25 tips for optimizing blogs for readers and search engines

Now everyone and their dogs (yes, some of them also have their own blogs) start to write blogs, but many people have not taken measures to optimize their blogs for readers and search engines. Although a blog can be commercial (does anyone write a blog on the error message "my blog ?), A blog can also be personal. You can talk about the ham sandwich you eat today, or about the poor services you enjoyed in that fashion restaurant last night.

However, whether your blog is commercial or personal, you should ensure that you have optimized your blog for readers (after all, you want these readers to come back) and search engines. Unfortunately, too many blogs, even those popular blogs with "Qian" path, seem to have ignored this important step of optimization.

However, the optimization of blogs is different from the optimization of search engines for common websites, especially because many blogs are based on standard blog platforms, or even worse, on others' websites. In addition, the unique design style of each blog can also affect your ranking.

Let's take a look. When you use a new nice-looking new blog template, many blog designers only focus on the appearance of the blog. However, unfortunately, many excellent blog designers are not search engine optimization practitioners, which means that the blog templates you use may damage your search engine rankings. Maybe your new design looks good to readers, but if your blog ranks poorly in the search engine, new readers may not be able to find your blog.

In addition, when you optimize your blog to improve user experience, you need to make it easy for users to return and participate in your blog, instead of turning them into other websites or blogs. Old users are the essence of your blog, so you can use the following tips to provide them with the returned tools and improve their user experience, so that they are willing to access them again.

Fortunately, if you want your blog rankings to be improved without compromising the user experience, you can check your blog and modify the problems as per this article, to Prevent indexing problems in the search engine and ensure that your blog appears in the search engine in a good image.

The following is how to optimize your blog for your users and search engines.

1) do not use the default template. Appearance is very important!
I don't like blogs that use WordPress or MovableType default templates. Hire a designer to design a unique style for your blog, or at least use a free template and slightly modify it, add a unique logo or modify the color.

2) reject bad colors
You may like the combination of pink and light green colors, but consider your user experience. This combination of colors may be good for a young man chatting website, but it is too outrageous for a Business blog of a men's wear company. Similarly, gamers will think that there is no black background for an Xbox 360 blog, but the black background is terrible for parenting or pregnant women websites. So when you adjust the color of your blog to find a good color match, remember the user experience and their expectations.

3) RSS
Make sure you have RSS. Many blog websites do not automatically install RSS, so you need to add it. After adding RSS, make sure that these RSS links are in a prominent position. Do not hide them on the 20 articles you recently published on the homepage, or on another "About Us" page. Put all these convenient subscription links on the sidebar where people are looking for these links. If you use feedburner now, check out their new
Mybrand option, which enables you to use your feed and provide a seamless user experience.

4) Provide RSS and feed subscription buttons
Yes, when people want to subscribe to a blog, they will look for the orange RSS icon and the standard aggregator like Bloglines. Therefore, it is worthwhile to add most popular aggregators to your blog, because visitors can easily subscribe through one click, and they do not need to pay for anything. If you make subscription troublesome, most people will give up. Feedbutton provides a service that allows you to use an expanded scroll button to provide multiple RSS aggregators and feed readers.

5) provide the function of obtaining post via email
Some people cannot get RSS. Therefore, we need to take care of them and provide them with the function of obtaining blog posts through email. Feedblitz is the most popular service that can automatically provide this service, although many tools can play the same role.

6) The decision is to use all or part of the feed.
Do you provide all or part of the feed? This is my preference. It is usually related to the market segments of your blog. One choice is to provide two types of feed, one is all the feeds supported by the advertisement, including one RSS advertisement, and the other is the feed without advertisement, so that the user will not see the advertisement, but you can see your blog reading the entire article. But it usually depends on your personal preferences and your users' preferences.

7) write paragraphs/descriptions that are fascinating
If your RSS feed uses paragraphs, make sure it is inflammatory, or you can hold your appetite to encourage them to click and read the full text. This will attract more readers than using the starting content of the default post as a paragraph. Use synopsis to stimulate interest and click.

8) Pay attention to writing methods
One of my favorite blogs has a bad habit of posting a long post without segmentation and having a small number of words. If I watch it for a while, it's hard for me to find it. Therefore, I don't quite read her blog. Even though I like it very much, it is because it is very difficult to read.

9) spelling is very important
Spelling is also worth mentioning. Add a spelling checker to your browser to quickly check the spelling before posting a post. Not every word needs perfection, and I often misspelled it out due to missing mistakes. But I am not happy to see misspelling when I read a post. Yes. If this phenomenon occurs too many times, I can't accept unsubscribing.

10) fonts are important
The font is easy to read. Some blogs think it is cool to convert their handwriting into a Custom font, or use a trendy font that is better suited to the clip book format. But not everyone has installed those weird fonts, which means these people see standard fonts such as Times New Roman, and your blog looks ruined. Therefore, we need to use a standard font in a blog post.

11) do not forget the navigation bar
Is this blog part of a large website? For example, a company blog? Do not just link to the blog homepage. Integrate the latest posts on your sidebar to encourage visitors to visit your blog.

