It hasn't been the busiest month for video game releases so I thought I'd go back and play through a couple of my favourites from the year so far. Two massive sequels to highly respective titles - let's see if they matched up to the hype..
Gears of War 4
The Gears of War series is a massive deal for Microsoft. The launch exclusive for the XBOX 360 way back in 2006 has now reached its 4th iteration but continues to innovate the shooter genre more than we ever thought it could have done. The series was always a big reason to own the Microsoft console, and luckily it still is.The real struggle any returning player is going to find is in relation to the new characters. The original Gears Of War crew stood out because of how ridiculous they were. Here, our new cast are a little too generic to compare. They develop before all is said and done but none are as memorable as Delta Squad.
Ultimately, not much has changed, but that’s exactly why it’s so good. It’s been over three years since Gears Of War: Judgment, so jumping back in is like reacquainting yourself with an old friend. There are new modes – such as Dodgeball where you kill members of the opposition to revive deceased members of your own squad – but the real joy comes in how unique it still feels.
You can pick up Gears of War 4 on Amazon here.
Halo Wars 2
As I said It's been a month of playing sequels and this is no exception. Halo Wars 2 is yet another example of a shining beacon from selection the Microsoft exclusives available for Xbox One. The Halo series has always ben at the cornerstone of what Microsoft stands for when it comes to top quality multiplayer shooters, but this RTS (real time strategy) approach to the series will be a welcome change for many.If there’s one thing Halo Wars 2 gets emphatically right it’s the Halo content. You can feel it in the music and the front-end menus, the lengthy cut-scenes and the near-constant referencing of background bloodshed. If you’re looking for the sense that you’re fighting climactic battles straight from the Halo playbook, only from the perspective of a commander controlling units from the sky, it has you covered.
There’s some smart thinking going on behind the basics, too. As you play you can build up a range of Leader abilities, enabling you to heal or repair units or call down missile strikes, mines, turrets and ODST troopers. Upgrading skills makes them even more powerful, and using them wisely can be a game-changer, turning the tide of battle when you need it most.
Halo Wars 2 suffers a little from its console limitations, but it’s a solid RTS with a strong campaign and a good overall feel for the Halo universe.
You can pick up Halo Wars 2 on Amazon here.
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So you've created your very own blog (congratulations!) and have started frequently posting new content that you're super passionate about. Good start. The eternal struggle I had when I first started blogging just less than a year ago now was how to grow my audience and maintain that growth as the weeks go by without having to rely on things like paying for advertising space on blogs that were a similar niche to mine but had a much larger following. Organic growth is always best.
There's tons of guides online that'll tell you they can show you how to make $1,000 in your first month of blogging or get to 1m Instagram followers in less than a week.. but seriously it's just not possible, well not legally anyway. I thought I'd pull together my top tips on growing your blog organically and how to get away from hiding behind your laptop and actually actively promote your blog - scary i know!
I've written a couple of blogging advice posts already which you can check out below so give them a read and let me know if there's any other tips that would be helpful, although maybe yano finish reading this one first?
- Creating Content You're Proud Of
- Growing Your Domain Authority
- Staying Motivated & Overcoming Bloggers Block
- Reasons To Start A Blog Today
- Considerations Before Launching Your Blog
- 10 Ideas to Boost Your Blog Today
#1 | Reach out & engage with the community
Bloggers don't bite! There's no better way to organically grow your blog than simply engaging with other bloggers and content creators and getting their thoughts, feedback and criticism on your content. There are Twitter chats every day of the week to get involved in and start sharing your latest posts. This will help gain not only visitors to your blog but hopefully lifelong readers and subscribers too.
Blogger events can also be a fantastic face to face alternative to virtual chats, and usually end up being much more productive. Most of them centre around London but ask around and see if there are any taking place on your area, or if not why not create one yourself? They are the perfect way to meet local content creators and come up with new collaborations.
#2 | Think about post titles - SEO is key
I am absolutely no expert when it comes to SEO, but I do know that the choice of title really helps. Posts with titles such as '5 things/ways/......' are always good. They're more likely to come up on search engines. I mean, I definitely don't stick to this all the time, because you've gotta keep it personal too! It sounds obvious but always try and make your title clear to the reader what they might be about to click through to on your blog.
For example, if I was writing a post about the technology I use everyday, I wouldn't want to just say "Never leave the house without your iPhone". This certainly sounds interesting, which might get you a few clicks, but doesn't actually explain the post of the post. Something like "The tech I use everyday" is much shorter and to the point, but also does a better job of explaining the subject of the content your readers are about to see.
When creating, and uploading a blog post, keywords should always be in the forefront of your mind. Without your vital keywords in your content, search engines won’t be able to see what your post is about and then can’t show it in their search results. If you take anything away from this incredibly long blog post it has to be about the importance of keywords.
