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Setting up and launching a blog is relatively easy. However immediately before and after the launch certain steps should be taken and proper blogging habits should be established. These steps and habits will help maximize the amount of success you experience during the critical infancy stages of your blog. Here’s a checklist to help insure your blog is both properly prepared and maintained:

Step #1 – Focus on the Setup

In your rush or excitement to launch your blog don’t forget to insure your setup is complete and working properly. You should have your RSS feed working correctly and be sure your site is optimized for the search engines. Also don’t forget to check that you’re able to ping the blog search engines with every new blog post. No matter how good your design may look, if you are not correctly ‘broadcasting’ your blog or optimized nobody will know you exist.

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Blogging is still an excellent way to build link popularity for your website, or for your customers websites. However this method to create back links to your website is getting more and more difficult.

The difficulty here is that most blogging software now includes code which prevents some search engine bots from following the link. Some search engines will not count this link as a relevant link to your website, in fact some will completely ignore the link altogether. However some search engines will count the link, and some will even index the link.

There are many search engines but only a handful is used by the majority of people. Consideration needs to be taken for your target market and what search engine your potential customer is likely to use. Google is currently the most widely used. Understanding how each of the search engine algorithms work will determine the best method to use when it comes to adding links back to your website.

When adding a comment to a blog to create a back link that has the nofollow tag could be a waste of time. This assuming of course that the only reason for leaving this comment is to create a back link to your own website. This makes for creating back links to your website using blogs difficult.

TIP: Look for the ‘nofollow’ tag in the code if you are trying to increase your Google Page Rank!

Now that you’ve selected your niche let’s look at some blog design tips with your readers in mind. Balancing a design with pizzazz and individuality to attract new visitors but yet still have the warmth and comfort of an old worn shoe for returning readers is a delicate task. In order to accomplish this feat here are 5 tips that will increase the appeal of your blog design.

1) Blog theme

The overall blog theme should correspond with the niche you’re blogging about. Don’t confuse your visitors by going off target with pictures, symbols, or other visual aids that ‘decorate’ your blog but have no relationship with the niche you’re in. Your blog theme is a subtle yet powerful component that reinforces your affiliation with the niche you’re in.

For instance on Halloween you display pumpkins, witches, and other scenes and figures commonly associated with this holiday. Christmas holds the same association with Santa Claus just as Thanksgiving does with pilgrims or turkeys.

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So if you are looking to create your own site at no cost and without those annoying pop ups ads, just follow this little tip and you can get it in no time.

1. Go to http://sites.google.com and create an account.
2. Log in into your account and click the “Create Site” button.
3. Choose from the large variety of templates and enter all the info that is require.
4. Once your site is created, click edit to begin entering content. You can add calendars, files, photo slideshows, and more!

Let a 404 error be an opportunity for you not the death knell to a visit to your site.

How often have you mistyped a file name in a web address? Have you ever clicked on a search result listing link to a dead page?

How many times did this result in the frustratingly uninformative ‘404 – page not found’ thrown up by search engines or, worse, by ISPs flooding your screen with irrelevant ads? What do you? Try again or just go elsewhere? I’d put money on it being the latter!

Just remember how you feel when this happens to you and you’ll understand how important t is for you to make sure this doesn’t happen to your visitors.

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