I've been blogging for a while and I've come to learn a few of the more basic things about writing a blog that you may find helpful when writing a blog. If you're an advanced blogger, you may not find this post helpful. On the other hand, if you're a beginner just starting out in the blogging world, or if you've been blogging but it's just not going anywhere, you might find this simple set of 10 easy to follow rules will help you step your blogging up the the next level without you learning them the hard way.

Rule 1) A blog is not a social networking site - If you want to write a blog solely based on reporting the events of your personal life to your friends and neighbors you might as well get a MySpace or a FaceBook and do it there, because social networking sites have a lot more tools to help you update your peers and family on your social life than a typical blog will.

Instead, write articles that will be interesting to everyone. If you're going to tell the story of your life, at least make it interesting. You could assume your blog readers will care about your day at school, but if you do your blog readers will only be your family and one creepy guy from California.

If you want to describe your day fine, but try to at least make it an interesting read, and don't make it the only content in your blog unless you have one fantastic life.

If the only reason you're blogging is to let your friends and family know how your day was, stop here. You don't need any help. You aren't ever going to get much traffic that way, don't worry about your low traffic. Otherwise, if you must describe your life, try to do it in a way that communicates meaning or a message, or at least an interesting story.

Rule 2) Do not check in - Ever. This doesn't mean not to check on your site. It means not to post to your blog just to tell the people reading that you're not going to post that day, you just wanted to let them know you're not dead. This ties into Rule 1 a bit, in that if you're doing that, it means your telling your readers what your up to, or in this case not doing. Another good reason not to do this is because if you do, you'll end up with a lot of posts with no value, which will drag down the average value of your blogs content. Don't do it unless you are running your blog as a social networking site, in which case you should have stopped reading on Rule 1, stop reading now.

Rule 3) Write content people are going to want to read - I'm sure you already know that if you write something that's boring, or pointless, you're not going to be getting any fans from it. People won't return to your site if they don't want to read what you wrote.

If you write something they find useful however, like a review of a product they like, a guide to doing something they need to be able to do, or a story they enjoy you'll find they're likely to come back again and again.

Rule 4) Check syntax and spelling in every post - If people find that you have poor grammar or that you can't spell, how can they take seriously anything you have to say? This isn't really fair, I know. I can't spell myself, but I have plenty to write that's worth reading. The sad truth though is that you'll lose readers if you can't spell, or if you write in 133T, or if you otherwise ignore the rules of language.

Rule 5) After you write a post, don't publish it immediately - Go watch a YouTube video, a movie, or go to bed and sleep on it first. After you've finished doing something else, come back and read your post again. You'll be surprised how often you'll be able to pick out mistakes you couldn't find before. Typing back into rule 4, you're likely to find spelling and grammar errors which would have otherwise lowered people's opinion of your writing. You'll also be more likely to notice if your post is missing details, or if there was a better way to word things in your post.

Rule 6) Write your blog as a professional would - Write every post as if you were going to submit to a magazine or another serious publisher. A publisher wouldn't want poor work, and the reason for that is simply because poor work is bad for the publication's reputation. Similarly, you shouldn't post poor work because it's bad for the reputation of your blog. If people visit your blog and see that your sites content is on average poor, they're likely to leave and never come back. When someone visits your blog you want them to read your work and enjoy what they've read.

Rule 7) Pick a category around which your blog should be centered - You'll find that blogs are more popular when the reader can be sure your next article will be in a similar category to the last one, or at least that it will fall into one of a predictable group of categories. Someone interested in technology isn't necessarily interested in philosophy or rant blogs.

If you can't pick just one topic, which is often my dilemma, then pick a limited group of categories to write about which are likely to share fans. This blog for example is about blogging, and communication, and life. People who blog are likely to enjoy the topic of communication as well, and everyone is living their lives, so it's likely that they're going to be interested in life as well.

Rule 8) Don't steal content - You might find yourself inspired by what others write about. You might even want to write about the same thing. Don't ever let yourself take what they wrote for your own though. This is common sense for most of us, but there are people out there to whom this might not occur. Stealing content from other websites is on one hand illegal and on the other hand it's pointless and overall bad for your blog. You might be able to steal some visitors from the original author, but in general you're going to hurt your reputation in the community if you steal content, and this will hurt you most in the long run.

Rule 9) Do not pay for links - Links are vital to your site's success, but paying for links will do you more harm than good. People say you get what you pay for, but in the world of blogging, if you have to pay for a link, you're going to be punished by Google. Google doesn't like black hat SEO methods like paid linking, and will make sure your traffic stays low if you use that sort of tactic.

Rule 10) Use the White hat SEO methods - Rule 9 is basically not to use the SEO methods you aren't allowed to use, but it's also important to use the ones you are. These include things like submitting your best articles to article databases and Blog Carnivals. These will produce you publicity and visibility within the community, and will often generate you links which will boost your search engine rankings.

Make sure that sites you get to link to you are on the up and up though. A site that links to yours that Google views as bad is likely to lose you points. It should be fairly easy to tell whether what you're doing is white hat or black hat. Don't make an effort to get sites that seem low quality, or that seem like link farms to link to you. Instead go after the sites that seem similar or a little better than yours.

You might also try placing key words and phrases into your posts. Think about what someone would type into Google when they were looking for the information provided in you post, and try to slip those words or phrases into your article once or twice each.


If you follow those 10 simple rules, it still doesn't guarantee that you'll succeed in the world of blogging. It will give you a much better shot at doing so, however. You'll find that the successful blogs already do these things, and that the blogs that aren't worth reading ignore them. Many people can follow these rules by instinct, but if hearing these rules came as a surprise to you you may find trying them rewarding.