Hi, I am Praneeth.
In this blog, you will learn what is a good blog and 10 ways you can make your good.
Without further ado let’s get started.
Here is a 30000-foot view of the blog.
What is the definition of a good blog?
A blog is an informational website whereas and article,
The definition of a good blog is about how valuable providing the blog is to the audience.
A good blog is a blog that compels you to share it with your friends and family to let them know the amazing resource of information you found.
A good blog is a blog that adds value and enriches lives to the audience a lot,
What problem does the blog solve and how it solves it in the audience’s life defines the meaning of a good blog?
It is all about how helpful, user-centric, value providing a blog is that determines whether a blog is good or not.
This may seem very confusing for a beginner to understand so here are 10 things that make a blog good or are signs of a good blog and how you can also make your blog good.
10 ways you can make a good blog or a blog good.
Here is a quick list of the 10 ways you can make a blog good.
- Helpfulness.
- Readability.
- Consistency.
- Well designed and structured.
- Speed and uptime are good.
- Always have a Call To Action at the end.
- Focused on a niche and a target audience.
- SEO or money is second, the user is first.
- Brings something unique and different to the table.
- Credibility is always there.
Let’s learn the ways in detail.
-
Helpfulness.
The number 1 rule of having a good blog is to make sure that your blog is helpful first.
Your blog has to be helpful, informative, value providing, first.
It is very easy or not so specific enough to know if your blog is helpful or not.
Here are things to look at to know if your blog is helpful or not.
- Most of your blogs are long like 2000 words.
When, I say more word count, what I am referring to is the quality of content,
More word count means more information and better content with more value addition.
Don’t add the words to the blog just for the sake of it,
Add words to your blogs to increase the level of helpfulness in your blogs.
Add words to increase your blog content and information on that topic making your blog the ultimate resource possible.
It is not just that,
According to backlinko, blogs with more word count of approximately over 3000 tend to rank high on Google because those blogs are the ultimate resource for a topic for people,
Blogging is essentially being helpful to the audience by providing information to them on your website that ranks on search engines.
2. Readability is good.
Another important aspect of having a good blog or making one is to make sure that,
Your blog is easily readable and skimmable to the readers.
There is a lot of information on the internet,
A lot of places where information is a lot helpful to the audience,
Even though there are a lot of helpful resources on the internet, only a few blogs are successful,
- According to Ahrefs, 90% of content on the internet gets no traffic from SEO.
This 90% of blogs are going to be helpful there is no doubt about it at least half of them,
But blogs are not the only helpful resources,
You also have real highly helpful resources published by government and educational institution with a lot of original data but,
They are not equally successful and one of the main reasons why they are not successful is,
The thing is how easy your blog is to read.
If your blog contains a lot of advanced terms like professional terms of your niche which your audience doesn’t understand clearly,
Irrespective of how helpful your blog is going to be It is not going to be a value providing resource to the users.
Look the problem with most of the bloggers is that when they are writing blogs,
They tend to look at the audience as themselves like they know a lot of things on a niche like all those technical terms and details of the blog and forget about beginners,
But the sad reality is that Over 80 to 90% of the audience are going to be beginners on the subject that is why they are googling them to learn that subject over and over again.
Look according to Optimonster,
- 73% of visitors skim rather than read the blog post thoroughly.
- The average reader only spends 37 seconds reading an article or blog post.
At the end of the day, it is not just about being helpful, it is equally or more important which is being able to make your blog easy to read.
3. Consistency.
It doesn’t matter how good or helpful your blogs are or how easy to read your blogs are,
If you are super lazy at creating and publishing content on your website.
It is not going to be a good website.
If you publish blogs like with a frequency or a posting schedule of 1 blog a month type of thing,
Oh man, it is not going to be a good blog at all.
According to Isitwp,
- B2B companies that blogged 11 times or more per month got 3X more traffic than those blogging only once or less per month
- B2C companies that blogged 11 times or more got more than 4X as many leads as those that publish only 4-5 posts per month.
- Companies that publish 16+ blog posts per month get nearly 3.5x more traffic than those that publish 0-4 monthly
- Blogs that post daily get 5X more traffic compared to those that don’t.
It is also common sense, more blogs you have on your website, the more chances you have to be more helpful to the audience,
More helpful, value-adding, and useful your blog is,
Then your blog is good.
