11 ways to customize your WordPress blog to your needs

WordPress is the most popular blogging CMS used among the bloggers. By default WordPress comes will more that what you need, but you have the option to customize your blog according to your requirement. There are tons of extensions which are available at the WordPress extension directory which can cater your need. You should make sure that you have your WordPress Installation Updated to the latest version. Recently search engines have introduced a new tag called canonical tag which is used to tell the search engines about the URL of the post to avoid content duplication. You can use this tag using a plugin without any pain

1. SEO – Search Engine Optimization

   Search engine optimization is something very important as you should be aware that  search engines are the best traffic and free source of traffic for any blog or website. You need to make sure that your blog complies with the Webmasters Guidelines. Google is the most powerful and widely used search engine. There are a number of tips that should help you in optimizing your WordPress blog for search engines. Pagerank is important for a blog or website, so you need to look into the SEO factor seriously. There are some good plugins like All in One SEO which takes care of most of the SEO requirements of your blog

2. Subscription

   RSS feed subscription is something which you should concentrate on. You should have some option for your readers or visitors to subscribe to your posts using the RSS feeds. There are many ways to increase the number of your RSS feed readers. There are two options for subscriptions, one E-Mail subscription and other is through the RSS feed reader like the Google reader and many others are available.

3. Newsletters

   Other than subscribing using the RSS feeds, you can run newsletters where you send something special to your subscribed readers. I would recommend Aweber which is one of the most popular newsletter system. Newsletters can help you in boosting your traffic and even help in selling offers.

4. Theme

   Having a professional theme is something very important. I use a theme from Brian Gardner called Revolution Church which I feel is having a professional look and I have made some customization looking into my needs and taste. A good theme is very important to impress your visitors. There are also lots of free WordPress themes available which can be used when you start your blog and later you can change it to a professional one when you feel that you can afford to pay for your blog theme.

5. Advertisements

   Blogging is done as a hobby by some, as a way to make money and some do it for both. To monetize your blog, you need to get advertisers. Google Adsense is the best for the starters and if your blog has some decent traffic, you can go for private sales of Ads slots. I have been using Oiopublishers for some time now which takes care of the entire process from telling the visitors that I have ad slots for sale or rent, they can check the prices, buy it, make the payment, create their ads and view the reports. Make your advertising system automated, that will really help you. You can display your affiliate banners till you sell your ad slots and make money from your affiliate sales too using this plugin.

6. Fighting Spams

   Protecting your blog from spam is very important. If you are using WordPress, then you do not need to worry much because Matt has developed an excellent plugin called akismet.  You will find this plugin available by default, all you need to have an API key with WordPress and you have to update it into the settings of this plugin.

7. Guest Post from Users

   Getting your visitors to register and do guest posting will help you in getting good content for your blog. I have some paid content writers for my blog who help me in adding good content to my blog. You can encourage your visitors to register and submit content and offer Guest posting  option. This works well for popular blogs as this would help the authors to advertize themselves as well and market their blogs. I would suggest to use the register plus plugin which has some security features and some additions features than the default user registration in WordPress. To motivate your visitors to write for your blog, you can offer some rewards which is done by some bloggers, but some offer to add a link to the authors blog which is also very much useful for the authors.

8. Translations

   Offering translation of your blog or website is one of the best way to get readers from non-English speaking countries. I have written a  translation plugin which I was using, but now I do not use because I find Google translation banning the site temporally very often. I need to work on this plugin and find a solution for this.

9. Social Networking

   You need to build your presence in different social networking sites like twitter, stumbleupon, facebook, digg, etc to advertize your blog and make it popular. Many use social networking to gain traffic and sales. Traffic is very important for your blog and social networking sites are something which can help you in branding your blog and get loyal readers.

10. Auto Blogging

    I have come across an excellent plugin which will fetch and update your WordPress Blog with posts from different RSS feeds. You can run a blog without spending time in doing posts.

11. Hacks

    There are many hacks that I use on my Wordpre
    ss blog like displaying the upcoming posts and adding the meta custom fields for thumbnails for themes which use thumbnails like the Revolution Themes, showing a welcome message to your visitors coming from search engines

I have written written this post for WordPress CMS because I have been using this for my blog and I find WordPress is the most widely used open source tool for blogging. I would suggest to make customization for your blog using plugins rather than making any changes in the core files. Reason being, when you upgrade your WordPress installation will overwrite all you customization.