After running a Small Business Marketing blog for several years now, I’ve become acutely aware of the need to optimize my blog (and my website in general) for both Search Engines and user experience. Now that everyone who is capable of turning on a computer and hammering out a few phrases can haphazardly throw a blog together, it is extremely important to make sure your site stands out above the rest of the millions of blogs that are currently on line.

Photo by lisaclarkeOptimization is one of those things that website owners constantly hear about, but most don’t take the time to really understand it. Website optimization seems too technical and too confusing, so it can be easy to ignore the essential steps of optimizing your blog.

However, poorly designed and maintained websites drive away repeat Readers, and low rankings in Google and other Search engines ensure that few new readers find your articles. Since most small business owners start blogs in hopes that prospects and potential customers find their posts helpful or enjoyable, a lack of traffic almost always ends in the blog fading into the black abyss of cyberspace. In other words, no readers, no point in continuing to write your blog. Which is a shame, because a blog is truly an awesome small business marketing tool.

The good news is, there are some quick and easy things you can do to optimize your blog, encourage continued readership, and increase your search engine rankings:

I’m assuming your blog runs off a standard platform like WordPress or Blogger; but that doesn’t mean you’re limited to the standard, over-used templates. Make your site stand out by hiring a web designer or finding a customizable template. With a little bit of research, it is quite easy to tweak design elements and color schemes. Make sure the look and feel of your blog match the branding of your business. And always keep user experience in mind when you pick your font, color scheme and other design elements. While you want your site to be custom, you also want it to be user friendly and professional. There are a lot of sites out there, and if your blog is not easy to read and navigate, finicky readers will look elsewhere. Also, make sure important links, like your RSS feed, are easy to find on the main page.

Also, I recommend buying your own domain name. By doing all of this, you are making sure your site is unique-that it’s not, “Just another WordPress blog.”

Once your site is set up, start in on content. Content is what continues to bring in readers. It is important to user proper grammar, spelling, and paragraph breaks. This is especially important if you are cutting and pasting your posts from other source, such as Microsoft Word. When you copy your posts from other software, you can end up with strange paragraph spacing and odd characters. Always use the “preview post” feature before publishing your article.

It is also important to post new material regularly. Set up a schedule that works for you, and use the “Publish Later feature that is built in to most blogging platforms. This will allow you to set up several posts ahead of time and have them “drip published” to your blog at regular intervals. Readers like dependable blogs with regularly published articles, and the search engines do too.

Once you have a well-written post, make sure you use descriptive tags and proper categories. If you include pictures, give them descriptive names, as people also use search engines to look for images. Once you’re happy with the entry, ping sites, such as Technorati, to let them know you have new material available.

In order to optimize your posts for search engines, use permalinks that include your post title. The default permalink setup for many blogs includes generic numbers, such as /?p=123. This tells search engines nothing about the content of your article. Also, always manage your spam and trackbacks. If you have a bunch of low quality links on your website, it will negatively affect your search engine ranking. Plug-ins like Akismet helps tremendously.

Now that you have the basics down, keep following these simple guidelines, and your site ranking will continue to increase over time. The more you do to ensure optimization for both your readers and the search engines, the faster your blog will pick up new subscribers and better rankings.