Your home page layout can make a big difference in who comes to your blog and sticks around to read it.
There are two parts to designing your layout. First is to make it SEO friendly….yes I did put SEO first. You will need to get visitors to your site before you can entice them to stay. The search engines will be looking at your site and judging it in comparison to what people are searching for.
So lets take a look at how your can make your site SEO friendly.
1. Choose a domain name that has your keywords in it for your niche. For example: ThePublicDomainExpert.com
2. Choose a blog theme that has the post content in the left hand column with the sidebars on the right. The search engines read from left to right just like humans. So you want your main content (which you will keyword search) to be first for the spiders that read websites. (You know- Word Wide Web – Spiders)
3. Use keywords for your categories.
4. Use keywords in you post and page titles. Also in your bolded subtitles.
Make your site visitor friendly.
Second: Now that your visitor has arrived, you only have a few seconds to catch a visitors attention. Then you need to make your site easy to navigate.
1. The look of your site should fit your niche. When your visitor arrives he knows immediately he is at the right site. For example: A cooking site – Erincooks.com . A travel site – Abroadening.com. Beta Fish – BetaFishCenter.com.
2. Make your site usable and simple. You want your visitor to stick around and find the great information you will be giving. You want your site to be easy to read get around on.
Permission Marketing – Make your opt in box pop!
By placing your opt in box in the top right hand corner every visitor has the chance to sign up for your offer. This is called permission marketing.
In short, your page layout needs to be both SEO and visitor friendly. This means using keyword to get your visitors to your page and then making them feel at home. Go look at sites you like to visit. Pick out what you like about them.
To your success,
Sheila
P.S. Here is more information on using keywords and SEO: – Craig-Edmonds.com - Problogger.net – SEOSmarty.com
P.S.S. Now take a look at your home page layout. Make sure your site is both SEO friendly and visitor friendly. Rinse and repeat for all of your blog pages.
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Good tips. I’d add that keywords in categories are all well and good but in the end it’s entirely possible to not get any traffic to these categories unless you have a ton of domain authority and/or extensive links to those categories.
So in most new blogs it won’t even really matter until you get large enough.
It is my theory that you should start and write your blog with every possible way to be seen. In the video by Matt Cutts, he tells us to use keywords for categories.
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Sheila, you have given so many practical tips! Great for the new year!
Patricia
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