You can promote your blog and get people to come and check it out, but what they experience when they arrive is what will make them want to stay. If they like what they see, they are likely to share it with their friends, and this cycle is what builds your audience and creates more sharing and more interactivity. What measures the success of your blog is different for everyone, but a bigger audience and more interest in what you’re posting is always a good start. There are many things you can do to make your blog better and more enjoyable for your visitors, read on for tips on how to achieve this goal.

1. Get a great design.

The most important part of your blog is arguably the design of it. It’s what gives users their first impression when they land on your site, and tells them what your blog is all about before reading anything. Your design must also match the content that you’re posting as well. If you run a skateboard shop, you probably don’t want a clean-cut design because it doesn’t match the content, and it won’t appeal to your audience.

2. Post relevant and rich content.

The content you post is certainly the next most important aspect of your blog and it’s what will really get people to stick around. Don’t just post anything, make sure it’s relevant to your target audience, something that they will find interesting, useful, or fun. Also, a blog is a great way to get tons of keywords that search engines can use to rank your company. So if you choose topics that are relevant to your business, then your posts should be rich and full of great keywords.

3. Allow people to subscribe easily.

A subscription is an easy way to ensure you don’t miss posts from your favorite blogs, but you want to make sure you make it prominent so they can find it easily. It’s also a good idea to make different types of subscriptions available like rss and email subscriptions. That way, you don’t alienate any audience that doesn’t want to subscribe in a certain way.

4. Make your posts legible and easy to read.

This is another aspect of your design, making it even more important to find one that has everything you need. Make sure the font size is large enough to read, but not too large so that it’s tough to look at. The color contrast is also a concern. Black text on a white background provides the most contrast (and vice versa), and doesn’t make your eyes tired if you look at it for long periods of time (like when reading a blog post). You don’t need to use black and white, but extreme contrast is definitely important for legibility.

5. Promote sharing and make it easy.

Add sharing buttons to each post so that people don’t have to do anything more than click a button to share your article on Facebook and tweet on Twitter. If you don’t make it easy, they won’t do it! You can also promote sharing even more and mention sharing the article at the end of each post to make sure they got the message if they receive it through email or an rss reader.

6. Don’t constantly sell, but provide resources and valuable knowledge.

If you’re running a business blog, it’s certainly a great place to promote what you do. And if you blog about relevant services that you provide, it’s only natural that you would point out that you provide this service and can help your audience out. However, if you are constantly selling, people will probably lose interest and go elsewhere. Your audience wants value and resources, so chose your topics wisely and remember to bring diversity to your blog.

7. Make it searchable.

Search functions are built in to most blog platforms, making it an easy thing to incorporate. Someone may find your blog through a friend and then want to search to find other topics. Make sure you make searching easy to use and easy to find.

8. Make related content easy to find.

Using categories is an easy ways to link relevant articles together. If you categorize all of your posts, and then add a list of categories in the sidebar, people can click on different categories to see all the posts that pertain to that topic. Categories usually show up in each post as well, with a link that can take you to that same list.

9. Keep your homepage easy to look at but still informative.

The layout and design of your homepage is important, as I mentioned before it’s what gives your users their first impression of your blog. You want to make sure your users can see and read what you’re about, but not be overwhelmed by too much information. Including the full post on the homepage is often overwhelming. But if you include just an excerpt of each post you can limit the amount of text on your homepage, making it not quite so long.

10. Don’t use too many ads.

Ads provide a great way to make some money and offer your audience additional resources and information. However, too many ads can be distracting and take away from your posts. I would especially recommend against any moving ads, it’s very tough to read something when you see moving objects on the screen in another area.

Creating a blog is a great way to get lots of content on the web quickly and easily. But you want to make sure you’re doing all you can to build your audience and provide value and resources for your fans. Happy blogging!