If you’re blogging and trying to accomplish an online objective it’s useful to look at some of the common elements of pro bloggers that are apparent in making a successful blog. Here is a short list of key elements:

1. Write a lot – be prolific.

2. Be concise – get to the point and use short posts. Seth Godin is great for this.

3. Analyze – track and analyze your blog stats to find out from whence your readers are coming.

4. Keep learning – in blogging as in marketing, things are always changing so keep exploring and moving forward.

5. Be focused and consistent – have an objective for your blog and set a schedule for your post. (1,2/week etc.)

6. Plan – Think about where you are now and where you want to go. Write it down. It will change, but that is good.

7. Intention – set up your intentions for the blog, then sculpt, reshape, develop..it’s a journey and part of the fun.

8. Initiative and discipline – you’re the champion of your blog. It’s up to you to keep the energy alive.

Well I may have taken the concise part a bit too literally, so if you have an thoughts on this, please expand on these points or add your perspective.

Today there is so much material we can read online that we are always evaluating what is worth our time to spend reading. If you are a blog writer then you are interested in people reading and commenting on your articles. With some brief research I have put together a short bullet list of key points to consider when writing a blog post. The key point to remember, putting the bottom line up front, is that online readers scan articles to find salient value to satisfy their immediate need. Once that is satisfied then your audience may dig deeper and possibly take action. i.e make a comment etc. The key word is scan. These are 10 points to consider if you want to get beyond SCAN.

1. Get to point in the first paragraph.

2. Use short paragraphs or number lists. Pro: Easy to and get to the core quickly.

3. Provide the facts. Pro: Increases trust and credibility. If you can, provide links to the facts or the experts.

4. Use a concise obvious title describing what the article is about.

5. Write in simple easy to understand language. Pro: the less time people can spend understanding what you are saying the easier they receive value

6. Keep your articles short. If people can get some really good stuff from your article at a glance then there is a good chance they may read more of your blog.

7. Use headings and sub headings.

8. Highlight, Bold and underline key points.

9.Use pictures and images to help make your point.

10. Get to the bottom line. Because sometimes that’s all people have time for, especially, self employed, independent contractors and small business owners. (who make up most of my audience)

You may use only some of these points in your articles each time. What do you think. is there more to add to the list?

Now, increasing your reader action, (i.e commenting) is another matter. Next time I will talk about on site activity and whether it is important may depend on your internet strategy.

I came across Frugal theme for word press. I like the clean structure. It looks a lot like Matt Cutts (Google) theme. I am thinking about using this a main theme for all our clients that want to now add a blog to there Joomla website. The My Blog extension in Joomla1.5 is the best that is available for Joomla but it is still not as good as using a word press theme. WordPress is built for blogging and has the styling that is more suitable for copy writers. It’s SEO structure is much better out of the box than Joomla”s. It appears that Joomla is moving toward more blog type templates and better SEO and WordPress is getting more into business websites. For now  think I will stick with Joomla for websites and WordPress for blogs.

I am thinking about doing an experiment: I have just set up my SearchMarketinglife.com blog site in using a Joomla platform. I think will set up the same structure with OnlineMarketinglife.com using a WordPress platform and see which one does the best from and SEO stand point.  Hopefully I won’t get penalized by Google for duplicate content. If you have any thoughts on this please add your comments.

9 Reasons you should have a blog!

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I found an article on SEO benefits of blogging on an Australian site, SearchEngineRoom. The artilce was written by Lee Odden, CEO, Top Rank Online Marketing.

Since most of the businesses I speak with are interested in web development, this article gives good reason to make blogging or at least regular article writing a part of your web marketing program. I have summarized these benefits.

9 basic advantages to blogs:

1. Uncomplicated content structure makes it fairly easy for search engines to crawl.

2. Blog software makes it easier for search engines to understand your content. This can help you rank better.

3. Deep link anchor text in blogs can help ranking.

4. Blogs more freely link to each other making them an inbound link magnet.

5. RSS that uses the blog domain name can assist in building link popularity.

6. Blogs offer fresh content which is rewarded by reader and search engines by more visits.

7. Comments and track back features in blogs encourage interaction.

8. Blogs encourage a lot of non search engine traffic via RSS and “add to” links like bookmarking.

9. Blogs and there RSS feeds benefit by having greater visibility in Blogs & RSS search engines.

Go to Search Engine Room for the complete article and details.