If you want a blog that will be popular and have loyal followers you need to keep in mind the following things.
1.) What type of hosting service should you use – I am not talking about specific hosting services I am referring to whether you should be using a free service like WordPress.com or whether you should purchase your own domain name and hosting.
The simple rule of thumb that I use is if your blog is for your business or for profit have it set up on its own domain name. If it isn’t for either of these purposes then you should be fine on a free blogging service.
The main advantage of having the blog on your own site is that you can add plugins and optimize the blog much easier than you can with a free blogging service. This brings you traffic and traffic brings you customers and sales.
2.) Choose the right blogging software – There are a number of different software programs you can use to create a blog such as Joomla, TypePad, Concrete and WordPress. I recommend WordPress because it is the most highly supported when it comes to plugins, themes and even support. There are a number of sites that will help you with your WordPress blog besides the support that you will find at WordPress.org.
3.) Only blog about one topic – stay on target with your blog. Yes, you can have all kinds of sub-topics but they should all be related to your main niche.
If you keep your blog in one niche the likelihood of getting readers to come back time and time again is greatly improved. This brands you as an expert in your niche and builds loyalty with your prospective customers.
Speaking of niches, your niche should be something that you have an affinity for. You don’t have to be the expert but you need to like the niche enough that you are willing to put in the work and it helps if you do know enough to know if the post you are entering is good information or bad information.
4.) Know your keywords – every blog relies on keywords to get search engine traffic. The keywords you choose to use should be researched and you should know that people are actually searching for these keywords.
Google’s keyword tool is a free service where you can see exactly how many people are searching for your keywords on Google every month. This is a great place to start your keyword research.
5.) You should be the star of your blog – let the readers know who you are, put your picture on the blog and a short biography. This will help the reader relate to you and will end up getting you more loyal reader then trying to be an anonymous expert.
These are some the most important things to know about blogging if you use these as your guideline you will end up with a blog that you enjoy working on and your viewers enjoy reading.
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