Content Marketing What are the Ingredients of a Successful Blog?

Have you ever pondered over the question of how to start a successful blog? If you are new to the blogging paradigm, this is one of the few questions that pops into your head. Since the blogging industry is getting more and more saturated with every passing year, it is becoming difficult to stand out from the crowd and run a successful blog. Instead of following the conventional ways of blogging, the new-age bloggers need to add some jazz to their blogging strategy to get noticed by the audience. Once you successfully receive the attention of your audience, the next step is to build blog loyalty. However, that is something that is built with consistent efforts over time.

Coming back to our case of how to start a successful blog, here are some ingredients of a successful blog and some ways on how to run a successful blog for you. So, read on!

How to Start a Successful Blog?

Before we dig into the discussion of how to start a successful blog, it is important to determine what makes for good and effective blogs? To say it better, what are the key indicators of a successful blog?

Some common metrics that bloggers usually check to determine a successful blog include:

• Page visitors
• Page views
• Recurring visitors
• Direct visitors
• Organic Views
• Average Subscribers
• Average Number of Queries
• Comments
• Likes
• Direct Shares
• Social Shares
• Retention Rate

If your blog has a high number of almost all of the above-mentioned parameters, it means that it is a successful blog or it is on its way to become a successful blog.

Usually, a high bounce rate coupled with high search volume but less page visitors is something that indicates that your blog is not gaining the traction it needs. Therefore, you will have to make some changes in your blog to put it on the right track. 

What are the Elements of a Successful Blog?

Here are some top ingredients of a successful blog:

Striking Headline

Your blog headline is the first point of interest with your potential reader. A blog’s headline has as much importance for your readers as does the elevator pitch for the investors. Although the goal of your headline is not to give away all the information to your readers, it should be magnetic enough to grab their attention and lead them on to read the rest of your blog. 

To create a striking headline, you can use a combination of power words and emotional sentiments to engage the reader at the first look. 

Also Read: How to Generate Content Ideas?

Compelling Lead

A lead is as good as the number of people it pulls into your blog. The purpose of adding a compelling lead in your blog is to inform the readers as to what type of information, help or value they can expect to receive from your blog. 

As the famous saying goes, first impression is the last impression, your blog’s first line and first paragraph should have a compelling lead that hits the bull’s eye at the first read.

It means that you should be able to get your point across to the reader while maintaining an element of curiosity and urgency. Once the reader grabs on to your hook, they will be much more interested in reading the rest of your blog. 

Important Subheadings

Subheadings serve 3 main purposes. First, they break down the long information into small, readable chunks. Second, they help to get important points across more effectively. Finally, important subheads are good in improving on-page SEO of your blog. 

However, an important thing to remember is that the first two subheadings are the most crucial to your blog. It is important to deliver the most important and useful information to your readers within the first two sections of your blog.

Creating subheads not only improves the blog’s visual appeal but also enables readers to briefly go through the points that interest them.

If you struggle with figuring out the right type of content subheadings or layout for your blog, you can always take help from an AI Content subheading generator. 

Engaging Body that Delivers Value

Today, blog creation is more about delivering value than rambling on about things that you believe may work. 

Readers are more interested in reading blogs that smartly intertwine factual valuable information with a verbiage that is easily digestible. It means that your blog’s body must represent facts, emotional needs and useful information in an engaging and compelling manner. 

The content body you create will either establish you as an authority or it will help you develop a more personal relationship with the reader. 

For the former case, you want to stick to a single theme and offer content that solves their problem or offers insight that they won’t find anywhere else. For the latter case, you want to use stories, personal experiences, anecdotes and tid-bits from your daily life to break the communication barrier and get closer to the audience. 

Suggested Read: Building Blog Audience – 9+ Effective and Easy Ways

Although it is still important to optimize your content body with appropriate keywords to meet the SERP algorithms, more important is to deliver value. Google will understand what you write, so make sure you don’t riddle your content with keywords. 

Appealing Graphics

Same as an engaging body, appealing graphics not only bring the attention of readers to the point that you want to deliver but also help to retain their attention.

Here the important thing to keep in mind is that the graphics you use should be relevant to your discussion and must illustrate the main idea. Graphics should supplement your text and add visual appeal to the content. Make sure that the graphics you use have a typography and design consistent with your blog or brand’s theme.  

Powerful CTAs

CTAs or Call to Actions are useful for redirecting your audience to an offering or to read more blogs on your site. The first thing you should do is to decide what type of action your visitors would take while reading your blog. Once that is done, you can add relevant CTAs and buttons on your blog to redirect users for meeting different purposes.

Internal and External Links

Internal links and external links help in directing users to read more content on your website and build authority online respectively. Include links to other relevant articles on your website. For instance, a website discussing great travel destinations should have appropriate links to explore travel packages and tips on how to travel the right way within every relevant content piece. 

Internal links help in retaining readers to your website, which decreases the bounce rate and increases visitor site engagement rate. Internal links are also very helpful in improving your blog’s SEO.

Meta Titles, Meta Descriptions and Keywords

If you want your content to rank better on Search Engine Result Pages, the best way to do so is follow the search engine ranking algorithm parameters. Meta titles, meta descriptions and keywords are primary ingredients of a good-ranking blog. 

Meta description is a snippet that search engines display under your blog’s link on the search result page. You can install different SEO plugins to help you figure out the SEO parameters and follow them effortlessly. 

Want to learn more about how to write good content for your blog? 

Read More: How to do Content Writing for my Website or Blog

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)?

What are 4 to 5 characteristics of a successful blog?

1. An awesome design and meaningful purpose that resonate with one another
2. A sharp focus that helps in introducing niche expertise to the readers
3. Spectacular graphics to enhance reader engagement and information value
4. Regular content updates on new and useful topics around the blog purpose
5. A vibrant and responsive community that regularly interacts with the blog

Do bloggers make good money?

According to statistics shared on a popular site [1], an average blogger earns between $200 to $2,500 a month. The earning is usually low during the first year but as time passes, the improvement of monetization strategies can bump the blogger’s earning to a whopping $3,500 to $15,000 monthly. It all depends upon how efficiently the blogger incorporates monetization strategies into their blog. 

How do you start a successful blog for beginners?

Starting a successful blog for beginners is simple and easy. You need to follow these preliminary steps:

1. Decide on a catchy blog name and buy a blog hosting
2. Choose a blogging platform – most bloggers choose WordPress
3. Pick and install a suitable theme for your blog 
4. Install Plug-ins to track blog performance based on readers and stats
5. Do some research on blog topics and start creating compelling, SEO friendly content for your readers

Are blogs still relevant in 2022?

Blogging is not only relevant in 2022, in fact it is gaining popularity. Roughly 409 million of internet users visit any of the 20 billion blog pages monthly. Blogging has gained a 12% increase in its popularity and has gained the attention of more than 53% of content marketers in the past 5 years.

Suggested Read: Top 2022 Content Marketing Trends That Should be on Your To-Do List

Do people read blogs anymore?

Yes, people love to read blogs – whether they are short form or long form content. More than 70% of internet users read blogs and the numbers are expected to increase in upcoming years. 

References:
[1] How Much Do Bloggers Make? The Surprising Answer – FitSmallBusiness