Welcome to Day 25 of the 30 Days to Build a Better Wedding Blog. Over the course of this series, I’ve been asked to share some insight on how to increase reader subscriptions. Here are 5 tips on how to increase reader subscriptions on your wedding blog:

1. Choose a “Subscribe” button, not a “RSS” button
2. Make your “Subscribe” button highly visible (i.e. in the Header or Sidebar)
3. Display the “Subscribe” button on every page of your wedding blog
4. Encourage Readers to Subscribe at the end of every post
5. Use subscription buttons to popular Blog (RSS) Readers (i.e. Google Reader, Bloglines, Yahoo)

Lastly, why not simply ask. 

Day 25 Task - Ask your Readers to Subcribe to your Wedding Blog

For today’s task, simple write a post asking your readers to subscribe to your wedding blog. In the post, give information on the blog, upcoming content, and reasons why you think your readers should subscribe. 

Are you a Subscriber? If not,  **Subscribe to the iMatrimony Wedding Technology Blog Here - :) **

It’s a known fact that many brides are using the internet to aid in planning their wedding. Tech-savvy brides are using technology daily to research the industry in an effort to produce their wedding vision. No matter what your wedding niche, its nice to know when, or what time of day, your readers are spending time on your wedding blog. You can use this information to schedule special post updates, release new company or industry news, make giveaway announcements, and more. If you post to specific categories on specific days, your stats will reveal which categories your readers are most interested in, and where to spend more time creating content.

Day 24 Task - Review Your Visits Stats by the Time of Day

Review your blog analytics reports, and take note of the time of day your wedding blog receives the highest traffic. Use this information to tweak your wedding blog strategy, and Weekly Post Schedule you developed on Day 7.

Not that you know who is reading your blog, and what keywords your readers are searching to find you. It’s important to know how often they are reading your wedding blog. When reviewing your web analytics, take a look at your stats on Page Views and Unique Visits. This can get a little tricky, and I often have people ask, “What’s the difference?” Page Views simple relate to how many times a page or multiple pages on your wedding blog have been viewed. A Unique Visitor is when your site is viewed by a reader for the first time. For example, If you have 15 Unique Visitors to your wedding blog, and 30 Page Views. By dividing the 30 Page Views by the 15 Unique Visitors, this means each unique visitor viewed an average of 2 pages before leaving the your site. 

Day 23 Task - Review your Page Views and Unique Visits

Take a look at the analytics reports for your wedding blog, and make it a habit to track your progress. This information will be important as you grow your wedding blog and track the changes you make in the future.

It’s Day 22 of the 30 Days to Build a Better Wedding Blog, and we’re rapidly approaching the end of the series. To date, we’ve discussed building a foundation for your wedding blog, writing quality content, and tips on optimizing your blog. So what’s left? Your Readers.

Building an audience and improving your readership is key. You’re writing your wedding blog with the expectation that others will read it. So today’s task is focused on the readers. Who’s your audience, and who is reading your blog?

Day 22 Task - Identify your Readers

Know your readers. Why are they visiting your blog? What topics interest them most? What keywords are searched to direct them to your wedding blog? This is where your analytics come in from Day 2 and Day 3. Take a look at your visitor statistics and alerts. Brainstorm on topics in your wedding niche that connect with the terms and keywords your readers are using. 

Involving guest bloggers to contribute to your wedding blog, is a great way to establish your blog as a trusted and respected resource. Inviting an expert blogger will help to increase traffic to your site. Also, the expert’s readers now become aware of your wedding blog as a new resource, and vice versa. Guest bloggers can address topics, or answers questions, that you as a wedding blogger may not be familiar with. Planning to take a vacation, or taking time away from the blog, is a great time to add a guest blogger to fill in the gaps. 

