Rebecca Chelsey’s recent post on ways to spark our creativity got me thinking about the next step: how to take that creativity and turn it into meaningful sentences on the page. In other words, what we do with that spark of inspiration will determine the success or setbacks we face when we blog.

I’m a firm believer in the importance of pre-writing as a great way to take advantage of our inspiration. Pre-writing helps us bloggers to get down onto paper the ideas in our head. It helps us use language to explain our ideas. Through pre-writing, we can figure out exactly what it is we are trying to say. We can think of pre-writing as the laboratory in which we can test out and refine our ideas before we share them with an audience.

What follows, then, are a few of my favorite pre-writing exercises that help me figure out what exactly I’m trying to say. I hope they are useful to you as well, and if you can think of others, please share them in the comments section.

Brainstorm

Perhaps the most basic of all the pre-writing strategies, brainstorming is a good way to quickly populate a list of ideas related to your main concept or subject matter. While it won’t generate solid and well-written content, it will give you a list of ideas that you can go on to further elaborate upon.

Make an Outline

Outlining is a great way to organize our thoughts. For example, if we have a series of loosely related ideas, we can use an outline format to help us figure out how the exact relationships between them. One idea might be subordinate to another. One idea might cause the existence of another. The hierarchy of an outline allows you to figure out those relationships and then create the order in which you think you should explain those ideas to readers of your post. Once you fill in the parts of the outline, it’s just a simple matter of applying that to a post with an introduction, body paragraphs, and conclusion.

Envision Your Ideas

This method of pre-writing asks you to envision your ideas through idea-mapping or web-mapping. It’s a great form of pre-writing if you have a large list of ideas, but are not sure at all of how they are related. When you can sketch them out on a big piece of paper and form a map between them, then you’ll better be able to see which idea clusters are more important or need to be explicated more thoroughly than the others. Although this won’t help you get some strong sentences down for your post, it will help you understand the nature of the subject matter in a more situational way.

Profile Your Audience

If you have a good grasp of the idea you’d like to turn into a post but are unsure of how to write it for your audience, you should try to write a profile of your audience in relation to the subject matter of your post. When you write the profile, try to ask yourself questions about how you think the audience would respond to your post, especially an audience that is at first resistant or skeptical to your content.

For example, if they might disagree with your main point, think of ways you could encourage them to lower their guard. Or, if they might not at first understand your content, think of ways to make it accessible to them. You can use this profile to help you write your way into the post.

About the Author:

This guest post is contributed by Katheryn Rivas, who particularly enjoys writing about online universities.  She can be reached via email at: katherynrivas87@gmail.com.

As a creative person, I’ve noticed that creativity and creative ideas tend to present themselves whenever they see fit, and rarely otherwise. This is an especially unfortunate habit for my creativity to have because I am in the field of design. Over the years I’ve researched and stumbled upon eight nearly sure-fire ways to spark my imagination and creativity and I figured I would share them. Keep in mind, however, every imagination is unique and all of my methods may not strike a chord with you the same way they do with me. Hopefully at least one will bring you some inspiration to keep your blogs unique and intriguing or any situation you may need some outside-the-box thinking for.

As a general rule, when I find myself stuck on an idea for a long time, the best way to go about it is to stop trying so hard. Stop thinking so hard about your work when trying these activities and just let your brain do its thing. In other words, stop looking for the answer and let the answer find you.

1. People Watching

This is my best technique, especially when designing something for a consumer product. Go to a crowded place, any crowded place, empty your mind and subtly observe strangers. This can literally be ANYWHERE that there is a constant flow of new people to observe and absorb. This may seem awkward at first, but 99.9% of the time, nobody will notice what you’re up to and before long, you will probably find yourself quite entertained. Observe people and how they interact with each other, the world around them, and even with themselves. There is no better way that I know of to step outside yourself and get a fresh outlook on what ever task may be at hand.

2. Past Achievements

This works best for me when I siphon through old completed or especially half-completed projects. I find myself often muttering to myself “Oh yeah, I forgot about this project. This would have been great if…” BAM! Creative idea. Doesn’t apply to your current project? Keep rummaging. Even if you don’t find anything that directly applies to your current project(s), it’s bound to at least get your creative juices flowing.

