- Dump the default template - Looks Count! I cringe when I see a blog using the "out of the box" templates Wordpress or MovableType. Hiring a designer to create a unique look for your blog, or at least, take advantage of some free templates available and customize it a bit with a unique logo or upgrade a little color.
- Just Say No To Bad Color Scheme, While pink with yellowish green color scheme may be your favorite, consider what your readers will expect. That color scheme might work perfectly on teen gossip site, but it would look very out of place as the company's corporate blog for men's suits. Likewise, gamers will think nothing of a black background on the blog Xbox 360, but it will look horrible on the site parenting or pregnancy. So, while you have to experiment with colors to find a good mix for your blog, keep in mind the user experience and expectations.
- RSS Me! Make sure you have RSS available. Many hosted blogging solutions do not have RSS automatically available, so you'll need to add it. And when you add it, make sure you have the RSS link in the clear. Do not put them away at the very bottom of the index page after you the latest 20 entries, or hide them in a separate page "About Us". Place all subscribe link handy in your sidebar, which is exactly where people will look for them. If you use Feedburner today, we see a new option MyBrand those that allow you to host your own feed for a seamless user experience.
- Offer RSS Feed Subscribe & Buttons,Yes, when people want to subscribe to the blog, they will often find that the orange RSS logo and the logo of the standard aggregators like Bloglines. So it is worth the time to add the most popular for your blog so that visitors can easily make one-click subscription feeds them without it takes a lot of effort on their part. If you make it difficult to subscribe, most will not bother. FeedButton offer a service that allows you to offer multiple RSS aggregator and feed reader with the growing single rollover buttons.
- Offer Posts Via Email, Some people just do not get the RSS. So serve them by offering the option of getting your blog posts via email instead. The most popular service to do this automatically is FeedBlitz, although there are other tools are also widely available to do this.
- Determine Full Or Partial Feedm, Do you offer a full feed or a partial feed? It is a personal choice, and often depends on what your market space blogging in. One option is to offer two feeds, one being an ad-supported full feed, the RSS advertising is included, and the other a piece of ad-free copy of the feed, in which readers will not see the ad, but it should really look at your blog to read your complete entry. But this will often down to personal preference, and the preferences of your readers.
- Writing Compelling Snippets / Description, If you use the pieces to your RSS feed, be sure to make them attractive or leave the reader with a cliffhanger to encourage them to click through and read the full entry. This will make you more readers to your post instead of just using the default options including the first X number of words in a blog post as pieces. Use quotes to generate interest and click.
- Watch What You Write.One of my favorite bloggers have the unfortunate habit of writing long, detailed entriesâ € | without a single paragraph break and the double whammy of also writing a font size smaller than usual. If I were looking for a moment, it's hard to find my place again in his 1000 word entries. As a result, I did not read it as often as I would like, just because reading it was a painful experience.
- Spelling CountsSpelling is also worth mentioning. Add one of the many internet browser spell checker and run a quick spell check before you publish your entry. Every word does not have to be perfect, and I'm certainly guilty of letting myself the occasional typo escaped unnoticed. But I also get annoyed when I read the typo after typo after typo in the entry. And yes, if it happens enough, I'll unsubscribe out of sheer frustration.
- Count FontographyMake the font is easy to read. Some bloggers think it's cool to have their handwriting turned into a font be adjusted, or use a trendy font that would be more suitable for scrapbook layouts. But not everyone has such a wild and weird fonts installed, which means that people will see a standard font such as Times New Roman, and it can actually kill the look of your blog. So instead of designing your blog entries to text using standard fonts in a standard size.
- Do not Forget NavigationIs this part of a larger blog sites, such as the company's blog on a site for a large company? Do not just link to the main page of the blog. Syndicate your latest news in the sidebar to encourage visitors to the main site to check out the blog as well.
- How Fast is Your Host?One of my favorite blogs has a slow response time when I click of the pieces in my RSS to a full blog entry that I just really end up waiting for it to contain approximately 10% of the time. Do not lose readers because the hosting company you think 30 seconds is a reasonable amount of time to load the page.
- Avoid Overload Widget!Yes, there are definitely some cool widgets that you can add to your blog, such as Flickr or MyBlogLog box attached to your photo gallery. But be aware that having a large number of javascripts can slow down your site. So do not sacrifice time loading time for fun-but-not-all-that-necessary widgets.