12) How fast is the host?
Another blog host that I like is too slow. When I clicked my RSS section to read the full text of my blog, I waited for a long time before it opened 1/10. Do not lose readers because your host service provider may think it takes 30 seconds to open a page.

13) avoid some fancy Functions
Yes, you can add some cool functions to your blog, such as the album functions such as mybloglog or Flickr photo box. However, note that many javascripts scripts will slow your website. So do not add some nice-looking but not practical functions.

14) Descriptive title
Some blog software will repeat your title in the search engine results, and the results will lead to a low click rate compared to the optimized title. If your title is "Jason's tech industry rants & ramblings blog> new Xbox 360 title announced for release l release, you should change the title like "new Xbox 360 title announced for release l release" unless your blog is well known in the industry. The blog name wastes the important position in front of the page title, and the titles of the posts in the search engine results are truncated. To enhance your post by the page title, do not confuse the user with the blog post, such as what it is about. If you don't have many readers and rely mainly on search engines to bring them to users, ensure that a good page title is the first action you need to take to optimize your blog.

15) Check your CSS
Many blogs use a lot of CSS to create custom appearances. Although most of the default template designs place all CSS in an external CSS file, some blog designers put their CSS in each template page. If you do not place CSS in an external file, the code will pile up in the page, as a result, the most important blog posts on the page will appear after a large amount of CSS code in HTML code.

16) Frequent posting
The more frequently you post, the more frequently Google spider programs and other spider programs will visit your webpage. If you post a post for a long time, it may take some time for Google to visit your page and check your updates. Google prefers websites that are updated frequently. Therefore, it makes sense to update websites frequently based on Spider Program preferences.

17) link to other blogs
If you want to write a blog about a story, you need to link it to other blogs on the same topic. If you do this, people will know your blog (if they do not) when they click to access their blog from your blog ). This increases the possibility that they will link your story or other content in the future.

18) Pay attention to your link text
Make sure that the link is correct when you link someone's blog post or your previous blog post. This means that you should not use the link text such as "Click here". You should use the link text related to the blog post, for example: "Jason's scoop on the new widget Xbox 360 game ".

19) create unique stories
Blogs like to link to other blogs. When you post innovative blog posts, instead of making a repeat, someone will find your article interesting and link or talk about your post. If the reader of this blog reads his blog and decides to talk about your article, another link will be generated. If you are lucky, this kind of link will be viral, which means that all the blogs in your field are talking about your articles. Repeat as much as possible to obtain the maximum exposure and link.

20) use related post plug-ins
This not only enables readers to read other articles related to this post on your website, but also enables you to link to other old posts in depth multiple times. Old posts are often buried deep, so that they can show the excellent old posts that have been made several months or years ago and make them better in the search engine. You can select several post plug-ins based on your blog platform.

21) notify other websites
When you add a new post, you may want other websites such as Technorati and feedburner to know that you have a new post. You can also notify Google's blog search engine to capture your website more quickly. Most blog platforms, including WordPress and MovableType, provide the option of automatic notification in the control panel. Ping-o-matic provides a service that allows you to quickly select the content to be notified.

22) buy your own domain name
Do not always think that your free blog provider will always exist. If you already have a loyal reader group, one day you suddenly find that your blog is no longer usable, because your blog service provider has closed down. What do you do? You should make sure that the search engine can always find your blog on a URL, instead of worrying that they need to re-crawl your originally ranked blog on the new domain name, if you are lucky enough to get your original post from your free blog provider. Both Google's blogger and Wordpress allow you to use their blog service to display your blog content to your own domain name, rather than their domain name.

23) Manage Your trackback and comment Spam
You do not want Google or Yahoo to find a large number of links submitted by blog writers to junk websites on your website. There are many tools you can use to manage comments and trackback spam.

24) use a good URL Structure
Do not use www.yourblogsite.com /? P = 123 permanent link. Instead, use the chain form of www.yourblogsite.com/2007/01/01/blog_entry_title_here. Many blog platforms allow you to convert standard permanent links with parameters into a form that is friendly to search engines. If every post on the blog platform you use uses dynamic URLs, make sure that the search engine spider program can easily crawl them, or use Mod Rewrite to create a good structure in the example.

25) used classification
When you post a post, put it in one or three different categories related to the post. For example, articles about the grey's anatomy TV program should be included in the grey's anatomy and ABC categories. However, avoid the impulse to add it to 10 different categories, such as drama, hospital, internship, and Seattle. This is too much. However, if you write a great article about grey's anatomy, your readers can easily find all your posts about grey's anatomy, they only need to click the category link at the top or bottom of the post.

Although some bloggers believe that the search engine rankings of those who are waiting patiently will naturally be good, who is willing to wait for Google? When it comes to search engine optimization, a blog may encounter many different challenges and should act immediately, rather than simply hoping that if a blog is written, the search engine spider will access it. It is much easier to optimize a blog. What should I do if I think about the next six months when I only find your homepage on Google?

Does anyone have their own 25 blog optimization skills? I have some skills that others think are the most important, although not the best.