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Blogs are notorious for having a high bounce rate. It’s not necessarily a bad thing. Blog readers typically read the latest blog post and move on to something else so they aren’t clicking from page to page to read the information. New readers might, but loyal readers won’t.

But also keep in mind that loyal readers may not necessarily read every blog post. They do have their own lives, after all. They’ll read the posts that interest them, for sure. But they will likely just read those and not many more. One way to keep those readers on your blog longer and increase your time on site is to write a series of posts on the same topic. Here are my recommendations for making a good series:

• Write an introduction to the series first. It doesn’t need to be long. Just provide a good introduction and tell readers what to expect from upcoming posts along with an outline of your series. This doesn’t necessarily need to spell out what each individual post will be about, but it does need to cover your entire series so that readers can know what they will be getting. It builds reader expectation.
• Strict to your outline religiously. If you do need to change it have a good reason and state to your readers why you are veering from the outline.
• After you have written each new post in the series, go back to the previous post and add a link at the bottom of the post that gives readers a chance to read the next in the series without having to back up to the home page and click another link. Make it easy for them. This not only keeps your readers in the loop, but it also builds link juice from post to post and you’ll have more readers overall. As those posts age and you start getting more organic traffic from the search engines, new readers of the blog will be able to follow the series easily.
• Don’t make your posts too long. Try to break down each part of the series to a readable level. If you write more than half a dozen paragraphs in any one blog post, add subheads to break up the text, and it wouldn’t be a bad thing to add graphics either.
• Don’t make the series too long. Shorter series do much better. You can have a 5-7 blog post series with no problems, but when you start talking about 30 posts in one series then you are talking about a big commitment for your readers. You are likely to lose some of them.

Don’t do too many series posts, but every now and then it’s OK to add a series to keep your readers on their toes. Your loyal blog readers will love it and new blog readers will get a chance to see what you have to offer in a continuous strain. Building blog loyalty takes time. Time on site is one measure of loyalty, but don’t swear by it.

Blogging is a unique content mechanism. In many ways it is an individualist enterprise, but there are some consistencies between blogging techniques. Even then, within all those consistencies, there’s really no right way and wrong way. There are multiple right ways and a variety of ineffective ways to go about blogging.

If you know your topic well - and you should - you can write a 300 word blog post in 10 or 15 minutes. It’s off-the-top-of-your-head writing. But you probably don’t want to write every blog post that way. Sometimes you want to spend a little extra time composing a great blog post that will serve as good link bait and great reading for your regular readers as well as serve as a good hook for your new readers. How long should that blog post be?

I think most successful bloggers will tell you that a blog post shouldn’t be too long. You certainly don’t want to write 5,000 word blog posts every day. Occasionally is OK, but not every day.

If you spend more than an hour writing your blog posts every day then you are probably spending too much time on your blog. But if you write 15-minute blog posts every day then you are probably not spending enough time. Most of your posts can be the shorter, 300-word, 15-minute posts and you can get away with it. But you want some variety so that you don’t get into a routine that bores you and causes you to lose interest. You also don’t want your readers to lose interest and go away. So every now and then you should probably spend a little extra time writing that longer blog post just to spice things up a bit.

Here are a few tips to help you turn those social bookmarking visitors into loyal readers:

• Make your RSS subscription icon highly visible - Don’t put your RSS button at the bottom of your blog. Put it at the top where people will look first and make it big enough to see.
• Allow subscriptions by e-mail - If you use Feedburner, you can add a subscribe by e-mail button in addition to your RSS by feed reader button. This will allow new Internet users who are not familiar with RSS to subscribe to your news feed and read your blog in their e-mail.
• Add a bookmark button to every post - Whether you use ShareThis, AddThis, or one of the other umpteen bookmarking buttons available, use one. This will encourage people to bookmark your posts and share with their friends. As an added bonus, allow your readers to send your posts to their friends via e-mail.
• Reply to comments - Quickly.
• Encourage comments - Allow readers to comment on your blog and make it easy for them to do so.
• Don’t talk down to your readers - Make your blog posts interesting and easy to read. People will stick around longer.

