This question has been brought up on many other websites and blogs and all have different points to ponder. For example, Jakonrath.blogspot.com says the first point is “Content Is King”, while Problogdesign.com says that “Better Looking Blogs, Grow Faster”.

My personal spin on it is that both of those blogs are right and wrong at the same time. Jakonrath is right at the fact that a large portion of how you judge a blog is the content when you actually read it. If the design is annoying with ads and the entire lot, then chances are you won’t even get to the content.

Problogdesign does fight a good argument saying that the design of a blog grow faster.. but they can’t grow fast if the content is just sponsored ads, or R.S.S feeds from other blogs. Even if the design was so unique and you WOULD not find it anywhere else… Who would stick around for another terrible post?

So I think I’ll be the first person to say that a good blog has the following:

1. A Easy-to-Use Interface & Content that is original. (Hah! 2 points in one!)
2. An uncluttered sidebar only showing what is necessary for the reader to have a better experience.
3. A Nav Bar with at least: Home and Contact links

What did I forget? Nothing in my opinion, but thats only one of the 6,798,093,473 people on earth. Whats yours - What makes a good blog?

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To target a keyword for search engine exposure, we first need to understand how to do it effectively.

My previous post asked readers 5 questions about how they blog, where their traffic comes from, etc.. and 4 of the 7 responses said that Google provided them with the greatest amounts of hits after Stumbleupon. So in order to start gaining more hits from Google from the keywords that you use in blogging, I would like to offer a check-list that I use to achieve the maximum exposure from search engines.

1. Does your title have the main keywords in the first 3 words? If not, revise your title. (From personal experiences, I find that the closer the keywords are that you are targeting to the start, the better the ranking)
2. How many times does your keyword appear in your article? Search engines use the first 160 words to compose a description so if you don’t have your keyword there, revise your starting paragraph. (Again, from personal experiences, I usually see the bolded keywords in the search results closer to the starting showing up higher the rankings than other ones.)
3. Did you use ALL-IN-ONE-SEO to set the keywords for your post? If not, It doesn’t matter..continue writing your article (Many people are saying that it doesn’t matter what keywords matter for your posts, its all in the titles and descriptions)

Most people say that a good amount of keywords in a post are about a 5% ratio. - But in all honesty, no blogger is really going to take the time to calculate it. C’est la vie.

Hopefully this list will help you gain more hits via Google and if you see something not mentioned here, tell me about it! What do you do to gain a good ranking in Google?

I’ve decided to ask my visitors a simple question, in anticipation of their responses.

1. What Drives the Most Traffic To Your Site?? (Excluding the most likely obvious network: Stumbleupon)
2. Do you include social network icons at the bottom of your posts?
3. If yes to question 2, how many?
4. On an average week, how many “Organic” hits from Google do you receive?
5. Finally, How do you plan to improve on those statistics. (EG - Broader Keywords, Diverse Blog Posts, etc)

Nothing in blogging can compare to the feeling of gaining a couple more RSS subscribers each day… or the feeling of losing the ones that you gain the next day. An interesting comment I observed yesterday was one from Adam Pieniazek (who blogs over at AdamPieniazek.com surprisingly )

My subscriber count looks intact but I do see it fluctuate a lot from day to day on a regular basis (e.g. it’ll move up and down up and down with seemingly no real pattern).

What Adam and many bloggers experience on a daily basis is the effects of their subscribers. The Feedburner Feedcount stats all depend on who tunes in with their RSS readers. Basically meaning that if one subscriber only tunes in every Saturday, they’ll have +1 for the day of Saturday but lose that +1 every other day. So that “fluctuation” is just when more or less people tune into his content.

Personally I would just use Feedburner’s Feedcount as a rough estimate of how many real subscribers you actually have. To the delight of most people, you may have more than you think

I signed on to my feedburner stats this morning and found my subscriber count at 0!!! Did I just kill my blog with yesterdays article or do other people have the same thing..

The screenshot to the left is what I saw!

Do you have the same problem with your RSS Feed?

*Update* - Around 3:00P.M the statistics were fixed.. Thank goodness

So If you still have 0 Subscribers, Become a better blogger and promote your content (Or a simpler solution would be to subscribe to this blog for easy to follow tips)

Your sidebar can make or break your blog. If you infest it with useless widgets, random buttons, and links to blog directories.. Whats separating you from a person that doesn’t care how their blog looks? Do you really care about how your sidebar looks?

Most templates now a days, have half of the screen to fill up with their content, with the other 40-50% going to the sidebar. So, If it is taking up that much of a visitors screen and it is filled up with useless information, your limiting your blog to half of your space - The content. If your content sucks, then you can kiss the visitor goodbye. However, If your content is good, but your sidebar is full, it distracts the reader that is coming back to read more. Here is an example of a cluttered sidebar.

The reason behind this is that your R.S.S buttons and top posts will probably near the top or otherwise known as,”Above the fold” (A crucial part of the blog that instantly needs to make an impression on a visitor that loads the blog.. This part is known as Above The Fold because it is the part of the blog that the user doesn’t need to scroll down to see) as then most likely the person will interact with the buttons.

If you fill that up with advertising or annoying little widgets, what does a viewer base their opinion of your site on. How important is the look of your sidebar to you?? Do you regularly clean it up? Or do you fill it up with as much as you can find…

Hello everyone!

As you can obviously see, I’ve finished my custom design for the blog and I think the outcome really reflects the content here on this blog…”Simple, Easy to Read, Content.”

We are currently working out all the “Misc” bugs so please bear with us as we complete that as soon as possible. The main purpose of this post is to actually find out what you think about this re-design. Do you have suggestions or criticisms? We would love to hear it if it means an easier reading experience for you. After all, a blog that is hard to read… Sucks.

Get ready for some interesting posts tomorrow as  there will be some articles you will not want to miss!