Creating a successful blog has nothing in common with the phrase “If you build it they will come”, as seen in the movie Field of Dreams. In fact, when it comes to building a successful blog nothing could be farther from the truth!
Many first-time bloggers make the mistake of thinking – that simply because they built a blog, that it will start getting traffic right away.
Unfortunately, it doesn’t really work like that – as most of us who’ve been around for awhile have learned from previous experience.
However, building a successful blog is possible! Here are a few simple steps to help you achieve just that…
Common Sense Tips For Creating A Successful Blog
KISS (Keep It Short and Simple) – Keep your overall layout and design of your blog short and simple. What I mean by “short” is, not using too many graphics, flashing images or anything else that draws attention away from what your site visitor is really there for, and that is your content.
Cute cartoons, music intros and other gaudy graphics (graphics that do not support the message of your blog or its content) distract readers and hurt your credibility. A simple graphic in your post is fine, so long as it is congruent with and adds value to your content.
Your blog represents you. It should be clean, professional, easy to navigate and provide positive user experience. – Click To Tweet This
Make It Happen – Some bloggers erroneously believe that creating a successful blog means simply posting 3-4 times a week, then waiting for traffic to come to them. This is not a good strategy!
Creating a successful blog involves content… a lot of it! In addition to writing and posting to your blog, you will also want to write articles and submit them to the top ranked article directories. Doing so will help you increase one-way backlinks to your blog, which search engines love!
Additionally, participate in forums related to your niche and provide valuable input to members question. Doing so will increase backlinks to your blog as well.
“Don’t wait for something to happen, go out and make it happen!” – Click To Tweet This
Advertising on select and related sites is also an option for getting more traffic. However, make sure that any website you’re advertising on have high rankings and a consistent stream of related visitors.
Search Engine Friendly – Making your blog search engine friendly is another important step to creating a successful blog. Search Engine Optimization (SEO) – contrary to popular belief, does not involve slitting your wrists! It does, however, involve a little common sense.
Perhaps the best piece of advice I can give you, as far as SEO goes, is to make your blog pages friendly to the search engines. In other words, give the search engines what they are looking for.
Common sense dictates that if they can’t find your pages, then they can’t index them. No indexing means no ranking!
Be sure to include a search-engine friendly navigation structure and always provide quality content for your visitors. If you own a WordPress blog, then go grab this SEO plugin and let it do most of the work for you.
Be Real – Perform a search on almost any topic you choose and I can guarantee you’ll find some cold, lifeless, and unappealing blogs. It is human nature to be skeptical. Therefore, people are more likely to “stick” to a blog that appears as if a real person is behind it.
Creating a successful blog involves sharing yourself with the world, letting them know you are a real person. A professional looking blog will go a long ways to reassuring them this is true.
More About YOU – Include an “About Us” page on your navigation bar. Statistics show that a blogs About Page is the second most visited page. It stands to reason then that you make it one of your best pages!
Including a nice picture of yourself, your staff (if you have one) is a nice touch. You can expound upon who you are, what you do and even some of your personal history.
I’ve seen some nice about pages that included a synopsis, or history, of how the person got to where they are today. Again, the main purpose for your about page is to convince people why they should listen to you and keep coming back for more. But even more importantly, letting them know you are there to help them.
Here is a synopsis of what we covered in this blog post:
- Creating positive user experience (Keep It Short & Simple)
- Not waiting for people to come to you (Make It Happen)
- Making sure people can find you (Search Engine Friendly)
- Sharing yourself with the world (Be Real)
- Let people know you are there to help (More About You)
Creating a successful blog is NOT like baseball… they will not come simply because you built it! However, it is within your grasp using these few simple steps and a lot of common sense. Feel free to post your comments and questions, we do read them!