3. Exercise

Being active is extremely important these days. I don’t think it’s any more important than it used to be, it just seems to get harder and harder to maintain an active lifestyle in the modern business battlefield so it IS more important to be aware of your physical state. Exercise when ever you can and you’ll be happier, healthier and more creative. When confronted with a project that stumps you, exercise harder. The release of endorphins that occurs when a body is pushed physically can do wonders for the creative process.

4. Hike

Go to your local national or state park and just go for a walk. Your focus should be on soaking in as much as the atmosphere and scenery as possible as you go. This also gets you a little exercise (#3) and will help to clear your mind and look at your problem with a new perspective. Getting a new perspective is HUGELY important. It’s almost like having another person on your team.

5. Drive

Similar to the idea behind hiking. Your goal is to empty your mind of all your stresses, tasks and negative energy. Embrace the world around you and let it embrace you. Not only should this loosen up your imagination, it can also make you happier and more relaxed in general.

6. Music

Find a genre that you can fall into. The first step is to clear your consciousness of your stresses, fears and surroundings. Then you play your music. Classical orchestra, classic rock, African drum, whatever you can use to close your eyes and just lose your brain into. Try to stay away from anything you know from a movie or that reminds you of a memory. The goal here is to meditate with the music and let it guide your mind into generating images in accordance with the song. When music takes your brain in a certain direction, or when it inspires images in your head, that’s called concurrent association. This is an invaluable tool when trying to generate original ideas.

7. Caffeine

This is an absolute last resort for me. I’m of the school of thought that my body is my temple and I keep it free of toxins as often as possible. But, a deadline is a deadline and sometimes I just can’t seem to get my brain out of second gear. This is when I have to head to my local mom & pop coffee shop (I like it better than the chain stores) where I can kick back and get myself a vat of caffeine to soak my brain in. Again, this is a last resort. The other natural methods I offered through brain power and thought control will keep you happier, healthier and more creative in the long run. You don’t want your creativity to become dependant on foreign substances.

8. Clear Mind

The greatest obstacle in creating something completely original is the frustration that tends to flare up when you can’t get your imagination to give you its goodies. When you try to force your imagination to generate something on the spot, it sometimes works. When you’re frustrated and you try to force your imagination, it never works. If my methods don’t work for you, I recommend you do what ever it is that works for you in order to take a step back, separate yourself from the problem, do something fun for a while and come back to it with a fresh set of eyes and a positive frame of mind.

About the Author:

Rebecca Chelsey is a working mother who has learned that often life and work overlap. Though both her job and her role as mother require her to be creative, she has seen that often the most original ideas are right in front of us merely waiting to be found. Beyond her job as mother and wife, she also works for Homeseasons, which has simplified the holidays with 4th of July decorations, Halloween Holiday arrangements and ideas for every holiday in between.

If you’ve ever gone to an industry conference, film festival, grand opening, or author signing, then you can appreciate the energy such events can create. Industry conferences gather together the best and brightest minds in order to share ideas and plan for the future. Film festivals celebrate great work by experienced and up-and-coming film makers. Grand openings drum up customers for brand new businesses. And author signings are often just one of many stops on a book tour to connect with readers who might want to buy the author’s latest books.

So how does this relate to you? Well, bloggers can also apply these same strategies to their own blogging practices. As bloggers, we thrive on buzz and the latest keyword trends, but we also need to figure out how to keep readers loyal. One way to do this is to set up a similar energetic event that excites our community of readers and other bloggers, while also creating momentum for the year until the event rolls around again. Here are a few ways bloggers could do this:

Organize a Blog Tour

This idea is similar to a book tour, and like a book tour it will take advanced planning. You’ll have to pitch the idea to a number of blogs within your community, create content to suit each blog, and then follow up by interacting with commenters at each blog. The pay-off is that your ‘tour’ can expose you to a greater audience, while providing some content to your fellow bloggers.

Moderate a Guest-Blogger Panel

The opposite of the Blog Tour is to moderate a Guest-Blogger Panel. Invite some of your favorite bloggers to a discussion, either live or edited, that you moderate. Make sure the discussion is timely and addresses a recent issue in your community. Also ask that your participants be available to respond to reader questions and comments. Your guest bloggers will get backlinks and you’ll have a week’s worth of content.

