Top blogs

‘Content is king’ is perhaps the best rule that has ever been told to a writer. It has become a cliché but its value has only increased with the advent of the world wide web . M any bloggers who have made good fortune tell that they concentrate on content as much as on other aspects of blogging. We judge written content on websites and blogs in two ways: subject matter and writing skills . Both need to be of excellent quality so that the blog fulfills its purpose of informing, educating or advising people. Such content attracts attention, is referred to by people again and again, makes visitors come to the blog when they look for more such content. If you are focused on making money from blog, good content is key to that in many unseen ways. Please bear in mind that quality content is not one-off affair, nor will it give quick dividends. You must churn out quality regularly; success will come as a by-product. How to write well, and write beautifully? Here are the 10 simple but ver...

Google's attention map: orange is the highest attention zone, followed by yellow and white. Have you ever thought that visitors to your blog usually do not look at the title area as much as they look at the middle of the page? Or that if a blog's homepage is bigger than the size of the screen, visitors might just not take the trouble to scroll the cursor to the lower part? It is common knowledge that blog surfers do not pay equal attention to all parts of a website. But which region of the screen do they tend to focus on and which region they ignore? Google's research shows that the prime region on a website or blog is below the navigation bar and where the main content of the site lies. The eye seems to give less attention to the right side-bar and the top bar. The worst portions, according to Google, are the footer and the right side-bar. You can make use of the attention map given here for web design of your website/ blog. Keep the important content on the ...

Updated: July 2020 Whether your blog is meant for jotting down your routine incidents or has a bigger canvas, you need to follow a few basic principles. The bits of advice that I give here are the basics of blogging, and yet most bloggers take them for granted. The result: the blog does not get traffic, it decays over time, the blogger himself/ herself loses interest and the blog goes down further. Make these basics your cardinal principles of quality blogging, and see your blog glowing and growing. 1. Content is king. It is a cliché, we know, but also a formula that works hundred percent in the long run. Creating good content needs effort and may not give instant traffic, but in the long term nothing can beat the quality of content . An investment of time and energy in writing a quality post will give you traffic and back links, and also immense satisfaction years later.  [We will come up with a post on what makes great content sometime later.] 2. Be regular even if not ...

Updated in 2021 This post was published in February 2011, a few months after the Top Blogs was created. These quick observations made more than a decade give a glimpse of Indian blogging when blogging in western countries had peaked and then plateaued but blogging was in ascendance in India. These were followed by much detailed observations as can be seen here:  Indian blogging scene: observations while compiling list of best blogs   Blogging in India: a detailed perspective ----- T he ranking of blogs for their inclusion in the list of top blogs in India - which we intend to call The Directory of Best Indian Blogs -  is over. As we said before, we have kept the  quality of blogs much higher than their popularity in ranking the blogs. The first comprehensive list of India's best blogs in English will have top blogs (Platinum rank), followed by excellent blogs that have minor issues of design, regularity, interactivity, etc (Gold blogs) and other good blogs (Silver...