By: Mandeep

The following is a list of things that can help you in increasing your blog’s usability.

Navigation:

There are variety of templates to give skin to your blog. But choosing the best template is a critical job. Templates with scroll down to the bottom of the blog to navigate are not the best choice. Stick to standard left column or right column navigation.

Search Box:

You should include a search box in the main body of your blog or the sidebar. Other than the convenience for users, the added advantage is that unlike Google search box, the search results will appear in the main body of your Blog. Continual visitors may not remember a post that’s not instinctive to find through your navigation menu or tag system. They might also want to find their own comments, so make that possible by placing a search box somewhere in your layout.

Background & Text:

Anything that makes your blog harder to read should be avoided. Avoid low contrast combinations like black with red and busy patterned backgrounds. White text on a black background, causes eyestrain.

Linking to Posts:

You can use permalinks.These remains unchanged so points to a specific blog or forum entry after it has passed from the front page to the archives.Linking back to previous entries builds page strength for those posts and can help you with search engine rankings. But don’t be afraid to link off your site, this can help you get noticed by other bloggers.You can combine links with template tags like header, footer, or sidebar. You can make Absolute links (defines absolutely where to find the target of the link) OR Relative links (define the location of another document in relation to the current document) in your blog posts.

Excessive Advertising:

When ads appear all over the page and even in the middle of posts, the user suffers. Avoid contextual ads programs that highlight words in your posts to make them look like hyperlinks, but popup an ad when they are rolled over with a mouse.

Mannage Your Comments:

Don’t allow everyone to post whatever they want in your comments section. Not only is this annoying to your readers, but also takes down the professionalism of your blog. So moderate your comments yourself.

Regular Posting:

Don’t put time lags between posts.Pick a posting schedule and stick to it. If you don’t have anything to post you can give link of anothers blog post in your blog post. It wil not harm your blog because atleast you are providing a useful info to your reader.

Be Subject Specific:

Don’t make posts on different subjects other then your theme or subject of your blog. Categories should relevent to your blog theme.Random blog entries are not a good approach for a serious, professional blog.

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By: Marie Boran

The three search engine heavyweights were present yesterday at the Search Marketing World 2008 conference in Dublin and one topic they were all keen to talk about was the future of search.
Search engine marketing remains very strong in the Irish market said Mike O’Shea, director for the EMEA region, inside sales organisation at Google.

O’Shea said the biggest challenge, however, was in educating small businesses and marketing agencies as online advertising currently only accounts for 1.5pc to 2.5pc of the overall advertising spend in an organisation’s budget.

When it comes to the future of search, O’Shea said it is most definitely going in the direction of mobile, a view echoed by Peter Cobley, regional UK sales manager for Yahoo!.

Cobley said: “Yahoo! is investing very heavily in mobile. However, everyone waxes lyrical about mobile as the next platform but it is not necessarily the panacea they think it is.

“Mobile penetration is huge in the western world, usage is huge, but for sucessful mobile search and advertising, user adoption of the mobile web and the provision of a use-friendly experience on the handset is needed.”

Cobley added that as far as the web experience goes, the iPhone marked the first real point of convergence.

Mel Carson, Microsoft’s adCentre community manager for Europe, said that going forward, while social networking sites like Facebook or Bebo will continue to grow, he doesn’t think this will affect the relevancy of the search engine for users who need results.

He feels that the search engine and the social networking site can happily co-exist because while users value personal recommendations from friends, their network might not necessarily know the answer to their query or problem.

On the other hand, said Carson, search engine sites like Microsoft’s Live are working on narrowing down user intent, with personalisation being a key focus going forward.

Both Microsoft and Google emphasised the need for a balance between developing more relevant, customised searches for the user, while protecting their data and providing them with information on how that data is being used.

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Source: www.siliconrepublic.com