7 Detailed Ways To Improve Your Blog

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Today, I’m giving you 7 ways you can improve your blog and improve yourself as a better blogger. One note though. The following contains advice related to different areas, such as blog optimization, promotion, etc. So you’ll be able to improve in every area simultaneously.

The Title Tag

The title tag is one of the most important aspects to consider when optimizing a website or blog for the search engines, particularly Google. Believe me, many bloggers are still confused to this day about what is the perfect title for their blog. But I think that the best titles are those which contain only the keywords of the current page’s content and as little extras as possible.

This means that titles should look like this(This title belongs to this post) :

See? It contains only keywords of the content of the post. Notice that the blog’s name is not there. Well you can put it at the end if you wish, but I think that the SEO effect of such titles is diluted or reduced by including irrelevant items. The blog name is irrelevant here, at least on this page.

Also notice that the title of the page is the same as the title of the post. Nothing much really, but it counts still.

Note: The homepage of any site should have at least the name of the site and optionally its tag line. Obvious.

If you’re using WordPress, and are looking to optimize your page titles, I suggest you use this title code, which I also use, taken from a free theme called Cutline (Put all of that code in between the <title></title> tags.):

<?php if (is_single() || is_page() || is_archive()) { wp_title(”,true); } else { bloginfo(’name’); echo(’ — ‘); bloginfo(’description’); } ?>

This kind of title is highly optimized for SEO. What the above simply means is that if the current page is a post page (and not the homepage), the title of the page should be the title of the post. And nothing else. But if the current page is the homepage(the else in the above), then the title of the page should be the name of the blog, followed by the description. Pure and containing only the essentials. No extras.

If you wanted to include the name of your blog also along with the title of the page on post pages, you just add a little more code to make this:

<?php if (is_single() || is_page() || is_archive()) { wp_title(”,true); bloginfo(’name’); } else { bloginfo(’name’); echo(’ — ‘); bloginfo(’description’); } ?>

There you go. You now have the blog name in the title of every page. Simple.

Turn that ‘Home’ into [blog name]

One thing bloggers often ignore during SEO is that they leave the homepage link’s anchor text to ‘Home’. You can see that on many blogs. Your own too perhaps. Look where your page navigation is and most probably you’ll see HOME at the beginning . This is a huge wasted opportunity and SEO weapon. Change that HOME to the name of your blog and then see the improvement in your search engine rankings. Before, you just had ‘HOME’ as the anchor text and the search bot didn’t give much attention to it, because the word had no SEO value whatsoever. But the words PuttingBlogsFirst have a lot of SEO value, as they contain the critical keywords. ‘HOME’ doesn’t have any keywords related to your site, (unless you run a home-management blog ). I myself too was doing this mistake, until I read this fantastic article on Performancing and I thought I should let you know.

Clean Up Your Blog

Start 2008 on a cleaner and neatier look! Invest your time in the coming few days of 2007 to clean up your blog. Remove or reduce dramatically all those blog buttons, showing which blog directories you belong too. Believe me, they are just no more than eye-candy and make your blog cheaper. No one is interested in how many directories you belong to. Moreover, they increase the ‘clutter-meter’ (as I call it), thus discouraging readers. Look at this blog. Clean and without any unneeded eye candy.

Lorelle, over at The Blog Herald has this great post on cleaning up your blog. What she says might shock bloggers a little.

Another area to look at when cleaning your blog up is the code. Look at your blog’s style sheet file and delete and unwanted or extra code. You will probably find a lot of it. For example, you can find a style for links, when you have already defined a style for links. Similarly, you will find lots of such things and remove them.

Look also in your blog’s theme files and remove all extra or unwanted code. Believe me, even a small amount of this work can have a big, positive effect on the reading experience of your visitors.

Take that Extra Step and Optimize Your Blog For All Browsers

This perhaps should be a part of the previous tip but I thought it deserved it’s own place.

