Last week marked five years blogging at The Garrulous Grimoire.
It feels like an eternity now that I think about it. I started this blog as a way to share my writing and thoughts with the world. While it still serves this purpose, it has also been a place for me to keep in touch with my web development skills. So while I reflect on my five year milestone, I thought I would share some of the things I have learned along the way.
Search Engine Optimisation
It turns out that SEO is kind of important if you want to build any kind of readership on the web. For the most part, I have simply attempted to write things that make sense.
I wrote a post a couple of months ago about Playing D&D From Home and seen some increased traffic linked to some of the keywords used. Since then, I have been thinking about how to improve the SEO standards of my content.
You would think that after five years blogging I would have a handle on this stuff, but things have changed a lot. So I did a little bit of research about how to implement some basic SEO and looked at various methods for improving the quality of my content. There is so much to learn, but the Yoast plugin makes it that much easier.
Posting Frequency
I have about 80 published posts, which averages out at roughly one and change per month. I could probably improve this by writing more about what I am reading and playing. It should be fairly straightforward to increase my rate of posting. I just have to make sure I have something to write about.
Book and Game Reviews
One thing I have been thinking about doing more of is book and game reviews. I like reading and I come across some great books, so why not share my thoughts about them? It is the same with games. I have played some fantastic titles recently, so I could be writing about my experiences there. This could potentially do double duty as a body of work I can point to career wise.
Monetising the Blog
You may have noticed that I run ads on The Garrulous Grimoire. I don’t expect to make a fortune out of this, but I have put them there in the hope that they might mitigate some of the costs of running the blog. I have limited them to specific sections of the blog to try to minimise reader disruption. The content is more important.
The Next Five Years
Who knows where the blog will take us. I hope you stick around for the adventure.