Blogging Elements

Simple Ways To Convert Your Blog Into a Raging Bull

Posted on 06. Apr, 2009 by Ashwin in Blogging

WordPress is an incredible platform; just when you thought it couldn’t surprise you anymore, you have more coming your way. There are some simple things you ought to do before you hit the “publish” button. A few fixes, minor tweaks and a couple of entries later, your wordpress blog would just transform itself into an unstoppable juggernaut. Here are somethings you must never forget to do:

Use the WordPress Slug

More often, we tend not to use many of the features available on wordpress. When you are done posting your article (blog post), scroll down to find “custom slug” for that post. While you are here, you can customize the post URL even further and enable it to be SEO friendly., short and also easy to remember. Daniel Scoco, in his Daily Blog Tips blog, has a wonderful post explaining how to use wordpress slug efficiently ( complete with a snapshot; the post itself has links to further expanations and reference reading)

Add Tags

Think of tags as beacon lights; while the entire traffic on the web is like ships on an ocean. Ships need lighthouses to throw up beams of light to let them know that they might be nearing land. Tags help people find your blog in a lotof ways. These tags act like auxillary keywords and make it easy for people to find you.

Did you get your permalinks right?

When you upload a new post on your blog, it looks something like http://www.youblogname.com/?p=6 which is a URL that a search engine can’t find. When you go to your blog settings and change the permalink settings to some like http://www.yourblogname.com/your-new-post-title-can-look-like-this-too, it becomes very easy for search engines to find the posts. Before you post your blogs, as a part of general configuration for the blog, you got to change the settings such that the post URLs are displayed in the latter manner.

Don’t forget the Internal Linking

When you post about something that you must have already spoken about or blogged about in the past, it makes sense to link to your own posts. By linking to your own articles, pages or posts internally, you greatly enhance the chances of getting found by the search engines. Also, you allow your visitors to read other posts which would have been submerged in the avalanche of new posts that would have been added up. This strategy also lets readers stay longer on your blog.

Tags: Beginner Blogging, Blogging Basics, Blogging Elements, permalinks, Tags