To make your blog successful it is essential that you know what is an important component of each entry. Posts should for instance have a basic struc­ture and are at least bro­ken down into paragraphs. Posts, however, are not cluttered with links to your site.

Here are 10 additional criteria a quality post must include:

10. Relevant Content

This means relevant, interesting and timely. When I visit a website and find top posts from 2007, I ignore it.

9. Informative and Educational Content

Nobody wants to read something that is purely product based and self-promotional. With so many blogs out there, your content must really be engaging and stimulating as well as unique.

8. Quality Images

This doesn’t mean posts should be littered with images, but they should have quality, relevant, supporting images that outline the point of the content. Graphs and diagrams are very helpful as well as screen shots if applicable.

7. Proper Grammar and Spelling

You don’t have to be Hemingway to have a blog, but when I am reading a blog post written in English, with poor grammar and sentence structure, I rarely continue reading…it’s just not enjoyable.

6. The article is organized well

Organize your intentions using an outline format. Start with a draft and step by step to help prevent rambling and dragging out your content. Quality blog posts are written by people who know what they want to say and that do so clearly. A good way to lay out your content can be the following:

5. Don’t Push Your Product

Going back to #9 a plug here and there is fine. An article written for the purpose of promoting a product or service should be incredibly rare. If you want to talk about your product only then consider have a separate blog for just your product and/or services, that way people can receive and follow that information by choice.

4. Strike a Balance

You don’t want your posts being too long or too short. Think about roughly 400-600 words. Some will be longer and other shorter. This is a good guideline and will help keep people’s attention longer.

3. Use Bullets and Lists

Top “trends list” or “3 things you must know” type of posts are extremely popular and common.  This isn’t a coincidence.  People like to read posts with nice, simple presentation of information, just like this one. Give it a try.

2. Provide a Take-Away

Excellent content leaves the reader with something new they didn’t have before.  That is why tutorial posts are so very popular.  People like to get something from blogs they read.

1. Have a Call to Action

Every web page should have a clear Call To Action (CTA) and the same is true of blog posts. With e-commerce web­sites that means encour­ag­ing vis­i­tors to pur­chase items, with small business sites it means encour­ag­ing them to click a link and go to a landing page. The end of your blog post is the begin­ning of your inter­ac­tion with read­ers so get them to take the next step and request more information via your offer shared (hint: this is the place you can be semi promotional…showcase the fact that you are indeed the subject matter expert).

That’s it! Just remem­ber, writ­ing con­tent that helps read­ers isn’t enough any­more. As the inter­net grows, read­ers get more and more used to copy with more than just qual­ity con­tent. Your writ­ing style is almost as impor­tant as your actual con­tent, so take these tips to heart!

Photo credit: www.taintedcanvas.com

Article – Article and blog post are frequently used synonymously. See post.

Author – The name associated with the person who wrote a blog post.

Blog - This is short for web log or weblog. Frequently it’s a type of website or part of a website. Blogs are usually maintained by an individual or group of people for a personal blog or corporate blog with regular entries of commentary, descriptions of events, or other material such as photos or video. Note: you should always have a call to action to ensure your blog is also generating leads.

Blogger or Blogging - The person who writes for a blog is referred to as a blogger, and the act of writing for the blog is known as blogging. Note: Google also has a blogging platform called Blogspot and sometimes referred to as “Blogger”.

Blogroll – Sometimes spelled blog-roll or blog roll, this is a blogger’s list of links to other popular blogs. Ideally these only include blog that you really like and recommend.

Category – Category and tags are frequently used synonymously. Though often times a category (in terms of hierarchy) is the top level definition and a tag may be a more specific classification beneath that. For example a blog about Apple Pies may have a category of baking and a tag of pies.

Comments – The opinions of your readers left in response to a blog post. This is a useful way for you to connect with your audience. It’s recommended to freely give users access to and make it easier for them to connect, which usually means not monitoring comments for approval and only deleting truly offensive comments. If negative comments come up use this as an opportunity to proactively share your knowledge and respond back positively.

Directory – A blog directory is a website that lists blogs, usually ranking them by their popularity and ordering them by subject or category. It’s a good idea to add your blog to directories to help generate more relevant traffic, especially when you are first getting started.

