And Break!

Blogs like Problogger, Shoemoney and John Chow are the popstars of the blogging world. Everyone knows these blogs and looks up to them. But what do these blogs have in common that make them so extremely popular?

To answer this question I took a look at several highly popular blogs and compared them to each other. Here are the five most important things that I came up with:

1. Great Content

This is maybe one of the most important points about these blogs, they all have great content. Even if they feature a lot of guest posts these articles are still high quality. Take a look at Problogger’s guest article about How to Herd Organic Search Traffic to Your Blog. Even though Darren Rowse did not write this himself it is still unique and quality content.

2. Unique Design and Logo

Taking a look at all of these well-known blog you will also realize that they all have a unique design and logo. Not only is the design reader-friendly but it further promotes their logo which in turn helps to establish themselves. Having a logo also makes it easier for readers to remember your blog or domain.

3. Distinct Niche

Niche blogs are blogs that are focused on one topic, or niche. Because the popstars of the blogging world are niche blogs, readers know what they will get when they subscribe to their articles. Also this has the advantage of not confusing the reader. Think about it. The more niches you cover, the lower the chance of finding people who are directly interested in the combination of all these topics. There might be a lot of people interested in fishing but a lot less in fishing, gardening and investing … I think you get the point.

4. Highly Social

Most of these are not so much about the blog and the content itself but also about the people running them. This makes sense when you actually take a look at what a blog really is. Blogs were from their “invention” on highly social (or at least they were supposed to be) so this partly explains the popularity of socially engaging blogs.

5. Posting on Continuous Basis

The frequency of posting is important for well-known blogs because readers will get used to that “frequency” and check their feed aggregator accordingly.

There are a few other things that these blogs share , e.g. all of the highly popular blogs have a .com domain obviously. Also notice that well-respected bloggers use non-intrusive advertisement because the more flashy the advertisement the more pictures or material you need to keep people focused on your articles. One last fact is that every single one of them is using Wordpress.