10 Steps to a Better Blog

I think we all know how powerful a blog can be in helping you to establish yourself in your niche and build a relationship with your readers. You can post as often as you like and deliver as much content as you’d like to share. But there is a fine line between building a successful blog which boasts high readership and social interaction and one which gathers dust on the web with little or no traffic or discussion.

So in order to help you get the most out of your blog I decided to do a bit of investigating and see is there a secret formula to blogging success? or some steps that you can take to improve your blog and start to gain traction in your market? Below I’ve listed 10 Steps to a Better Blog which I’ve found while browsing the web, each only scratch the surface but I think they will provide you with enough information to get you going.

 

from “How to Improve Your Blog” by Mike Michalowicz

1. Get Involved with More People

The hardest thing that you can do when starting a new blog is to “go it alone”. Instead seek out a group of bloggers and get involved with them, this will help you keep focused and moving forward when times are hard because you’ll be part of a team and will have plenty of help and support if you need it.

2. Identify and Claim Your Expertise

Don’t be afraid to claim your expertise, you are already an expert on your chosen niche – how else would you be in business? You may even be surprised by how much you already know and can offer to people through your blog. So open up and share your experiences, tips and tools!

3. Give Them What They Want

Regularly survey your readers by asking for their opinion or send an email to your list asking what area’s they would like help on. When you get their answers simply sit down, do some research and deliver the best content on this subject that you can. Do this and you’re on to a sure winner because you are giving your readers exactly what they want.

4. Create a Discussion

The internet is like one huge, never-ending conversation…And your blog should be no different in that regard. Ask questions during your posts and interact with your readers. For your blog to gain readership you really need to focus on creating discussions and get your readers involved. Make them feel that their views are important to you and that you are interested in what they have to say.

from 6 Actionable Tips to Really Improve Your Blog

5. Start Guest Blogging

Connect with other bloggers in your niche and inquire about the possibility of writing a guest post for them. Start small with this and write your best content with the aim of attracting more traffic to your site. As you become more successful you can approach bigger blogs and see the results of your efforts gaining momentum all on their own. For example a guest post on ProBlogger.net would easily see your site see an extra 2k visitors in a couple of days…very powerful stuff indeed.

6. Optimize Your Blog’s Design & Speed

Having a good looking blog is a necessity but so too is having a blog which is properly optimized for increased performance and functionality. There are endless amounts of things you could do to improve this with one of them being improving your blogs loading speed. A simple way of doing this would be to remove any plugins that you are not using or are not essential for your site. This will allow your blog to load faster and reduce bounce rates.

7. Don’t Neglect Your Email List

You should always have an opt-in form on your blog to allow your readers to easily subscribe and connect with you. This is like gold to you as it gives you a direct line to your target audience which allows you keep them updated of any new posts and build the all important relationship with them.

from 58 Ways to Build a Better Blog by Marko Saric

8. Include Links to Other Posts in Your Article

Always include at least one link in your article to an older post. This will make your blog more “sticky” and entice your readers to spend longer on your site reading some of your other articles. This little tip takes only seconds to do but will greatly increase the number of readers who stay on your blog instead of just clicking away when they’re finished with the post they are reading.

9. Make Your Blog More Secure

The first thing you need to do when you install your new WordPress Blog is to change the default password to something unique. Those generic passwords are very easy for hackers to break and could increase the risk of your site being attacked. So do the smart thing and change your password to something more secure and update on a monthly basis.

10. Include a “Related Post List” at the End of Your Article

This is something that I’ve only recently become aware of…that is to include a “Related Posts List” at the end of your article, much like the one which you see below. Again it just gives your reader a chance to check out some of your other work and keep them on the site longer. The longer you can do this the greater the chance that you will turn those one-time visitors into long term readers.

 

So there you have it, 10 Steps to a Better Blog… I hope I’ve highlighted a few tips for you that will help improve your site overall and move closer to becoming one of the super successful blogs on the web that receive 10k visitors a day. I know for a lot of you this may seem like a lofty ambition but remember, all those bloggers started at the beginning just like many of you. The thing is they started to incorporate many of tips that I’ve mentioned above and overtime their blogs grew into the successful sites you see today.

Do you have any other tips to building a better blog? Please share them with us below so we can all learn about them and put them to good use 🙂

Want to read more posts like this? Then you’ll enjoy these posts from the archive…

How a Hot Girl at the Gym Saved My Online Business

How to Position Yourself as an Authority Figure in Your Niche

The Entrepreneurs Achilles Heel

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P.S. I’ve finished the Zero Sum List Building Report that I mentioned a few weeks back. If you’re interested in checking it out you can grab your copy HERE.

 

24 Comments

  1. Hey Sean

    Some great information on how to reduce the bounce rate on a blog and increase stickyness with related posts and inter linking within the blog 🙂

    I checked my blog the other day and found no less than 5 plug ins that I no longer use. Got rid of them tot sweet 😉

    Cheers
    Paul
    PS I did send you an email this morning re your report 🙂

    • Noel

      Ha haaa! Thanks Paul, you gave me a good old laugh there 🙂
      Glad you got a few useful tips there, I know myself I have a lot to learn in this area and got a lot of value from the 3 sources I’ve mentioned.
      Cool, I’ll check for that email in a bit and get back.

