Simple tweaks while on your coffee break

Was going though Sphinn yesterday when I stumbled into a post by Jennifer called 52 easy ways to optimize your blog in your coffee break, and as most of us are part time bloggers I can see the value in this post, as much of my blogging is done in my lunch time and the odd hour though the day (sorry boss if your reading my post).

Source: beconfused

Here is a few of my favorites:

Finding your Homepage
My first template never had a “home” tab in menu bar, but the logo was linked back to my homepage. My personal feeling is to have both, but minimum is the home tab in your menu bar. Remember a large portion of your readers may land on your site via a single post and using the home tab will bring them to the homepage, after which they will explore more.

Customize your 404 error page
If people end up on a page that doesn’t exist, a customized 404 page can go a long way to help people find what they are looking for. So spend some time improving your 404 page to help people navigate. Heres my article on customizing your 404 error page.

Consistent Updating of Blog
Whether you want to post daily or weekly it’s your choice but where possible stick to a regular routine. In your coffee breaks prepare your posts for upcoming weeks if possible and have a 5 to 6 posts as backup cause you may never know when you don’t have time again.

Add a Favicon
Many RSS readers use the favicon when they are displaying posts from your blog, so why not add a favicon to help your blog stand out more to readers when they go to their RSS reader. And not only that, the icon will show up in the address bar of the visitor’s browser, as well as showing in the tabs, if multiple tabs are opened to various other websites too. Not sure how to make and add your favicon then goto how to make a favicon.

Comment on other Peoples blogs you read
If you read an interesting and informative article, spend the extra 5 minutes to drop a nice comment. “Not a great article” or “Good post” but a proper comment that will add value. You will gain exposure with the blogs owner as well as other readers too and this in turn will create awareness of your blog and increase your visitors then the rest is down to your blog.

Start tagging Your Posts
The new Wordpress versions have tags in built and there are plugins for the older versions. But make a point of tagging a few of your older blog entries a day, and before you know it, you will have a great tag representation of your posts for others to use. I have started doing all my new posts with tags and soon I can add the widget to show a complete list.

Add Sociable Plugin
Make it easy for people to share your content with other social networks by adding the Sociable plugin by Joost De Valk.

Twitterfeed
So once you have set up a new Twitter account for your blog, go to TwitterFeed and set it up to begin automatically posing everytime you have a new blog post. This is becoming a very popular means of keeping up to date with other people posts. You can join mine here.

If you have any other ideas do drop me a comment or two

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