A blog is only as good as the content you, the writer, puts their. So by increasing the quality of the content you increase the quality of the blog, which will in turn get you the traffic, readers, commentators and links you want so bad. Do you want to know how its done?

1. Use headlines that don’t suck.

I like to think of it this way: the headline of a blog post is like a sign on a door that draws people in to take a peek. It needs to lure your readers in  yet give them the gist of what they’re gonna get inside. A good strategy is to ask your self, “what does this article have to offer?” and not “what is this article about?”
You can add to  a headline by adding related keywords or a “power word” like secret, reveled and free. They lure people in to learn about something that is not known to most, or get some thing of value for nothing.

2. Use a compelling opening line.

My favorite part of posts are the opening lines, there the first things your readers actually read once they open up that door and walk into your post. Your opening lines should expand on your headline while making people want to continue reading the amazing content below it. You can open up the post in a couple different ways, maybe by telling a little story, sharing a quote, by making a controversial statement, or even by using some statistics. Ideally you want it to be irresistible to continue reading.

3. Go into depth.

People like details so don’t just tell them they can do something, but expand on it an tell them how they can do that something. For example if your writing about getting links, tell them the various ways to do it, and expand on each one giving its pros and cons, with an example of how you did it for your site. But you have to make sure that depth doesn’t turn into fluff.

4. Speaking of fluff!

No one wants to weed through a ton of fluff to figure out what your are trying to say. Sure but whats fluff? Its all those useless adjectives, and sentences that add nothing but length to your post. Fluff makes you seem as if you can’t communicate your ideas effectively, thus giving you an unprofessional image. So lets just cut out all the useless words, sentences and paragraphs, and shorten up your post.

5. Get a thesaurus and a dictionary.

I can’t stress this enough, every blogger should have a dictionary and thesaurus nearby. You need to know what the words your using mean, so you can use them properly and effectively. As for the thesaurus, you can’t use the same words over and over again because it gets repetitive so look up a word and use its synonym. This way you won’t sound like you have the vocabulary of a little kid.

6. Readability is everything.

Give each and every one of your posts a format which will make them easier to read. Try using sub-headings and lists, especially for the longer posts. I like doing this because although a reader may not be interested in one of my first ideas, they may like the later ones. With sub-headings they can just skim through them and they will read whatever they are interested in.

7. Please the eye.

Too much plain text gets boring for the eyes, and may turn a reader away. So give your posts the visual interest readers love.  Simple text formatting is a must for all your posts, use bold, colored or italicized text to make something of importance stand out, add an underline to some thing of importance. Formatting really helps keep the readers attention than plain text.

You should also add a minimum of one image per a post. Just try to get something that is remotely related to the content of the post. Take my last post for example, I talked about getting tons of traffic from forums so I put a picture of traffic lights in it. I think that the image along side formatting really makes it easier to read.

8. Get the readers in on it.

The end of a post is a great opportunity for increasing your comments. Ask all your readers what they think about your post and the ideas within it.

9. Link out within the post.

Once you’ve finished up your post you should read it over and look for some keywords where you can link to some older posts you’ve written or maybe a couple of related pages on other blogs. If you link out to other blogs and use headlines that don’t suck then, you can get some nice trackback traffic.

10. Spell check, proofread and edit.

Don’t hit that publish button just yet, you still need to read through it a couple of times before you can show it off to the world. You should go ahead and run spell check on your almost-finished post. Then read through it with a fine tooth comb checking for typos, making sure that it make sense when read out loud, and check all the links and formatting.

Tell me, what do you think of my tips? Got any of your own?
Tell me in a comment.

Image by: foundphotoslj