Lead a Book Club

You don’t necessarily have to discuss a book, but the idea is that you lead discussion with your readers about something that directly relates to your community. It could be a book, a movie, a magazine, a paper, a presentation. The idea here is to interact with other members of the community, but to regularly host that discussion at your site.

Create Themed Weeks

For this, you should consider both the atmosphere of your blog and the sensibilities of your readers, as well as the overall health of the community. Does your community need a pick-me-up? Then have a Positive Thinking Week, and post inspirational ideas for your readers. Could your community use some solid criticism? Then maybe a Truth Hurts week could be appropriate. Whatever you pick, make sure it will both create buzz and benefit the community of which you are a part.

What’s most important about these ‘events’ is that you make use of the momentum they generate by following up with excellent content and selling your services, if applicable. And, you should create anticipation among your readers by somehow having these events be reoccurring features at your blog.

About the Author:

This guest post is contributed by Alvina Lopez, who writes on the topics of accredited online colleges.  She welcomes your comments at her email Id: alvina.lopez @gmail.com.

Success in attracting and retaining readers is often influenced by a blog’s level of interactivity. Many readers are more active than passive and want to feel like they have a role in affecting a blog’s content, design, structure, and overall ongoing conversation. Posts shouldn’t be thought of as soliloquies, but as the beginnings of highly interactive discourses. For effective ways to keep your blog interactive and encourage your readers to come back for more, try reading and adapting these ten tips to fit your blog’s needs.

1. Encourage Guest Posts

If you want an easy way to get more players involved in your conversation, encourage guest posts. Even though your readers are probably used to your style and enjoy reading your posts, interactivity can be improved by giving visitors the opportunity to read something different every once in a while. This also enables you to participate in conversations by posting comments on someone else’s content. To promote guest posts, include a separate tab for submissions or mention it on your contact page.

2. Write Guest Posts for Other Blogs

To get more activity on your blog, offer to write guest posts for others. Your byline on someone else’s blog may lead new visitors to your page, so take advantage of this opportunity. You might even arrange a guest posting trade-off with another blogger, writing for each other once a month to help generate more traffic for both of you.

3. Take On a Friendly Role

People love talking to their friends. If you want to encourage your readers to respond to content, you might consider being friendlier with your tone and adopting a more casual style. By “selling” less and being more approachable, you could increase feedback and readership.

4. Allow Guests to Express Themselves

Enabling comments on your blog lets readers know that you welcome their feedback. Even if you have a lot of RSS readers who don’t visit your page, it’s important to leave the lines of communication as open as possible. As with guest posting, commenting on other blog posts can result in reciprocal favors for your own blog, so don’t hesitate to let others know what you think. Depending on your relationship with the blogger, you might even mention a popular post from your blog somewhere in your comment.

5. Request Feedback

Ask readers to respond to your content. You can do this by asking visitors to submit article topics they would like to see on your blog, posting articles with interactive questions, or starting a weekly (or monthly) poll post. Once you’ve established a recurring poll day, readers will know when to stop by and respond so they can be included in your results and discussion.

6. Demonstrate Good Intentions

Let visitors see that you’re motivated to please them rather than use them. You can do this by offering free tips and advice, minimizing obvious commercial ventures on your blog, and responding when you do receive feedback. When your readers know that you’re invested in helping them with your blog, they’ll be more likely to participate when you include interactive opportunities.

7. Reward Your Readers

For RSS feed subscribers or those who subscribe to your full content (if you offer different versions), consider offering an annual or biannual gift. You could give subscription discounts, free access to one of your eBooks, a small gift of merchandise if you run a commercial blog, gift certificates, coupons, access to special content, or anything else to let them know that you appreciate their loyalty. By doing this, you can both secure long-term readership and encourage increased interactivity.

8. Hold Contests

Contests can be for best guest post, most interesting article topic submission, cutest pet photo, or any variety of other premises. Offer a modest prize and watch contest submissions stack up, increasing your blog’s interactivity by leaps and bounds.

9. Write at Least One Article Series

Writing a series can attract short-term readership from those who read one post and return for the next installment. If you can sink the hook this way, you might receive interesting feedback from new visitors and get some long-term readers who want to see more of the same.

