Top 5 Most Important Things Your Blog Needs

There is always talk about what makes a blog successful and what doesn’t. What is it these bloggers do differently? Is it they just know more people or are there hidden tricks? What are the most important components a blog needs in order to be successful? And how do we define success? Is it loyal readers, traffic, revenue, or some other factor? As a blogger you need to define what it is you call success. For me, I define success through several venues. I see traffic and revenue go hand in hand. I see if you have one then you more than likely have the other. So what are the main components of a blog that help build up traffic and revenue?

It’s debatable, but when you take the top 100 most popular blogs on the internet they all have a common theme. What are they? I see blogs that have themselves signed up to every social bookmarking site known to mankind such as Digg.com. Some have installed the Stumble Upon toolbar and have submitted their site many times in hopes for more traffic. I see blogs that are join fun community sites that link bloggers together like MyBlogLog. These are all good marketing tools but here is how I break it down.

1) Content/Voice - You look at the top 100 blogs on the internet today and they post several times per day all throughout the day and sometimes on the weekend. Obviously not all of us can pull that kind of weight on our blogs but these guys do. And they are very successful. But what it comes down to is content. You can tweak your blogs day in and day out to make your blog look spectacular, you can check your stats 10 times a day, you can email all your blogging friends, but at the end of the week it comes right down to content, content, and content. If you want to promote your blog, you need to write. If you are sitting there wondering how you can get people to read your blog, go put up another blog post.

You can’t slap up 30 blog posts and wonder why nobody is visiting you blog. You need to write a lot, you need to write well, and you need to be persistent. You have to get content up on your blog. It is the number one most important thing. Without content you can promote and you can have people stop by your blog, but what most people are after is good content. Google, and other search engines love content, especially when it is “real” and not “stolen” content. They like to see that a website is getting updated often with “niche” material. This will train the robots to come out more often to crawl your blog and get the new content.

But you have to have something worthwhile to readers. You can’t just say the same thing. You need to have a voice, something that is different than other bloggers… something they can’t find anywhere else. This isn’t so much for search engines but for readers who are not looking to fall asleep in their comfortable computer chair. So write content, and have something worthwhile to say, and do it all the time, constantly. Don’t give up 3 months, 6 months, or even a year into it. The successful bloggers say it takes one good year of constant blogging before they can determine whether or not their blog will be a success.

2) SEO/Marketing - Most people believe this is number one. I think it is number one after content. You need something to market and you can’t really fully and successfully market a product that doesn’t exist. Not that you can’t begin marketing your blog from day one but content is by far the number one best thing for your blog. If you have content you will sooner than later be found even with poor marketing skills. People will find you some day if you wrote content, linked to your sources, and kept at it. But if you didn’t focus on content and spent all your hard earned time and dollars towards marketing, what is it you are promoting? Again, marketing is very important and is the number one best component to add to a blog but only after content.

Marketing comes in many forms. Emailing, advertising, linking, outsourcing, submitting articles to social bookmarking sites, joining other communities in your niche, and the list goes on.

3) Networking - Networking is a form of Marketing. But I am going to make this the 3rd most important aspect of a blog. You could be the worst marketer on the face of the planet but if you can manage to Network you are well on your way to executing one form of marketing. Networking is reaching out to other bloggers, and other sources. You can do this by emailing people in your niche, linking to them from your blog post, linking to them in your sidebar, commenting on other blogs, joining online communities, and basically getting involved with the latest online trends. You can’t hide in one corner of cyberspace. Get out there and Network. Meet new people and learn. Work together.

4) Loyal Readers - Networking helps you achieve more loyal readers. Having readership is important on a number of levels. People tend to stick around and learn more about your blog if you have others that are sticking around and reading your blog. People tend to follow the crowd and go where the action is. Readership also keeps you motivated as a blogger. You know your content is being read and therefore the need to perform is there. In turn, you will work harder to make your followers happy. Readers also engage and provide you with feedback. This can spark new ideas, helping reduce blogger’s block, and finally lead you to more and more loyal readers. Readers will begin Networking by linking to you as a legitimate source, ultimately bringing more added traffic your way.

5) Navigation/Design - If your blog is tough to navigate and find archived posts that are relevant to a topic it will be tough to provide a resource for your readers. Easy navigation is easy. Always keep in mind that when you are blogging and your blog post falls off the home page it doesn’t disappear. Your blog is a living, breathing document. Much like the constitution that can be amended. Always feel free to edit old posts to link to newer content. We can easily link back to old posts but how often do we edit old posts with updates to link to new posts? What’s the purpose? Any successful blogger will tell you they aren’t getting comment just on the new blog posts for the day or week, but older posts written 3 months ago, or 6 months ago, are being commented on. These posts have finally moved up in search engine results or are being found from older sources. So don’t always think of your blog as linear, but circular. Update old posts if you have updated material on a subject. All you have to do is update with a link to your new post. This keeps your blog easy to navigate and takes them to the most updated information.

Design isn’t so important as long as you don’t have something completely ugly. Good design will help readers find what they are looking for. Keep a good list of categories. Emphasize more on archives by categories and not so much on archives by date. People search the web by topic more often than date.

These are the Top 5 things I would say are the most important aspects of blogging.