Overview of a Blog Post

A blog post is the most important part of your blog. Your posts are the entries that take up at least 75% of the screen space on your blog's site. Blog posts appear in reverse chronological order, so your blog stays timely, fresh and meaningful to visitors. It's your current content (in the form of blog posts) that will keep readers coming back to your blog, again and again, to read what you have to say about your blog's topic.

The Blog Post Title

The title of your post is basically a headline. It is meant to lure readers in and entice them to read more. At the same time, blog titles are a useful tool in terms of search engine optimization. Search engines value titles strongly in ranking results and using popular keywords in your blog titles can help drive traffic to your blog. Just be careful to use keywords that are relevant to your blog post's content else your title could be considered spam by search engines and negatively affect the traffic sent to your blog.

Publication Date

Since blogs are most successful when they are updated frequently and provide timely content, readers will check the publication dates of your posts to determine the value of your blog. Blog posts that are published erratically with long gaps of time between posts are typically considered to be less valuable than blogs that offer more current and consistent posts.

Author Byline

The blog post's author byline is important to identify who wrote each post and is particularly important for blogs that are written by multiple authors. Furthermore, the author byline typically provides a link to your About Me page, which provides additional promotion for you and your blog.

Images

Images provide more than just color and visual relief from text-heavy web pages on a blog. They also act as another way you can drive traffic to your blog. Many people perform keyword searches through search engines for the purpose of finding images and pictures online. By strategically naming the images you use in your blog posts to match relevant keyword searches, you can drive some of that image search traffic to your blog. Just make sure the images you use to enhance your blog rather than detract from your blog and confuse your readers.

Links and Trackbacks

Most blog posts include links within the content of the post. Those links are used for two purposes. First, links are used to cite an original source of information or an idea used in a blog post or to provide additional information beyond the scope of your post. Second, they provide a breadcrumb trail and a tap on the shoulder to bloggers whose posts you are linking to in the form of a trackback. A trackback generates a link on the blog you're linking to in your post, which acts as an additional source of traffic to your blog as readers on that blog are likely to click on the trackback link and find your blog.

Comment Section

Aside from your blog post content, blog comments are the most important part of your blog. Comments are where your readers have an opportunity to join the conversation. It's essential to the success of your blog that you respond to the comments left by your readers to show you value them and to further build the two-way conversation on your blog and the sense of community your blog creates.

What Is a Blogroll

A blogroll is a list of links on a blog, usually on the sidebar for easy access, that the blog writer likes and wants to share.

A blogger might have a blogroll to help promote their friend's blogs or to give their readers a wider variety of resources about a particular niche. 

Some bloggers divide their blogrolls into categories. For example, a blogger who writes about cars could divide his or her blogroll up into categories for links to other blogs he or she writes, other blogs about cars, and other blogs that are on an unrelated topic.

The blogroll can be set up based on each blogger's personal preferences, and it can be updated at any time.

Blogroll Etiquette

It's an unwritten rule in the blogosphere that if a blogger puts a link to your blog in their blogroll, you should reciprocate and add that blog's link to your own blogroll. Of course, each blogger approaches this with their own blogging goals in mind.

Sometimes, you may not like a blog that links to you through its blogroll. There are many reasons why you may decide not to reciprocate a blogroll link, but it's good blogging etiquette to at least review each blog that links to you through its blogroll to determine if you'd like to add that blog to your own blogroll or not.

Another appropriate move is to contact the blogger that listed your link and thank them for adding you to their blogroll. This should be done especially if their mention is driving significant traffic to your website, but even if you don't particularly like the blogroll owner or their content.

However, contacting someone to ask permission to add their blog to your blogroll is probably unnecessary. Since that blogger has a public website that's available on the internet for anyone to see, they surely won't mind if you add another link to their site.

Also, asking a blogger to add your own website to their blogroll is not good etiquette, even if you've already added their blog to your own blogroll. If that blogger wants to add your website to their blogroll on their own accord, then that's great, but don't put them in the strange position of having to turn you down directly.

Blogrolls as Blog Traffic Boosters

Blogrolls are great traffic driving tools. With each blogroll that your blog is listed on, comes the possibility that readers of that blog will click on your link and visit your blog.

Blogrolls equate to publicity and exposure across the blogosphere. Additionally, blogs with many incoming links (particularly those from high-quality blogs as rated by Google PageRank) are usually ranked higher by search engines, which can bring additional traffic to your blog.

If you're the one with the blogroll, it'd be wise to update the links occasionally. We don't mean remove your favorites and replace them with new links even if you don't like those sites, but instead to at the very least add new links sometimes or rearrange the order of the links to keep things fresh. 

