Blog or weblogs are perhaps one of the simplest publishing tools available today and this is the most efficient ways to boost traffic to your site. They are easy to manage and post, and relatively simple to install within no time.

Can you help me choosing a Blog for me?

Nowadays there are countless blogs coming up every day as it’s an easy ways to get your blog up and running. There are nos. of publishing platform available today but you should prefer only authentic and legitimate blogging platform which are of repute in the online world, such as Wordpress and Blogger. (Both are available as hosted services as well as you can host them in your own domain).

What is a Good blog in layman’s terms?

No matter what type of blog you may have but the end objective is to get as much traffic as possible on your website. To behave like a wise and well informed blog owner, you need to work on your own specialization. For example if you are running a business blog, then instead of posting personal stuffs post what you know about business, you must post what people like to see and why.

Perhaps they don’t come to your blog to read your own views but in search to find what they want. So if you are able to satisfy their needs you are a king within no time. Frankly, that’s the main difference between a good and bad blog.

But how readers will find my blog?

SE’s and Social Networks are the best source to gain regular readers for your blog. To understand the whole issue you need to put yourself in their shoes. When you need some particular information you in a majority of cases go to any popular search engine like Google, Yahoo or MSN. Actually these search engines send millions of interested people to websites listed in their index. However they don’t care for the websites or blogs which aren’t indexed.

Write for humans and allow SE’s to index your blog.

So the first thing is to get your website or blog indexed by all major search engines. You as a blog owner must therefore know how to write a suitable content for search engines as well as human visitors. In case you have written content for just search engines then search engines may send traffic to you but once your visitors don’t find what they were originally looking for then they will turn off their face immediately.

However, in the recent time even search engines have become intelligent so even they won’t be interested in the content which is not written suitably for human visitors. Now the million dollar question that may come into your mind can be: is it possible to write for search engines and human visitors at the same time, why not…it can be.

Practically writing for search engines and human visitors is not mutually exclusive thing at all. By writing good content with various keyword density and placement rules in mind we can easily achieve that.

Get an exclusive design for your blog.

Next, important issue with every blog is the template used. Most people have a wrong notion that looks don’t count when it comes to blogs, as a result they may use any out of the box or outdated blog template. This is just like putting a best cooked recipe in a shabby plate.

No one would ever like to eat in a dirty plate no matter how best you might have cooked that food. Same applies to the blog template. Use some free templates available and try to do some customization. If you aren’t able to do that hire some professional and get it done. If you aren’t literally hard on your budget then try some professional and ask him to create a unique template for your blog.

If you are looking for an SEO friendly theme, why you don’t choose Talian or Beyond2010, these are highly optimized themes and I am updating these frequently to work better with the latest version of wordpress.

Optimize your blog with the help of SEO Plugins.

I assume you have quality contents, now it’s time to use some plugins which help you to optimize the dynamic pages. I suggest use All-in-one-SEO- Plugin, it allows you to create custom titles, keywords and descriptions for your blog. I am using this from last 2 years and I am 100% satisfied with the performance. It allows you do lots of other things such as using no-index for archives or tags to prevent duplicate content penalty.

Create a sitemap for your blog.

Sitemap are essential to get your blog indexed in SE’s. If you are using my themes, you have additional advantage of creating a sitemap other wise you need another plug-in that generate a sitemap for you. With the latest version of wordpress I didn’t tested the plugins, so I can’t suggest any right now, but if needed I will write the sitemap generator code for any theme you are using for your blog.

Create a monthly submission plan.

Submit your blog to Search Engines, directories and various blog directories, but be careful, too many submissions may be a disaster and SE’s may found it spammy. So avoid bulk submissions at once and create a monthly submission plan. Track your successful submission and resubmit the same again. The process is slow, but is better for health of your blog.

Optimize your RSS feeds.

Next most important thing for better optimization is to use RSS feeds. All blogs have default RSS URL as well as many external tools such as Feedburner is providing excellent ways to optimize and share your feeds to World Wide Web. Always place your RSS URL on a place where everybody can see, like top left or top right sidebars. They have countless benefits by linking your blog to many useful resources. Offer your blog visitors with RSS & feed subscription buttons to help them subscribe to your blog instantly. If some of them don’t like to get RSS readers then offer them with emails.

Get social, brag about your blog.

Social networks are wonderful source of traffic. You need to choose few good networks and be an active contributor. Places like Digg, Facebook, Twitter and many others helps you gain virtual friends and regular readers. I am putting up my list soon, meanwhile you can see a list of social networks at Wikipedia.

Do some Internal Linking to gain authority pages.

Finally, each post you write put the link of relevant pages of your site. This way your readers will find exactly what they need. Try to make your navigation as simpler as possible and put everything open which is on the deep pages on the first page itself with deep linking. Try to persuade them that they have something more interesting in the deep pages and hold them on by providing them more and more useful content.

There are many useful Plug-ins available but never overload your blog with every of them. And, now the important part, do regular with your postings because with frequent postings you are more likely indexed by Googlebot and other bots on the Internet. Needless to say what benefits you may have if they often visit you. Most of these bots love updating fresh sites, so it makes sense to feed them with what they want.

This post is an continuation of SEO Tips for blogs, I am putting together more useful stuffs for my readers later in this post.

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