What comes first, blog SEO or Blog design? An argument that has done the rounds for a long time so I am not going to enter into it - at least not in this post.

Where blogs SEO and blog design do clash is where the design defeats the SEO processes. A good example is where poor code prevents the search engine spiders from reading your complete site.

When a spider comes to visit it reads your site page by page following all the links that they are allowed to follow. As it comes across content, it reads and indexes that content so that it can be found by a searcher. The page also starts to develop a ranking that will determine its place in the search engine results pages.  Your blog design needs to facilitate the work done by the spiders. Your blog SEO provides the links and keywords that you want the spider to concentrate.

If your blog design has any code problems then it is possible that your content will not get read and consequently not get indexed.  Not only that, the spider will probably not continue on to any of the other pages so they will not get indexed either.

There are two solutions to this problem. The first is to check to see if your site is W3C compliant. This checks the code of the page to see if there are any problems with the blog design. The second option is to use a spider simulator. This is a software program that displays a copy of your web page as the spider sees it. You can see whether or not the spider can read the whole page or if it, and where, it  breaks down.

Part of your blog SEO strategy should be to run regular checks on your pages for both compliance and spider readability. If your blog design is good, your site will pass both checks.

Two old saying contradict each other - First impressions count and Never judge a book by its cover. When it comes to blog design, your landing page is not just the cover, it essentially a snapshot of the whole blog so First Impressions Will Count. Avoid these six blog design mistakes and you may keep your visitor long enough for them to read the content.

Avoid the overuse of Flash: in fact, if possible don’t use it at all. Flash graphics can look great in a blog design but they can also be turnoffs as well. If you need to use flash graphics, place them below the fold so the visitor at least gets a feel for your blog before the flash scares them away.

Avoid auto play video and audio files. These slow down the load speed of your blog and can often be a huge turn off for your visitors. Give them the option of playing the file if they wish.

Avoid placing badges and banners everywhere. A nice clean look to a blog is the ultimate aim. You can still have banners and badges, the key is to balance how many and where they are place. Having too many can be counter productive as the visitor can be confused as to which button the need to press when the time arises.

Avoid fancy fonts and/or fonts that are too big or too small. This is a simple equation. If I cannot read your site, I am gone. Be sensible with font colors and sizes.

Avoid the use of ‘click here’ links. When providing a link, use anchor text that makes sense to the user. you should also avoid simple home page links. If you are discussing someone else’s article, link using good keywords and using the articles URL.

Finally, tell me where I am! I don’t know how many times I have clicked on a couple of links only to find the page I have landed on has no indication as to who they are.

If you can avoid those six blog design mistakes you may find your traffic staying a little longer and your conversions, if you have them, increasing. Your blog design is selling you and your brand.

One mistake that businesses make when starting a blog is to use a free theme rather than getting a customized blog design. Some times, when you use a free theme you are getting what you paid for.

Free themes are often written by amateur writers and while they often look good, that is all they are good for. When using a free theme you need to run several checks. The first and most important check is via any of the tools that let you look at your site as the search engine spider sees it. Many themes have code errors in the blog design which prevent your pages from being fully read and indexed correctly.

Other free themes may have links to dubious sites, or at the very least, sites that you may not wish to link to. These links often appear in the footer, one area that some search engines treat with suspicion. You can easily check for these by using your browsers view code option. Scroll through to the footer to see whether or not there are any strange links. If there are then ditch the theme and find another blog design.

Free themes are just that, free. Create a blog using a theme custom designed by a reputable designer and they will do their best to ensure the code flows smoothly and the blog design delivers everything that you need from it. After all, they are professionals and their income relies on delivering quality products - there name is on the blog design.

If you do decide to go with an off the shelf theme, pay the few extra dollars to have it customized to your needs. Run the two checks I have suggested to ensure that everything flows and can be read by the search engines and that no strange links are included. Your blog design delivers the first impression to your visitors, and first impressions count.

