If you follow these commonsense principles, and keep in mind what’s already been said, you won’t go too far wrong. A good post on a blog will be:
1. As short as possible, but no shorter. You should aim to put as much information into as few words as you can. Some posts are as short as 100 words; 300 – 400 is more common. By the time you get to 700 – 800 words, you’re getting into a large-ish post. Make sure you’re not waffling. If several important points need to be made, you might go as far as 1000 – 1100 words.
Any more than that, and unless you’re a very skilled writer, the sound you hear won’t be one hand clapping, it will be one reader after another snoring!
2. Informal and conversational, but no swearing! And while you’re at it, leave the jokes to the professional humorists. It’s not easy to be funny, especially in print. Just stick to a good professional style, without sounding too formal.
3. On topic. Focus your post on a particular topic and stick to it. Don’t ramble far and wide, or try to cover too much. Save it for another post tomorrow or the next day!
4. Informative and accurate. If you’re setting yourself up as an expert, be sure to check your facts and assertions. On the other hand if you’re stating your personal opinion, be sure to make that clear.
5. Easily understood. For a lot of readers, English isn’t their first language, so keep it simple and clear.
6. Designed for humans, not search engines. In other words, don’t go overboard with keyword optimization and h1 headline fonts at the expense of content, substance and ease of reading. Remember, search engines are a lot more sophisticated these days. If humans appreciate your posts, and visit often, search engines will too.
7. Updated regularly. Don’t let your hard-won audience drift away for lack of fresh material. Incidentally, updating your content with regular posts, and archiving your previous material, will help to increase your visibility and search engine ranking.
8. Checked for grammar and spelling. I should also say check your punctuation, as so many people get it wrong. And vary your words, instead of repeating the same ones over and over. Use a thesaurus to find a synonym.
Also, use a higher-impact word occasionally. For example, instead of saying “very,” repeatedly, see how “hugely,” “enormously” or “tremendously” look in its place. And be especially careful about “its” versus “it’s.” The one with the apostrophe is a contraction of “it is” or “it has.” If you mean “belonging to” use “its.” So “it’s a fact” is correct, but “see how ‘tremendously’ looks in it’s place” is incorrect.
9. Made available through RSS feed. Including your blog’s content in an RSS feed will increase its readership (“its,” note!) and help drive more traffic to your site.
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