Need someone to manage your blog?

One overlooked aspect of blogging by many new bloggers is promoting previous posts. You can actually drive traffic to your previous posts by linking to them from current posts. It’s called cross linking.

Don’t go crazy with it though. One or two cross links per post is enough and you don’t want to do it in every post. Just every once in awhile. When you find yourself blogging on a topic you’ve covered before you might allude to that previous post with a link back to it for reference. Your new blog readers will go back to look at that other post and older blog readers who have forgotten the older post will check it out again.

Just a useful tip if you’re writing your own blog.

A lot of people have high hopes for their AdSense blogs. Too high, actually. But that doesn’t mean you can’t make money on AdSense with your blog. I have one blog that only gets about 1/10th the clicks as other properties I own, but the income is double. How is that, you say?

No. 1, you have to choose a keyword niche that is profitable. Do your research. Find out what topics are clicked on the most and what keywords offer the highest payouts on AdSense.

But there is one other thing that you can do to increase your AdSense blog’s ROI and click through rate, no matter what the payout is on the clicks. This one thing can increase your CTR by 100%. It’s just a simple tweak and all you have to do is make this one change to your template’s CSS or php file and you’re in business.

What’s the tweak? The color of your in-text links. I’m not talking about your AdSense links. I’m assuming you know how to optimize your AdSense ads. I’m talking about your blog post links. If you don’t use links in your blog posts, that’s even better. Why tempt your readers to click a link that won’t make you money? But what if you do use links in your blog? Make sure those links don’t show up in blue like normal links. That will tempt people to click those links and they won’t click your ads. Instead, change your CSS file to make links appear the same color as your other text. That will make internal post links indistinguishable from surrounding text and you’ll get more clicks on your AdSense ads.

Need a blog ghostwriter?

Earlier today I posted an article on where to get article ideas from on the Article Content Provider Article Marketing Blog. You can actually use the same list to generate ideas for blog posts. Here are my top 5 recommendations for places to get blog post ideas:

1. Blogs - You should read and subscribe to as many blogs as you can within your niche. Read the top ones every day and scan the headlines of the rest. You can usually come up with good topics to blog on.
2. Search Engines - The search engines have great resources: Yahoo! Answers, Google Trends, Dogpile, and MSN Live all have resources that will help you get a good idea of what you can blog about.
3. Technorati - This isn’t on the list at the Article Marketing Blog, but it should be. Technorati has a top 10 list of most searched and blogged about topics. Good way to get ideas.
4. Old Articles - Pull up some old articles you’ve written and recycle them. Don’t print them verbatim, but with articles you can actually cut them in half and have two blog posts. Rewrite them so you don’t get dinged with duplicate content.
5. Blog Directories - This isn’t on the ACP list either, but I recommend joining Blog Catalog and MyBlogLog. Join neighborhoods and make friends. By networking with others in your niche you can get good ideas with hardly any effort at all.

If you just check these five resources once or twice a week you will never run out of blog post ideas. Of course, you can always hire a ghostwriter too. Let them come up with the ideas.

I love blog comments. Legitimate ones. Ones that make me think or provide useful information for my other readers. Disagreement even can spark great debate. I love it. But sometimes I just have to say no. When I do, I kill the comment on the spot.

I did that just a few minutes ago. The commenter had a great opportunity to be brilliant. Instead, he just wrote, “Hey, those are great facts.” And he had a legitimate website, albeit one that has nothing to do with my niche. Still, he’s a reader and probably reads this blog on a regular basis. But I dumped his comment in the trash can. Why?

Because it contributed nothing. It didn’t enlighten, it offered no new information, it didn’t ask any pertinent questions, and there was no insight that could have been helpful to anyone at all. He simply threw some words into a comment box so he could get a free link back to his blog. It was rather obvious that’s what he was doing because he put no thought into his comment. And that’s the cardinal sin of blog commenting.

