Blog Traffic: Another View

There are hundreds of guides on how to get more traffic directed to your blog, and most are wrong. Seth Godin recently posted on this topic, and I have to disagree with most of his points. While there are a few basically good ideas, there are many more that I just don’t see holding up.

Here’s what I look for in the blogs I visit:

Writer is an expert in the field. If the writer seems to have only a passing knowledge of the subject, I typically don’t return.
Articles are of a reasonable length. If the articles are too short they don’t contain enough information to be of use, on the other hand if they are too long, they require too much of a time investment. I’ve found that 600-1,000 words typically works out well for most items.
Don’t write about things nobody cares about. Many people are tempted to write about things that nobody else cares about, if it won’t benefit the bulk of your readers, then it’s probably not worth writing about.
Keep to a single, basic topic. I look for blogs that follow topics I’m interested in, the further it strays from what I care about; the less likely I’ll come back. For me, I care about technology, not the writer’s local news, the more news posts, the less the odds of me coming back.
Keep is site simple and useful. If the site is too complex, it distracts from the quality of the work being published. The site should have a simple theme and not be overload with useless links or icons.
Be transparent. I like blogs were the writer exposes a bit of herself, don’t be afraid to post your name or who you work for. The more information authors posts about themselves the more credibility they have.
The site can’t be an ad-farm. I’m not a fan of ads, but I understand high traffic sites are expensive to run. If the site looks like its only purpose is making money from ads, I won’t stick around. In most cases, if there are any banner ads, or more than two text ads, I’ll probably lose interest. Ad locations and colors should be carefully selected, if done properly, they add value, if done carelessly, they will kill reader loyalty.

This is by no means a formula to get millions of hits, just my view on what I look for, and the rules I try to follow. Each blog is different, and the readers of the topic you are writing about will determine what works and what doesn’t. Just try to make sure you’re writing about what people care about.

Focus on your readers, not your traffic. If you focus on providing a great resource for people, the high-quality traffic will follow. People matter more than the numbers, that’s what all bloggers need to stay focused on.

Adam Caudill

On Apple, Privacy, and Device Control

If you’ve bothered to look at Twitter or any technology news source, you’ve seen that Apple made a major announcement: Expanded Protections for Children. This has been written about by countless outlets, so I’ll assume you’re familiar with the basics. The announcement covered a few new features being added to the next version of Apple’s operating systems, namely: Scanning of inbound and outbound messages for sexually explicit images. Scanning images being uploaded to iCloud for CSAM.

Utilitarian Nightmare: Offensive Security Tools

Or: Ethical Decision Making for Security Researchers. There has been much discussion recently on the appropriateness of releasing offensive security tools to the world – while this storm has largely come and gone on Twitter, it’s something I still find myself thinking about. It boils down to a simple question, is it ethical to release tools that make it easy for attackers to leverage vulnerabilities that they wouldn’t otherwise be able to?

Looking for value in EV Certificates

When you are looking for TLS (SSL) certificates, there are three different types available, and vary widely by price and level of effort required to acquire them. Which one you choose impacts how your certificate is treated by browsers; the question for today is, are EV certificates worth the money? To answer this, we need to understand what the differences are just what you are getting for your money. The Three Options For many, the choice of certificate type has more to do with price than type – and for that matter, not that many people even understand that there are real differences in the types of certificates that a certificate authority (CA) can issue.

Testing for SWEET32 with YAWAST

Testing for SWEET32 isn’t simple – when the vulnerability was announced, some argued that the best solution was to assume that if a TLS server supported any of the 3DES cipher suites, consider it vulnerable. The problem is, it’s not that simple. On my employer’s corporate blog, I wrote about practical advice for dealing with SWEET32 – and pointed out that there are ways around the vulnerability, and some are quite simple.

A Secure Mentality

My employer recently completed the final audit to confirm ISO 17799 compliance, the process was a real eye opener. In a process that should have been fairly short & painless, the ordeal lasted close to a year, with me joining the company just before the second, and largest audit. That made my first few weeks rather interesting, to say the least. While 17799 does have some complex requirements, most of the issues found had more to do with the overall mentality than with the true technical issues involved.