Saturday, April 3, 2010

Top 10 Ways To Improve My Blogspot Blog

Blogger users have recently seen a great number of improvements to the free blogging platform from Google. But the service has a long way to go compared to self-hosted WordPress or even WordPress.com blogs. Personally I'm on a mission to find ways to improve this Blogger blog and I'm using several hacks that are making a big difference (especially the Intense Debate, CommentLuv enabled commenting system).
Blogging Challenges
The redesigned layout of this blog using Blogger's new Template Designer looks good too. Yet many  challenges remain along the path to blogging success.
  1. Blog more frequently - last month I published 2 posts, I think once a week would make a difference
  2. Create A Custom background image - I should create custom branding and a logo for this blog also
  3. Improve Google Page Rank and Alexa Rank - I have no where to go but up!
  4. Improve Image Quality - most of my images are generated by suggestion the Zemanta extension
  5. Improve Ad placement - some ads are too long and most are ineffective
  6. Invite Guest Posts - would you like to guest post here? Please let me know.
  7. Create more backlinks - start leaving this url on DoFollow and CommentLuv enabled blogs
  8. Increase Promotion Efforts - I can post more blog links to Twitter, FaceBook and Google Buzz
  9. Keyword Research - I can use more long tail keyword phrases
  10. Reduce page load time - here's a report from Pingdom indicating areas for improvement
Many bloggers might say that I should add a #11 to this list - and that would be the ultimate challenge of migrating this blog to a self-hosted WordPress blog with my own domain name :)
Blogging Inspiration
I was inspired to write this post by Brian from Blog Engage and the Weekly Writing Challenge. I encourage you to join the Blog Engage writing challenge each week. It's a great way to exercise your brain blogging muscles. You can also share your thoughts on ways to improve your blog in the comments below, I'd love to hear from you.