10. Understand Readers’ Interactive Tendencies

Don’t be offended or discouraged if you don’t notice drastically increased comment numbers on your blog. With RSS feeds, Twitter, and re-posting popularity, it’s more likely that your interactivity will increase in places you can’t monitor as easily as your blog. You can either hire a social media service to track threads related to your blog or simply trust that your efforts are increasing your blog’s interactivity and readership.

About the Author:

Alexis Bonari is a freelance writer and blog junkie. She is currently a resident blogger at First in Education and performs research surrounding online degrees. In her spare time, she enjoys square-foot gardening, swimming, and avoiding her laptop.

I recently sold DesignM.ag and through the process I’ve looked back at the last few years and what I have learned along the way. Blogging in a popular industry where hundreds or thousands of other blogs exist has pros and cons. In this post I’d like to cover five specific things that I have learned, hopefully it will be helpful to you as well.

While the context of this post is my experience blogging about topics related to design, I think they can easily apply to most other niches or industries that are very crowded.

1. Obstacles Present Opportunities

If you’ve read many articles with blogging tips I’m sure you’ve read that you should select a niche that doesn’t present much competition. In my opinion, depending on your strategy for growing and/or monetizing your blog you may be better off blogging in a more popular niche. If your blogging approach is to create a large number of small blogs that target specific words or phrases and are optimized to make money with AdSense or affiliate programs, then you’re probably better off avoiding crowded niches. On the other hand, if you’re looking to build an authority blog where you’ll be active and you’re willing to dedicate a significant amount of time, crowded niches present some powerful opportunities.

The reason for avoiding crowded niches is usually that it is easier to achieve top search engine rankings or to stand out from other bloggers, both true. But the obstacle of a crowded niche can be turned into a very profitable opportunity. Here are a few examples:

Link Building - Bloggers who want to attract lots of search traffic will need to make efforts to build links. This may include blogroll link exchanges, guest posting, article marketing, social media marketing, or simply focusing on writing great posts that naturally draw links. You may have the greatest content possible, but if there are only a handful of other blogs that cover topics related to yours, you may have a hard time building more than just a few links. In crowed niches like design, there are countless other blogs that could potentially link to you. Sure, it will be more difficult to stand out in this situation, but the potential is much higher.

Guest Posting – One of the best ways to build your profile and passively market your blog is by writing posts for other blogs. In crowded niches there are more opportunities for guest posting than you could ever pursue. If you’re willing to put in the time to write the content, you can get exposure and links through guest posts at a very large number of blogs.

Subscribers – Gaining subscribers is much easier when there are a lot of people interested in the topic that you are blogging about. In obscure niches you may have to work very hard just to pick up a few subscribers, which can be discouraging.

These are just a few examples, but the point is that with the right approach the obstacles of a crowded niche can be turned upside down and used for your benefit.

2. Traffic Potential is High

Crowded niches have a large number of blogs in part because there are so many readers out there looking for the content. With a huge potential audience comes the opportunity to reach very large traffic numbers. There are tons of design blogs that reach hundreds of thousands of page views each month, a number that may be almost unreachable in some niches.

3. Ad Prices May Be Lower

Finding advertisers in the design industry is not that difficult. Because the audience is so large there are plenty of companies with products and services that are looking to advertise to this audience, but there are also plenty of other advertising opportunities for them. With hundreds of blogs in the niche receiving decent numbers of visitors and page views, ad prices tend to be lower than they would be in other niches or industries with similar traffic numbers. If your ad prices are too high, the advertiser can simply go advertise somewhere else, and there are plenty of blogs willing to sell ad space at low rates. If there are only a few quality blogs in a particular niche, advertisers will have fewer options and higher ad prices can be justified. In the end, I think the higher traffic potential and lower ad prices basically even out.

4. Originality is a Challenge

Throughout my 3 years of design blogging I have followed a number of other blogs to stay aware of what is going on and the topics and types of posts that are being published by other blogs. As time has gone by and more blogs have launched it has become increasingly difficult to produce content that is unique and stands out from the content of other blogs. With far fewer blogs covering design-related topics a few years ago it was pretty easy to come up with ideas for posts that hadn’t been done yet, or to cover the same general topics in new and different ways. In a crowded niche though, originality is possibly the biggest challenge.