But your visitors do. Let’s face it. When it comes to blog design, the search engines couldn’t care less what it looks like. In fact, apart from black text on black backgrounds, search engines like Google are only interested in a text versions of web site.

What about graphics, video and audio I hear someone say? Again, search engines are only interested in text versions (that is why your alt tags are so important). Search engines don’t listen to an audio file (yet - just wait - it wont be long), nor do they watch a video (ditto), the contents of these files could be garbage, the search engine doesn’t care. They do want the alt tags in your blog design though.

Getting a little more serious, search engines are not interested in blog design - your visitors most definitely are. It is pointless undertaking a strong SEO campaign that brings in plenty of visitors only to have them run just as quickly because they have been confronted by an eye-sore. There is no need for it either.

You can very easily incorporate user friendly features along with visually appealing looks into your blog design whilst still implementing strong SEO strategies. The two need not infringe on each other, in fact serving two masters can help to keep you sharper and more on the ball.

Blog design may not be important to search engines, but they are highly important to me along with every other visitor to your site. Don’t sacrifice good design in the name of SEO - they can both live harmoniously together.

We have written many articles dedicated to blog design including a previous post on keeping it simple. With the release of WordPress 2.5 I thought it was timely to look at the basic features of your blog design when it comes to user friendliness.

For whatever reason you publish a blog, the design should focus on the reader and what they need to successfully navigate through your blog. Rather than tell you how to do something, which I will do in a later post, I am going to ask you to review your blog using the following questions:

1. Overall Blog Design: Is your design easy on the eyes - some blogs are either far to soft or far to harsh - where would classify yours?
2. Navigation: Does you blog have clearly labeled navigation links particularly Home; Previous Posts through either Categories, Archives or Most Popular; and dedicated pages such as About?
3. Font Size and Color: Is the font size easy to read and are the colors of the text and links appropriate both in respect of readability and overall color scheme?
4. Subscription: If you are offering subscription feeds - are the icons clearly visible, the appropriate size and above the fold?
5. Comments: are the comments easy to access with clearly defined icons or text links?

If your blog design does not address these five basic design features then you may find that your readers are frustrated, uncomfortable reading your content and unlikely to return again. Your blog should be a friendly easy to access and easy to use site that not only welcomes the visitors, it encourages them to return again and again.

Get your blog design right and you can spend more time working on the content. Design offers friendship - content earns respect - interaction delivers loyalty. Get your blog design right and you have made the first step towards developing a loyal reader base.

The best blog design is one that is easy to navigate, easy to use and easy to read. A fancy blog design may look great but if the reader finds navigation difficult or the text hard to read, all that work will have gone to waste.

Some designs only need a minor tweak. I was asked by a friend to look at his blog recently to find out why he had such a high bounce rate (over 90%). The first thing that struck me was the header image, it consumed the whole opening screen. For a lot of visitors, they land on that page and don’t know what to do next. The opening graphic, being so large, also took a while to load.

The quick fix was to reduce the graphic in height by 50%. This allowed the page to load faster and of course brought the content and menus above the fold. His bounce rate is now down to around 70% - still high, but much better that the 90%. He was fortunate, his graphic allowed for 50% reduction in height without degrading the overall effect. It is rare to have an easy fix like that.

I see a lot of blogs that are far to complicated. A simple design is all that is needed. If you are looking to deliver information then that information should be your primary focus and the blog design should focus on that as well.

For blogs that are intended to produce income, your design should focus on leading your readers to your income streams. Leave the fancy designs to the blogs that are created for fun and pleasure.

Blog design - keep it simple and keep it focused on what the blog is there for.

Blog design refers of course to the design of your blog. Do you hire a professional to build a blog from scratch or simply buy a template. Even if you prefer to buy a good template, someone still had to design the template in the first place. In fact, if you decide to build a blog from scratch, chances are the designer will start with a template and modify it to your requirements.