If your visitors know that your blogroll is updated every so often, like the same day once a month, they'll likely visit your page on a routine basis to see which new blogs you recommend.

Creating a Blogroll

The word "blogroll" sounds complicated, but it's just a list of links to websites. You can easily make one no matter what blogging platform you use.

For instance, if you're using a Blogger account, you can do this a number of ways. Just add a Link List, Blog List, or HTML/JavaScript widget to your blog that contains the links to the blogs you want to advertise.

If you have a WordPress.com blog, use the Links menu in your dashboard.

For any blog, you can edit the HTML to link to any blog. 

Top Blog Statistics Trackers

If you want to create a successful blog, it's important to understand where traffic to your blog is coming from and what people do when they visit your site. A number of trackers are available to bloggers to analyze the metrics of your blog and assist you in making decisions about your blog content.

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StatCounter

What We Like

• Simple installation.
• Stats can be public.
• Free version available.
• A 30-day trial of paid features.

What We Don't Like

• The free version is severely limited.
• No analysis of data conversion to sales and retention.

The advanced functionality of StatCounter is available for a fee, but most of the metrics a typical blogger needs are included in the free package. It's important to note that the free version of StatCounter only counts up to 100 visitors at a time before it resets and starts counting again. That means only the last 100 visitors to a website are included in the statistics displayed.

StatCounter generates activity alerts, descriptive information about your visitors while they visit, and the path they take to reach your site. The companion mobile apps let you take your stats with you wherever you go.

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Google Analytics

What We Like

• Live results.
• Lots of customizable settings.
• Email alerts.
• Mobile access.

What We Don't Like

• Might be confusing to use.
• The mobile app is limited.

Google Analytics has been around for a while and is considered one of the most comprehensive website tracking tools. Reports are available down to minuscule detail, and users can set up custom reports, which comes in handy for bloggers who like to track specific advertising campaigns. The basic Google Analytics service is available free of charge. Free Google Analytics apps are available to monitor your site's stats while you are on the go.

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AWStats

What We Like

• Completely free.
• Includes all the basics.
• Shows bandwidth usage.

What We Don't Like

• Basic user interface.
• Limits new visits to 60 minutes.

Although AWStats isn't as user-friendly as some of the other analytics trackers, it is free and offers a good amount of metrics related to a blog's traffic. AWStats tracks the number of visitors, unique visitors, visit duration, and last visits. It identifies the most active days of the week and rush hours for your blog, as well as the search engines and searches phrases used to find your site.

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Clicky Real-Time Web Analytics

What We Like

• Comprehensive results.
• Modern user interface.
• Affiliate program.
• Pro versions are inexpensive.

What We Don't Like

• Tracks 3,000 page views per day (more for pro accounts).
• Missing features in the free edition.

Clicky provides real-time web analytics. The sleek interface presents reports that contain a high level of detail on every segment. Gather stats on each individual who visits your site. Users particularly like the graphic "heat maps" that show the density by visitors, segments, or pages.

Go to your blog and view on-site analytics on how many visitors are on the site and page you are viewing in real-time. Generate heat maps using the widget without leaving your blog.

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Matomo Analytics

What We Like

• Free for self-hosting.
• Real-time results.
• Widget support.
• Pageview-based payment system.

What We Don't Like

• Results could be easier to read.
• Slow to display large amounts of data.
• It doesn't log the amount of time visitors spend on pages.

Matomo (formerly Piwik) comes in self-hosted and cloud-hosted versions. You can opt to install Matomo on your own server at no cost with the free version of the analytic software, or you can host your analytics on Motomo's cloud server. This fee-based version comes with a 30-day free trial.

With Motomo, you have full control and ownership of your data. The software is easy to use and customizable. If you need your analytics on the go, download the free Motomo Mobile app, which is available for both Android and iOS devices. 

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Woopra

What We Like

• High capacity free plan.
• Clean and modern interface.
• Heavy app integration.
• Comprehensive trigger/action features.

What We Don't Like

• Expensive non-free accounts.
• Difficult to implement a tracking code.

For company blogs and websites, Woopra may be the best choice. With it, users can visualize every interaction with every visitor, down to the individual level, and it can be used to individualize customer service

Woopra prides itself on tracking anonymous visitors to your website from their first visit until they identify themselves, and beyond.

Woopra provides advanced analytics that include customer journeys, retention, trends, segmentation, and other insights. It provides real-time analytics, automation, and connections with other apps.