If you choose not to opt for blog customization, just as 99% do , then you have surely lot of stuff you could be missing.
Customized blog give immense value like branding, professionalism, attitude this helps developing community or personality over the blog.
First and foremost you will be backfired by search engines for having duplicate content, ( a great free blog software wordpress comes with pre-loaded 5 way to serve same content ). A very simple thing , but if you do not handle then surely you will pay the price – it becomes harder and harder to grow with such duplicate content.
All major blogging software comes with easy to customization for URLs. Search engine bots like to be feed properly with good easy to url like, but all software comes with tyical database URLs like ( http://www. Yourdomain.com/blogpost.php?b=213). The best part is you can customize this URLs into search engine friendly URLs like ( http://www.Yourdomain.com/name-of-your-article.php). This customization can drive lot of search engine traffic to your blog.
RSS is must and it has started a web2.0 revoulution, If your blog software do not have one , it is time you get one and start living with it. Lot of readers prefer to use rss content to check the updated content on various blogs. make sure the rss icon is well highlighted on the blog.
Bookmarking is yet another web 2.0 revolutionary marketing tool , it is all about sharing content on popular content sharing website. You can very easily add this stuff on your website with lot of third party tools available ( AddThis ) . After adding you will be able to share the content with various websites. so make sure your blog has all this.
Do not use spam control for your comment box & i can bet you will be deleteing message from your email box for half of the day. Comments are ver important part they are must for your blog popularity. But they are easy prey for spammers so you need a proper tool to handle this. there are lot of free plugins available to start with.
We would be posting more stuff in coming days – so make sure you check again. Take care