If you are confused in figuring out the ideal number of posts you should publish on your website,
You can read my blog on how often you should publish a blog.
At last,
Consistency is key to the success of a blog and making it good or bad.
4. Well designed and structured.
This one is crucial.
Even though it is a bad idea to judge a book by its cover, people on the internet do judge a book by its cover.
Look,
First impressions are very crucial things on blogs, I would say even more crucial than content or the information in the blog itself.
A blog with poorly designed and structured can cause a lot of problems like,
- Instant bounce away from an audience which can hurt Google rankings.
- No audience retention to convert it into leads.
- No dwell time of traffic to monetize it with ads.
Well,
What are the things you can do to make sure that your blog is well designed and structured to have a good blog?
- Pick a clean and neat WordPress theme with no sidebars or few widgets in sidebars.
- Regular usage of images in blogs as a single image can speak a thousand words and grab hundreds of eyes to your blog.
- Better easy site navigation and structure.
- Blog posts are nicely edited using short paras, using subheadings, using bullet points, bolding sentences, reducing spelling mistakes, and errors on the blog.
- Decrease ad placement on your blog, make it less aggressive.
I would want to specifically highlight a few important things here though,
Always include categories and subcategories in the menu header section of your blog and fill all your blogs in different categories,
Have a silo structure for your blog to actually improve the site navigation and structure and make it easy for the audience to find blogs on your website fast.
Let’s see what’s next.
5. Loading Speed and uptime are good.
Another important thing about blogs You should know is,
Loading speed and the uptime of the website or the blog must be top-notch to make a blog good.
It does not matter how good or helpful your blogs are, how easy to read or well designed and structured your blogs are,
If they take 10 seconds to load on a mobile device, it is just terrible.
Nobody stays that long for the blog to completely load to read the blog.
According to stats,
- According to Google Website Bounce rate increases by 32% If the loading speed is between 1-3 seconds whereas the bounce rate is 123% if the Website loads between 1 to 10 seconds.
- 40% of people leave a website that takes more than 3 seconds to load.
- According to Cloudflare, Pages that loaded in 2.4 seconds had a 1.9% conversion rate and the conversion rate declined as an increase in website loading speed.
Here is the image of how according to google, loading speed impacts the bounce rate of your website.
Another important thing is the uptime of the website,
Fortunately, if your blog loads quite fast on mobile devices but has a bad uptime, it is terrible as well if users can’t see your website on the internet.
How come is your blog going to be helpful if readers just can’t view the blog on their browsers.
If you haven’t invested in website hosting or just moving around with looking for a different website hosting companies,
I would like to highly recommend you using Bluehost hosting,
The reason being is,
- The amazing loading speed of the website.
- 99.9% uptime guarantee.
- A free domain name, domain privacy, and SSL certificate for a year.
- Free caching and security updates.
- Hosted over 2 million websites on the internet so far and Recommended by WordPress since 2005.
Use the link to get your Bluehost hosting with a 65% of discount
I don’t want to get into much details of the Bluehost hosting here,
Fortunately, I have written a detailed guide on Bluehost hosting company in an honest review, you can check it out here.
If you already have a web hosting service for your website or blog And have a bad uptime,
Read my guide on using CDN and how it can improve your website uptime and loading speed.
Read my guide on using WordPress plugins to increase loading speed.
Read my guide on how using excessive WordPress plugins can impact website performance.
Let’s see what’s next.
6. Always have a Call To Action [CTA] at the end.
Another important thing to have To maintain a good blog Is,
Always have a call to action at the end of each blog.
It is very important to have a call to action At the end of the blog Because,
There are like stats like,
80% read your title but 20% click to it, even in that 20% a very large percentage of the blog will just skim the blog read end or conclusion first,
If it was good then they will read the blog totally,
I do this whenever I research for content in other blogs.
A very small percentage of people are going to read your blogs Who are going to be a target audience,
In such a case, It is highly important To have a call to action And direct your audience mind to different things including things like,
- Subscription to your blog post newsletter.
- Follow on social media.
- Read other blogs.
The reason you should have a CTA is the audience has got the value and help that they are looking for reading the blog.
The audience might not know what to do next After reading the blog, they might be confused about further steps they have to take.