If you want to leave a blog comment, that’s good. I encourage it. But follow these guidelines when you leave comments on any blog in any niche online:

• Say something intelligent about the blog post on which you are commenting
• Be sure to provide the URL to your own website or blog
• Make sure that the URL is an actual URL (avoid typos and don’t use a fake URL)
• Don’t use affiliate codes in your URLs
• If you aren’t making a comment on the content of the blog post then ask a question about the topic (bottom line: make it relevant)
• Don’t include links inside your comment unless you are linking to a relevant article or blog post that will contribute to the ongoing discussion
• If you do include a link in your comment, don’t include more than two (three at the very most)
• Don’t engage in blatant self promotion
• Provide valuable insight that will help others

Blog commenting is a great way to build links back to your own website. But do it tastefully. Don’t just try to skate by on thin ice.

Some new bloggers are confused about the difference between tags and categories so I’m going to try to clarify that for you now.

Categories are broad groups for blog posts within a niche. For instance, if you are writing a blog about real estate then you might have the following categories:

• Buyer Tips
• Seller Tips
• Mortgage Tips
• Open House

Generally speaking, you don’t want too many categories - 10 to 15 ought to do it. I don’t think I’d want more than 20, tops. But the purpose of the categories is to group all of your related blog posts so that readers can find them easily.

Now, what are tags?

Tags are a bit more specific than categories. While we recommend that you use categories as keywords, they don’t necessarily need to be keywords. But tags should be keywords that you mention in your blog posts. And keep this in mind: You can have individual blog posts in different categories use the same tags.

When you create tags, you want to use important words that are used in your blog posts. For instance, you might have two posts categorized in your Buyer Tips and Seller Tips categories that each mention negotiating and contracts. You could tag both blog posts with ‘negotiation’ and ‘contract’ tags and any other tags that are appropriate for the post. I wouldn’t use more than 5 or 6 tags per post, but they are meant to be specific keyword counters for specific individual blog posts without consideration for the category those posts are in. There is no limit to the number of tags you might have for your blog, but you should try to be consistent in your use of them.

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Do you have a method for writing your next blog post? I’ve hit upon a six-step process that is guaranteed to get your next blog a real boost in authority and sex appeal. Here’s the process:

1. Choose a category - Before you do anything else, pick your category. You should have a list of 10-15 categories in your blog repertoire. Start your blogging by choose the category. The category name, or a variation of it should be your keyword phrase.
2. Define your blog post’s keyword focus - If your category name is the keyword you’ll focus on for that blog then you’re OK. Feel free to modify the category name slightly so that every blog post in that category doesn’t use the exact same keyword phrase.
3. Write a highly optimized blog post - Write your blog post around your chosen keyword phrase, including necessary anchor text that points to the page on your website you want to promote.
4. Compose your blog post’s title - Make sure you use a keyword and that you write a blog post that tells readers precisely what to expect from your blog post.
5. Add your tags - If you are using the latest version of WordPress, pick 3-5 tags for your blog post.
6. Review and publish - Hit “Save” then preview your blog post. Fix any errors. After you’ve got a blog post that you can be proud of, hit “Publish.” Lovely, eh?

Enjoy your next blog post. This six-step process allows me to write a blog post in less than 10 minutes. If you know your topic well then you can write off the cuff and be done in no time. Your readers will think you spent hours on that blog post.

When it comes to blog posts, how short is too short?

Well, the real answer is, there is no too short. You can post a one sentence blog post and that’s better than nothing. But if you want a highly optimized blog post then the longer the better. But the real way to optimize blog posts is to make them not too short and not too long.

If it’s too long then no one will read it. If it’s too short then you might not get a good ranking in the search engines. There is an optimal length, but it isn’t counted in words or paragraphs. The optimal length is how much space you need to cover your topic adequately. But if all you can do on a given day is post, “Hey, just dropping in to say Hi,” it’s not optimal, but it’s better than nothing. Just don’t do that too often or your friends will think you don’t like them any more.