25 Tips To Optimize Your Blog For Readers & Search Engines

Everyone and their dog (yes, there are a few dogs out there with their own blogs) have started up a blog these days, but many people just aren’t taking the steps needed to optimize their blogs for both readers and search engines. While blogs can be business related (another blog about mesothelioma anyone?) they can also be personal where you talk about the great ham sandwich you had for lunch today or the crappy service you had at that trendy restaurant last night.

But whether your blog is business or personal, you should ensure that you are optimizing your blog for both your readers (after all, you want to keep those readers coming back) and the search engines. Unfortunately, optimization is an important step that far too many blogs seem to be skipping over, even those that have a broad appeal to surfers and have the potential to be monetizable.

1) Dump The Default Template - Looks Count!
2) Just Say No To Bad Color Schemes
3) RSS Me!
4) Offer RSS & Feed Subscription Buttons
5) Offer Posts Via Email
6) Decide On Full Or Partial Feeds
7) Write Compelling Snippets/Descriptions
8) Pay Attention to How You Write.
9) Spelling Counts
10) Fontography Counts
11) Don't Forget Navigation
12) How Fast is Your Host?
13) Avoid Widget Overload!
14) Have Descriptive Titles
15) Look at your Cascading Style Sheets.
16) Post Often
17) Spread the Link Love
18) Be Aware of Your Anchor Text
19) Create Unique Stories
20) Use a Related Posts Plugin
21) Ping Other Sites
22) Buy Your Own Domain Name
23) Manage Your Trackback & Comment Spam
24) Use a Good URL Structure
25) Use Great Categories