Improving Your Blog – How To Do It
Categories Set up and manage several different categories related to your “topic”. You can publish the same article into different categories. Example: if your blog is about Search Engine Optimization you may have 5 different categories (plus the main category). Your categories could be – On Page SEO, Off Page SEO, Link Building, Directory Submission, and Site Design. Not every article or post will be relative to each category, but some will overlap. Don’t go crazy and put every post in every category every time. You’ll lose readers and value. Blog Search Engine Optimization There are a series of tools/plug-ins that will help with search engine optimization for your blog. DagonDesign has a great plug-in for WordPress and it’s free and easy to install. Having clean URLs for your posts is extremely important. When you post an article about “Choosing Colors for Your Website” you don’t want your post URL to be www.blahblahblog.com/?=ID1234 . In WordPress, for example, you want to at least choose the built in selection “Date and Name based” (click “Options” then “Permalinks” in the Dashboard view”). If you feel comfortable and are a bit crafty you can create a custom permalink structure. Submit your Blog to Blog Directories In addition to the traditional directory submissions you would make with any website. Most of these directories require a link back to their directory. There are two ways to handle these links (1) create a new page called “links” or resources” and post the links there (make sure you use the HTML editor/button on the post page otherwise the link will show up as code and won’t count), or (2) put the link on your main page in the sidebar. Keep in mind that the blog directories are for the most part human edited so it may take some time for them to confirm your link and blog content so be patient. Also, it’s a good idea if you’re setting up a separate links page to write down the URL of that page, the directories will ask you for the location of the backlink to their directory when you fill out the form. Most of the general SEO principles for a regular website apply to blogs. Don’t forget to put a link to your main website and to your blogs main page in the footer of your blog (and tag it properly for maximum effect). Blog Design Almost every blog is designed using CSS (Cascading Style Sheets). CSS is a great tool for website design and especially blogging. It allows you to create new pages on the fly without redesigning each page. For WordPress (and Blogger, etc.) there are a ton of pre-designed, free templates, themes, skins, layouts (all the same thing) out there you can download, customize or use “as is”. Be a decent blogger and make sure you leave the backlink in the footer for the designer. If you don’t know anything about customizing blogs you can follow the link back to the original designer or the person who “ported” it to the blog format, they may be able to help you with customizing the blog for a couple hundred dollars. Matt at http://www.dagondesign.com/ can help you out here. Calls to Action Just like your website, your blog should have specific calls to action so that reader’s can interact with you. Whether it’s a simple “contact us” form mailer or a more elaborate ecommerce function, once you “got ‘em” there, they need something to do. Again, Dagon Design has a cool form mailer plug-in that’s easy to add to your site. You may have to create a separate HTML page and link to it from your blog (put it in your header so it’s on each page) if you want to add a shopping cart. These are just the first 5, stick around for more, or visit our blog at http://blog-template-layout.com and check out what’s new. Remember, your blog is just an extension of you and your business, so give it some personality, define some goals and make some rules for your blog. If you want to have a Blog Make Money Online all you have to do is learn the basics of Blog Make Money Online It is rather simple and easy but you have to make sure that you have a passion for writing, otherwise, Blog Make Money Online will not be an option for you.
