So you’ve been blogging for a while but you still can’t seem to get things to really take off. Well don’t give up this is a really common situation for new bloggers (blogs under a year old) – speaking from personal experience I’ve been on the verge of giving up on the whole internet blogging many times. However I pushed through, kept going, and slowly saw positive changes. It is my hope that this post will encourage you to keep on blogging, because I promise as time progresses it will get easier 
SO now that I’ve gotten that motivational little speech out-of-the-way lets discuss how to improve your blog in 2010! Below I have listed the characteristics that have immensely improve my websites readership/ traffic and subscriptions. Some things you’ve probably heard before, but I’m reiterating everything that’s really improved my blogs (in terms of statistics). I apologize in advance if you feel like your reading some obvious suggestions! Despite the obviously ideas, I decided to put them in because when writing it is easy to get caught up and forget all about the most common sense things!
- Use analytics correctly – this means analyze the stats and try to find correlations between popular posts, high readership days, etc. Don’t become a slave to the stats , for example: don’t get hung up on two days of low readers, it’s most likely a fluke and not yet something worth worrying about
- Blog with a purpose - know what the “main goal” or “focus” of your website is going to be, and make sure it is clearly stated and reiterated throughout your site
- Have your “target audience” in mind
- Think about the types of information that readers would type into search engines – prior to landing on your site
- Tag your blog posts accordingly
Example: if your blog is about fishing specifically fly fishing you would want to include “fly fishing” as tags of course, and then if you did a specific article packing for a fly fishing vacation you would include relevant keywords [for that topic] like “packing for fishing”, etc…)
- Branch out with social networking while keeping your blogs “goal” in mind
- Also related to the target audience –> learning to think like the reader specifically
- Look at the format of your site, does it make sense? Is it easy to navigate? Is the overall appearance visually appealing? If not they edit and improve
- Make sure your site is NOT overwhelming or distracting
- Review post titles and subtitles, are they catchy? Also look at the first one or two sentences in the article these should be equally memorable
- Remember the amount of information overload common in today’s society, and try to write in a format that caters to this:
**this is why having good titles, subtitles and introductions is so important. These initial snap shots are usually the deciding factor in whether or not people stop and stay to read your site. Make sure you maintain their attention by:
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- Keep posts at a reasonable length, (when in doubt remember short + simple = best)Use numeric or bulleted lists if they would fit the article. The formatting is easy on the eyes, as well as mentally digestible
- Make the main point stand out! Do this by using bold text, underlines, italics, or highlighting
- ALWAYS make sure your site is providing valuable information that you would enjoy reading
- Engage your audience through feedback, subscription emails, and more (showing that you really appreciate your readers and value their feedback goes a long way!)
- Finally …. of course remember to always have fun!
