Many bloggers obsess too much with the design and yet, they forget other important things as it is, for example, do the basic homework on the SEO of your blog .

Especially when you start with a blog, there is much tendency to tangle in excess things, while remaining important, should not monopolize your attention (eg, aesthetic) and make you lose focus of of other even more important things like what may be the usability of the blog and that has effective elements to encourage the actions of your users that interest (subscription to your mailing list , etc.).

So today I’ll talk a little about what not to do with these issues if you do not want to waste your time away , I’m sure in your sinning case also at least some of the things I will comment because they are highly typical among bloggers …

1. Prior aesthetic design on usability

In this post since I touched this point a little above. It is one of the most typical points and therefore worth a little deeper.

Many bloggers make the mistake of thinking that a good content and design are sufficient to engage readers to your blog and they completely forget the usability .

This means that if the reader can not  easily find what you want in a blog, going to skedaddle . It is therefore difficult for a blog with this problem can succeed over the medium / long term.

In the post I mentioned earlier used as an example blog Joanna. Its design was attractive from the beginning, but had not care usability, which manifested itself in several points:

• The contents hardly saw that the head was so big (especially in height) that these barely peeked. In a typical display of 768 pixels high, you could just see the title and the first line of the post.
• Important elements such as subscription links via RSS and email were “hidden” way down the page (scroll had to do to arrive), an area to which you get a line of text in a post looks …). Remember how difficult it is to extract a user action (in this case, scrolling) unless you have a clear incentive to do so.
• Other important elements, such as links to social networks, yes we were in a good position , but did not call any attention for a color scheme in pastel shades aesthetically pleasing, but nothing striking in view (go unnoticed for the reader) and therefore nothing effective . Furthermore, no icons are used so that social links ultimately remained virtually invisible .
• The design does not suit the contents . For Joanna, its contents are very visual, the images are key. The theme you are using is not bad as it is, but surely could improve using a type theme ” magazine ” in the line of these examples . This would show on the cover several posts at once using images as a lure, which usually helps achieve a clear improvement in the permanence of the blog readers.
• Etc.

You’re catching, right?

That is, an attractive design is obviously important because it found a ‘seedy’ design just landed on the blog backing down. But it is not the only aspect of the design and, above all, it can not overshadow the rest .

You have to also take care of things like usability of the blog and the strategic use of elements that contribute to your goals, especially those with whom want to get rip some action the user as it can be a subscription to your mailing list.

You have to think a little strategy: What interests me to see elements in each site (Home, posts, pages, …)? What are the most important? Where appropriate place? How you can highlight them ?, …

In short, what I want to do things my reader and how do I get that?

A tip : With these ideas in mind, take a tour of blogs that you like and / or are well known in your niche, sure to find ideas to inspire you. Look at them not so much from the perspective of aesthetic design, but the strategy and objectives that are behind what they have done.

2. obsessed with design

One issue that comes up from the above and that always comes in the WordPress courses and courses bloggers are templates (or topics)WordPress and / or Blogger and the enormous amount of time people spend on finding and testing issues and tinker with them, especially at first.

We’re talking about a lot of people will go easily over 100 hours in this because they seek the “perfect” theme with the perfect design for your idea 100 hours that have not been dedicated to the most important task for a blogger: generate content for your blog.

My recommendation is simple: Do not obsess over choosing the perfect theme for your blog , especially at first.

It makes no sense , and what I mean:

A blog usually require a maturation time relatively long, it is normal to have to spend more than a year to really begin to see clearly the subject line of your blog and you are clear (as we said in the previous point) which can give him your blog.

It is possible that over time you see that yours is only post things as a hobby and others read them, but it can also happen (even quite normal) even inadvertently, suddenly discover that your activity has professional potential and / or commercial.

A typical line and simple good business blog is the ability to teach courses related to your niche or theme you post infoproducts as eBooks.

Moreover, you will go better knowing your audience, know better than hooks can function for a given action, etc.

