This afternoon the judges sorted through all the entries in the Wales Blog Awards longlist and it was tough going. Loads of great blogs to read and it made us all realise just how much great blogging talent there is in the nation.

Across all categories it was tough narrowing it down to just a few blogs who will battle it out to win their category. What struck us as well was just how much linking out there is and linking up between the blogs. One of the things we hope will come out of the Blog Awards is those blogrolls down the right-hand side filling up with more people discovering and linking to new reads they’ve found.

We also discovered how blogs can make a big difference to their community, posting local information – but at the other end of the spectrum they can be used to tell a very personal journey that takes you aback at just how honest and open that person has been.

So, what were we looking for when trying to narrow down the lists? Content is king on the web and we wanted to see it. Plenty of posts, on informative topics and some relevant pictures. We wanted to see linking out, the web is a social place and those who linked out to other websites and blogs and built upon this in their content certainly ticked some boxes.

Lots of blogs were embracing twitter, facebook, flickr and youtube as a way of promoting their content. We saw a lot more video than expected, and lots of people using Twitter and plugging it in to the side of their blog. Great to see.

Basic things like a good grasp of spelling, punctuation and grammar were needed, plus attribution for images. We also wanted to see a clear about page for the blog so the reader had a good idea of where the writer was coming from. We kept an eye on comments and reader interaction as well, it’s always great to see bloggers responding to questions/criticisms in the comments on their posts.

Overall the standard was very high and when you see the shortlist you’ll be impressed at the quality of Welsh bloggers out there.

What happens now? Each shortlist will go to the specialist judge for the category and a winner and runner-up will be picked. We’ll publish the shortlist next week and let everyone who is shortlisted know. We’ll also release details of the awards shin-dig next month.

Thanks again to everyone who nominated their favourite blogs or themselves and we hope you’ll enjoy browsing the shortlist and then finding out who came out on top.