5. Commitment, Dedication, and Consistency or Critical

In a niche where there are a large number of blogs competing for the attention of readers, you must continue to work and develop the blog in order to be successful. Taking long breaks between posts or relaxing on the quality of content will be far more damaging than it could be in other niches, because readers can simply go to other blogs to get the information that you are not providing. As I look at the design blogs that have been successful over the past few years, consistency is the one thing that they all have in common.

What’s Your Opinion?

Do you blog in a crowded niche? If so, what have you learned from the experience?

The theme is a great choice for bloggers because it provides a lot of flexibility through various options. You can choose from 10 different color schemes, easily upload and change background images (or simply use a solid color), move the sidebar to the left or right, change fonts from the WordPress dashboard without touching any code, and more. The dashboard options make this theme a great choice for bloggers who want some control over the design and layout without needing to dive into the code.

The Personal WordPress Theme costs $49.95 and allows you to use it on as many sites as you wish, without the need to purchase an extended license. It also includes support from the Blogging Theme Support Room.

To see the demo or to purchase the theme please visit Blogging Tips.

The Giveaway Details:

If you would like to get a free copy of the Personal WordPress Theme courtesy of Blogging Tips, please leave a comment on this post. On Friday, December 4th I will draw a random winner and update this post. Please be sure to leave a valid email address so you can be contacted if you win.

UPDATE: the contest is now over. Congratulations to the winner, Sarbjit Singh.

One of my typical recommendations to these people is to start building a blog of their own, but do some freelance blogging at the same time. Building a profitable blog takes some patience and a willingness to put in the effort with the hope of being rewarded for it in the future. Very rarely does a blog sprout up and become a big money maker in a short amount of time. However, that doesn’t mean that you can’t be making money while your blog is in the early stages.

For more the two years now I have been doing some freelance blogging for a wide variety of blogs, and it has been an amazing experience for a number of reasons. While there are some downsides to selling your posts to others, there are also a number of reasons that I think freelance blogging is a great option that should be pursued by more people.

Here we will look at 10 reasons why freelance blogging can be a great opportunity.

1. Networking

Although the money may seem like the biggest reason to work as a freelance blogger, I have found that the networking aspect has proven to be much more valuable in the long run. Most (although not all) blogs that pay writers are already successful. And many times the editor or contact person that deals with the writers has played a very large role in building that success. This means that as a freelance writer you will have the opportunity to get to know some successful and very influential people that have already accomplished what you are hoping to accomplish with your own blog.

Having a solid network is extremely important for bloggers, and this is a great way to make it happen. Many of these people are very busy and would be difficult to connect with through other means, but as a writer you are a major contributor to their success. Do a good job for them and they will take notice.

2. Money

Obviously, getting paid is a good thing. The amount of money that you will be paid for freelance blog posts will vary depending on the blog that you are writing for, the types of posts that you are doing, and your ability to produce results. Some pay very small amounts that may not be worth your time, but others pay quite well. Personally, I started with some lower-paying gigs and worked my way up over time. This was a nice way to do it because the thought of writing for major publications was pretty intimidating at first, so I was able to improve my work and build my way up to it.

As I mentioned in the intro, making money with a blog takes time. I am a big believer in the need to develop your own assets and take care of your own properties first, but freelance blogging doesn’t have to prevent you from doing that. For many people not making anything as a blogger can be quite discouraging. If that’s the case, you can keep working on your blog and have some patience for it to develop at the same time as freelancing and actually see some income.

3. Flexibility

Most freelance bloggers are able to write posts as their schedule permits. I have had some assignments where I need to get a post published on a particular day of the week, but I could work on that post whenever I had the time. I found it helpful to work ahead and have a few posts ready so that if any given week I didn’t have the time, it wouldn’t become a problem.

With this type of flexibility you can prioritize the work on your own blog and fit in some extra paying work as you have time. Many blog owners that pay freelancers are very willing to accept posts with the understanding that it will be done as the writer has time.

4. Exposure

Getting your name out there to readers can be extremely valuable. If you are writing for a blog that has a similar audience to yours, freelance writing is one of the best ways you can get in front of that audience. This gives you an opportunity to develop your reputation, and if the readers see your name attached to several different posts at various blogs in the niche, they will see you as a leader and influencer.