The consequence of all these things is that when you have reached the point where these things start to be clear, the design you need insurance has little to do with your initial idea . So what sense does it invest an awful lot of hours on the mega-design when you start?

Any.

So I recommend that you do not waste time trying 30 different templates, look for the kind of letter perfect and do 20 sketches logo perfect. At first, settle for something that is just “decent” and that suits your needs reasonably well.

Obviously everything is nuanced. That is, if your blog is born from the beginning with a strong professional component and a clear definition, it is worth investing in (hire) a good design from the start.

Personally, as a free general topics I usually recommend the template free PageLines as payment option template Canvas of Woothemes that are of good quality and highly configurable . You should be able to adapt any of them reasonably well to your needs.

In the previous post we also talk about one of the issues blog Joanna was his thematic dispersion. We saw that this makes it much more difficult for readers interested in your blog .

The other side of the coin is that this results in organic traffic(searches from Google ) very low , the result of which there has been no work positioning in specific niches. That is, a theme usually also involves scattering material injury to rank your blog because they centras keywords where you want to position.

Do not be obsessed with SEO, but if you have minimal work positioning would be to clearly identify your thematic niches , those in which you are interested in having a presence.

Beware not get too competitive niche (many people with a strong position), for example, “fashion” or “summer fashion” because in this case the results will be zero.

This can be seen very well with the free tool Keyword Tool Google AdWords as for any combination of keywords it will tell you how many monthly searches they receive and what level of competition have (site that you want to position them).

Reasonable to start a blog niche position move in situations low competition and a range between a few hundred and a few thousand searches per month.

For a blog that begins these niches are typically defined with three or four key words.

With this tool Joanna could do active work positioning leveraging effect long tail (long tail) , things like “Summer 2013 fashion trends” ,“cheap fashion children” , “children fashion trends” , “children 2013 fashion trends” , etc .

And another thing: do not be fooled by the “aesthetics” of language . That is, “affordable fashion kids” sounds better than“cheap fashion children” , but the second search which better reflects how people really looking for, then, is this that interests you, it sounds ugly.

That is to say, in this case is less . The more specific your keywords are, the less searches are done, but (in fact, many more …) chances you have to end positioned in the first page of Google search results (which alone is worth).

It is a poor bet, but safe . Over time, as you publish more content for a niche and improved your position you’ll be getting a little more ambitious because if you repeat a number of important content for certain keywords, little by little, Google will consider more authority for that niche . But you have to start at the bottom, otherwise you will never get to position yourself .

For example, if you publish posts with the keyword “latest fashion trends summer” , “summer fun fashion trends” , “Summer 2013 fashion trends” , etc., gradually Google understood that a branch of specialization of your content is “tendencies Summer fashion “and gradually you will better position in that niche. The outcome will depend a lot on the success logically get your content (traffic on social networks, links you get, etc.)

Thus, gradually, over time you will also be more competitive in the upper niche “summer fashion trends.” Yes, the next level, “fashion trends” and will be a very hard niche for such strong competition that already exists in this particular niche.

With this clear, still, at least, these four basic guidelines  with which have made ​​your SEO duties:

1. Regularly devotes time to identify keywords of your (s) niche (s) for which you want to position. Make a list of them, for example, in Excel.
2. Make sure that your titles using these keywords.
3. Take care that the content the use also regularly (especially the first paragraph), more or less in a proportion of 1 to 100 (a keyword or combination of keywords normal word 100). But try never be forced.
4. And finally, make sure your URL (if you can customize) containing them, separated by hyphens (look at our URLs).

If you use WordPress.org , the WordPress SEO plugin , it will help to make sure enough these are applying the guidelines properly.

In addition to the Google webmaster tool you can monitor whether you are doing well because it will give information on which searches are bringing you traffic to your blog is. If in them you find your keywords and a good positioning of your blog in search results it is that you’re doing well.

You see, in the end the basic recipe to make SEO work is quite simple , common sense and if you do it right,I guarantee that you will notice much strong.

image credit:-fotolia

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