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.