There is nothing new about blog design. Web design has been around for a long time and blog design is simply an extension of that. In fact, blog design is more like a cross between good print design, particularly magazine design and web design.

If you look closely at a lot of blogs you will see some similarity with magazines or newspapers. Like all good print media, the look is important. The ads are carefully placed for maximum results. The content carefully crafted and placed to effect.

What the print media does not need to consider are the intricacies of the web. Blog design needs to allow for SEO policies; they also need to consider page loading speeds; and of course user interactivity like comments and click throughs.

When looking at your blog design, does it resemble a magazine, a newspaper, a web page or is it quite individual in its design? Or is it a blog that has just grown out of hand over time? It’s never to late to update your blog design.

Creating a blog is easy and so is getting your blog design right. Avoid these seven mistakes and you should have a blog design that is all set for your content. Get your content right and you will have a blog that is well on the way to success.

MISTAKE NUMBER ONE: Not Using Your Own Domain Name - The biggest mistake many people make is in simply not believing in themselves so they head of for a blog hosted blog like WordPress.com or blogger.com. If you are serious about blogging then get your own domain name and hosting. In this day and age the annual cost is quite small.

MISTAKE NUMBER TWO: Not Defining Your Niche - A lot of bloggers use a scattergun approach when it comes to publishing content. Settle on a genre, even if it is a broad one, and stick to it. Make sure each post that is published relates to that genre.

MISTAKE NUMBER THREE: Not Creating An Identity - Readers will want to know who you are. One of your first tasks should be to write an ‘About Me’ page. This can be edited over time. A photo is also a nice touch.

MISTAKE NUMBER FOUR: Infrequent Posting - You may write the best material on the web but if you only publish when you feel like it you will not build a reader base. Establish a posting routine, preferably every day. If you cannot post every day then at least establish a routine that readers can expect. This may be every Friday, or every second day - so long as it is predictable.

MISTAKE NUMBER FIVE: Poor Post Titles - Make the the title of every post stand out so that it attracts readers. The more attractive or luring the title, the more readers you are likely to get.

MISTAKE NUMBER SIX: Burying Your Hits - You are sure to write some great articles. Make sure they are always promoted and readily accessible from the home page. It only takes a carefully crafted list of links.

MISTAKE NUMBER SEVEN: Dead or Mysterious Links - There is nothing worse that reading an article that has a link with no reference to what the link is about or where it is going. Users can hover a mouse over a link and when they do they expect to get some feedback as to where the link is going. Worse still is when the link proves to be a dead link. Check your links on a frequent basis.

Think about these seven blog design mistakes and then think about your own blog reading experiences. You will see that most, if not all are relevant to what you would like to see when visiting a blog. You want to know a bit about the author, you want regular on topic posts, you want to know where the links are going and often you will want to check out some of their older titles. Start to leave these out of your blog design and you will find that your blog reader base will not grow.

Starting a blog is easy, getting your blog design right is also easy - we often just make it hard on ourselves.

There are many blog and website services provider in the market place now. What features do you look for before buying their services.

The first and most important feature to look for is the level of expertise in the services they offer. Some services providers claim a high level expertise but unless they can back these claims up with evidence, generally in the form of a portfolio of successful clients, then tread warily.

The second feature, whilst not truly a feature, is price. Cheap is not always best, in fact it rarely is. The lower the price the lower the level of service - it is a simple matter of economics. If your are offering a service that requires a high level of expertise from a team then low fees indicate either a small team or a lack of dedicated resources.

The major features to consider are of course the services themselves. Do they offer web hosting? Price again is important here - cheap hosting invariably leads to cheap service - frequent down times and little support. When it comes to web hosting, you get what you pay for.

Other features include web design, content writing, directory and search engine submission, SEO, blog and/or website marketing and  an ongoing help program.