Favicon – This is the small graphic, typically your logo or other representation your website that appears in a browser’s address bar, favorites or bookmark lists. In HTML it is referenced as the following rel=”shortcut icon”, and should be saved or uploaded as favicon.ico.

Feed - This is a news feed used for providing users with frequently updated content. Content distributors syndicate a web feed, thereby allowing users to subscribe to it.

Header – This is the top part of your blog, appearing before any pages or posts. Headers generally include items such as logos, taglines, and navigation menus, which are meant to set the tone or theme of your blog.

Hyperlink - Used synonymously with the word “link”, this is click-able content within a web page that takes the user to another page, website, or within part of the same page. The text that comprises the hyperlink is referred to as the “anchor text”

Keyword(s) or Keyphrase(s) – These should be used as a topic generator. Picking keywords is the process of determining what topics are most relevant to your target audience or buyer persona and crafting content around those topics. They should be used in a strictly creative sense for structural composition, reasoning, and comprehension, and should showcase your knowledge in a given field.

Tag or Tagging – A tag is a bit like a category in that it is another way of classifying blog post. It is a word or set of words that help define what the post is about. Tip: think of it like a filing system and these are your folder labels.

Title or Subject - The title of your page is frequently an H1 tag.

Meta Description – The description should be a short description of that particular page or post. It’s a great opportunity to place some very targeted content for your audience to see on the search results page. A good description is approximately 2 sentences (no more than 150 characters) using your target keywords, phrased to cause a person to want to visit your site.

Meta Keywords – Historically the most popular and well known element describing content of a web page. Search engines however quickly came to realize that this piece of information was often inaccruate or misleading and frequently lead to spammy sites. As such this tag is no longer followed by search engines.

Meta Tags – Is the comprehensive term that is comprised of meta titles, descriptions and keywords. These three items together are what are referred to as meta tags. The tags are elements that provide information about a given Web page, most often to help search engines categorize them correctly. Note: these are inserted into the HTML and as such not directly visible to a user visiting the site.

Meta Title or Page Title – The Page Title is the phrase that shows in the blue bar at the top of your web browser when the page loads. The page title is also the bold text that shows up on a search results page when you rank in a search engine.

Nofollow – A link attribute which prevents links from being crawled. As a result no SEO credit gets passed from one page to another.

Permalink - A permalink is an address or URL of a particular post within a blog.

Plugin – Add on tool or application to enhance your blog, be it performance or for other features that don’t come with the basic wordpress set up.

Post – A post is an article within a blog. A post can be on any topic, and it’s the collection of posts that form the basis of a blog.

Redirect - Used to specify an alternative URL and in order to redirect the user to a different location. The most commonly used redirect is a 301 permanent redirect.

RSS – Short for Really Simple Syndication, is a means by which users can subscribe to a feed, a blog feed for instance. Because content is published in a frequent basis subscribing makes it easier for users to follow content and updates.

Social Media Sharing – Your content should not exist in a vacuum. give people the opportunity to share your content for you. A lot of platforms have this built in or at least available as an add on. There are also tools like sharethis.com or addthis.com that make content sharing easy.

Subscribe - Your blog should have multiple means through which users can subscribe to your blog content. These should include email and RSS.

URL – A URL or uniform resource locator is the address of a piece of information that can be found on the web such as a page, image or document

Photo credit: examiner.com

The reason you are redesigning your website is to impact your business, not because you are bored with the design. Ask yourself some of the following questions – does your existing website communicate well with the users? Do you want to increase leads – improve your funnel? Is your current website designed SEO friendly (maybe it’s currently based on table layouts? Whatever your reason you need to focus on a goal and understand that doing a redesign alone won’t generate more traffic – you don’t want your site to be a billboard in the desert.

Three tips to help you with your website redesign:

1. Establish a goal
   Whether for usability or technical improvements you need to have a clear goal and expectations. Start with some kind of website audit or analysis to see what your current situation is and key areas that need improvement.

   My previous website for instance made it difficult for users to more readily browse through more content. While there are many channels into your blog, your homepage is still most often linked to and visited. More prominently highlighting new articles and other categories will help me reduce my bounce rate and increase time spent on site.

