So many of my website visitors currently have blogs, or are considering obtaining one. If you don’t have one yet, I highly recommend a WordPress blog.  With that in mind, you should only create a blog if you are willing to update it on a regular basis. Now I want to talk about what truly makes a blog successful from my personal research. First, you must create a blog that is unique and that you are passionate about.  Your blog must offer something unique, that isn’t just like all the rest!

Second, you need to brand your blog so that it stands out as well. Promote your own name or your blogs name repeatedly all over.

Third, Integrate dynamic content, pictures or video! This is a big plus, because most all people are visually stimulated, so you need to meet their hunger for visual content. I noticed when my blog was complete text, my bounce rate was really high from search engine visitors. Once I started integrating videos and images, more people were staying and looking around. More people were also signing up to obtain the email feed and commenting on my posts.

Fourth, Make it easy for users to promote your blog! Give your blog the ability to easily social bookmark posts with the click of a mouse. Also promote your blog on popular blog feed website’s such as Technorati and sites that promote blogs within your niche!

Fifth, Don’t be lazy when posting and try to just throw something up on your website for the sake of posting. Put some thought in to your posts and do some research! This is huge to online success with your blog!

Sixth, Submit your blog to popular blog directories. Also make sure to submit your RSS feed URL as well (if possible). This will help to obtain syndicated links throughout the web!

Seventh, Post regularly and with frequency! Make sure that you aren’t the blogger that posts 5 days in a row and then doesn’t make an update for 2 weeks! That will be an easy way to ruin your blog from the start!  The more often you can update, the better. However keep everything in reality, you need to maintain a personal life as well! If you are consistent, your readers will understand this and be eager to visit your website regularly knowing that there is something new.

Eighth, I recommend signing up for FeedBurner and activating RSS Feeds via email.  Blogger’s that truly love your blog will be eager to sign up to receive regular email updates about your blog.  I know I personally love this feature when available at a great blog. It is just like having your favorite news delivered to your inbox every morning!

Ninth, Make sure to integrate all search engine friendly add-ons or updates to your blog. For example, in Wordpress you should integrate search engine friendly URL’s to make sure that your blog posts are more likely to be listed high in the search engines. A URL like http://www.yoursite.com/?p=12 is way less likely to succeed in the search engines than a post with a URL like http://www.yoursite.com/search_engine_friendly_blog_posts/  -  This is because search engines value friendly Titles, URLS, Meta Descriptions and Content.

Tenth, Encourage Communication! Ask your visitors to respond with their input, don’t be shy. This will help to also get people reading only via a feed to visit your website and respond. Make sure to always try to incite a call-to-action.

Eleventh, If you wish you can remove the No-Follow comments on your blog and tell your readers about this. If you have a blog that has a reader base who understand the value of quality links – You can derive a large number of comments because everyone will want a link to their website.

Twelve, Create an internal linking campaign. Link within your posts to other posts, this will help to build up the popularity of your blog pages so they rank higher in the search engines.

Thirteen, Use catchy titles! A title such as Make a cool blog, won’t do nearly as well at sparking potential visitor interest as a title like “Put Your Blog On Steroids, Simple Tips To Obtain Great Blog Success”.

Fourteen, I recommend you try to promote people to follow you on sites like Twitter (Follow Me Here), LinkedIn (Follow me here) or Technorati (Follow Me Here), StumbleUpon (follow me here), Youtube (follow me here) – or more! Also please subscribe to my feed at the top of the page (have it emailed to you or use it how you’d like). This will allow people to become more connected to you as well as promote your Twitter, LinkedIn, Technorati and other website’s link popularity.

Fifteen, Get some traffic to your blog. Once you have a solid blog that is ready to succeed – you can always jumpstart your website traffic by paying for visitors on websites like StumbleUpon. I was able to get 600 visitors for like $20 one day. That in turn got people talking and linking to my blog which will help build traffic, blog popularity and link popularity.

Sixteen, I recommend if you are wanting to obtain financial gain from your blog you decide to monetize on it. This can be by promoting your own products or else by integrating quality advertising services.  Some great advertising services are listed below.

• Google Adsense – Great advertising solution that pays a large percentage per rumors. Unfortunately you cannot control the content that is shown in these ads though, however their analytics usually provides pretty relevant content.
• Text-Link-Ads – Great service for selling link space within your site for monthly recurring fees. The amount you are paid is determined based on your website’s popularity. They take in to consideration a variety of factors when determining your popularity.
• Selling Ad-Space – Create your own section of small 125 x 125 ads or even sell standard banner ads. If your website has enough popularity or visitors you can demand money for this space.
• Find affiliate programs that your readers would be interested in.  For example, I could probably sell affiliate SEO software with a monthly fee and obtain monthly dividends if I wished from this blog. If you owned a blog about website hosting, you could probably link to a hosting company that would pay you monthly or a lump sum for referring a customer.

Seventeen, Start interacting on Social Media sites and obtaining friends and commenting. Also comment on other peoples blogs – within weeks you could be receiving hundreds of visitors a day from the connections you have made.

Eighteen, Keep up the Good Work.

Nineteen, Link to DataFlurry’s Blog if you like what you see :-)

Twenty, Please follow me on Twitter, LinkedIn, Technorati, StumbleUpon, Youtube and More!

I appreciate you guys reading this. Please comment below with your opinions.

Joel McLaughlin

DataFlurry Phoenix Arizona Search Engine Optimization