Providers such as Brick Marketing not only offer a comprehensive range of blog and website services, they have the expertise to see your project through from start to finish. Brick Marketing also have a wide range of blog and website services to assist you in the ongoing development of your blog or website.

You can spend a lot of money on a blog design. If you have, do you also have a matching favicon? Now I can hear some mumblings. What is a  favicon?

Have a look in the address window of your browser. Have you ever noticed the little icons that precede the URL. This is the favicon. Now have a look at your site and tell me if you have your own favicon? These are not difficult to put together. Favicon’s are simple 16 pixels by 16 pixels images - if you use the .ico standard then you can use 32 x 32 size images.

Most browsers search for a favicon file whether or not you have one. Including the favicon to your blog design is like putting the finishing touches on any project. It adds that little touch of professionalism to your site.

Once you have your favicon designed, place it in the root directory of your site with the name favicon.ico - most browsers will automatically pick it up and use it. If you want to make sure that a browser uses the icon, or if you wish to place the .ico file in another directory then include the following line of code inside the <head> </head> code of your site.

<link rel="shortcut icon" href="http://yourURL.com/directory/favicon.ico" type="image/vnd.microsoft.icon">

This is standard code that is accepted by most browsers. You can also use .gif and .png graphic files as well although their resolution sizes are restricted to 16×16 pixels.

If your blog design does not have a favicon then why not design one. They certainly do add those finishing touches to your blog design.

Blog design is one of those areas that most blogger’s feel dissatisfied with most. Either it is never quite right or you have simply become bored with it. So what can you do to improve your blog design.

You have a wide variety of options. You can:

• hire a specialist to revamp your blog design
• find a template that you can purchase, preferably with exclusive use
• use a common license template, remember, there will probably be others using the same template
• tweak your current template

If you are confident and comfortable playing around with the CSS files on your blog then tweaking your current template can be one of the quickest and easiest ways to update your blog design.  There are many areas that you can modify to get a fresher looking blog. You can:

• change the color scheme
• change the font, font color and/or font size
• for some blog designs you can change the width of the sidebars, content or whole page
• add or remove a sidebar
• change the header image or text style

These are only a few of the areas that you can modify. On one of my other blogs I was able to increase the page width thereby allowing me to increase the width of the sidebars and the content. While I was at it I fully justified the content and increased the font size marginally. I then added a new header image. The end result was a blog that I was much happier.

Part of the reason for being happy with the improvements was due in part to the fact that I had done it. I do urge a word of caution. If you blog design was created by a specialist designer then may be easier and cheaper to get them to do the redesign.

Whichever path you take, it can often be easier to just tweak what you have. Your regular visitors may notice the improvements, but most items like your categories and archives will remain the same (unless you make a major change to them as well). A total change in template may have undesired results when it comes to your regular visitors. Humans like the norm, not change.

Your blog design - if you are bored - tweak it first - you may be surprised at the results.

A bouncing blog - sounds interesting. When it comes it blog SEO, you do not want a bouncing blog. What is bouncing. The bounce rate is a measurement of how many visitors land on your home page and then leave without visiting any other pages. Together with the time measurement, you can get a fairly good overall picture of your blog.

If you have a bounce rate of 70% with an average stay of 1.20 minutes; you know you are getting visitors, but they are not staying and certainly not staying long enough to read the landing page. There can be many reasons for this. Perhaps you have engaged in a pay per click campaign. People are clicking to visit but not staying. Perhaps your blog marketing is wrong with visitors arriving only to find you don’t have what they are looking for. This is a problem. It means your blog marketing campaign is not delivering.

If you do have a high bounce rate, you need to adjust your landing page to see what works; to see which modifications keep the visitors on your page and then deliver them to other pages.

Good solid blog SEO strategies along with constant analysis of your traffic should keep your blog from bouncing.

Blog SEO, is it really that important? After all, its just a blog. With that mindset perhaps blog SEO is not that important. Blog marketing and blog design are probably not that important either. On the other hand, if you are serious about your blog; serious about getting visitors; delivering a message or making money; then blog SEO is extremely important.

