The beginning days, weeks and months of a blog are crucial to building a reader following and increasing blog traffic. Unfortunately, many beginning bloggers fail to understand the importance of a focused point and meaning to their blogs. The “niche” is the center concept of the bloggers blog and is more important than any marketing strategy when it comes to gaining a reader following.

A niche is simply a small or finely tuned keyword or theme. When creating a blog, many bloggers find themselves writing day in and day out about the events of their personal and business lives. This is not the purpose or aim of a successful blog. A successful blog needs to have one, fine tuned thought that is expressed over and over again.

When creating your blog find one thought to center the content around. If you are interested in health and medical matters, writing about this field as a whole will give little focus to your blog. Instead, concentrate on one center thought. Health 2.0, for instance, is a very popular concept right now. A blog centered on Health 2.0 is a niche blog.

After finding that niche, you will need to write about that niche and only about that niche. Every blog entry created will need to be somehow linked to the niche industry. This provides the reader with a constant stream of information. There is nothing worse than a potential return reader finding a blog posting through a search engine on your niche and clicking on the link only to be taken to a blog that does not offer the same information. Blog readers will rarely search your archive for the information they are looking for, they will simply search another blog.

The importance of the niche when blogging can not be stressed enough. Readers want to know that the niche blog they subscribe to will consistently provide new and informative information on that niche. Straying from that center theme can cost you readers and blog views.

When choosing to begin a blog either for business or pleasure, the first decision you will have to make is in regards to the blogging platform on which you will write. The three top blogging platforms currently include: Wordpress, Blogger, and Typepad. Each of these platforms is quite different and each offer a little something different to the blogger.

Wordpress is, by far, the most utilized blogging platform. Wordpress is free to use and can be easily modified and changed to the liking of the blogger. With the use of themes, a Wordpress blog can look and feel just like an online web page without the extra cost. This ease of customization is at the heart of Wordpress popularity.

Blogger, another top blogging platform, is a great choice for the beginning blogger. Unfortunately, this blogging platform leaves much to be desired on the side of customization. With slower than other FTP access and limited control over the look, feel and functionality of the blog, serious bloggers often skip Blogger for a more advanced platform.

Typepad is a blogging platform that is aimed at the “premier” blogging crowd. Very similar in functionality to Wordpress, Typepad is certainly a choice for the business minded blogger. But, unlike Wordpress, Typepad requires a $4.95 monthly fee to maintain an active blog.

The choice you make in blogging platforms is a crucial decision. When beginning a blog, you will want to make sure the blogging platform you choose is one that you are compatible with and one that you completely understand. Reviews, experiences and suggestions online can give a blogger an inside look at the performance of a blogging platform over time. The better you understand the blogging platform and the long term goals of your blog, the better decision you will be able to make.

Your blog roll is an introduction and an advertisement all in one. The people you place on your blog roll are the ones that you are telling your readers you enjoy reading. A spot on a popular blog roll is about more than just a name and a click. It is about another blogger vouching for the content on your blog. When choosing your blog roll award recipients, a careful eye must be paid to the blogger and the overall condition and postings on the blog.

You may think you know a blogger in cyberspace until your child or your friend asks why you have a link to an X rated blog from your blog. The blog roll on your main page is viewable by all people who visit your blog. The roll is a symbol of the things you like and the things you are willing to tell your reader they should be reading. When a blogger posts things that are not appropriate to the information you are trying to express with your blog, that link can lead to decreased traffic to your blog and a bad blog name.

On the other hand, the placement of your blog on another’s blog roll holds a responsibility with it as well. You are responsible for keeping your blog postings current and in the proper taste for the viewers of the main blog. This responsibility can mean the difference in being placed on a major blog’s roll and being told “maybe next time!”

The blog roll is free advertisement for your blog. When you want to be placed on the blog roll of another bloggers site, make sure you drop them a comment or an email about your wishes. Never add them to your blog roll without their permission and keep your posts of the best possible character and content. Essentially, a blogger is sharing their traffic with you when they add your link to their site. That responsibility can not be taken too lightly.

There are bloggers out there who simply create a blog for the therapeutic quality of blog posting. There are other bloggers, business bloggers if you will, that have decided to monetize their blog and make a little extra money. The art of SEO, search engine optimization, is at the heart of changing a blog from personal to business.

SEO is a widely used term that refers to a websites, web pages or blogs ability to be noticed by webcrawlers. Webcrawlers are “robots” employed by search engines to seek out new content on the Internet and index that content in search engine rankings based upon a secret set of criteria. While that criteria formula is left unknown to bloggers, they can create an SEO friendly blog that will give the blog a step up in the rankings.

Essentially. Webcrawlers are looking for keywords. The keywords for your blog will center on the blogs niche, or central theme. If you are writing about women’s health, the keyword for the blog will be “women’s health”. But, there are millions of websites and blogs aimed at the same keyword. So, how can your blog be noticed above the others? Here are a few SEO blogging tips.

• Blog well. An effective blog posting is not going to be 100 words. In order to provide relevant information for both the reader and the webcrawlers you will need to create substantial blog postings. These blog postings will need to employ SEO writing tactics in order to maximize the keyword density % for the content. Generally, a keyword density of 2% - 5% is ideal for a webcrawler.
• Blog often. Updating your blog daily with such informative posts is just as important as providing great content. Daily, or even twice daily, blog postings will flag your blog as “active” and the webcrawlers will eventually begin to visit your blog for indexing much more often.
• Write for the web. Writing for the Internet is much different than writing a research paper for school. Web content needs to follow a concise set of rules. These rules include, writing short paragraphs and including the keywords for your blog within the first and last paragraphs of the content.

SEO practices are what makes the difference between a blog being just a nickel and dime piece of web space and a relevant money maker for the blogger.

There are quite a few very successful bloggers out there that seem to have their fingers on the pulse of the blogging world. If it just so happens that one of those bloggers is blogging in the same niche as you are, asking them to be a guest blogger on your blog, may just be the spark your blog needs to jump off the proverbial website page.

Guest blogging is the art of writing a blog post for another bloggers site. This post is not printed on the author’s blog, but on the blog of another. There will be times when a guest blogger asks permission to link to the blog containing the post. Guest blogs often caring the weight of heavy reader followings and can increase the traffic to your blog for more than just a few days.

Once the blog posting is indexed by a search engine with the guest bloggers name, there will be at least one permanent link to the blog posting available when other readers or bloggers search for the name of the guest blogger.

When first trying out a guest blogger, aim low. A beginning blog may not be able to land a veteran blogger will hundreds of thousands of daily page views as a guest blogger. On the other hand, many bloggers understand what it is like to be just starting in the world of blogging and may just give your blog a shot to be the nice guy around blogging town.

Guest bloggers are a great way to add fresh, new content to your blog. They will stir things up a bit and increase the traffic to your blog. There is nothing wrong with a little added traffic when the person or blog gaining that traffic is you! Guest blogging is a great choice for veteran bloggers and novice bloggers alike.