5. Link Building

Many blogs that hire freelance writers will include a brief author bio with the post that will include a link back to your site (this will vary from one blog to another, so check the details with the editor). This can be a very effective way to build links to your own blog. While you will get some click-through traffic from those links, the more important benefit is that you can build some strong links from blogs that have a lot of authority in the search rankings. If you write for a number of different sites this can add up over time.

6. Experience (as a writer)

Writing for other blogs can be a lot more challenging than writing for your own. At your blog you can write whatever you want, and usually that tends to lead to writers taking more liberties and being less careful. When you are being paid to write for another blog you will be challenged to do your best work in order to be asked to write again in the future. Plus, many blogs that hire freelancers have a large audience, so you know your posts will be seen by a lot of people. While this can be a little intimidating, it is a good challenge that will push you and help you to improve as a writer. Those improved skills can then be used on work for your own blog in addition to your freelance work.

7. Learn While You Earn

In addition to improving your ability and gaining experience as a writer, you’ll also learn some things about what it takes to run a successful blog. Most likely you will be getting some feedback on your posts from an editor, and that feedback can be priceless. You’re getting a great opportunity to learn from someone successful, get feedback on your own work, and your being paid for it.

8. Diversify Your Income

Even if you are already earning some money from other sources, like ad sales on your blog or affiliate marketing, freelance blogging offers a way to diversify that income. In situations like the current economy where advertising sales slow down in most industries, having some diversity can make your income more stable.

9. Learn from the Best

This has already been mentioned in some of the other points, but it’s important enough that it deserves its own point. Many of the people who will be running the blogs that you are writing for have already accomplished, or are well on their way to accomplishing, exactly what you hope to accomplish with your own blog. Don’t simply view the freelance blogging experience as a way to earn some extra money. Pay attention to the feedback that you’re getting and notice how they run their business. You can pick up a lot of valuable bits that can be used in your own work if you get involved with people who are already successful.

10. One Job Leads to Another

When I started as a freelance blogger it was basically an accident. I emailed a guest post to another blogger with the intent of getting a link to my blog and a little bit of exposure and he wrote back to offer me an opportunity to be a paid writer on a regular basis. After I had written a few posts for his blog I started to get emails from other blog owners who were looking for writers. And as I wrote for some of those people, it led to even more opportunities. For blog owners who are looking for content, finding qualified writers is not as easy as you might think. Doing a good job with one assignment can often lead to more work even without dedicating any effort to finding it.

What’s Your Experience?

Have you ever done any freelance blogging? Would you consider doing so in the future? If you’re looking for freelance blogging opportunities the best place to start is the ProBlogger Job Board. Also, you may be able to find some opportunities by simply contacting some blog owners in your industry. Focus on those that are clearly earning some income through the blog and try to see if they publish posts from multiple authors.

Here we will take a look at 30 blogs that make a big impact with their design. These blogs have been featured at my gallery site Blog Design Heroes, which you can visit if you are looking for more examples of great blog design.

Mr. Henry

Mark Forrester

Sarah Rhoads

Eco Simply

The Swish Life

WorkAwesome

Internet Dreams

DC3 Forever

Andrea Mann

Cut & Taste

Designfeedr

Blik

Tidy Songs

Second & Park

Hey Indy

BigBadCollab

West Coast Poppin

What Katie Does

The Photo Argus

Officeal

Helium Workx

The Greg Brady Project

Devot:ee

Laura Marchbanks

T.J. Mapes

Carbon Sugar

Colorburned

Outlaw Design Blog

Hey Josh

Ecoki 30.jpg

There are a few different ways that premium theme marketplaces can sell their themes. Most sell themes individually and you can by a single-use license or a developer’s license. Other marketplaces use a membership model where members pay a monthly or yearly fee for access to all of the themes. And some marketplaces, like Blog Themes Club, offer both.

At the current time, Blog Themes Club has 4 different themes to choose from (shown below). Single-use licenses range from $19 – $39 depending on the theme. Memberships can be purchased for $49 for 3 months, $79 for 6 months, or $99 for 12 months. However, to celebrate the launch the prices will be $29, $49 and $69 respectively until July 31, 2009. Club members get unlimited downloads of themes as well as support.