      Cheers,
      Noel.

  2. Hi Noel,

    There is some good information here. I must make sure I do all of these and not just some. How to you get the related posts to show? Is there an option or plug-in or do you just do this manually?

    Cheers
    Roger

    • Noel

      Hey Roger,
      For the Related Posts I just put them in manually and then linked them up. I was thinking the same thing myself…was there a plugin that would auto-detect and put in a random selection of posts. I’d imagine there is but I’ve yet to discover it I’m afraid!
      Thanks for you comment 😉
      – Noel.

  3. Hi Noel,

    I have to say you have produced 10 great nuggets of information there.

    I have been very slow with the interaction bit that you mentioned in point one. It’s not that I couldn’t be bothered but just down to the fact that there seems so much else to do when you’re setting your blog up.

    You also make a great point about being part of a big team. You can start some great discussions off in forums by posting questions or asking for advice.

    A tip that I have only found out recently is placing alt tags into your pictures on your blog. It can really improve the overall optimization of your site. A lot of people overlook this. Many people don’t realise that Google Images can send you a good amount of traffic if your images are optimized. I’ll be doing this to my site as soon as.

    Great post.

    Regards,
    Dean.

    • Noel

      Hi Dean,
      Ya, there’s some good tips in there – all we have to do now is get in the habit of following through on them and I’m sure our blogs will improve greatly. Good tip about the alt tags, it’s something I learned a while ago and have been putting to good use.

      Glad you enjoyed it,
      – Noel.

  4. Ade

    You seem to be really finding your style with these collating information round a theme type articles. They are helpful to you and helpful to readers who are on the same journey as you. So you are keeping it real which I think people can pick up on when they read it. When you are writing about stuff you are doing or stuff that you are actually using it is far more compelling in my opinion. Well done.

    • Noel

      Thanks Ade, I appreciate that and you’ve actually described what I’ve been doing over the past few weeks pretty good. I was finding it hard to come up with new content every week, it’s not easy just to sit down and produce a great post out of think air so I thought to myself “why don’t I just tell people what I’ve been doing…” So this week I was reading up on how how to improve my blog and that lead me to putting together this weeks post 🙂

      Cheers,
      – Noel.

  5. Ade

    btw…has anyone read the toilet paper entrepreneur…it seems to be getting excellent reviews on Amazon. I was buying books in the same niche – MJ De Marco book and a few others – and I kept on seeing it. I thought it was about toilet paper or something to do with toilets…kind of put me off. Amazing the kind of conclusions you draw when you are time poor and judging books by their covers !

    • Noel

      I was thinking the same thing… I’m going to order it myself and see what it’s like. He’s also just released “The Pumpkin Plan” and it looks like a really good read. I love picking up books like that (4 Hour Work Week etc.) I usually can’t put them down until I’ve read them cover to cover…

  6. Hi Noel,

    Nice list of tips! I especially like the one about putting a link in each post to one of your older posts. At first I thought this was some SEO trick to get higher rankings, but your explanation makes more sense – keeping readers on your site.

    Thanks for the tips!
    -Karl

    • Noel

      Thanks Karl,
      Ya, that was a new one for me too…I know a blogger who does this all the time to reduce his bounce rate and keep the visitors on his page as long as possible. He gets a lot of referral traffic and he believes it’s a great way to keep their attention as long as possible, especially the first time visitor.

      All the Best,
      – Noel.

  7. Hi Noel,

    I enjoyed reading your 10 tips.
    What I liked the most was no.1 & no.7
    Running an online business is not a lonely affair
    and the more we network with like minded people,
    the more we are able to exchange ideas with
    each other.
    And building a list, without a doubt is one of the most
    important things an online business must have. 🙂

    • Noel

      Hi Muhsin,
      I think that’s a key point, you need the support and that’s where networking with like minded individuals comes into play. I think going it alone is a recipe for disaster!
      Glad you enjoyed them,
      – Noel.

  8. Hi Noel,
    Really like this post some great tips here, I am new to blogging so doing all the research I can this helps. Most of these points I have not done yet and as my aim is to bring more traffic to my blog I will be sure to follow all these 🙂
    Cheers,
    Rob

    • Noel

      Thanks Rob,
      Glad you enjoyed the tips, there are some real nice ones there. Best of luck with your blog 😉
      – Noel.

  9. Hi Noel,

    I am also a fellow Irish, but from up North…

    Thanks for this post, I have just added a subscription option to my blog and am looking at adding links to other posts off the back of this.

    Good luck with your journey

    Zara 🙂

    • Noel

      Hey Zara,
      Cool, good to see another “local” in this game. I’ve been up North a fair bit recently, usually around Belfast. A great place for a night out 😉
      Glad you enjoyed the post,
      – Noel.

  10. Hi Noel,
    Paul gave me a good laugh by calling you Sean…I thought I had a memory fail when I started to read the comments. ROFL.
    These are really good tips for blogging. Not the usual ones that I have seen lately. I like the tip about putting/referring to other post on the blog for the sticky factor! It looks like I might be going through some posts this week and taking action on it.
    Keep up the great posts!
    :)Sylvia

    • Noel

      Thanks Sylvia,
      I had a good laugh when I saw that too 🙂 Glad you enjoyed it!
      – Noel.

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