- has a descriptive titleSome blog software actually makes the title of your post seems quite repetitive in the search engine results pages, and can result in lower click through than you might otherwise have had the title of a highly optimized. If your title says something like "Jason Tech Industry Rants & Ramblings Blog >> New Xbox 360 title announced for April release of" You have to change it to "New Xbox 360 title announced for April release". Unless you are known as an authority in the market blog, blog name just a waste of space is important at the beginning of the title tag and causing the rest of the entry title to finally get a cut in the search results. And make sure you actually increase the entry title and does not leave the reader wondering what on earth can a blog entry about. Ensure you have a great title when you have a small reader and depending on the search engine to send the reader is one of the first steps you should take to optimize your blog.
- Look at the Cascading Style Sheets.Most blogs use a large amount of CSS to create a custom look. And while most "out of the box" design that comes standard with the installed template includes all the CSS in an external file, there must be some blog designers that will put them on the individual rather than the CSS page templates put everything in an external CSS file. And when you do not place CSS in an external file, it can mess up your page and result in the most important part of the page - text entry - which is much lower in the HTML code when I have to go after the mass line of CSS coding.
- Post OftenThe more you post, the more likely Googlebot and other bots will stop growing steadily. If you only post once in a blue moon, hoping that it might take a while for Google to drop in and see that you have actually been updated again. Google loves updated fresh sites, so it makes sense to feed the bot what it wants.
- Spread the Love LinkIf you are blogging about the story, connect the original story as well as other comments on the same topic. When you do, you will often make people aware of your blog blogger (if they are not already) when people click through from your blog to them. And it also raises the possibility that they will link to you on a story or something you blog about in the future.
- Be aware of your Anchor TextWhen you link to someone's blog entry, or even a previous blog entry on your own, make sure you connect with either. This means that instead of linking to someone's blog entry with the anchor text "click here", you link to them using the anchor text associated with blog entries, such as "Jason scoop on the new Xbox 360 games Widget".
- Create Unique StoriesBloggers love to link to other bloggers. When you write an original blog entry, not just repeating something someone else has said, you increase the likelihood that someone will find you interesting enough to link to and talk about. And a blogger blog readers may read the entries and decided to write something about what you are saying as well, meaning yet another link as well. And if you're lucky, it will go viral, meaning it suddenly seems like every blogger in this market space you're talking about what you write. Rinse and repeat as often as possible for maximum exposure and link juice.
- Use the Related Posts PluginThis not only makes sense to keep readers around for another article on your site related to your post today, but it also allows you to deeplink of the current page in your blog to the older entries. Often, older entries get buried in the archives a few pages on the page, and allows you to display the entries written months or years in advance and give them the "oldies but goodies" a little extra kick in the search engines. There are some related posts plugin some are available depending on which blog platform you are using.
- Ping Other SitesWhen you add a new blog entry, you may want to ping sites like Technorati and FeedBurner to let them know you have a brand new blog entry on your site. You can now ping Google Blog Search as well for faster indexing in search engines blogsearch.google.com them on the blog. Automatic pinging is an option in the control panel of most blog platforms including WordPress and MovableType. And Ping-o-Matic offers a service that allows you to quickly pick and choose what to ping.
- Buy Your Own Domain NameDo not always think of free blog hosting companies will be there forever. What would you do if you are building a loyal reader then one day you find yourblogname.examplebloghost.com no longer work because examplebloghost.com have gone out of business? You want to make sure the search engines have a URL they will always find your blog, instead of having to worry about their re-index your blog previously well-ranked in the morning a whole new domainâ € | it is if you are lucky enough to get your blog post from the company You are free hosting. Both Google Blogger and WordPress allows you to use a hosted service while displaying on their blog on your own domain instead their own branded one.NOTE: See also our related story, stay Master Of Your Feed Domain.
- You Manage Trackback Spam & CommentsYou do not want Google or Yahoo to search for mass spam links on your site for all sorts of less-quality sites submitted to your blog by blog spammers. Use one of the many tools in the market for your blog platform to manage both comment and trackback spam.
- Use the Good URL StructureDo not use "permalinks" like www.yourblogsite.com/?p=123. Instead, use www.yourblogsite.com/2007/01/01/blog_entry_title_here. Most blogging platforms allow you to change the default number of permalinks for this style that is search engine friendly. And just in case blog platform you are using has a funky dynamic URLs to each entry, you'll want to make sure that the bot can crawl easily or using mod rewrite to create a good structure as in the example.
- Use the Large CategoryWhen you write a post, put in 1 to 3 different categories related to the post. For example, and articles on the television show Grey Anatomy could go under the "Grey's Anatomy" and "ABC". Avoid the temptation to add it to ten different categories though, as it included a "drama," "hospital," "intern" and "Seattle" because it's just overkill. But if you write something great on Grey's Anatomy, you have made it easy for your readers to find all your posts on Grey's Anatomy as they only need to click on the category links at the top or bottom entry.
Once on blog optimization hopefully this will make you understand and know how to blog optimization.
