You may already have a blog or want to start a new one, so here are some blogging tips starting with choosing your blog name (domain name). Read the following 25 blogging tips to create a better blog.
The following are useful blogging tips before starting a new blog or writing a new post. These are important for search engine optimization.
1) First do the keyword research for the blog topic. Finding popular keywords related to your blog or the topic of your post is a must. To start with, you will need at least 2-3 keywords to use for the blog title and around 10 keywords for the post titles.
2) Try to use the keywords in the domain name, blog title, post title, post content, hyperlink, ALT tag, TITLE tag, etc. of natural form. This will help you rank higher in search engines.
3) Try to limit no. of your tags/categories about 20. Use tag cloud or tag cloud if you want to save space. If you have a lot of topics on a blog, try regrouping and retagging them. If totally different topics are mixed in a blog and you don’t have enough. of posts for each topic, and then start a new blog for that topic.
4) Do not copy old blog posts to a new blog. You may be penalized for duplicate content. You need to remove the old copy from the search engine and then add the same post to the new blog.
5) Use the post title optimization widget on this blog for blogger/blogspot blog so that you get better search engine rankings. WordPress bloggers can use plugins like All in one SEO for meta tag and title optimization.
The following are blogging tips related to the look and content of the blog.
6) The appearance and layout of the blog should be nice, neat and beautiful so that it can create a good impression on the visitor and they should feel like they stay longer and visit again. The content quality should also be good for this.
7) The navigation and layout should be such that the visitor can find the recent posts and tags very easily. So if the recent posts and tags are near the top of the sidebar, they will be visible on the first screen of the blog and the visitor will get a quick idea of what the blog is about and can quickly jump to their topic of interest.
8) Use images, images whenever possible to make your post colorful and engaging. Do image/image optimization as described in my previous post. No need to use large images, you can use medium to small images.
9) The loading time of the blog must not be very long or the visitor will run away before the page opens. So keep an eye on what widgets/code you are installing and if it slows down loading. If you are uploading images, make sure the file size is not large.
Do not use BMP files, you can use jpg, png files. Also check the size of the image. You can do all of this using Photoshop. As sometimes images load slower from external sources, please check that as well.
Blog Tips Related to Writing and Visitors
10) Write your post after proper research and gathering total information. Don’t write too much. Use groupings, paragraphs, and subheadings to organize the information in the body of the post.
11) The written language should be easy to understand and, whenever possible, write in a humorous way. If the visitor enjoys your post, they will come back.
12) Provide links to helpful resources related to your topic. Also provide links to your previous posts with proper anchor text where possible. This improves the internal linking of your blog.
13) Encourage the reader to participate/comment. You can also run some contest or survey on your blog and save some prizes for that.
14) Use a beautiful and professional looking theme/template and header image for your blog. There are many free templates available so that you can easily get a suitable one for your blog. Choose a 3-column template that uses a full 1024 X 768 resolution. This gives you more space.
15) The color and size of the font should be such that the blog can be read on different screen resolutions. Other blogging tips to increase readership and revenue.
16) Save your feed to feedburner and provide the ability to subscribe via email for your RSS feed.
17) Check the visibility and feed of your blog in different browsers. Especially in Internet Explorer and Firefox.
18) Try to increase your number of RSS feed subscribers and use AdSense for feeds to show Google AdSense in the feed.
19) Use Google AdSense or other ads in the body of the post, in the right sidebar and below the header. Use the AdSense link block with tags or links or below the header. Match the AdSense background color to the background color of the blog or post.
20) Read my post on blog traffic tips for driving traffic from sources other than search engine.
The following are precautionary tips for blogs
21) There should not be many outbound links (pointing to other websites/blogs) in the post or sidebar. Remove unnecessary outbound links. Place all outbound links near the bottom of your right sidebar or footer.
22) Do not buy or sell links for link building.
23) If paid posts are a must for you, keep them to a minimum or have a separate website/blog for paid posts or articles.
24) As said above, please do not rewrite the same post (duplicate content). Do not edit the titles and content of old posts to optimize for search engines.
25) Don’t have METATAGS just for the main blogger blog home url as it will be used for all posts and you will get a duplicate meta tag error in google webmaster tools. You are also confusing and confusing the search engine by having the same meta tag for all posts. So you can use a script/widget that can give different METATAGS to individual posts. WordPress blogger can have METATAG for individual posts using All in one SEO plugin.