New & Improved: Bruce Clay, Inc.’s SEO Blog

Sound the trumpets and bring out the good china! There is exciting news to celebrate here on the Bruce Clay, Inc. blog! After months of planning and programming, the hard work has come to a proud and happy ending. Welcome to the new and improved Bruce Clay, Inc. blog.

Earlier this year, BCI staffers with a role in the blog swore an oath to make it better. A blueprint had been laid out by Internet marketing maven Patrick Sexton. He had spelled out several shortfalls of the blog’s design and function in constructive detail. His suggestions would serve to increase conversation and visual appeal, and in it we saw a vision for a better blog.

With a plan in front of us, we aimed our sights on several goals and announced them to readers, who replied with supportive and encouraging comments. It appeared we weren’t the only ones eager for change.

Through a redesigned blog we hoped to:

1. Get rid of the sideways barcode problem we’ve got going on.
2. Include lots of images!
3. Let people communicate in real time through the comments.
4. Make the comment approval process better.
5. And kick the blog navigation up a notch.

Today we’re all aflutter because the redesigned blog is live! Just in time for the holidays, here are some of the new features we’re glad to bring to the blog.

Farewell, sideways barcode!

If you refer back to the original post announcing a redesign of the blog, you’ll see that the sideways barcode problem wasn’t an issue we waited to change. With the infusion of images in every post, modifications to the sidebar, and the new snippet style of the blog home page, we said, “Bye bye, barcode!” and never looked back.

Hello, swift comment approval and real-time conversation!

One of my favorite revisions to the blog is the comment handling. First, the comment approval process has been simplified. Comments submitted by Gravatar users who have previously commented on the blog will be automatically approved to the post, complete with the avatar image. Plus, comments are now threaded, which means conversation in the here and now is strongly encouraged.

We think the new spam filter is better than the last one, too, and we’ll continue to iron out any kinks in the comment approval process moving forward. Try it out and let us know what you think!

A warm welcome to the sweet new sidebar and blog home page!

Improved navigation and enhanced Web presence, all wrapped up in a tidy little package? Check! On the new blog home page, readers are presented with post excerpts, allowing for easier navigation to the topics you care about most. Rather than wading through full posts you’re not interested in, the snippet-style blog home page gives readers a taste of each post, from which readers can dive in for more or skip on to the next.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/maxblogbits/ CC BY-SA 2.0

The new sidebar includes buttons that will take you to Bruce Clay, Inc.’s presence across the Web. Links to the company’s Facebook, Twitter, Flickr and podcast are all quite comfy in the new sidebar. And the newly svelte blog archives in the sidebar are easier to navigate in their expandable form.

Finally, a big hoorah for the related posts feature at the end of each post, for Twitter and Sphinn buttons at the top of all posts, for social media sharing capabilities at the bottom of posts, and for darker, more eyeball-friendly text throughout.

Thanks to everyone involved in the planning and creation of the redesigned Bruce Clay, Inc. blog. Special gratitude and appreciation go out to Aaron Landerkin, Michael Thompson, Johnny Lin, Paula Allen, Susan Esparza and Bruce Clay for their essential contributions. And a big thanks to the BCI blog readers for kicking it in the construction zone.

Virginia Nussey is the director of content marketing at MobileMonkey. Prior to joining this startup in 2018, Virginia was the operations and content manager at Bruce Clay Inc., having joined the company in 2008 as a writer and blogger.

See Virginia's author page for links to connect on social media.