What Makes For A Good Blog Post

This is a very important subject because it could mean the difference between a busy blog or one with no visitors. Sort of like sitting on a park bench all by yourself watching everybody rushing by on their way to the next blog.

• Your Audience: Before writing a post you need to work out who your general audience is and write accordingly. A potentially good post can turn bad if you wander off the topic and then fail to grab their attention again
• Use The Right Keywords: By this I mean the keywords you choose have to be related to the subject you are writing about. There’s no point in using keywords such as money, sex, boobs or porn stars if your post is about a WordPress theme you’re trying to promote. Do that and the only thing that’ll happen is you’ll increase your bounce rate.While keywords play an important part in your post being noticed by the search engines its also possible that the Adsense ads displayed on your blog are related to those same keywords

• Avoid Bad Grammar:This can be a real killer. You may have gotten people to your blog by using the right keywords and you’ve piqued their interest by having a captivating title but that’s all going to wasted if your post is full of bad grammar. Honestly taking the time to check your spelling, punctuation and utilising paragraphs and such is well worth the effort.
• Avoid Confrontation: No matter what you do sooner or later you’re going to write a post where people will disagree with you. The worst thing you can do is to take those people on. Remain calm even if that means stepping away and having a cup of coffee or something. Once you’ve calmed down you can reply to them in a professional manner.I’ve seen many a good post where the bloggers credibility has been shot to hell all because the blogger lost it when someone criticised something he said or the product he was promoting.

• Be Professional: The way you behave on your blog affects the way people relate to you so no matter what your post is about you should always keep in mind how that post will affect the way people see you. By this I mean rather than attacking a person via a post because you disagree with something they’ve said or done just leave them out of it and write about the subject in general, why you disagree with it and how you would have handled it.
• Separate Business From Personal:The one thing I like about my blog is that it allows me to write about almost anything. If you have a business blog then your posts should relate to your business. You certainly don’t want to write about your personal opinions on your business blog because doing so can piss off some potential customers. If you have a lot of personal opinions then the best thing to do is to start a personal blog and rant away.
• Interact With Your Commentator: I’m sure that a lot of people notice that many of the pro bloggers of this world rarely take the time to interact in the comment section giving them the impression that this is the norm. Honestly, if you’re just starting out the best thing you can do is show your readers / potential customers you care by interacting with them in the comment section.
• Be Completely Honest: Never promote a product unless you know it’s all that it says it is. Forget about the commission because if you sell something that you’re not happy with it’s going to bite you in the arse. You’ll kill whatever credibility you’ve built up over the years and those poor people who got sucked in by your post will tell all their friends what an arse you are.
• Be A Person, Not A Salesman: People don’t like being sold to but they do like to know the positives and negatives of a product. That’s why you’re more likely to get sales when you’re writing about a product you use and obviously love than one where the only thing you’re interested in is the commission fee.

Of course there are a lot of other factors like the theme you use, having too many ads (guilty ), your posting frequency and even the font you’re using. Face it, if your font makes it hard for others to read they’re not likely to come back for seconds now are they? Getting it right is all the difference between that empty park bench and a foyer full of people talking about that awesome blog they’ve just left.

Naturally these are my personal opinions and alone they don’t hold much weight. What I want is your opinion. Do you agree with what I’ve said or not? If you do which factors to you believe to be important and if not why not. You may even want to add your own views as to what differentiates a good blog from a bad one.

Will Tags Decrease Your Bounce Rate?

The question is whether or not having a tag cloud decreases your bounce rate? Personally I feel that they are next to useless and the space would be better used for something else. I know that I have one on my Buy Lottery Tickets Online site but that’s only because I like the way it behaves more than anything else.

The only way to get a true result to that question is to run this poll. As you well know the more people that take part in any given poll the more accurate the result and so I urge you to get the word out.

Note: There is a poll embedded within this post, please visit the site to participate in this post's poll.

