5 Ways to Improve Blog Performance

A blog can be your best friend or your worst nightmare. When used in "moderation" a blog can be an advantage to your bottom line, but note, blog is addictive. It is easy to get into your blog, and lose focus on your core business goals, so here are 5 simple ways to make your blogging life easier and more successful.

Blogs are not new, but they have a fast pioneer in the world of web design and search engine optimization. A blog is a website the first place with a small twist. It is usually a neat user interface that anyone can publish their latest news, product updates, whimsical thoughts, technical specifications, customer service / FAQ and more information. You can use a blog for just about anything you can think of. So be more creative.

There are plenty of free ways to start blogging. Word Press, Blogger, Easy2Blog, B2Evolution and more are all free. If you do not know anything about programming, then post your blog in Blogger (Google) or Easy2Blog (simple as the name suggests).

The 5 Ways to Improve Blog Performance, more for those who have used publishing software such as WordPress.

Content
There are plenty of ways to acquire content for your blog. The best is to keep to your subject. Ezinearticles, GoArticles and thebestarticles.com are great places for free, syndicated articles for your blog. Be cool and remember to cut and paste the text or code exactly as it is and show the decline of the writer (the author link).

Just syndicates all the articles are not enough. Try and write one day, even if it's not 500 words or more. Be cautious. It is easy to obsess with adding content to your blog. More time the content to be added to the front-end and then just commit yourself to 10 minutes per day writing at least one post for your blog.

It is easy for a blog to a BLOB that your reader will quickly turn away.

Categories
Develop and manage different categories with regard to your "subject". You can publish the same article in different categories.

Example: if your blog on Search Engine Optimization you can choose 5 different categories (plus the main category). Your categories might be - On Page Optimization, Off Page Optimization, Link Building, Directory Submission, and Site Design. Not every article or post will be compared to each category, but some will overlap. Do not go crazy and put each item in each category every time. You will lose readers and value.

Blog Search Engine Optimization
There are a range 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. Clean URLs for your posts is extremely important.

Submit your blog in Blog Directories. In most of these directories, there is a link back to their directory. There are two ways in which these links (1) create a new page "links or resources" and following the links there or (2) put the link on your main page in the sidebar. Directory Submission is laborious task and you should consider hiring an SEO company to do this.

Keep in mind that the blog directories are mostly human edited so that it may take some time for them to confirm your link and blog content so be patient. It is also a good idea if you set up a separate page with links to write the URL of that page, the lists will ask you for the location of the back link to their map if you complete the form.

Most of the general principles of SEO for a regular website apply to blogs. Do not forget to link to your website and your blogs main page in the footer of your blog and tag it for maximum effect.

Blog Design 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 Word Press (and Blogger, etc.), there are a lot of pre-designed, free templates, themes, skins, layout (all the same), since you can download, modify or use as is. There are also a large number of Wordpress Theme Designers who can create nice web 2.0 style themes for you.

Call to Action
Like your website, your blog, specific calls to action, so the reader can interact with you. Whether it's a simple "contact us" form mailer or a more extensive e-commerce function. Again, Dagon Design form mailer has a cool plug-in that is easy to add to your site. You may need a separate HTML page and link to it from your blog and set in your header so it's on every page.