10 Things that Ensure Blog Popularity

Assalaamu'allaykum.

After my first year blogging, I learnt some particular things to make blog popular. Those things, unfortunately, were things I was lazy to care about in blogging. So, if you want to have popular blog, notice my list below.

Unpopularity mostly because bloggers were lazy to:

1. Update regularly
   One or two updates a week, or one update every other day if you had time, were better for Search engine indexing and social aggregators than a hundred new postings in three consecutive days then silence for one semester. Somehow, I didn't know how it worked, search engine better indexing blog with regular posting. Google gave higher page rank and priority in search result, for example. Moreover, if you published your postings via email-feed too, the readers (I bet) preferred one or two posting a week than being bombarded by a hundred in one go.


2. Visit other blog and give proper comment
   Even in the virtual world, socialize and be friend with other were important. Commenting on their postings, never spamming, and be honest. Showing your appreciation, giving positive feedback.


3. Look for community of your niche
   Joined in a community, especially that of the same interest with yours, would help a lot in promoting your blog. FaceBook, Friendster, Myspace had been famous for social-networking and blog promotion. Why didn't you take advantage of these free service? Other way to be involve in community was join specific mailing list/groups/forum. There were many online community then become real society, with real meeting, tea time, coffee time, etc.


4. Pro active in community
   After joined a community, the next thing to do was avoiding any possibility of being a lurker. Of course, never spamming or talking too much about yourself/blog. This would annoy other members!


5. Submit blog to search engine
   Other than standard facility brought to you by the blog platform service like Blogger or Wordpress, you better submit your log URL and site-map to search engine. Just to ensure, optimize, the search engine in crawling your blog.


6. Submit blog to online directory
   There are many free directory you can use to promote your blog. Submitting blog in their list would not be too much hassle. Other free service you can use for this purpose was web-ring, top-list, or social-bookmarking. Choose what suit you best, and remember not to clutter the Net with spams.


7. Renovate Blog Display
   Using standard/default template provided by the platform service for the blog is a big NO, NO. Without strong content, the default look of any blog would give no extra value for the visitors and they would not return as often as you wished. To make this worse, you could made the visitors tired by display 6 or more full-posting in the front page. Come on, give only heading of your postings and let the visitor choose which one they want to read first. Too many lengthy postings at once not only exhausting, it also took longer to load. Encourage yourself to change blog template. Whatever platform yu use, there were so many free template around, completed with proper tutorial and instruction on how to install them. By giving your blog a personal look, you had took the first step to convince the visitors about your (blog) uniqueness.


8. Follow the trend/issue
   You dont need to be news portal, of course. However, being absolutely isolated from the whole world was (and is) a weird concept. Blogging was not an exception.


9. Reply any email/contact
   No explanation needed, anyone with a few experience of internet use would have no doubt of the importance of keep in contact with friends/readers/clients.


10. Listen to feedback, suggestion, and critics
    And do it to make your blog better. Keep growing and taking experiments; watch your blog(s) develop.