How to stand out from other blogs
Lorelle wrote an article called Truths and Consequences of Blogs That Stand Out, which I'll use as the basis of this article (thanks Lorelle!)
If you want your blog to stand out from the rest of them, then there's a few things you need to take into account as you aim for that goal.
Looks count
Everything is about looks. We like to look pretty to make ourselves more attractive, and we are attracted to people and things that appeal to us. So the first thing that we need to take notice of with our blog is how it looks.
It has to be easy to read, without being too cluttered. If it's too 'busy' then people are going to get lost trying to find something interesting. It the design interferes with the ability to read it, people are going to move on.
Think about books. What makes them attractive? For a start, they're easy to read. Dark text on white background, and fonts that are easy for the eye to see. If there's any pictures, they don't interfere with the text and there's a decent amount of white space between the picture and text.
Navigation is important too. You have a blog that you want people to be able to get to other content that you think is important. How are they going to do that if you have no navigation features? Categorisation works wonders, helping your visitors see what kinds of content you have available, and allowing them to browse through your site according to the categories that they're interested in. Important Pages need to be stand out as well, and Popular Posts inspire visitors to hang out a bit longer and read what others find interesting.
Remember also that the website design should reflect the content. If you have content on mountain climbing, then a design that includes mountain views would be applicable. A photo blog would include photos in the design. General musings about life might have a design that reflects the theme of your life, or of how you want to present it.
Looks count, but they need to be appropriate to the content of the blog, otherwise people just aren't going to take it seriously.
Content is King
It doesn't matter how good your site looks, if you don't have good content, visitors aren't going to hang around for long.
Good content means good writing, spelling and grammar. However, that's still not important if what you write about or how you write it grabs the visitor's attention and holds it. Providing good quality information or entertainment are two very good reasons visitors will stay, and they might forgive a few spelling errors if the content is worth it.
If the content gives the visitor the information they're looking for, meets their interests, or challenges their thinking and motivates them, then they're likely to spend time there. If it's really good then they'll return time and again to find out what new content you've added.
The best quality blogs are those that focus their content on a particular topic or theme, rather than putting lots of different topics together on the same blog. Being a 'specialist' gains traffic and reputation, while talking about anything and everything doesn't help those visitors stay focused. If you're not focused on a particular topic, then your visitors aren't going to stay focused on you.
It's about traffic
A lot of people think that the more traffic you have, the better your blog is. Not true. Traffic is only important to the blog owner, as hardly any of the visitors to your blog are going to be aware of, or even care about, how much traffic you're getting. What makes your blog popular is not going to be the traffic, but the content and how people find the content.
Search engines, directories, links on other blog's blogrolls, and even placing comments on their blog. They all help bring you traffic. What's important though, is not how many links you have, but good your content is.
Your reputation will be enhanced by people finding your blog and then writing about it or linking to it. That increases traffic, but that's only because they think your blog is worth other people reading it. And that comes from having a good look and good content.
It's about convenience
Many websites offer incentives to sign up to their newsletters, or they don't have anything like that at all. Instead, you have to bookmark the site in your browser and come back to it every now and again to see if they've updated the content. These are static sites and they don't add a lot to the convenience of the visitor.
Non-static sites like blogs allow visitors to subscribe to RSS feeds, which delivers your content to them as soon as you publish it. Very convenient!
RSS Feeds allow visitors to automatically subscribe to your blog so that any new content you place there is sent to them, without them having to remember to come and visit it. On some blogs you can even subscribe to the feeds of various categories, so that the only content received is of those categories that you're interested in. Allowing this option for visitors to your blog will only increase the convenience of it for them.
Comments are another convenient feature of blogs, allowing visitors to agree or disagree with your content, or even to add or correct information that might be of use to you. Not only do comments increase the convenience for visitors to engage in interesting conversations about your content, but the convenience allows you to update your own content based on what you might learn, as well as to inspire your visitors to hang around longer because of the conversations they have with you.
Pings and trackbacks allow search engines and directories to be notified when you've updated your blog, allowing users of those sites to visit your blog whenever you update it. Trackback comments allows you and your visitors to see what others are writing about your content.
Your outstanding blog checklist
Again, from Lorelle's article, we have this checklist. Check your blog against it, and see if it meets the standard of an outstanding blog. Use what you learn to make any changes you might want, to help you achieve 'outstanding blog'.
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