In such cases, they are more likely to get converted into leads when they are given value by letting them read blogs full of value and information.
The audience is more likely to be a reader for your blog or a part of your blog as a loyal audience as it is going to help you and the audience both at the same time,
You can get a lead for your blog for pitching sales or a loyal supporter,
The audience can get additional value by being a lead for you as they have already experienced your value in the blog before.
- The stat is that 80% of all the daily traffic on a blog consists of new visitors.
In such a case, making your blog in a way that converts visitors into an audience is important if not all your blog visitors are new without leads and sales.
It is very important to have a CTA at the end of the blog post.
And all great blogs do have a clear CTA.
7. Focused on a niche and target audience.
The most important thing about blogs Is they always have a focus on a niche subject instead of a wide variety of subjects.
This makes a blog Very good because When a blog is focused on a single niche,
It can become an authority on the subject among the audience.
It can express its expertise and be more engaging to users if a blog talks about all the things related to a niche within a niche solving all the problems within a Niche,
Blogs that are focused on a single niche Are going to Rank higher in search engines As well.
The good side of all the good blogs that you see on the Internet around is always focused on a single niche and talking to a specific audience In detail.
This builds a loyal community base on the blog, be more engaging and useful to readers and audience when all of the problems are solved in a single blog,
This can help establish brand And authority on the subject.
This will eventually lead to more sales due to being helpful and good for the audience at the end of the day,
Having a blog on a multi-niche subject talking about a wide variety of things is a big sign of a bad blog.
Such blogs Are not going to be engaging to the audience. They don’t build a loyal community base on the blog nor do they build a brand By being helpful to the audience.
Fortunately, I have written a couple of blogs on this topic,
You can read them,
- Read How to select a topic for your blog.
- Read how to select a niche Vs micro-niche market for your blog.
With that said let’s see another way of making your blog good.
8. SEO or making money is the second priority, have a user-first mentality.
All good blogs of history and today which are there are focused on user-first mentality blogs.
At the end of the day if you’re in the SEO game,
This is what Google wants all the bloggers to focus on,
Google has constantly evolved and changed Bringing up new updates in its algorithms,
By investing billions of dollars Into Technology only to serve the most highly relevant and credible sources of information on the search results for the users.
You consider any Google algorithm update That has happened in the past And it’s happening in the future as well.
All are contributing to the betterment of the User experience on the blog.
Let’s consider a few examples here,
- Google Panda and penguin update in the past were Focusing on Penalizing bad sites That are either keyword-stuffed low-quality content or with spammy backlinks To manipulate search engines For higher rankings As they don’t deserve it which can cause a bad User experience for the users on Google.
- Google’s rank brain algorithm update which is the top 3 ranking factor that monitors UX on the SERPs of Google and has the power to decrease the importance of backlinks and other factors if UX is good.
- Google’s core web vitals update in 2021 also focuses on the Loading speed of the website and the security and safety of the user on the website.
At the end of the day, It is what Google wants which is the betterment of the User experience on the website.
If you’ve also focused on user-first mentality, Google is going to focus On you because you are The most important resource for Google.
After all, a lot of people have Google and SEO first mentality.
And Google job is to show you or your blog in the search Results high penalizing all the people who try to trick and manipulate Google for higher rankings and more traffic artificially,
If you make the User experience good on your blog then there is no stopping you from earning more money and high ranking in SEO.
I have seen many people focusing on SEO first and users second mentality,
Fortunately, I have written a couple of guides to help them out,
You can check them below,
- Pros and cons of building backlinks.
- Why you should never buy backlinks.
- Pros and cons of Keyword research.
- Are SEO tools are worth it.
- Are SEO Services are worth it.
Keeping user first mentality priority You can make a lot more money In SEO and blogging, Then those who have SEO first mentality.
9. Bring something unique and different to the table.
Another important thing People miss or don’t realize is the fact that they need to be a bit creative.
Helpful does not mean Serving the same information In a more easy to understand way That’s already present In thousands of other blogs on the internet.
You should come up with something unique and different on the table.
Well, I am referring to things like,
- Coming up with Non Obvious tips and pieces of information that’s already present In thousands of other blogs, do your extensive research and come up with new ideas and information and tips in your blog that is not either discussed fully or not addressed at all in other blogs.
