Reviewing someone else’s blog isn’t something new, but there are ways that you can get more impact for the other persona and furthermore add more value to your blog, even though you are technically linking out to and reviewing someone else’s service or product.

Even though there are millions of blogs out there, it doesn’t mean that you have to limit yourself to the few popular blogs that you might be interested in. Those blogs already receive hundreds of thousands to millions of page views each month. Instead, focus on blogs that might be new, but provide the same level of content and community that those sites do.

Benefits of Writing a Review of Another Blog

1. As a result of writing the review, the other blogger could do the same favor for you and provide some feedback about your blog on theirs.
2. You will receive more comments on the post, as others may suggest additional blogs to visit and their own thoughts on the blog that you have reviewed.
3. Your blog will pass some link juice off to the other blog, but in the long-term, this single link probably will increase as the other blog will likely grow and other bloggers may share the review that you posted.
4. It provides an easy way to recoup some time lost, because I find that posts like these don’t have to be as lengthy as a tutorial and are somewhat easier to write.

Getting Started with the Review

Select a blog that your visitors might want to read or may be interested in subscribing. This is key, as if there is little interest from your own readers, there will be no benefit to the blog that you are reviewing. You do want to provide a favor to the blog on the opposite end, or they won’t see any benefits and likely disregard the compliments/criticisms.

After you have selected the blog, draft the layout of the post. Typically, I like to layout a plan or think about what I want to include in the review. In this case, because we are not necessarily reviewing a product, you can skip some of the finer details, like price and what others think, but generally, there aren’t a tremendous amount of differences between the two.

Here are some simple ideas to get started:

• Obviously, include the title of the blog when linking back to it in the content.
• Think about adding a screenshot of the site, a sample paragraph of their content or work, and perhaps a picture of the person behind the blog. You want to make it as personal as possible.
• Include some positive and negative feedback related to the blog. This is assuming that the blog is less than six months old, or still “struggling” to find visitors and readers.
• Give your own readers reasons to visit the blog, complimenting the blog author on what he or she is doing right and what you enjoyed about it.
• Think about questions that your visitors might have or any questions you had when visiting the site, so you can give them advice when visiting the site if anything might be the least bit unclear.
• Perhaps grade the blog against a scale that you have created, to add at least a little bit of creativity to the post.

Writing the Review

This may be where things get a little challenging if you aren’t as accustomed to reviewing products. Yo want to focus on what is at hand  - the blog owner’s site. Don’t stray from this, or you’ll lose the interest of your visitors.

• Make it interesting.
• Add tidbits of information, such as a bio or funny trivia about the author (with their permission) that might make it more interesting to read.
• Ask the blog author questions (this requires more planning), which will help your visitors become more familiar with their background and why they began their blog.

My idea of a blog review is that it is at least four hundred words at a minimum. If you can’t reach this level, you aren’t really benefiting any party, but trying to increase the number of posts on your blog, and this isn’t what you were aiming to accomplish.

Be clear in the article and make sure you focus on the following aspects of their site: design, content, category/focus, and anything else you want to. Again, blog reviews aren’t really that specific and don’t have nay explicit requirements – you can craft them however you’d like, as long as you include a few of the key points.

Conclusion

Reviews are just one type of post that you should be including on your blog. I am not saying that you have to write five of them in a row, as you probably shouldn’t, but they are a good idea to include at least once a month if you do choose to do them. They are a great way of building your community and increasing visibility/readership of your site.