Everyone is blogging these days. It has gotten so crowded on the blogosphere, that the quality posts are harder to find than ever before. Unfortunately, most blogs are not worth reading, due mostly in part because of sloppy writing and ineffective engagement. There are several elements that can ensure that a blog post is not only a great read, but is effective at bringing readers in and making sales. If you blog for a company or business, keep in mind the following elements when you post your next entry.

Keywords

When writing a blog for a business, it is important to know what your target audience is interested in before you dive in too deep. By conducting keyword research, you can leverage the keywords and key phrases that your target audience is searching with online, to gain readership. Once you choose a topic for a blog, find the keyword or phrase that best fits the topic. Not every topic will have the perfect keyword, so don’t get discouraged if you can’t fit it in. Most readers will appreciate that you have a few posts that are optimized for the reader and not the engines.

Title

This is arguably the most important element of your entire post. Not only will people avoid bad titles, but they may not even come back to your blog ever again. Extreme? Maybe. Or maybe not. The title also is important for your SEO. The title of the post usually becomes the title tag, which is indexed by the spiders. It also becomes the anchor text for the hyperlink in the search results. Overall, your title must be interesting, engaging, and compelling. And try and use the keyword or phrase, if you can.

Content

This may go without saying, but your content needs to be informative, original, relevant, interesting and well-written. If you can’t write, people will lose interest in what you have to say very quickly.

Image

Use your own images, or Flickr images, to spice up your post. Images will give your reader a visual to break up the text and helps illustrate your points. You can also use screenshots, if you like being effective.

Links

If you reference another article, author, blogger or website, it is a great idea to include a link to the piece, where it is relevant. Links back to past blogs on the same topic, or to other bloggers who have written on the same topic. This makes you even more credible as a source of information. It also makes your post more SEO friendly.

Writing an effective blog that draws high readership and, possibly, sales for your business is more difficult than one may first assume. There are many elements of a blog that need to be taken into account when posting successful communications. If you don’t successfully implement these elements, you could lose online credibility and relevance within your industry and niche.