Blogging is easy but getting famous at it is harder. If you don’t work on getting your name out there then chances are, your posts will go unread.

Here are a list of few things that people forget to do.

1. Sitemaps - First things first, Google is the leader of the free internet world. But unfortunately for them to like you, you need to give something back! Well thing is sitemaps are what you have to give them back. Sitemaps are like links in a xml format defined by w3c. They also have a update and a priority level that comes with it. Using this to your advantage is necessary. Make one. If you use wordpress, then there are plenty of ways of getting a sitemap. There are plugins that do that for you. The page template for sitemap is another one. Visitors should be able to browse your website without any issues. Sitemaps in templates help that. The xml sitemap can be submitted here http://www.google.com/webmasters/sitemaps/ . They also help SEO ( search engine optimization ) quite a lot.
   
   
2. Meta tags & description - Meta tags and description is another one of those things which are important for SEO. They basically describe what that post or page is about for that particular story. Meta tags like meta keywords help recognize all the ones that are related words by adding them to the list. Meta description helps search engine help understand well…..description for that page. Sites like http://whois.domaintools.com/digg.com go on that info.
   
   
3. Linking - Cant emphasize this enough! Link dammit. People do link! Just because you don’t believe in linking with an inferior blog doesn’t make your blog any worse than what it already is. If anything it might travel that extra little bit and get you better conversion rates because it is true, hits from other bloggers do infact get you better conversion rates. Not to mention if the other blog has a high page rank, it does get transfered to you! This means faster searches and better results all around as far as blogging with search engines go!
   
   
4. Analyze - Use google analytics or something. But for your own benefit please track your blog. You never know where your traffic is coming from if you don’t do that! Once you do know the origins, reap its benefits! People don’t do that enough. I felt the need to tell this myself because not enough is being done about it. People leave it to some SEO company and then just relax back and think that flow of traffic is going to grow on its own! Well thats not going to work. You need to build it upto a certain point and then make something of it. Find out your most famous article and who is behind that extra bit of flow. What did you do in that popular article that others haven’t received similar traffic for.
   
   
5. Polish - Bloggers are lazy, I admit, I am a victim of this crime too. I never polish my posts. Well for one thing, we should be doing that more often. Remember, its these polished blogs that will fetch you your money maker. That extra bit of editing could be the difference between a B+ article and the outstanding A+ which is your money maker. Revisit your old posts and have a feel of whether there has been a growing polished feeling in your posts and compare.
   
   
6. Categories - Categorization is the key to success. I mean if its in a irrelevant category, don’t bother posting. Make sure you have the right categories done. Try not to be general but if you are then try to stick to the topic.
   
   
7. Permalinks - Use permalinks to your advantage! Make something of it. No one likes it when you are searching through google and you get posts like blah.com/?=38 . Seriously use permalinks. It looks better when its something like blah.com/archives/omg-i-lik-u/. Its also better for SEO.
   
   
8. Social Bookmarking - Don’t just blog and forget about it completely! Please use social bookmarking to your advantage. This is the coolest thing happened to bloggers since …….. wordpress. Well I haven’t used it myself but still… try to use it.
   
   
9. Advertisement - Do not use pop-ups, we are bloggers, people are there to read and be enlightened. Make it subtle. Not in your face! Try to ease it out and soothe it in to the website. Get a webmaster or a friend to give you an idea of what should go where.
   
   
10. Template - Get a unique template. All serious bloggers need to get one of them. The odd casual blogger can get away with inconsistency as well as a generic look. But a serious blogger should get a template. Its easy to get a template especially a unique one. It only costs a couple of hundreds. I myself work on these sort of things. Used to do it for free. Still do it for free. As long as I have a CSS template. Its this uniqueness that defines your site and reminds everybody of the blog. Keep working on it. Also customize your template. Don’t just do something as stupid as get a template thats recommended. Add your input into it. The most customized template makes the user feel at home, feel like they should come back for more.

I wiill add more if anyone care to suggest them in the Feedback form below.


This list appeared originally at http://www.publishersweblog.com/blogging/10-things-bloggers-forget-to-do/ and is republished here with the kind permission of the author.