5 Ways To Take Your Blog To The Next Level
About a gazillion people have blogs today. Devoted to anything from garden gnomes, celeb’s plastic surgery to the life of living in Papa New Guinea, blogs have become an easy way for average Joe to share his daily contemplations with the world. But with so many blogs, at least a couple of hundred per niche, you might need some help in sticking out.
As you can see we have taken the liberty to list five things that will help your blog reach great heights. All tricks below are equally useful and are hence not listed by worth.
1. Update with weekly content
A common expectation on a blog website is frequently updated content. Popular blogs normally have a high percentage of returning visitors through personal bookmarks or RSS feeds. If that is your ambition, you have to make sure to give your visitors reason enough to come back. New spaced out blog posts normally do the trick.
2. Create unique interesting content
Mentioning the importance of quantity and frequency above it is only fair to list quality as yet another important blog preference. And much like this article you should focus on bringing unique, practical and useful information to the reader. Internet users also normally tend to go mental over “How To”-guides and “Top 10″ listings. Quality blog posts will generate more RSS feeds and loyal visitors.
3. Search engine optimization
A must for any website. Onsite and offsite search engine optimization gives your blog the best chances of ranking high in Google, MSN Live or Yahoo. Researching popular search terms and including them in your blog post titles is a good example of relevant onsite SEO.
4. Engage in the blog community
There are several good and well-visited online blog directories where you can submit your blog. It will not only generate traffic but also help you create an awareness of your blog. Get on Twitter, Digg, and StumbleUpon but remain active in those communities, don’t leech
5. Get proper web design with premium themes
If you have Wordpress, you also have a smorgasbord of web designed themes to choose between. There are the ones that cost nothing and normally have the traditional “diary” structure and graphics. But if you want to increase your blog’s credibility and give a real professional look – Wordpress Premium Themes is the way to go. You will get away from always being associated with a simple blog and join the big boys as a dynamic and serious website.
And it goes without saying, quality content is essential. If you spend time writing crap then you are doomed to fail no matter what. And this does not mean boring topics. If you are writing about dull topics to your audience, try to spice them up. There are many programming websites, theoretical academic sites, and even the mundane web hosting sites that are lively and well designed for their audience.
About the Author
Brian Franklin is the proud owner of several websites and has been active in the web hosting games for many years. You can read more interesting posts on his website hosting blog, where he writes about hosting, platforms and performance, news and random bits and more.
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I think this is a great list. However, I am not sure if you are advising us to post on our blog on a weekly basis.
Although this may be effective for some, I suppose blogging frequency depends on a lot of factors and regular commentators is one of them.
Angel, in the end it’s as simple as this: a post attracts a certain number of readers. More posts, more visitors.
Of course, this does not have to interfere with the blogger’s schedule. In order to build loyalty and trust, it’s better to provide quality content, even if 2-3 days apart, than poor content, 4 times a days.
For sure, I agree with Alex. Regular posting is advocated to maintain and grow your audience. Try to stick to a schedule (1x/wk, every Tuesday, whatever) so your readers can follow you more easily.
Sadly good content doesn’t always equal popular. Plenty of posts that go so viral are totally fluff that will be forgotten next day.
It also depends on a niche. Lately I think a lot that software review is not exactly something to chase after viral factor or social traffic with.
Rarst, Blogsessive has had its share of popular posts, but, as an insight, the community around it was not built by those looking for corporate WP themes, or those looking for free images.
It was built on helpful posts, that didn’t turn into popular ones, but gained the loyalty of certain people, who spread the word to other people with similar interests.
The community was also built around the Simple Balance theme, which became popular only due to its quality. For users, it turned out to be a good resource, and one that was developed by Blogsessive, not a link to another website. This resource is also part of the content.
If you’re looking for traffic, start a photography blog and promote it like crazy. If you’re a StumbleUpon user, you definitely saw that the most active stumblers are those interested in photography. Travel is also popular.
In the end, it all comes down to loving what you do and doing what you love.
@Alex
I totally agree that producing good content is important.
But it doesn’t equal isntant success as some people belive. Some of the best post I’ve ever read I found on empty lonely blogs.
Building your blog is lot of work and its important to remember that writing posts is only part of it.
Let’s see, the last post on the blog in my signature was November 6th, 2007. Guess what? My traffic level on that blog is the same as it was then, around 800 unique visitors every weekday.
You don’t have to grind out post after post, day after day, if you take the time to build good, stable, links and have good content that people find useful. Well, you do have to post regularly if you want to socialize with other bloggers but it isn’t necessary to get traffic.
the 5 tricks would really work out when it is sequentially followed. the main focus of every blog is to write a quality content with originality. In my point of view popularizing and stabilization is much more important then designing the website.