Before I start a blog post, I always do a little keyword analysis. It doesn’t have to take forever, and it doesn’t have to be long winded. I think about the post that I am going to write, and I start using search engines to look for certain words or phrases to see what results come up and if it is a keyword that I want to implement into my post. Then I will write my post. I won’t think about keywords for the time being, I will just write my post as I want it to read so that I know it has a good flow to it.
Then when it is in the proofing stage I will go through and implement keywords where I think it needs them. You do have to be careful though not to put too many keywords into your post. If your content doesn’t flow and it is choppy due to the overuse of keywords this can go against you in regard to SEO. Everything in moderation is key and make sure that it reads nice and smoothly when you are finished.
#3 | Create eye-catching content
I don't know about you, but the first thing that entices me into reading a blog post, is the photography. I think its good to keep the photography clean, and simple. Well, this is if you're photographing products of course. A busy background can often distract the eye from the product you're talking about, so keeping it simple(ish) is always a good idea!
I often visit sites such as Unsplash to get stock photography that's free to use. This way even if you're not a dab hand and taking photos you can still create super engaging content that will be more likely to get people clicking on, whether that be through Bloglovin, Instagram, Twitter or others.
I often visit sites such as Unsplash to get stock photography that's free to use. This way even if you're not a dab hand and taking photos you can still create super engaging content that will be more likely to get people clicking on, whether that be through Bloglovin, Instagram, Twitter or others.
#4 | Don't be afraid of social media
My next point on this guide is based around the myth of too much self-promotion. When you first start out it can often be daunting to keep tweeting about your latest post and flooding instagram with all your fancy new flat lays, but the truth is you just have to keep at it if you want to get a serious following. Determination is the most important thing when it comes to starting out. For the first few weeks or even months you won't get any followers and barely and readers. But that's just it, you shouldn't be writing your blog for sole purpose of quitting your job and making big bucks blogging all day because let's face it it's just not going to happen that way. Blog for yourself first - always be selfish when it comes to the content you create.
I've gone off track slightly...but you get the point. There's so much social media has to offer when it comes to promoting your blog. Heres just a couple of pointers:
- Comment on at least 5 blog posts per day with a link back to your site.
- Use hashtags that fit your blog's niche like #BBLOGGERS or #LBLOGGERS.
- Post regularly on Instagram and engage with the users that like or comment.
- Link back to your blog in the bios of all your social media - make it ridiculously easy for people to find your blog.
So that's my short and sweet guide to growing your blog organically. There are various ways to to pay for more traffic and more followers, which I can cover in another post but really the best route to a successful blog is creating content that you enjoy and sharing it with others that feel the same.
#5 | Invest time on your header & logo
When somebody clicks onto your blog, the first thing that their eyes see most of the time is your header or logo. What you need to do with that header is make sure that it is good enough to entice people in and want to stay on your page. It needs to clearly show what your website or blog is about and be easy to understand. Anything that is too intense and crowded can often turn people away.
When people click onto your site and then go straight back off this is classed as a bounce, when your website hits a certain percentage of bounces Google will start to think of your website as spam and will try to refrain from showing it on their search results. A normal percentage bounce rate is around 40%, any more than that and you are in the red zone of what is acceptable. When designing your header, you just need to have in the forefront of your mind, does this represent my blog? Does this represent who I am as a person and a blogger? And, is this easy to understand and does it get my message across?
#6 | Consistency is key
To hold your audience and keep them interested and wanting to come back you need to be consistent on your blog. If they like what they read but you don’t post for months at a time they aren’t going to spend their time keep coming back to see if you have finally uploaded, they will just go elsewhere to see what somebody else has to say and you have lost yourself a reader. Make sure that you think of a schedule in your mind and try to stick to it. It doesn’t have to be set in stone but just a rough guide to keep you on the right track.
I write and upload a blog post every alternate day or at a push, every third day, this is manageable for me and I find it really easy to do. This way, I can upload on time every day without too much pressure and my readers know where they stand because majority of the time there will always be something new for them to take a look at.
Also, when you upload on a regular basis it also helps to boost your site up the search engine rankings. Platforms will notice that you are consistent, and they will link that to being a source of reliability so they are more likely to show you on their search results. You don’t have to upload all of the time but just be consistent in your uploads and try and stick to a noticeable plan.
#7 | The speed of your blog
We all know how annoying it is when you click onto a website and it takes forever and a day to load up. It literally does my head in and if I click onto a website and it isn’t fast responsive I will click back off because realistically who has the time to watch a website load for what seems like forever? Always check that your website can handle what you are uploading. For example, if you are uploading a post which is very heavy in images make sure that they aren’t too large. Yes, we want the images to be high quality, but you can keep the quality and have a reduced file size. It just allows people's computers, phones and tablets to be able to handle the amount of data that you are trying to show on their screen.
