Blogging and web-mastering are two different things . The kind of competition blogger face these days is too high. Building readership is one thing and receiving organic traffic from search engines is different thing. For a blog to make good money it is really important that it receives free traffic from the search engines. Apart from search engine optimization there are many other aspects of web-mastering that a blogger has to learn but due to unawareness many bloggers are not able to take care of many web-mastering tasks which are important these days. In this article we will be knowing about some steps that a blogger must take after creating of a blog.
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Steps to take after creation of a blog
Template inspection
Template inspection is a very important aspects that has to be taken care of before starting publishing of content. The primary goal is to make sure that the template has clean code and is optimized for search engines. The W3C markup validation tool is really important in this regard. A blogger can easily check the markup of template and rectify the errors in the template code.
Other step that can be taken by the blogger is to make sure that the blog home page has proper title and meta description and other meta elements. Read more about the HTML Title and Meta Tags at W3C online tutorial site. Bloggers must also check the H1 and H2 tags for the home page and post pages of their blog. It is recommended that the title of blog be the H1 of the home page and the title of post be the H1 of a post page. A template has to be optimized accordingly.
Adding the Author markup for Google authorship
Adding authorship markup for Google Search is also important these days, a blogger must take appropriate steps explained here to add the authorship markup to there posts.
Make sure that the font and color combination is good
Many times we see blogs with odd font size and irritating color combinations. One has to make sure that there blog has got a good color theme, font and font size.
Performance inspection
Using tools like GTMetrix will help a blogger understand the kind of performance their blog pages are doing. The goal is to make sure that pages have less size and HTTP requests.
Making pages available and unavailable for search engines
Making appropriate arrangements for search engines crawlers to understand which pages to crawl and which pages not to and also to direct the search crawlers to do many other required things is essential. This can be achieved by setting up a proper robots.txt file and by using proper meta robot tags.
Learn more about the robots meta tags
Submission to search engines
Submission of a blog to search engines is also a very common but important step. Though search engine crawlers will find every page that is crawl-able on the web but submitting a site and analyzing data is really important. Bloggers can use Google Webmaster Tools and Bing Webmaster Center to submit there blogs to Google , Bing , Yahoo and MSN.
Submission to DMOZ
Submitting a blog to DMOZ has been important . A blogger can find a proper category to submit their blogs to. If they find it difficult to look for appropriate category , a search can be made by using the domain name of a popular blog in the same niche. However the acceptance ratio in the DMOZ directory is extremely low these days.
Submission to blog search engines and blog directories
Submitting a blog to blog search engines and blog directories is also essential. Blog search engines and directories like Technorati are important is these regards.
Configuring site traffic analytic tools
Using a traffic analysis tool is an important part of web-mastering. Google Analytic is the most advanced free tool for this.
Creating XML and HTML sitemap for your blog
Creating XML and HTML sitemaps for your blog is essential part of web-mastering. An HTML sitemap is primarily for the users to understand your blog structure and XML site map is for the search crawlers to understand it.
Publishing a post or page about your blog
A blog must possess a page or a post describing the idea of the blog.
Setting up a contact option
Setting up option for visitors to contact the blog webmaster is essential. Using tools like Kontactr is recommended that offering just an email.
Setting up privacy policy and terms of use
Setting up privacy policy is must if a blog is accepting registration or collecting data. Terms of use is also an important documentation if a blog is publishing about any sensitive topic. Many Ad Networks also need you to have a Privacy Policy before using their code and displaying ads to visitors.
Using utility tools like WooRank to make a blog better
Internet is full of free resources to make a blog better. Tools like WooRank can be used to make a blog more better by following the tips offered after analysis of the blog.
Hi Suhas,
ReplyDeleteI dont' know if it's mind reading or something else but I have been thinking about this very subject since the past few days. I'll be starting a new site on an independent domain, so I was looking for a checklist of to-dos. Thank you for this. I'll getting back to you with my queries. :)
Regards
Jay
My Blog | My FB Page