11 things readers want in a blog

1-Content-Everyone reads a blog for content!

2-Good look-Bloggers and readers like a good look

• Color combination-A color combination that makes it hard for reading says "go back" to the readers.
• Font-When selecting font, remember "it is for reading".

3-Links-What do you think about a webpage without links?

• Links to their blogs (If they have)-Is there anyone who doesn’t like a link to his own blog?! (Don't worry about this)
• Link to other useful blogs-People read blogs for content and you should show them where to find it.
• Links to related posts-They can read more if they want.

4-Navigation tools-Reading a blog without anything for navigation is like being lost in a forest.

• Archives-Without archives how can readers find old posts?
• Search box-Help the readers to find what they want.
• Categories/Labels-Categorized navigation for finding posts on interested categories.

5-Feed-Help readers subscribe and make loyal visitors!

• Feed burned with Feedburner-Feedburner helps the readers to subscribe easily.
• Link to Feed-If there is a feed, there is a feed URL. If there is a feed URL, there must be a link to it.
• Feed chicklets-Give one click access to their readers.

6-‘Contact Me’ form/link/email-If anyone wants to contact you private.

7-Comment forms-All blogs have this. If anyone has hidden comment forms, show them for your readers.

8-About-They want to know what the blog is about.

• About page-They may like to know more about your blog.
• About the blogger-Yes, about you too, bloggers.

9-No NoFollow-I am a fan of DoFollow.

• In comments-Extra value for commenting.
• Anywhere in the blog-You are really selfish, if the whole blog is ‘protected’ with NoFollow. Remove NoFollow entirely from your blog.

10-Images-Beautiful images for beautiful blogs.

• Inside posts-Readers can understand more easily through images.
• Outside posts-Readers love to read beautiful blogs.

11-Money-Everyone wants money! If you can't spend any, just put a paid review button or something like that.

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Increase RSS subscribers with ten steps

I always wanted to increase my feed subscription. When I started this blog, I didn’t have any readers and it was before a month. As readers increased in my blog I tried to increase RSS subscriptions. The tricks worked amazingly and doubled the feed subscribers. I would like to share them with you. They may not double your subscription but will do great.

• Burn your feed with Feedburner-This will give a two click access to feed readers and work really well
• chickletize your feed
• Use full-feed
• Make it easy for readers-Make it easy for the readers to subscribe in anyway. They don’t want to visit 4 or 5 pages for subscribing. Put links in appropriate places that peoples can catch it easily.
• Mention the feed in a post
• Ask people to subscribe-This can be done in your blog or by contacting readers privately.
• Frequent posting
• Fix the time of posting- A sudden change in the time of posting is like saying the subscribers “you can go”. I would like to give an example: a person reads his subscriptions everyday at 5pm. One day he found there is no post and unsubscribe. This can be happened if the blogger changed his posting time to after 5. So fix the time and call them back.
• Don’t display small count-Publishing a count that is low, works negatively and the count will go down in no time. Display it only when you have 150 subscribers.
• Show your feed before an audience- Communities like MyBlogLog and blogging forums allow you to show your last posts in them. You should use this feature to build subscribers.

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Why quantity is important for blogs

If you ask an expert how to increase traffic for your blog, he will share some tips with you. Still if you find the tips not working, it may be because that the quantity of content is low, there may be other reasons. I’m not talking about anything else, but quantity.

The tricks used for better blogging like social networking, link exchanging etc; works better when you have lots of content. When I started this blog I used some but found them useless, but now I find many of them amazingly useful. There have been lots of changes to this blog since it started. Quantity also increased. I find the tricks more and more useful each time my quantity increases. Search engines consider the quantity also for the ranking and lots of content can increase your search engine rank.

Lots of content is a type of “giving readers what they want”. A person reads my blog because he wants to make his blogging better. So I have to give him the maximum I can that make one’s blogging better and that’s what I meant by increasing quantity. You have to post a lot before seeing those tricks working. Still you have to make it easy for the readers to find what they want.

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Related Posts
Factors of quality content
Frequency and length

Do better without NoFollow

NoFollow is an HTML attribute value used with links to instruct search engines that a hyperlink should not influence the link target’s search engine rank. It is used like this: rel=“nofollow”. In all blog platforms, links in comments are set to NoFollow by default. You can remove this by deleting rel=“nofollow” from the template code or by using DoFollow plug-in. Removing NoFollow is a favor for the commentators. This will encourage the readers to put comment as they can increase their search engine rank by just commenting. You can put a badge in your blog to inform the readers that you have removed NoFollow.

You may think “who want a link in an unpopular blog”. There are people who want. What you have to do is, remove nofollow, go to the link exchange part of the forum you participate and put a post like “exchange links for comments”. So if anyone wants to exchange links they will put a comment in your blog with a link to their blog.

This trick works in another way. You can increase your search engine rank by commenting in popular blogs without nofollow.

Blogs linking to you in posts will be linked back. Those links are called backlinks. You can disable backlinks. You can encourage linking to your blog by removing NoFollow from backlinks. This may not work with a newly established blogs.

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Are you on the right track?

Let me quote a comment posted by Barbara from Blogging Without A Blog: “It can be disheartening when you work so hard at posting and the traffic doesn't show up. But, if you truly love blogging and sharing, in the long run it will pay off. Traffic is fickle, and the highs and lows at times may feel like a roller coaster ride, but if your traffic increases from month to month, you know you're on the right track.” Thanks to Barbara for the comment.

When you start a blog the traffic will be low. It may climb the Everest and fall from there and you shouldn’t have to worry about it. If your traffic is increasing month to month, you should be happy that you are on the right track. If it is not, there is a problem with your blog or blogging. It may be the topic, language, template or something else. It is you who can understand the problem and fix it.

My traffic usually increase day by day and I am happy about it. But when my traffic climbs the cliff, I may have to take a vacation for some reasons. Then my traffic, feed subscribers and everything goes down. The reason of the problem is that I don’t have anyone to blog for me. Do you know how to solve this problem? Are you ready to blog for me? If you do, put a comment here.

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Related Posts
What do you felt when you started
Traffic-A big barrier
When you get stuck