If your site does take a long time or it even gets to the point where the screen times out because it takes that long, it can be really negative for your all-important quality score. The little Google-bots that scan your site will notice how long it takes to completely load and this will impact your position on the search rankings because Google don’t want to show anything that will look negative on them. At the end of the day by Google having us high on the search rankings it is basically them promoting us for free, so they need to make sure that what they are pushing is good stuff.
It's been a busy old month for new music releases so I thought I'd share with you the vinyls I've picked up lately. My last vinyls post was one of the most popular I've ever done so I hopped onto Amazon and ordered some more!
John Mayer - The Search For Everything
The latest release from John Mayer is easily his best work since the incredible blue-athon that was Continuum. The Search For Everything combines many of his best sounds and spans many genres into a single record including some acoustic tear jerkers as well as the more recent blues-filled sound you'd find on Paradise Valley. A true masterpiece from start to finish. Available here.
Paramore - After Laughter
I wasn't quite sure what to expect for this upcoming album but i'm so happy with what we got. A lot of bands change their style over the course of their career and Paramore is no exception. After Laughter is a mixture of old and new. Its a new place for paramore, but its what they excel at. The album has the standard tone, themes and pacing of a regular paramore, in an 80s style. The old paramore style may be dead, but the new one thrives in this mixture of songs that show the real feelings behind the past 4 years that paramore have been away for. Available here.
Harry Styles - Harry Styles
If somebody would have told me a year or two ago that I would one day buy an album from somebody in one direction I would have never believed them. But here I am with the first solo effort from Harry Styles in my possession and wow, i'm blown away by the 70s pop-rock vibe. It will be interesting to see how many one direction fans turn away from this new style that Harry is going down, but it will be equally interesting to see how many new fans are picked up along the way.
It is an album that deserves to be heard, and this guy should be applauded for taking such a huge risk and proving what a truly talented singer-songwriter he is. Don't turn your nose up just because he was in a boy band, Give him the chance and the credit he deserves for crafting such a brilliant first solo album. Available here.
So those are my new vinyl additions for the past month, what do you think are their any more new releases I need to consider? You can check out my first vinyl arrivals post here.
If you've not come across the term Domain Authority (DA) before, then simply put it's a measure of between 1-100 of the quality of your website in terms of SEO. This is SO IMPORTANT for the blogging community because your score will go along way to determine the ranking of your content in search engines such as Google. Allowing users to organically find your blog content via search is the holy grail when it comes to our community because it means focusing less on broadcasting your latest and greatest post all over your social media, and more time writing the next post!
Generally speaking, a DA of 25 is a good benchmark for a quality website that contains SEO friendly content. Brands often request a DA of at least this standard before working with potential influencers to ensure that the blog on which their product/service will be promoted will be beneficial for them in terms of additional traffic to their own site.
How to increase DA
The first question you're probably asking yourself is "Well what's the domain authority for my blog?". Well I'm glad you asked! Head over to Moz Open Site Explorer and enter the URL of your site to find out just that. There's a couple of key stats to take note of here:
DA Score - Authority of the entirety of your site (www.theguyontrend.co.uk)
PA Score - Authority of a specific page of your site (www.theguyontrend.co.uk/p/advertising)
The easiest way to increase your domain authority is gaining quality external links to your blog. The best way to do this is simply by commenting on blog posts you enjoy and making sure to include a link back to your website. If the blog you commented on has a high DA and you get a decent number of clicks back to your website from that page then it will benefit your own authority score. Simple right? Just remember, increasing your DA is no quick process mainly due to that fact that in can take some time to get relevant clicks back to your content once you start leaving lots of comments and secondly sites like Moz only update their stats around once a month - so keep checking back regularly to see how your score is improving over time.
Another great way to improve the DA score of your site is some simple SEO house keeping. Little tasks like remembering to include meta descriptions, title tags and cross-linking to other content on your site throughout your posts are quick wins when it comes to tackling your score.
Always remember to go back and check your old blog posts for any broken images and especially broken links. Google will instantly spot these and punish you and your DA score. Linking to a product on ASOS that no longer exists? Change it. Linking to an old article that's since been moved? Find it and update the link. All of these little bits of blogging admin soon pile up but will ultimately improve the score of your website and allow you to confidently reach out to brands and improve your site's ranking on search engines.
Lastly, remember that your DA will generally increase in line with the age of your website so these things can take a lot of time. I've only been blogging regularly for just over a year and have so far managed to keep my DA pretty stable at 12/100, which is still very much below average but I've noticed it improve significantly over the past few months as i've started to add new SEO-friendly content to the site on a regular basis.
I hope you've found these tips helpful, do you have any more advice on growing and maintaining a healthy DA for your blog?
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