Day 21 Task - Invite a Guest Blogger to your Wedding Blog

Reach out to a respected expert in your wedding niche, and invite them to contribute a blog post in their specific area of expertise. Don’t feel you must limit yourself to bloggers, choose an expert from any arena that you feel can contribute or inspire your readers. Be sure to communicate that the post may be edited if needed. You don’t want to run the risk of insulting your expert. Request a few post ideas to choose from to ensure you receive a quality post.

Commenting on other blogs is another important element in improving your own blog. Leaving comments on blogs helps to build your blogging reputation and establish your blog as a respected resource. There is such a thing called “Blog Comment Etiquette”. Be wise when choosing a strategy to add comments. You don’t want your comments to be viewed as SPAM, and automatically removed from other blogs. Some blogs have what is called a “NoFollow” tag, which tells search engines not to follow any links in the blog comments. Though the search engines may not recognize the link, other readers my follow the link. So leaving comments will also help to improve your search engine ranking, and build traffic for your wedding blog.

Day 20 Task - Create a Strategy for Leaving Blog Comments

Some experts recommend leaving blog comments twice a day or at least three times a day. It’s up to you to decide on a strategy for leaving blog comments, and remember not to over do it.

Yesterday, we discussed using tags for your wedding blog posts. Today we will discuss tagging the photos in your wedding blog posts. By using ALT tags (alternative tags) you can improve the quality of your content for better search engine ranking. An ALT Tag allows you to give your photos a text description or keyword. For example, if you have a photo of a “tiffany blue” tablescape, you will want to add an ALT tag to the photo with that description. The more specific, the better your chances of high ranking in search engine results. 

Day 19 Task - Add ALT Tags to your Wedding Blog Photos

In today’s task, you should take some time to review your past posts and add ALT tags to the photos in your posts. Remember to be very specific in describing the photos you are tagging.

I was recently on the recieving end of what amounts to questions of the originality of our recent posts in the 30 Days to Build a Better Wedding Blog. As with most area of my life I decided to approach this as a teaching moment. So, let’s explore some of the issues of blogging in the “sea of sameness”.

When building your wedding blog it is important to cite any references (typically through links and trackbacks). At times this may prove difficult, especially when your idea is the manifestation of an amalgamation of several ideas threaded together. But non the less, do your best to give credit when credit is due.  

I’d like to thank my Twitter friends for raising this crucial topic to my attention.  I commit painstaking and brain numbing hours trying to make sure I produce original and valuable information for the wedding world and any similarities with others is a mere coincidence. Please be on the lookout for upcoming iMatrimony blog posts on other measures of protecting your brand in the era of social media.

Are you using tags on your wedding blog?

Tags are like labels. Your tags should not reflect the blog post entirely, but elements of the content in the blog post. Much like to titles to describe the aisles at the grocery store. Tagging, although not structured like Catergories, allows you to keep your content organized. It also helps readers to find your content faster. 

Day 18 Task - Add Tags to your Wedding Blog Posts

If you aren’t in the habit of tagging already, now is the time to begin. Start generating tags that describe the content in your wedding blog. Keep in mind the categories of your wedding blog, and don’t repeat them as tags.

What is Permalink you ask? Well according to the almight Wikipedia ”A permalink, or permanent link, is a URL that points to a specific blog or forum entry after it has passed from the front page to the archives. Because a permalink remains unchanged indefinitely, it is less susceptible to link rot.” This simply means that each of your blog posts are given a permanent URL.

• For example, the default link for this post would be http://www.imatrimonyblog.com/?p=123. 
• The permalink for this post is http://www.imatrimonyblog.com/2009/day-17-using-permalinks-on-your-wedding-blog. 

Why should you use permalinks on your wedding blog? Creating custom permalinks helps to make your blog more search engine friendly. You can include keywords in your wedding blog categories, post titles, and post permalinks to improve your page rankings among search engines.

Day #17 - Install Permalinks Structure on your Wedding Blog

In today’s task, you will Install Permalinks Structure on your Wedding Blog. On most blogging platforms, this change be easily done by altering your settings. For other formats, the permalink structure is automatic.