How To Improve Your Bounce Rate

So, how do you improve your bounce rate? First let’s say that the way the bounce rate of any given site is calculated is related to the amount of time someone spends on your blog and whether or not they choose to explore it by reading some of your other posts.

• Select Your Keywords Carefully: Sure I said that tag clouds were next to useless but let’s not forget that the real reason for choosing your tags keywords carefully is for their SEO benefit. Keywords are one of the best ways of letting the search engine know what you’re writing about. Therefore you want to make sure that you select keywords that relate exactly to what you’re writing about otherwise people will be bouncing like crazy.
• Great Content:This is a no brainer and I’m going to include good grammar, introduction and heading in this point. Get all them right and people will take the time to read your post increasing the time on your blog and decreasing your bounce rate. Who knows, they may even want to look around your blog to see what other gems you have to offer.
• Interlinking Great For SEO:You may have read before how linking between your posts is great for SEO, well that’s not all as it’s also great for reducing your bounce rate, especially if you’re linking to related content. Sure there are plugins that will do this for you but they normally appear at the end of the post but it’s so much better to do it from within the post itself as it’s more likely to grab their attention.
• Related Posts Plugin:Sometimes you may find it a bit difficult to link from within a post and that is when a related post plugin will help. I usually use Microkid’s Related Posts plugin as it allows me to search for the right posts to link to. I am however trialling nrelate Related Plugin as it has some unique qualities which I will touch on later in this post.
• Open Links In Another Page:I’ve read some posts that actually recommend the opposite but that never made sense to me. They reckon if you do that it records another visit when they return to your blog. The question is, will they return to your blog? That’s an awful big chance you’re taking if you go that route. It’s so much better to open all links in another page.
• Entice Your Readers To Comment:This is important for many reasons. The most important reason is it makes your posts more interactive but just as important is that if they’re going to take the time to comment they will inadvertently stay on your blog longer improving your bounce rate. You could also go the extra mile by using a plugin that allows them to edit comments because there are a lot of people who take pride in their comments and will take the time and appreciate the opportunity to fix any mistakes.
• Make Good Use Of YouTube:If you can find a video that adds to your content then I recommend you include it in a post. If you can’t find one then that’s good too because it gives you the opportunity to make your own video, one that others may find useful  enough to include in their posts. Whenever I include a video I will use the ‘more’ tag so that it’s not displayed on the front page so as to not slow down the page load speed.

nrelate Related Plugin

I only learned of this plugin yesterday when I was contacted by someone affiliated with it. I have to admit that I wasn’t all that interested because I already have a related post plugin, but I thought I would do the right thing and give it a try. I must say I am impressed, so much so that I’m going to keep them both. Here’s a few reasons why I like it.

• Upon installing the plugin will take a couple of hours before appearing as it indexes your blog so that it has more of an idea when searching for related posts.
• It uses thumbnails to link to your related posts. Everyone knows that people are more likely to click on an interesting image than just a boring old link so to me this is a big plus. It pulls the image from the post and if the post does not have an image it will use a default one that you can upload. I’m thinking of making a Sire recommends this post image using cleavage to get their intention
• Once installed it finds related posts for all your posts unlike Microkids which only works on those posts where you remembered to use it. There are so many posts where I’ve forgotten to make use of it resulting in lost potential.
• Another cool feature is you can configure it to search your blogroll for related content. This is great for those who have more than one blog or have the tendency to link to certain blogs in their blogroll.
• It’s very configurable including giving you the opportunity to make money by availing yourself of their advertiser network. You can see the plugin in action at the end of this and every post on this blog. The thumbnails appear after the ‘You may also like -‘, also totally configurable. The fourth thumbnail is the one belonging to the advertiser. Naturally if you don’t want to use this feature you don’t have to.

That’s it for now as this post is a lot longer than I’m used to writing. Don’t forget to take part in the poll and to leave a comment, especially if you have any other tips on improving the bounce rate of any given blog.