Blogging is one of the most popular activities that people do online. In fact, most new websites started by web designers are blogs. Although a number of people run blogs for personal reasons, the vast majority of blogs are in place for commercial purposes. Blogs can be commercial in nature on their own or they can also be a valued part of the main website of a business. Many large corporations require some of their employees to maintain regularly updated blogs as a way of adding to their online presence.
The blog you maintain, whether it is for personal or business purposes, may be the best blog on the internet. You may write the most captivating blog posts that can be found any where. You may even provide the type of information that people cannot find from any other blogger. You and your blog may have all of these attributes and still not satisfy you completely because it isn’t as popular as you’d like it to be. Remember, there are a great many things that go into whether a blog becomes popular and well visited. Most, if not all, of these things cannot happen immediately.
One of the major things that influences how much traffic your blog will have is how well it is ranked in the search engines. Google, Yahoo, MSN, and all of the other search engines online have specific steps that they go through when ranking how well any website ranks in their search results. These steps include things like how long a site or blog has been online, how good of a reputation it has developed, and how much content is on the site. Generally speaking the more often you update your blog, the better it will rank in search engines. There is a great deal of other things that go into ranking well, but the more content you give search engines to explore on your blog and the better it will be indexed.
Another thing that a blog needs to become successful is backlinks. Backlinks are links to your blog that are placed on other websites. These can be from websites that value your blog and have placed a link to you on their site, they can be from forum participation or blog commenting that you do yourself and they can come from submission and inclusion in online directories among many other possibilities. All of these methods, whether they are done by you or done by someone else, take a significant amount of time to happen.
One of the most difficult things that a blog needs to reach the level of some of the more successful blogs around is acceptance and recognition. These are somewhat vague terms, but basically it comes down to how well your blog is acknowledged as a knowledgeable and somewhat unique source of information by well respected blogs or websites in your own niche. This is one of the hardest achievements to reach as first you have to add the quality content to your blog and then it has to get the attention that you want it to get. This is mainly done by leaving well thought out and intelligent comments on blogs that are well respected and hoping that the readers of those blogs will follow the links back to yours. Although this is probably the most difficult of all of the things your blog needs to experience the highest level of success, once it is achieved the benefits will come immediately.
Your blog is more than a statement of you, your thoughts and what you know, in many ways it is your online identity. As good as it is, or as good as you think it is, it still takes time to experience the true success you are hoping for. The work and patience that it takes though is completely worth it as you will see if it happens for you.
If your blog is not experiencing success right now, don’t be discouraged to the point of thinking you either need to make massive changes, start over, or throw in the towel. You may very well be on the right track but just not have given it enough time yet. Constantly refocus your energy on two things, making your content the best that it can be and doing everything possible to get your blog noticed by the people interested in the subject matter that you blog about. A high level of success is possible, and you may very well be on your way, don’t get too discouraged if the success you’re hoping for doesn’t happen right away. Attaining that success is possible, just give it time.
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January 19th, 2009 at 8:17 am
There’s a lot more to blogging than just writing content. As you point out, a successful blog is a combination of tightly targeting your niche, SEO, social networking prowess and writing ability. Even when you get those three elements “down” it still takes time to establish your blog! Conventional wisdom says it takes an average of 3 years to “establish” your blog.
Gee- that’s about the same amount of time it takes to establish a business as well. A coincidence? I think not.
January 19th, 2009 at 9:42 am
That is one of the mistakes people make when blogging. They expect it to come easy. It takes a lot of experience and hard work and dedication. Most blogs as a start out does not make a penny. But once blogs get older and famous then they start generating good revenue. Excellent post Bruce.
January 19th, 2009 at 10:50 am
I agree completly. It can be very fustrating to wait for a success from your blog. But it takes time. As long as you got the patience and keep producing quality content, it will pay off eventually.
January 20th, 2009 at 7:01 pm
great stuff, I was hoping to come across a post like this. I’m new to blogging and after doing my homework I know how essential patience is to making a name for yourself. I think it’s important to not judge yourself by making money in the beginning cause it certainly isn’t coming in consistently in the early going.
January 20th, 2009 at 9:26 pm
You have wisdom! I started a blog for fun and discovered it occupies much more of my time then I expected. I can see why it would be a challenge to keep it up for years. Not only the writing, but the social aspect takes as much time and effort if not more. Hopefully I’ll stick it out.
January 21st, 2009 at 4:58 am
You’re right. Blogging is like cultivating closer relationship. You learn to be patience and kind and loving toward one another, in due time your friends multiply, and you’re happiness, besides all other benefits.
January 21st, 2009 at 10:11 am
I find myself in this stage of putting in as much work as I can into the content of my blog and networking with other bloggers. I know it takes time and I’ve already been surprised by the friends I’ve gained and the comments I’ve received since starting in October. If I can learn as much as I’ve learned since then, imagine what I’ll know in three more months? This was an encouraging post. Thanks!
January 21st, 2009 at 10:14 am
I appreciate all the comments, you make some great points.
January 21st, 2009 at 11:29 am
Really good advice, I think. It seems to apply to all of the really popular blogs.
January 22nd, 2009 at 1:47 am
You are absolutely right! This is hard work, yet so many people think it’s a snap. No way!! But we hard working bloggers need to stick together!!
January 25th, 2009 at 11:54 pm
“don’t be discouraged to the point of thinking you either need to make massive changes, start over, or throw in the towel. You may very well be on the right track but just not have given it enough time yet.”
absulotely right… just patient..
February 15th, 2009 at 5:11 am
Hmm….yes I do appreciate whatever you
have written. But when do you really
know that you are on your way to hit the
the spot and ring the bell?