So you’ve set up a blog or you currently have a blog.
Nice to hear, but you’re wondering why you may not necessarily be getting the traffic you deserve.
Here are simple tips
1. Get other people to review your blog
Yes we can be critical of our own work, but this is important. Poll at least 5 people and listen to their feedback, the responses may surprise you.
Want to be a bit braver? There are a great number of forums that you can have your site reviewed on. You’ll usually find them in sections like ‘Review my Site’ or ‘Site Critique’
Here are a few popular forum links for getting your website reviewed:
- http://www.cssdrive.com/index.php/forums/viewforum/5/
- http://forums.digitalpoint.com/forumdisplay.php?f=91
- http://www.sitepoint.com/forums/forumdisplay.php?f=90
2. Keep your WordPress (or other blogging software) up to date!
Things change, but with change comes new innovations, features and stuff to make your life better.
3. Change those ugly links to search engine friendly URLs
This one drives me absolutely nuts when I see a site that has a number of pages indexed in Google with those funny URLs.
You know, those one’s with the ‘?’ question marks in them.
What’s even worse are categories with URL names like ‘?cat=2′, ‘?cat=3′, etc
How to fix this?
Log in to your WordPress admininistration panel and change your ‘Permalinks’ option.
(tip: if you have a .htaccess file within your WordPress directory, make sure you set it to writeable by the server - CHMOD 777)
4. Make sure your RSS feed works
I recently came accross a blog for a friend of mine. Yes I do want to keep up with what they are doing, when they are posting and such.
I want to subscribe to their feed, but the feed does not work.
Service to help you with feeds: http://www.feedburner.com
(btw: click the icon to subscribe to this site feed!)
5. Install a few plugins & add some functionality
Plugins help you optimize your site for the search engine, add user interactivity, add cool features, etc.
- Simple WordPress Pluings to get you started
7. Open up your post comments section
Older versions of WordPress are prone to SPAM - tons of it.
Users want to participate, comment, say hello and such … let them do it!
8. Keep active
Go for walks, get enough sleep, change the tv channel and post often.
It’s your blog and others will come back knowing you are posting to your blog.
If you subscribe with FeedBurner, you can even see how many people are subscribed to your blog.
9. Keep your design simple
… and your navigation too.
No one like to say “Where am I?” or “When was this posted” or “Is this recent?”
10. Monetize
Sign up for affiliate programs, post some ads, write about stuff you believe in, be passionate and riches may come.
There is a bit of work setting up your blog, keeping current with changes and such.
End of day, you know your blog is on the road to success when other people start making it ‘re-markable!!!’
