Optimization Done RIGHT

Optimizing your blog is as important as optimizing your website because your blog

is a rich source of fresh content to your website and it has great potential to attract traffic to your website. By optimizing your blog properly, you can leverage the maximum benefit out of your blog. Think of it this way – you would think nothing of doing proper maintenance to the Jaguar parked in your garage you drive 3 months of the year – and even throw in the bells and whistles on it. You shouldn’t hesitate todo the same for the Buick you drive everyday – the Buick being the blog in this analogy.

Move your blog to your servers instead of hosting it with the free hosting that you get from the blogging platforms such as WordPress or Blogger. They are fine platforms, but, you will have lot more flexibility hosting your blog on your own server. You will not be able to effectively optimize your blog when it is hosted with the third party hosting – that is a brutal fact they play down. You will be limited to use only the templates available which may look neat, but not be what you need. It is always better to have a custom designed blog that will match your website’s design so that your website visitors will not feel that they are out of place when they visit your blog. it should feel like a natural extension – not a trip to Mars.

If your visitors reach your blog directly without visiting your website, the default templates that are available may not look very professional or impressive your visitors. Take some time and drop a little money to get your blog design customized to have the look and feel of your website. Along with this, add the necessary optimization tags to your blog pages like you do for you website. Again, treat your blog nicely. On most websites, the home page of the blog will be called ‘blog’. Instead of using such a name, you can use your keyword or something related to your service. Hey, it’s your blog and you are free to name your blog URL as you wish. The inner posts are saved using the title of your post. So for your posts choose titles in such a way that they contain your website’s important keywords.

It is a good idea to add an RSS feed subscription tool to your blog so that if others are interested they can get the RSS feed from your blog. Some webmasters don’t value their own blogs very highly, so they think no one else would want to RSS their blog. Doing this closes off one of the potential doors to spread their content. You have nothing to lose, so go ahead and add the RSS button for your blog. Even if 5 to 10 users subscribe to your RSS feed it is still an added advantage.

Keep your blog content rich with keywords, but don‘t keyword spam it. Have good keyword concentration in the beginning paragraphs of your blog post. Always keep your blog posts professional. If you have followed a highly formal style in your website’s content try to maintain at least somewhat formal style in your blog content too. By jumping to the other extreme and being highly informal in the blog, you might confuse your visitors. Keep it consistent and quality and you’ll be just fine.