What makes a great blog?

What makes a great blog?

Over the few weeks our blog has been up we have worked hard to get our blog ready for the mass loads of people who will be visiting. We take the approach (Thinking Big Produces Big Results) therefore the first thing I want to say to everyone is do not think small. Visualize the big picture and set goals for where you want your blog to be in 3, 6 and 12 months time!

Setting goals is a great way to make sure you stay on track and get things done when they need doin. There’s nothing worse than running around in circles in doing the same things over and over again. Put a stop to that today and set some goals for your blog / website!

Well anyways, today’s post is about how to make a blog great! The problem is that this concept is a little out dated on today’s internet as there are so many factors to do in order to be the best! However we have taken our TOP list and we are sharing with you what we believe is important. We may link to other articles we have but this is a general guide as to what you need to do to have your blog put into the GREAT blog category!

Great Domain Name

The first step to having a great blog is picking a good name. If your blog is going to be based around yourself and your thoughts / opinions on whatever topic you decide then grabbing your own name domain is great! However if your name is anything like mine? Shannon Lilly www.shannonlilly.com you can see how this could be a problem for people to remember, how many n’s and l’s are in the name? So instead I took the second approach which is still just as effective and in some cases more so, I mean face it who can forget the name InfectedByBugs.com? It’s just to cool to forget and you know it!

So as a rule of thumb, grab your name domain if you can, but if you can’t then get a catchy domain name. The importance factor of a catchy business or domain name is explained in our article about a catchy business name.

Regular Unique Content

One of the most important ways to ensure that your blog gets return visitors is to provide regular unique content on a daily to weekly basis. Content is what makes search engines index your website more frequently, therefore if you make a post at least every other day you will more than likely in some time be indexed every two days. Being indexed frequently is a great way to build authority in search engines and satisfy your visitors craving for more content. Just make sure that you’re writing about a topic you know pretty well, there’s nothing worse than being labeled as Know-It-All who doesn’t know much!

In each article that you write you should list your own opinions and ideas on how to improve the niche you are currently talking about. For instance we take the approach on making money online completely different than those of the great blogs like TylerCruz and JohnChow.

Our blog focuses on how to get your blog ready to make money online; they cover more on page money making techniques such as affiliates and advertisements.

We touch on these subjects as well but not as in-depth like they do, instead we are more of a general blog about seo’ing your website and getting it ready for advertisers to hit the buy button on your advertise page which is really the missing step that they don’t share.

Both are needed but we did not see a blog doing what we are currently doing so we decided to fulfill the need!

Blog Design

As I’m sure most of you noticed our blog has changed its look several times since going live, while some may think this to be a little strange there is a perfect explanation for it.

We are testing and retesting our blog designed to ensure that every visitor see’s a beautiful catchy design that they want to tell their friends about. The design of a blog is so important to its success, success lives on so many levels and one is definitely the design stage.

Take time out to think about your blog and how you believe it should look. Even creating a PSD of the general look is a great way to get others’ opinions on the blog. Send your design ideas to all your friends and family to ask their opinions, this way you get the most out of your blog design!

Since there are a lot of people who want to have a blog but they don’t know how to design it themselves. There are many free blog template and theme sites out there where you can download hundreds of great looking themes for free to suit the taste of your niche. These themes come in every shape size and color, some even feature being adsense ready an advertisement ready with just a few clicks of a button.

Here are some free resources where you can download free blog themes for your new or aged blog. All of these places provide themes from hundreds of contributors and all they ask in return is a link to their website on the footer of the theme!

• http://www.zinruss.com
• http://rock-kitty.net/
• http://themes.wordpress.net/
• http://www.wpthemesfree.com/

Creating The Buzz

One of the most important factors when creating a blog is getting the word about it out in-to the publics eyes. Creating the Buzz about your blog can take some time but if you follow a few simple steps that we will list below you should have no problems with having a very successful blog that makes money within just a few months time.

1. The first step to creating buzz about your new blog is to advertise the blog on other related websites and forums. A great way to do this is by posting on relative forums and using your signature as an advertisement. We have written an article called maximizing signature clicks where you can learn how to use your signature to get clicks to your new blog. Using this technique you can get anywhere from 20 to 200 clicks per week to your blog!

2. The second step to creating buzz about your new blog is by purchasing advertisements on other relative blogs and websites. For instance banner advertisements in the sizes of 125X125, 234X60, 468X60, and 720X90. Banner advertisements are a great way to get people to your website from a relative website. These visitors are going to be targeted at your niche and you will more than likely get readers and return visitors if your content is unique and you post regularly.

3. Search engine rankings are another great way to create buzz about your website, ensuring a website is seo friendly is the number one step to creating a truly great blog. If you index well in the search engines you will get traffic. Check out our seo category and what we have to say about seo and how you can improve your own blog/website.

The End

I have really enjoyed writing this article for you all, and I hope you’ve enjoyed this post as much as I did creating it for you! I hope you have learned some ways to improve your blog from just okay to a great blog! Be sure to leave us a comment and tell us what you thought and how these tips have helped you in your mission to making money online with your blog!

[tags]blog design, wordpress, blogging[/tags]

Filed under: Personal Posts

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