Around 85% of online consumers use a search engine of some type. If you don’t use good search engine optimization practices then your competitors are receiving the traffic and your left behind. Given the billions of searches that are made each day it is important to get onto that first page for your given keyword.  The majority of consumers only go as far as that first page. Some look at the second page. Very few get to page three.

Employing a professional blog SEO  consultant is often money well spent. If they can get you onto the first page then the flow of visitors will more than adequately cover that initial expense. If they incorporate blog design and blog marketing in the package then your visitor numbers will rise dramatically. If you have a good product to sell, affiliate program or other income generating program that is attractive to your visitor then you may well be able to employ the consultant on an ongoing basis. Blog SEO - here at Blog Marketing Journal, we consider it very important.

This is an unusual blog marketing tip, but one that is probably not utilized by most bloggers. For the initiated, this may serve as a reminder, for every one else, you are probably asking - what is a 404?

You have probably come across 404’s before - it is simply a page not found error - and a very frustrating error. Think about it. You click on a link and get an error message. The page cannot be found. What have you done in this situation? Clicked refresh just in case; hit the back button; or just moved on? The majority of people just move on. If that was your page, you have just lost a visitor and every visitor is a potential customer.

How do you resolve the problem. For the big time bloggers, their 404 Page Not Found is a blessing - they use it to promote their main pages, their affiliate pages or their products. The easiest solution is to make sure that every link is unbroken and does not result in a 404. It is always good to have a backup for those times when you cannot repair the link, for example, a link that is normally unbroken is temporarily broken due to server errors.

It is very easy to redirect your Page Not Found to any page that suits. I will concentrate on WordPress, however the concepts are the same for any blogging package. Before moving on, a blogging tip for everyone - make a backup of the file you intend making any changes to.

WordPress normally has a file aptly named, 404.php. To redirect the browser to a page of your choice, open the 404.php for editing and add the following:

<?
header ("Location: http://your page url/");
?>

Replace the ‘your page url’ with the url of the page you want to have displayed. The best choice is either to redirect to your very best post or back to your home page. Even better, if you have the skills, is to have a dedicated page that advises the visitor that the page requested is not currently available, has a search option to find similar pages, at the same time promotes who you are, you current posts, products or services. This WordPress tip is very straightforward. For those using other platforms it is just a matter of finding your 404 file in your blog design and making the adjustments.

As a marketing tool, the 404 Page Not Found error should never be wasted - it is an opportunity to promote your business.

There is nothing worse when surfing the blog network than to be faced with a mirror of your own blog, just with different content. If your blogging for fun then a public domain or free template will suit your purpose. In fact you may think it amusing to find your template being used elsewhere.

There comes a time however when you may need to think professional. For some blog owners, particularly corporate blogs, you have to start with a custom designed blog. If you are using a free template then at the very least you need to consider designing a header, or having one designed for you.

When considering your blog design don’t stop at what you want. It comes back to why you are blogging in the first place.

• think about what message you are trying to deliver,
• who your target audience is, and
• what it is you are trying to sell.

These are not exclusive. If you are selling a product or service then your blog design needs to make it easy for you to market your product to the right audience with, in all probability, the aim of getting them to click through to a sales or order page. This message may well be lost in a cluttered three column blog design. You may however be selling many different messages where the content is the attraction but the sales pitch is in the side bars - in this case a three column blog design would be perfect.

There are many blog and website services that can design blog templates at very competitive prices. Check out some of their work first. If the designer is a professional then they will generally have links to working pages that they have designed. You can see them in action; see them being used.

Approach the designer with a clear idea of what you are looking for; the layout, the header and any extra options like links to sales or checkout sites. Most importantly, make sure the end result is going to be a blog design that is usable by both yourself and your reader. Design is the first step to attracting and keeping your readers.