A Foundation Blog

When you start out blogging the first step of your moving from being an amateur to a professional is when you have completed the first phase of blogging, setting up a foundation blog. That is you have set up a blog that has around thirty reasonable posts, which include some posts that encourage linking, called pillar posts.

The foundation blog allows the developer to begin the next stage of development, promotion.  It should give any visitor to your site a good idea of your site, its niche, its style and its content.  A foundation blog should contain four elements: a decent layout, content, and that content should contain a number of pillar articles, and a way of contacting you, usually a contact form.

As you’re probably be using using a blogging or content management system, such as WordPress, your layout will be defined by a theme.

theme – a website layout developed to work with a specific program, often a content management system. which .

The theme could be a free theme, a premium theme or the site owner may have developed the theme themselves or through a developer.

To be professional the theme needs the following characteristics:

• it needs to be in a style suitable for the audience.  A blog aimed at graphic designers will have a very different theme to an entertainment site, a community site or one for a religious organisation.
• whatever the style of the theme it should have easy to use navigation.
• it should be easy to identify the name of the of the blog.
• and the purpose of the blog.

There will be a quite a few articles on themes and design considerations in the near future.

In the blogging world content is king.  In fact it is king queen and a whole number of courtiers.  It is content that keeps the reader on the website.  It is content that keeps bringing the reader back.  It is content that gets the reader to subscribe to your site’s feeds and email list. It is content that is used by the search engines to find your blog. erm it’s important.

So in the early stages of developing your blog take some time to develop your writing style, the length and type of posts.  Think through the frequency of your posts: once a week, two or three times a day, every day or even several times a day.  Will you have a few categories or many?  Will you have regular features or will you concentrate on providing a stream of quality posts.

I reckon you need around thirty posts to demonstrate that you are committed to the blog.  Your posts should demonstrate:

• it should clarify the niche you are targeting
• it should give a good example of the content you intend to place in the blog
• it should be a good example of your writing style
• it should hint at your longer term plans to development  the blog

This article is in fact an example of a pillar post.   A pillar post is a post that encourages other website owners to link to your site.  These are the spine of your blog.  Popular pillar posts will help your blog develop authority and will help build your ranking in the search engines.

The most important characteristics of a pillar post are:

• that they are not time dependant.  This means that someone can link to your pillar post, or read your post, today, tomorrow, a months time or even a few years from now and it is still viable.  This article will be useful up to the time people stop blogging.
• they are useful to viewers.  That is they are the sort of article that people hunt for on search engines and so, if they are well written,  are more likely to be linked to on other blogs and websites.

In addition pillar posts are useful to build internal links within the blog.  You can set up pages to link to your pillar pages.  I use them to link to other posts within the site and often link to them from other

I estimate that there will be at least twenty direct links from this article to other posts I am planning to write for this site.

In addition I am planning to set up a pillar articles giving an overview of the blogging process, which will of course link back to this article.

there will also be an overview page of all pillar articles on the site.

Each link will marginally improve the page’s search engine rating, which in turn will build up the rating of the whole site.

The links will provide useful addition information to your viewer, who is then more likely to stay on your site.

As I use WordPress I use the useful plugin, Contact 7 , which in its basic form let me set up this contact form in around five minutes.

With a bit of work and planning you can develop a foundation blog.  This is your first step in becoming a proficient and professional blogger.  Your layout will look good, clearly indicating to your visitors your style and niche.  Your thirty or so articles will give a clear indication of your interests, your writing style and your approach to blogging.  Your pillar articles provide the basis for linking both within your site and for others to link to you.  And of course you’ve set up the contact form so that eccentric millionaire can give you a fortune for your site.

You are now on the road to the second phase of your blogging career – site promotion.

Well what do you think?

Look at your favourite set of websites and tell me how they use pillar posts.

Send me a link to your pillar posts.

Related posts:

1. Basic Blogging: Use Pillar Posts to Promote Your Blog