The importance of this cannot be stressed enough. Design and optimize your blog to look the same(or very similar) and be compatible in all browsers and in as many screen resolutions as possible. Complete compatibility is often very difficult to achieve(And I’m not asking you to do so), but you can ensure that your site looks the very similar in all browsers and in different screen resolutions. It pays to take that extra step and do it. View at this blog, for example, in different browsers and at different screen resolutions, and you will see it looks almost the same in all situations. But how do you do this, you ask?

The solution is too use flexible and relative measurements when designing your website. Use ems ,%-ages instead of px, pt. Use percentages or ems to define the sizes of different elements, so that they resize according to the current screen resolution. For example, 70% means 70% of the current screen size, and it changes with changes in the screen size.

Some people think that they should optimize their blog for Firefox, since it’s the spreading fast and every one seems to be using it. And they ignore IE and the others. I agree, Firefox is spreading fast, but it is not at this moment the most common browser out there. The majority of the people out there use Internet Explorer, still. So, if your site looks super slick in FF and horrendously un-usable in IE, you’re losing out on perhaps the majority of your readers. :(. So, at least optimize for IE along with FF, if not for the other browsers.

Dig Into Your Blog Stats

Everybody loves blog stats. I know I do. But many people just only look at the hits they received and when and that’s it. Blog statistics has a lot more to it than just that. You should dig a little deeper into your blog statistics and you will discover some very valuable pieces of information about your visitors(not passwords!) that you can use to make your blog better.

So, what should you really look at? Well several things. I’ll address them one by one.

• Traffic Sources - This is the most important thing you should look at. Search engine traffic is probably your biggest source of traffic, particularly when your blog becomes established. Check which search engines the traffic is coming for. Is there any search engine which does not send any traffic? Why is that so? Focus more on that particular search engine. Take a look at the keywords for which readers found your blog. Are you exploiting the potential of those keywords? Are you mentioning and using those keywords in your blog?
• Location of Visitors - You should also check from which country your visitors come from. Are you doing something to help them(like provide a translation feature)? You could also consider placing targeted advertisements on your blog to increase your chances of making more money.
• Browser, Screen Resolution, etc - This is the most important information you can extract about your visitors. Which browser do the majority use? Are you optimizing for that browser? What is the most common screen resolution? Is your blog optimized for that resolution? Are visitors’ browsers Javascript and Flash enabled? If so, are you utilizing these tools? If not, are there any Flash or Javascript items on your blog, which cannot be seen or used by the majority of your readers?
• Repeat Visitors - This shows you how many loyal readers you have, which return often to your blog. Is the number increasing?

The above four points were some of the things to look at in your blog statistics. Getting to know more about your visitors and then accordingly applying what you have learned to make your blog better.

Create An Editorial Calendar

This is a must if you want to become a more efficient blogger. Widely used by newspaper editors, editorial calenders can help you plan ahead of time what to publish and when. This greatly helps to clear up your mind and concentrate on the task at hand. Also, you don’t forget ideas you get for posts, if you write them down in an editorial calender. Your editorial calender can be as brief or as detailed as you wish, as long as it does the job. For more ideas on how to make n editorial calender for your blog, look at this article on Performancing.

Install plugins

Have some fun and install some plugins on your blog to improve it for you and for your readers. There are many plugins out there which can help you mange your blog and can help your readers too. Mashable have compiled this massive list of over 300 WordPress plugins for use on your blog. It’s simply fantastic : WORDPRESS GOD: 300+ Tools for Running Your WordPress Blog.

Here is my uber-favourite plugin from the list :

• AJAXed WP - This kick ass plugin allows you to literally AJAXify every aspect of your blog, to really speed things up and to help the reader. A MUST have for WordPress bloggers looking to optimize their blogs.

So there you have it. After reading and acting on the above, you’ll be able to say hello to 2008 as a better and more confident blogger.

Any views and criticism will be welcomed, as always