DLM has two excellent tips to help you become a popular blogger:
Linking: I don’t care where you come from, what sports you played, or how good you think you are. If some element of your site is not linking to other blogs within your niche, you are being foolish. Blogging is all about sharing information and starting a larger conversation. The second you take a competitive stance, you are cooked. When you link to other like-minded blogs you are essentially telling them that you exist and that you are part of the conversation.
Widgets and other garbage: A blog is about your readers, it’s not about you. Everything you add to your site should be added only if the readers benefit. To this day I cringe when I see blogs with 19 badges indicating what groups they are part of, or where they are ranked on irrelevant rating sites. Who cares? How does that benefit the people visiting your site? Link.
Find this article at:
http://www.labnol.org/internet/blogging/how-to-become-a-popular-and-successful-blogger/1175/
web: http://www.labnol.org/
email: amit@labnol.org
Reader Comments
I agree to the second point about the widgets to a certain level. Sure, it doesn’t add that much value to the user experience or in other words you are not sure if it really adds any value to the user experience but the same applies for advertisements as well. Most of the time it would be annoying to the users to accidentally click on the embedded advertisements that looks like a link in the post itself. So if it really benefits the user or not applies to the advertisements too.
Written by Askar on 08.20.07
Excellent point made.
I haven’t been into track-backs and linking much, but since I have done it, not only I have received positive feedback from the Blogger, but also some flow of traffic from that track-back, or reciprocal link I received!
Written by Vikram on 10.19.07