51 ways to make your blog popular

I have been working on blogs for the last 5 years and have so far learned many techniques that help us to make our blogs popular and effective. I learnt a lot from other bloggers in our niche. Here is the list 51 ways you can implement to make your blog more popular and successful:

1. Good domain name – It becomes easy for your blog visitors to remember your blog name if it is proper and short. For most of people, it’s really difficult to remember a long website address. So try to get a short and domain with proper keyword as much possible.
2. Regular posting – In case of blogs, regular posting is required. Try to update your blog more frequently. If you are updating your blog once a week right now, try to update it twice in the week. The more content you have on your blog, chances of your blog, appearing in all search engines for various terms increases. And if you have a new blog, update it with new posts very often. If you are able to update your blog on regular basis, you will have more traffic and more loyal readers for your blog.
3. Forum signatures – Use your blog links in your forums signature. Some of popular forums related to Search engines and internet marketing are DP forum, Sitepoint, Seo Chat. So one should search for forums related to their niche and devote some time there. These forums will give lots of quality links, traffic and popularity to your blog.
4. Link trading – Exchange links with blog/websites of your niche. When you have your blog included in top websites or blog of your area, will result in lots of loyal visitors to your blog.
5. Paid advertising – You can use pay per click advertising program like Google adwords, Microsoft Advertising etc if you have some money to advertise your blog on top websites or blogs. So in this kind of advertising scheme, you will be paying only for the clicks that are made on your blog.
6. Adding the Mata tags – Fill up all the Meta tags on your blog. Through Google don’t give much value to Meta tags, but still there are some search engines that give Meta tags some value. So there is nothing wrong in trying this technique.
7. Submitting on Social bookmarking websites – If you have some decent posts on your blog, you can submit them on social bookmarking websites. Some of the popular social bookmarking sites where you can share your blog/website content are Digg, del.icio.us, propeller, Mixx etc. All these social media sites can bring tons of traffic and targeted visitors to your blog site.
8. Making comments – Don’t forget to make comments on the top blogs/website of your niche. Leaving a value added comments on blogs will build some valuable links and visitors for your blog. This is a great way to have interaction with the similar minded blogs/website of your area.
9. Replying to the questions – When a user send an email or add a new comment to your blog in the form of question, don’t forget to reply to that. When you continuously reply to your readers comments, then they will become your regular readers.
10. Using StumbleUpon – Create an account on Stumbleupon and submit your favorite stuff here. Add Good Stumbler’s in your friend list and review other people post/blog here. This way you will also get your blog/post reviewed by other stumbler’s.
11. Sphinn It – If you blog about blogging, social media and internet marketing kind of stuff, submit your stories on sphinn.com
12. Use attractive Avatar – Choose an avatar for your profile that motivates people to click on it. Try something very funny or strange icon as your avatar.
13. On Facebook – create a profile on Facebook and submit your blog there. And get involved with other users there.
14. Blog logo – Create an attractive logo for your blog and use it in your blog.
15. Reviewing other bloggers – Review other bloggers of your niche. Also give link to new as well as popular bloggers of your area.
16. Create lists – Create a list of things or bloggers of your niche. Contribute on other blogs as a guest blogger which will help you get some loyal readers for your blog.
17. Blogging problems – notify bloggers if you notice some error with their blogs like 404 problem, page not found, broken links, design related issue and browser compatibility etc.
18. Blogs voting – submit the blog posts of your favorite or top blogs of your niche in social media sites like dig, StumbleUpon, del.icio.us etc
19. Text readable – make your blog text more readable by using proper titles, headings, bold, italic, lists, proper fonts and other means for making your text more readable. Use H1 and H2 tags properly.
20. Proper text & background color – Use proper text and background color on your blog. Use the color scheme in a way that makes your text more clear and understandable.
21. Image in Posts – use images in your blog posts to make them attractive and popular among your blog readers. But use images according to your blog posts.
22. Using screenshots – use screenshots to make your posts more clear and effective. If you have a screenshot that clears your point in a better way, don’t forget to use that screenshot as a part of your post.
23. Small size images – don’t use big size images. If you blog has lots or some images of big size, then it will take lots of time for your blog readers to open your blog. So try to use small size images. And if you must include a big image, use their thumbnails.
24. Conduct interviews – conduct interviews of the famous and most interesting bloggers of your niche and some bloggers who blog about general things in life.
25. Use blogging communities – create your profile on blogging communities like Mybloglog, Blogcatalog, Bumpzee, Spicypage etc. Add your blog there and get in touch with other bloggers of your niche there. These blogging communities give you a chance to meet and get in interaction with millions of bloggers whom you otherwise will never been able to get in touch with.
26. Pinging services – Use pinging services like Google blog search, Technorati pinging and ping-o-matic for distributing and spreading your latest blog posts all over the internet.
27. Give away links – Give links to favorite bloggers of your niche and hope some of them may link back to you as well.
28. Using RSS feeds – Show a large RSS feed icon on your blog so that the visitors on your blog can easily subscribe t your blog feeds. You can use Feedburner service to burn the feed for your blog. Also give the visitors option to get subscribed via email as well. When you create an account on Feedburner, you will have more idea about the number of people who have subscribed to your blogs.
29. E-mail Signature – use your blog name and url in your all outgoing email signatures.
30. Too many ads – Don’t fill your blog with lots of ads. Instead use fewer ads if you must use them.
31. Starting a contest – start an interesting contest on your blog and spread it around.
32. Creating a poll – Creating polls and asking questions from your readers will also make your blog popular.
33. Writing e-books – write e-books and offer for free to your blog readers. With this you can offer other freebies like T-shirts to your selected readers.
34. Top commenter’s – Include your top commenter’s in your blog sidebar. And give special attentions to the top commenter on some occassions.
35. Wikipages – add your blogs and its posts in various wiki sites including Wikipedia.org, wiki.com, wikihow.com, ehow.com etc. But don’t try to spam them.
36. Classifieds – submit your product related entries on classified sites. There are many free classified sites where you can submit your stuff.
37. Group Discussion – participate on Google, Yahoo and MSN groups and crate group targeting your blog there.
38. Paid review – Ask some famous bloggers to do the paid review for your blog.
39. Yahoo Answer – participate on Yahoo answer, Answerbag and kind of stuff and spread your blog there.
40. Article distribution – write some articles and submit them on ezine websites. Some of famous ezine websites where you can submit your articles are ezinearticles.com, findarticles.com, goarticles.com etc
41. Surveys – do surveys and publish the results for your blog readers.
42. Tools – build some tools that your visitors may be interested in and offer it for free.
43. Newsletter – start offering newsletter for your blog and ask people subscribe to them.
44. Social media activities – work actively in social media sites by voting, commenting and submitting the interesting stories.
45. Good design – Create an attractive design for your blog and if you are not good in designing take some designer help.
46. Blog directories – Submit your blog on famous blog directories. Some big blog directories are mentioned here.
47. Search Engine submission – Submit your blog url on major search engines including Google, Yahoo & MSN.
48. Feed submission – submit your blog rss to the popular rss submission websites.
49. Blogger forums – go and spread your blog on blogger forums and reply to the interesting stories there.
50. Squidoo & Hubpages – create a lens on Squidoo about your blog site and let the traffic flow from there on your blog. Also create a hub on Hubpages to get more popularity.
51. LinkedIn – create a profile for you on LinkedIn, Claimid kind of social media sites and include your blog there.

These are some of the steps on can follow to make his/her blog popular. I’ve so far implemented some of them and will try some of them in the coming days. If you have something more to add to this list, let me know I will add that to this list.