What You Should Put On Your Blog

This Hubs is offering suggestions on how to improve your blog.

These are only suggestions. You don't have to take my advice. It is totally up to you.

Let's be honest here: Maintaining a successful blog is not easy, and it certainly takes work if you actually want to make a living from it.

For purposes of this Hub, I will be referencing my own blog (on Blogger) for examples, found at: http://lovezack.blogspot.com.

I suggest that you go to my blog and take a look around before proceeding.

Try to create a banner that fits with the theme of your blog. Be creative, and have fun with it!

Successful blogs get sponsored by big names. When a blog gets sponsored, the company sponsoring it gives the blog money, but also credibility.

If you are new and establishing your blog, then you obviously don't have sponsorship by any big names. That doesn't mean that you can't make banners.

Feel free to fill up the empty space. Give visitors the impression that your blog is well-maintained and is actively updated, whether it is or isn't.

People want to read blogs that are active and alive, not deceased and forgotten.

You can easily make free banners at: www.mybannermaker.com

Your blog posts should have a link tree that is accessible by search engines. That way, Google (or other search engines) can index them and people can find your posts in organic searches.

If my blog posts are under month subheadings, then each month in that year will also be indexed and viewable in Google searches.

A link tree that can be crawled by bots is very important to getting traffic from search engines.

Posts with pictures are good.

Flickr is one picture source that offers Creative Commons licensed pictures, that can be used with citing the source.

Pictures can generate traffic in searches just as easily as literal text, if your picture has accurate captions and/or meta tags.

Plus, posts look better when you have gadgets to show your top posts, when there is a picture that identifies your post.

Much of my organic traffic comes from people that are just searching for a picture. They end up on my blog, and hopefully read the post associated with the picture.

Your blog is your brand. Your logo at the top should accurately represent your blog. If I doesn't, you need to design one or have one created for you that is good for your brand.

You can view mine (below). I created it myself, and felt that it portrayed the creative and fun aspect that I wanted to display to visitors. I hope they think, "Cool," when they come to my site.

Look, blogging should be fun.

If you don't blog about your passion, then you will run out of things to say, and will get tired of writing about things that you aren't interested in.

So blog about what you like to talk about. Then your passion will naturally flow and people will get excited about your passion.

If you excite the people, you may actually develop a following.

Good luck and keep on blogging!