1.    Use titles that capture reader (and searcher) attention.

Your headline is the single most important part of your entire blog post.  It’s what the searchers usually see in the SERPs (search engine results pages) and it’s what piques the interest of a potential reader to pursue the article further.

2.    Write your blog posts in a friendly, conversational tone.

Unless you’re in a very technical, professional, or academic field, it’s always good to keep your web writing as conversational as your topic and audience will allow.  Just talk naturally through your keyboard and let the words flow.  Be sure to grammar check once you’re all done by reading the post out loud—writing for your blog just got a whole lot easier!

3.    Use plenty of whitespace while writing your blog articles.

Whitespace means keeping your paragraphs brief (usually no more than 4 sentences), using sub headlines throughout your blog post, and otherwise ensuring that your copy doesn’t “appear” overwhelming to the eye.  If it just visually looks overwhelming, very few will actually go on the read the copy.

4.    Remember that bullet points and numbered lists make excellent blog copy.

This compliments the above rule about whitespace very nicely—but also stands on its own as a web writing principle.  It’s been proven that blog readers are attracted to quick and easy informative posts about the topics they’re interested in.  Lists and bullet points remain one of the top methods of delivering factual information in a quick and concise reader-friendly format.

5.    Cover a topic of interest with your blog posts.

This means planning and not just rambling about corporate policy or something else that’s really mundane to readers.  If you’re out of ideas, think about frequent questions that your customers ask (and answer them in conversational way through the blog).  That one always works in a bind—sometimes it helps to keep a swipe file list of potential blog post ideas handy so you can add ideas at any time they come to you in the normal course of your daily life.

6.    Consider including a relevant attention-grabbing image at the top of the post.

A picture has always been worth a thousand words…and nothing changes here when it comes to blogging.  Using an attention grabbing image can really make the difference if you’re having trouble drawing readers further into your blog copy.  Be creative and try and come up with stock photos that are colorful and somehow tell a story of their own.

7.    Show right away that you have extensive knowledge of the topic.

One way to do this is to share a few bullet point facts or statistics within the first couple of paragraphs of your post.  Sometimes this alone can make enough of an impact to catch a reader’s attention and keep their interest as they continue to read on.

8.    Know that while longer doesn’t necessarily make a blog post better, it does have more potential than a one paragraph blurb style blog post in the eye of the beholder.

Sometimes shorter is actually better too—but too many really short posts can send a message to the visitor that there might not be anything of value to read on the blog.  Getting this just right can be a challenging balancing act sometimes, but getting it right is worth the challenge.

9.    Integrate the basic principles of SEO in each and every blog post you write.

Think about important keywords that pertain to the topic you’re getting ready to tackle.  Make a list of those keyword phrases and at least try to include them where they fit naturally.  Also, include the single most important keyword phrase in the blog’s title.

10.    Don’t be afraid to use other popular blogs for inspiration.

This doesn’t mean copying them (in fact, by all means, you should definitely never copy them).  Instead, just look at their format and the kind of attention-grabbing headlines they use that make an impression on you.  They don’t even have to be topically related to your blog—the ideas and inspiration are universal.

Blogging is still alive and well.  Yep—it’s true.  Even with mass proliferation of the social media we’ve come to rely on today, and with the fact that in some ways blogs kind of pre-date social networking, they work really well as a cornerstone component of websites for a few practical reasons:

• Search engines love frequently updated blogs—which means your blog will help you bring in traffic to your site.

• Blogs are an ideal way to share the odds and ends—or news updates—that you might not ordinarily have a place for on your website.

• Visitors just like the conversational nature of blogs.  They can be catchy to read and foster some really respectable back and forth.

And the best part is that blogging is quite simple if you just commit to keeping up with it.  Here are 5 ways to get excellent results from your blog:

1. Stick to a schedule.

You don’t have to blog at the exact same hour each day or anything overly strict like that, but it is a good idea to keep a basic schedule and plan regular blog postings accordingly.  This way, visitors kind of get a feel for when you’ll be updating the blog with something new—whether it’s once a day or once a month.  Search engines like it too.  And if you want to fill in between the regular schedule with an occasional post, that’s icing on the cake…the more the merrier!

2. Use your blog as your social media hub.

Probably one of the most effective uses for your website’s blog is to use it as a central hub that all of your different social media broadcasts and campaigns kind of aim back towards.  It’s like the central foundation that all of your social outreach ties back into.  This way, your social media efforts still stand on their own, but they also lead visitors back to your site—such as through your blog—for the rest of the story.

3. Ensure your blog is SEO friendly.

When your blog is tuned and tweaked to be a SEO machine, it’s basically using its very organic nature to reach out to the search engines and say “Hey, this site has lots of helpful content that’s updated regularly…click here!”  Search engines love it when they can add super new content to their results pages—and the organized structure of a well-optimized blog really helps them do this very efficiently.

4. Write from the horse’s mouth.

The great thing about blogs and why they tend to be so attractive to visitors is that most people write their blog posts with a little bit less of a formal tone than they would write regular site copy (and posts are usually less ambitious than sales copy).  When writing a blog, it can be quite helpful to literally speak out loud and type what you’re speaking—just like having a conversation in person.  Maintain your professional edge of course, but be sure to make your blogs light and easy to ready for best results.  It kills the pressure.

