How to Change Online Publishing in 2009

The blog, the log, the weblog, wordpresses, journals both live and dead, yes they've all taken us pretty far. When I first blogged it was all static files. Yup just plain ol' HTML files I manually built and organized, relics that live only in The Archive now.  Today however, I can't help but feel despite all the options and technology available, online publishing has gone stagnant, boring even.These feelings were drivin home even more so after reading Duncan Riley's recent post, The Uber Blog. Go read that and come back...This is where blogs are headed, or are already on their way to. For me sites like Huffington Post really come to mind. I'm not even a huge fan but the unique layouts, inclusion of UGC and aggregated content make it both dizzying and genius at times. A lot of people are trying to give their blogs a face lift, to stand out more as platform, less of a journal. TechCrunch and the Gawker sites also come to mind.Since I'm building my own little blog network this year, I thought I'd share some of the ways I'm going to, well do it better.

• Exposing Article Page ViewsI'm going to show page views and even use them as a metric for the quality of that content. The views tell me things like readership numbers, weight in search engines, and of course "share-a-bility" across social media.  I've started to expose page views on a few of my sites and found its the best way to track "the hits".  Since traffic is really all that matters to online publishers why not show off what you got.
• Exposing AuthorsWhy do we hide so many of the great online writers?  In most cases they are reduced to a byline, sometimes a clickable link to their archive. Wordpress powered blogs are notoriously bad at this.  Authors should be highlighted, each with their own profile that includes a bio and how to find them around the web.  Exposing links to their personal blogs, Twitter, etc helps them build social currency. Hint: That's good for you as a publisher. We should expose, promote, and acknowledge our authors so much that they leave you in 1-2 years for a better job.
• In line AggregationAt some point in the last few years data has become very portable, publishers just haven't taken advantage of it. Why not bring in aggregated content even if it is external, to keep a page fresh? You can see an example of this on the Andrew Warner profile on lalawag. Scroll to the bottom of the interview to see the aggregated experience. The page immediately gets more value and longevity. No matter when you view it, the page contains all the latest info about Andrew. Doing this is also very easy with technologies like Simple Pie.
• RelevancyCreating and more importantly connecting relevant content is the new black. For both user experience and SEO, stitching relevant content together is vital. When I think about SEO today, I see that it is less about link stuffing and more about telling the machine a story. My characters are anchor text, my back-stories told through relevant linking. Next we need better tools to include achine-driven relevant content.
• RecirculationAOL, specifically their Web Logs Inc division does this like masters. The one blog, one domain play is limited. Build a network that can pass weight and recirculate your visitors. Get them into discovery mode and you'll get 50+ page-views per session. Bolt on utilities and search solutions and you can keep them even longer.

So there's a small taste of what I'll be focusing on this year in online publishing.  You can watch some of it starting over here, you can also share your own ideas in the comments.How are you going to change online publishing this year?