- Coming up with other Media like images, not those lame stock photos, get creative, make some custom and real images, infographics, screenshots, graphs, charts.
- Coming up with video content on the blog.
- Coming up with more stats and facts in the blog to convince your statement on the blog.
- Coming up with stories that users can connect to within blogs, creating a common ground between you and the user.
When you have this mentality of the user first then you can come up with lots of ideas To how else you can add value to your end-user.
I would like to stress a lot on things like Coming up with Custom images instead of stock photos in the blog.
A few valid reasons why you should avoid stock photos on your blogs are,
- Most of the time they don’t engage the audience as they are not at all relevant to the information present.
- They are used by everyone and present all over the internet so there’s nothing new and exciting on the blog.
- Stock photos can look boring or fake or not so authoritative and authentic to users.
- They are expensive.
- Using them can Lower rankings in Google.
I highly recommend you considering Canva for your blog.
- 32% of marketers say visual images are the most important form of content for their businesses.
- Articles with images get 94% more views
- The top three things that make content effective are audience relevance (58%), engaging, and compelling storytelling (57%) and triggers a response/action (54%).
Canva is a free graphic design tool for bloggers and nondesigners.
It is the single biggest thing that I have done to my blog which has yielded amazing results to me.
Here is a list of the top features of the Canva.
- You get access to 420000 Templates.
- You can create custom images And post them for social media channels.
- You can create many things like Social media posts and Resumes Brochures and many other things.
Use the link to get to Canva and use the discount on the signup for Canva pro.
Fortunately, I have written a detailed guide on a complete review of CANVA.
You can refer to the guides here,
- Read Canva review.
- Read Google search console review.
- Read the benefits of graphic design.
- Read the future of graphic design
If you are a regular reader of my blog You should notice something very important.
I don’t use stock photos on my website. Rather I use Custom images that I make on Canva.
The fact is that,
- Using photos of real people instead of stock photos can result in a 35% conversion increase.
Use Canva to create custom images for your blogs as I do.
At the end of the day,
It is just about bringing up something unique and different on the table, unlike the competition.
This way, you can stand alone and apart from the competition and be real value to the audience and rank high on search engines.
10. Credibility is always there.
I think I should have placed this Higher Because this deserves Top 3 things to do to make your blog good.
Credibility is the most important thing That you should build on your blog or in the most successful blogs. That makes them good or I would say amazing.
I am referring to things like how credible your blog information is to the audience.
How credible you are as a person to the audience.
If you fail at this or the blog fails to establish credibility with the user It is a bad blog.
Even Google wants the credibility of the blog,
That is the reason it has brought a bunch of updates in the past like YMYL and EAT.
And in core web vitals update which is core update in Google 2021.
It includes the credibility and reliability of the website by making SSL certificate ranking factors.
Here are 15 things to look for and do if you want to make your website or blog more credible and reliable.
- Get featured as a source in authority websites.
- Increase Moz rank and Moz trust.
- Have an SSL certificate on your website.
- Have the author information in the blog.
- Have an about page.
- Get backlinks from authoritative websites and build profile backlinks.
- Get no link mentions in other blogs.
- Get interviewed on other blogs.
- Have a privacy policy and refund policy if you sell products.
- Have positive reviews for your local business.
- Have affiliate discourse and terms and conditions and disclaimer pages on your website.
- Get involved in the industry, don’t just be a ghostwriter.
- Have a Wikipedia page.
- If possible be an author of a book.
- Build more engagement on social media to your brand, shares, likes, followers, branded searches, etc
It’s all about building trust Between the audience and Google.
These are all the possible ways you can build the credibility of your blog or website with the audience and Google Remember Google’s algorithm job is not just about serving highly relevant information to the user,
It is also about checking how credible the information is to the user.
If your blog Does not build the credibility it requires Then it is a bad blog.
These are all the possible ways you can make your blog good, lets now end the blog.
Ending remarks.
There you go I have answered everything related to What is a good blog and how you can make your blog good.
Do comment down What do you think about,
What is a good blog and did I miss any other things that make a blog good in this blog.
Share the blog with your family and friends if you found it helpful and useful,
Sharing is caring.
Read my other blogs,
I will catch you next time,
Till then keep learning and keep growing.