For any web designer or blogger today, one of the hardest parts of setting up a blog is knowing what matters. While a few years ago you could get by with basic visuals and keyword stuffing, it's become a little more professional these days.

To help make life a little easier, here are some good examples of the main factors that play an important role of making a blog successful. What should you be looking to add to make your blog stand out more when people arrive?

How can you ensure your blog is informative and exciting?

Fresh Content

The obvious one, but also the most important. You need regular and impressive content that breaks away from the mold. Look at what your competition is talking about, and find a new and more dynamic angle. Don't just cover the same old, same old. Break out some invention and go the extra mile with fresh content that catches the eye and makes the difference when you feel it's needed. Fresh content keeps people returning and also does a lot for keeping you on the right side of the search engines which is very important indeed! (see our next point)

SEO Assistance

Any blog worth running needs to have competitive keyword usage and intelligent, natural use of the keywords. Throwing them in there like the old days will see you demoted, but total negligence and lack of keyword usage will likely see you struggle to get noticed in the first place. Find the happy medium and go a little bit beyond where you stand currently by looking for SEO assistance that does the job that you need. Sometimes all you need is a simple plugin. Whether it's a particular topic you want to reference in a natural manner or a consistently used keyword, make sure you put SEO as a priority.

Visual Appeal

Another significant aspect of a good blog is visual appeal. You want to sell what you are talking about well, using high-resolution images that are fitting and also make a good description of the topic. Check out a good example on this specific blog. The images fit well with the topic and it creates an association that we can all instantly believe in and buy into.

Length

A blog that is loaded with short, 200-word or so articles will not rank. Aim for 500+ for any blog post that you put up, but statistics show that top ranking articles are 2416 words on average. Scrimping and scraping along for lots of short content might make your blog look busy but it also lacks a little bit of depth and incision. Avoid making this mistake by instead looking to make the length as long as you can. The longer the better, but 500 words allows for a consistent and sharp message to be portrayed without it being broken down too much, nor extended too long for effect.

With this in mind, you can make the perfect step forward in terms of making sure your blog gives off the right impression to anyone who reads it. Making that kind of positive take is a hard thing to do, but ensuring your blog uses the four attributes above will play a pretty major role.