2. Focus on content
   Content is still king in SEO. Make sure you have a plan. Plan for new content as well as your old content. You do not want to lose any of your most valuable assets. Similar to my new design you want to make sure to highlight the strength of your content.
3. Measure the results
   Have benchmarks. It’s important to know where you started. Things like bounce rate, time spent on site can be a good indication of whether or not you made the right choice. Furthermore – leads. You want to be sure that you are now able to capture more leads. Leads can be defined as anything from more people signing up to your blog, downloading white papers, sharing your content etc.
   
   Bonus tip – What if you don’t see the results you expected?
   Re-examine your goals. Were you honest and realistic about them? A common pitfall is that after a redesign you will take a bit of a plunge in the search results, this is almost guaranteed (especially for larger sites). So give it a little bit of time. Don’t expect to see immediate results. From there continue to test new content and different offers. Hopefully your new design gives you enough flexibility to try out new things.

My most recent project was for a Boston area Women’s Life Coach who came from the publishing industry and has a strong leadership background not to mention super coach and consulting attitude. She will kick your butt and get you motivated as you would expect any good coach to do. This was a very exciting project for me because we encountered and overcame a number of challenges.

The woman’s coaching industry to quite saturated so we had to go about this strategically and knew that blogging was a huge part of how she will be able to gain some ground. One of the obvious challenges was that blogging was new to Pattie. The first step was for her to realize that she already has all of the knowledge and just needs to start sharing it. Interestingly that was the extent to the challenge other than understanding the platform for the new blog. We brainstormed a number of topics, researched her competitors and Pattie is now blogging regularly.

We also set up a new fan page on facebook as well as LinkedIn where we are piping in the blog’s RSS feed and have customized the profile to match the branding of the website. This is still a work in progress and any body getting started with a new blog and/or social media presence has to understand that you have to start somewhere and letting fear delay you will only keep you from your overall goals. Pattie overcame her fear of blogging and is a pro now. It takes time to build up your readership and followers but little by little you can do it.

A few takeaways: focus on content, lay out a plan, and start strong with blogging regularly. Build out your networks in relevant areas as not every social network will be appropriate. You want to write about topics and join groups where your followers are most likely to find common interest, share your content and link to it. After time, with good content built, people fill find you and business will boom…you don’t have to do it all, just don’t delay.

I talk to people every day who struggle with how to create unique and compelling content. It’s all around you – you just have to tune in. Here are some more ideas that I share with my customers regularly:

1. Follow Industry trends and hot topics – Being able to add relevant content on timely subjects is a huge advantage and mistake if you are not on top of things. If you are in technology then write about tech trends, if you are in entertainment write about the superbowl, if you are local then write about events, news whatever you can. You have to watch and listen and there are plenty of tools to do it for you…you don’t even have to go our hunting for it.

• Google Insights – so cool. Best insider tip – use this! Enter your keyword and it shows you trend wise what is going on, and you can see and follow what new “breakout” terms may be on the rise.
• Google Alerts – it doesn’t get easier. This sends you all the information you need and filter by topic.

Take what you read and summarize, rebuttal or general response to what you read. Simply copying what you read is not impressive, anyone can do that. Your readers can get that anywhere, provide people some insight, resolution or glimpse of knowledge other than what they can find somewhere else.

2. Use Social Media tools – If you have the luxury of using a tool to track conversations online, great…there is no reason not to listen in. At the very least use some of the free resources out there and you can even use wordpress plugins like Zemanta to give you ideas.

• Search.twitter.com – Using social media does not have to be complicated or expensive. This was probably the first search tool and it gives you plenty of information. Tip: Track your brand and name and subscribe to the RSS to track what people say. Additionally track your competitors and industry to stay abreast of developments.

3. Go old school – Hint: this requires actual human interaction. Attend an event, tweetup, conference, continued education classes, interview someone etc. And write about it.

Like I said, there is lots to write about. As you think of ideas write them down, use a sticky note pad or access your computer and keep a list by saving blog posts as drafts and then continue writing when you feel inspired or have time. Use what you’ve got!

image source: blog.mindjet.com