The Giveaway Details:

If you’d like to win a free one-month membership to Blog Themes Club, please leave a comment on this post. On Wednesday, June 17, I will select 3 random winners. Be sure to leave a valid email address where you can be reached.

Themes:

Anima

Invictus

Kronos

Profectus

UPDATE: The contest is now over. Thanks to everyone who participated. The winners are Justin, Roseli, and Fabio. Kevin will be contacting you shortly with the details of claiming your prize.

In this article we’ll look at a number of things you can do to improve the impact of the older posts in your archives.

1. Look for Easy SEO Opportunities

Last month I published a post Simple SEO Changes to Improve Unexpected Rankings. That post covers some very easy things you can do to improve the rankings of posts that are already drawing traffic for specific search phrases. If you have a blog that’s been around for a while and built archives with a decent number of posts, one of the easiest ways to add more value to your older posts is to identify opportunities that already exist.

If you have a post that is drawing traffic for a specific phrase, make sure the page title is optimized for that phrase, add some internal links using that phrase as anchor text, and build some links from other sites to that post. Since these posts are already driving traffic for these phrases, if you can improve the rankings with some simple changes you should see a noticeable increase in search traffic.

2. Promote Your Best or Most Popular Content

Many blogs include a list of popular posts in the sidebar. This can be an effective way of directing new visitors to the best content on the site, and improve your chances of turning that visitor into a subscriber or a repeat visitor.

Sidebars aren’t the only place to promote your best work. Links within the context of the new blog posts will have the most impact in terms of click-throughs, so make an effort to link whenever appropriate.

You probably spent a lot of time writing your best posts, so make sure that you’re still getting something out of them rather than letting them collect dust in your archives.

3. Build Links

Achieving solid search engine rankings is probably the best way to extend the life of your blog posts. Even a small increase in the number of search visitors you draw on a daily basis will make a big difference over the course of a month or a year. Most bloggers focus link building efforts only on new posts, but you can also build links to your older posts. If you have older posts that have potential to draw significant search traffic, spending some time building links could be a great investment of your time. You could exchange links with other bloggers, do some article marketing, build Squidoo lenses, or some other type of link building activity.

4. Consistently Use Internal Links in Your Posts

Going back through your archives and adding internal links to other posts can take a lot of time. You can help yourself out and work to extend the life of your posts by using internal links in your new posts. Get in the habit of reading through your posts before publishing just for the purpose of identifying opportunities for internal links to your older posts. You may get some click-through traffic from your subscribers to the older posts, plus the links can help to establish them with search engines.

5. Go Back and Update Important Posts

The posts from your archives that are drawing the most traffic on a regular basis are assets to your blog. Rather than just leaving them alone and hoping that the traffic continues to flow, go back to the posts periodically to see if there are ways to improve the post. Is the information out of date? Are the links still active? Is there new information that could be added to improve the post? Could the formatting be improved to make it more reader-friendly?

Be updating your posts from time-to-time you’ll help to keep them relevant and useful for a longer period of time, which should help to ensure that they continue to draw visitors.

6. Focus on Quality Over Quantity

Most of us bloggers feel the need to publish a certain number of posts per week or even per day. Consistent posting is a great habit to develop, but quantity of posts should not take priority over quality. If you’re rushing to pump out new content just for the sake of having something new for readers, it’s likely that these posts will have little long-term value, and shortly after they are published traffic will fade and they will rarely be read again.

By focusing your efforts on creating the best content possible, you’ll draw more links, attract better search engine rankings, and develop a better reputation among readers in your industry. In this case your archives will be a strong source of on-going traffic.

7. Use Landing Pages

If your archives include a number of posts on similar or related topics, consider creating a landing page that provides some information and links out to these posts. The page could become a valuable resource for visitors and funnel traffic to posts in your archives.

8. Evaluate Your Stats

Most bloggers are obsessed with stats, tracking visitors, page views and subscriber counts on a regular basis. But many times the stats aren’t really used productively. By evaluating which posts on your site are drawing the most on-going traffic and which search phrases are sending visitors, you can probably use this information to come up with some ideas for new posts that will be likely to turn into strong long-term assets in your archives.

What’s Your Opinion?

What do you do to improve the effectiveness and impact of your older posts?