1. Choose a niche topic for your blog.
How to Choose a Niche Topic for your Blog
2. Make your blog personal by adding your photo and moving your byline to a more prominent position. If you are wondering why your visitors are not commenting, this might just do the trick.
Using Bylines on Blogs
Use of Images and Video – Adding Personal Touches to Your Blog
3. Involve your readers by posting polls and surveys, running competitions and asking questions in your posts.
How to Build Community on Your Blog By Giving Readers Jobs
4. Do a series of articles on your blog.
Promoting Your Blog With a Series and Articles
5. To help your post rank better, stick with one topic per post.
How to Optimize Your Blog for Search Engines
6. Stop guarding your outbound links and don’t be afraid to link to great resources elsewhere.
Sending Traffic Away or Keeping Traffic On Site?
7. Make sure to promote your RSS feeds. If your readers are not computer savvy, explain to them what RSS is and list the benefits of using it.
Kick Your RSS: Jumping on the Syndication Bandwagon
8. Include social bookmarks to sites like Digg and del.ici.ous. Yeah, yeah, I know. We don’t use those ourselves. But we will have a completely redesigned blog with social bookmarks in a few weeks.
Social Bookmarking – Getting your Blog Noticed
9. Make sure to ping blog search engines and other services to let them know you have a new content on your blog.
Services to Ping When you Update your Blog
10. Think before you link from your blog. Does the link clarify what you are trying to say? Have you even read what you’re linking to?
Think Before You Link from your Blog
11. Increase the longevity of your posts by adding a “related posts” or “recent posts” or “featured entries” sections to your blog.
Increasing the Longevity of Key Posts – Part I
12. Employ deep linking by referring to your old entries in your new posts.
Increasing the Longevity of Key Posts – Part II
13. Your blog readers are people, too. They have needs, emotions and feelings just like everyone else. Tap into these and your blog will be a success.
Your Blog’s Readers are People Too
14. Give your readers a way to contact you.
Why Your Blog’s Readers Should be Able to Contact You
15. The post title is the most important part of your blog. Use it to grab attention to your post.
Attention Grabbing Blogging – Persuasive Blogging Part I
Feel free to share your own experiences and add anything I’ve missed. ![[]](http://www.searchmarketingstandard.com/wp-content/themes/sms/images/entry-end.gif)
