To blog or not to blog is the question most online business owners ask themselves these 
days with the internet now full of self taught so called experts filling pages and pages of Google, Twitter, Facebook and Google + feeds with advice, instructions, commentary and critique in just about every area of our lives one could think of but why?
Well of course the inner cynic in me naturally replies in a big loud voice – it’s all for SEO purposes, once you have bought a domain it is reiterated again and again (yes all through blogs) that the only way for your domain to gain PageRank and Domain Authority is to add pages and add them regularly. I think the suggested ideal cadence is two to three times a week otherwise apparently Google gets twitchy that yes you are trying to play the system by adding empty content specifically targeted at chosen keywords and come on lets be honest we have all done it even the best bloggers in the world are guilty from time to time of adding unnecessary repetitive keywords into their blogs.
As someone who is relatively new to the art of blogging I am the first to admit I am still finding my feet and place in this somewhat ruleless and directionless space. I have had no formal training in creative writing or journalism and my only real qualification is my propensity to write long and detailed emails to work colleagues which even I accept is not always a good thing… But yet here I am blogging away at least once a week trying to find my niche in the expired domains market without repeating content and yes boring my readers to death..
To better understand what is a truly good informative blog versus a standard SEO ploy I have read a LOT of blogs both from my specific industry namely domains and many many others related to hobbies of mine and general news stories. Interestingly what surprised me the most was that my biggest observation from reading the majority of these blogs was that they simply were not long enough….
The title and first two paragraphs would draw me in and then just when I am getting to the punchline would reach the end of the blog, I am left feeling kind of empty – is that it? Is there some login page I have missed with the rest of the article? Is the question posed in the title addressed below by other readers in the comments? More often than not the answer to these questions is no, the author never addresses the central question/themes arising in the blogs and neither do the readers – a feeling akin as a reader to drinking a can of diet caffeine free coke – its satisfying BUT theres something missing – real substance.
As a self professed writer of blogs that are probably too long with too many themes going on I ask myself what is the perfect example of a great blog? I have observed the following.
1) Really good bloggers rarely blog more than once a day, in fact I can think of many 
examples where the best blogs are written by people who write sporadically and have clearly spent many hours researching their chosen subject matter. This is an important point for long term SEO survivability. Those blogs that are being added to twice, three, four times a day more times than not lack real content, depth and originality, yes in the short term Google will index these pages and you may see a boost in page position and keyword impressions but a good substantial, authentic blog can live on in Google for a very long time and you will continue to reap the rewards of your work for many years to come.
2) Informative step by step guide blogs are extremely useful and very popular, regardless of the subject matter there is a niche for everything in this world, if you can gain a reputation as an “expert” in your field and regularly blog “how to guides” and even better augment them with YouTube videos and online discussion boards you will drive a significant amount of repeat traffic to your site in no time at all.
3) Layout and visual appearance are key to holding your readers attention, texts blogs need to be broken up into small evenly divided paragraphs with some kind of visual representation of your subject matter whether it be graphs, tables, photos or artwork.
4) Don’t shout and be too gimmicky if you want to create a regular following for your blog it is ok to be a self confessed expert but don’t try to shove it down your readers throat every couple of sentences – this in my opinion with so many “experts” out there can be very annoying and off putting, I don’t want your blog to make me feel less about myself. A little self deprecation can be fun in the blogging community.
5) Resist the temptation to laden the article with too many keywords, ok so as a I write this I am thinking how can I add “expired domains” or “just dropped domains” into the blog another 20 times without sounding obvious to you guys but I am going to to be good and not do it. It never reads well and interrupts the flow of the text and will put off potential repeat visitors to your site.
6) Last but not least and a subject dear to my own heart – find a good CMS (content management system) or blogging site, of course there are the old faithfuls like blogger, and wordpress but if you have a site like mine where the blogging is only one aspect of what you do you will probably have to look further a field.. I currently use Magnolia an enterprise CMS, which works at the moment for what I need it to do but it is very process orientated and therefore can take an extremely long time to publish one blog which is not ideal, in a world where everything is pretty fast paced.
So to answer my own question is there a graceful art to blogging or is it all just personal taste? I am guessing most probably a bit of both but one thing I do know for sure is it is an extremely competitive area which is ballooning by the day if my Twitter and Facebook feeds are anything to go by and yes I have joined this very large group of Merry Men still trying to find my way.
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