How to Optimize Your Blog

Once your blog is up and running, it's time to optimize it to attract more readers and to make it more crawler friendly. Blog optimization is a never ending process, which gives you more readers and better rankings in search engines. Your strategic ad placements and daily posting alone cannot give the desired results, unless you do not put that extra effort to optimize your blog. It is generally observed that, large number of bloggers completely ignore this step and wonder why the results are not as per their expectations. Let us see the important steps in optimizing the blog.


Optimization Process


» Domain name and URL structure
» Layout optimization

» Post refinement
» RSS feed optimization
» Ping, ping and ping !!!

Domain name and URL structure

If you are serious for making some money from your blog, and have a blog name like "yourblog.somedomain.com", then it is not a wise decision to start with. Purchase a domain name and if you have low budget you can use any free blog hosting service for your blog. Better URL structure makes them crawler friendly and helps in quick inclusion in search index with much better rankings from the rival having poor URL structure on exactly same topic. What is better URL structure? Well, the URL having numbers or unnecessary deep directory structure make it poor for crawling. For example: abc.com/posts/123679/bloggingtips/ is not good URL scheme. Try to cut out the extra numbers from your post URL and make it something like, abc.com/posts/blogging-tips/ .

Layout Optimization

The overall layout of your blog is one of the most critical part of blog optimization process. The most successful blogs have one sidebar on either side and posts column on the other side. Although you can opt for columns on both sides with posts in the middle too. You can read my previous post of landing page optimization for creating a good landing page for your blog.

Post refinement

The headline of post matters the most for better search engine rankings and for attracting readers. Do some research on the topic of your post, and make sure to include the keywords in the headline of the post. Include social bookmarking links or buttons and feed subscription button at the end of post. Include relevant tags and related posts list at the end of post, to reduce the bounce rate of your blog. Use images in your post to make them more attractive to readers.

RSS feed optimization

Offer full RSS feed to your readers. It is generally observed that large percentage of subscribers prefer to get full feed through Emails. Make sure you have the option of feed subscription through EMail. Feedburner is the best feed distribution service, as it is completely free and have tons of options, including a separate tab dedicated for feed optimization. You can easily create RSS button from RSS button maker for your blog.

Ping, ping and ping

What is the use of pinging? Well, every time you post on your blog, you must notify all important RSS feed readers and blog search engines about your blog update. It will keep your blog status updated in major blog search directories and RSS reader services, and will make it easy for your readers to find your blog. Use Pingomatic and Pingoat to manually ping your blogger posts, and if you are using Wordpress, you can automate the process of pinging your posts. Make sure to include these important update services in your Wordpress control panel.


Applying SEO techniques to your blog is another part of blog optimization process, and these techniques will be dealt separately in future, through a series of posts