5. Follow your theme.

One way to make your blog ultra effective is to have at least a rough idea of what it will offer to visitors.  Keeping with the informal, conversational nature that we’ve discussed above, it’s also a good idea to have some sort of theme—or at least a really solid idea of who your audience is—when developing and writing your posts.  In other words, if your blog is geared towards your customers, or turning search engine visitors in to leads or customers, then it’s probably not a good idea to use the blog for in-house communications as well.  Once you’ve figured out what the specific purpose of your blog will be, try and keep on point fairly closely.

Sure, there are some additional helpful ways to get the most from your blog—but by using these 5 tips for getting excellent results from your blog, you’ll definitely have all of the bases covered; you’ll be on the right track!

You’ve probably run across several web designers who insist on using Flash to create websites.  Most have good intentions, but are just not fully aware of the pitfalls that come along with relying too heavily on Flash web design.  Others are probably just really bad web designers altogether.  Enough said about that.

But one thing is true.  Regardless of what you’ve heard, using Flash on the web has some really great applications and some that are, well, just not very good at all.

For example, a couple of good possible uses might include:

• Using Flash for video. Flash-based video has more or less become the iron-clad standard for streaming video on the web.  It works very well.
• Using Flash for image libraries or other “widgets” or “apps.” Flash works nicely as a sub-component in many photo sharing slash portfolio types of website applications.

That said, it’s still probably best to use Flash components on your website as sparingly as possible.  And it’s all for very good reason.  In fact, Google themselves has even laid forth the shortcomings of using Flash on websites.  They spell it out very concisely and clearly here on their Webmaster Central Blog:

As many of you already know, Flash is inherently a visual medium, and Googlebot doesn’t have eyes. Googlebot can typically read Flash files and extract the text and links in them, but the structure and context are missing. Moreover, textual contents are sometimes stored in Flash as graphics, and since Googlebot doesn’t currently have the algorithmic eyes needed to read these graphics, these important keywords can be missed entirely. All of this means that even if your Flash content is in our index, it might be missing some text, content, or links. Worse, while Googlebot can understand some Flash files, not all Internet spiders can.

Now when talking about ranking well in the search engines, it’s hard to argue that Google’s position on Flash isn’t pretty much definitive.  The more you use Flash as a component on a website, the less the search engines are even able to recognize it—let alone effectively rank it.  Search spiders are getting better at understanding Flash, but there are still severe repercussions that can be completely avoided in entirety by choosing to use a more universal web design platform.

In Summary

Even though many web designers insist on using Flash-based websites, it’s just not a good idea if you plan on attracting organic traffic from the search engines.

• Flash effectively prevents search engine spiders from recognizing and understanding your site correctly.
• Without being able to understand your website, the search engines are not able to rank or list it appropriately within their search indexes.
• Flash can also be non-compatible with certain web browsers and mobile browsers (meaning visitors using these browsers will see a blank space or error message instead of the site as intended).

Don’t become overly afraid of using a small Flash component or two on your site.  But just don’t fall into the trap of using it for the entire site…unless you’re trying to prevent visitors.

These days, finding new sources and methods of driving targeted traffic to your website is more important than ever—and especially when that traffic is free!  While traffic development has always been a challenging task, the good news is that the huge growth spurt of social media is making things a bit easier on us all.

Here are 5 undeniable benefits of using social networking to drive more traffic to your website:

One:  Social Networking Is Free

Implementing a do-it-yourself social media campaign to promote your website is not only effective…it’s free!  That’s right, no subscription costs, development fees, or other monetary expenses have to enter into the picture.  Besides the investment of time, social networking is probably the lowest barrier of entry web technology that’s gone mainstream so far since the inception of the internet.

Two:  Traffic From Social Networks Is Notoriously Web Savvy

Because the fans of social networking are keenly aware of the web and how it’s effectively used, the visitors driven to your site from your social networking promotions will naturally be a web savvy crowd.  Depending on your website’s theme, it can certainly help to have more visitors that are wise to the ways of the web.  And even if your theme is very novice-friendly, driving more visitors site-ward certainly can’t hurt things any.

Three:  Networking Has A Multi-Fold Effect

Not just promoting your website in search engines, but also yourself through social networking.  Basically, you achieve double the results for your time and effort invested.  Plus, the visibility earned through proficient social networking will hold its own and have a certain degree of permanence in the future.

Four:  Results Can Literally Begin To Happen Overnight

In the world of web development and web optimization, it’s almost impossible to find a traffic-building strategy that is able to produce results immediately.  In fact, the traditional motto goes something like “patience is a virtue” or “patience pays in dividends.”  Good news:  With effective social networking, you can indeed send visitors to your site as soon as you begin to promote it across the networks.

Five:  Social Networking Is Gaining On The Search Engines

While Googling a search term is still by far the dominate way to conduct a web search, more and more folks are finding that they can better sift through all of the clutter out there if they search through Twitter or other networks.  Or better yet, they can often post a query and receive numerous personalized responses in just minutes—something that’s just not possible yet with traditional search.  Social networking is starting to change how we see web search.

So as you can easily see, the immediate benefits of using social networking to drive more traffic to your website are quite evident.  And as the trend continues to develop, being ahead of this curve will only become more and more essential to the successful website’s overall traffic strategy.  As the old saying goes, take advantage now and get in on the ground floor!