Blogging doesn’t hold the same power it did a few years ago however that doesn’t mean it still isn’t an effective way to get traffic. An effective blog can still gather a big following. It’s not easy but if it was everyone would do it. See what we think are the best tips out there for people hoping to start their own blog with our blogging tips for beginners.
Have A Plan
Like all things in life, you have to have a plan to succeed. Without one you will just get lost and lose your way.
Know Your Niche
Avoid diluting the content on your blog with multiple strands of content. Know what your niche is and write just for that. There are blogs for everything and if your blog starts to try and do a bit of everything then you won’t be a blog for anyone. It’d be weird if a travel blog started telling you about their yoga routine and then giving you history posts, so why are you any different?
Beyond just audience issues, having lots of topics will make it hard to have an internal linking structure as topics won’t relate. If you want to build a useful following, know your niche.
Know Your Ideal Audience
Who do you expect to read your content? Or rather, who do you write your content for? This is a key question you must answer when starting a blog. If the people visiting your site aren’t getting value back out of it then they are useless to you and will never bother with you in a meaningful way.
Think about who your ideal visitor is. Then think about what is the solution or information you can offer them. Write for that.
Consistency
If you take on to write a blog you are committing to it. If that commitment is once a month, twice a week or every day you are committing to it. Consistency is key to this. People have to know when to expect your latest post. If you write sporadically then how can anyone incorporate reading what you’ve written into their routine.
Do out a publishing calendar to rectify this. Plan what content you are going to write and when you are going to post it. Stick to this to build a following.
Link Building Blogging Tips
Links are one of the pillars of SEO, but are hard to come by. To get some, start by looking at your competitors website and seeing where their links are coming from. Once you’ve done this reach out to those websites and ask if you can do a guest post too. They may charge you a small fee, but if you’re smart you can manage to wrangle a backlink from them.
SEO Your Blog
This is a key to getting your blog out there and is one of the biggest things you should focus on. Organise all of your content in a correct manner, search engines like being able to move around a site in a neat manner.
Then have an internal linking structure and be regimental about it. Try and avoid linking to pages that don’t relate to the same topic or belong to the same category.
On-page SEO is another pillar of SEO, and is just as important as link building to help get your page ranking highly.
Learn more about SEO with our basics guide.
Social Media
Not only should you use social media as a way to promote your blog and get traffic, but get to know people using it. Like, comment and engage with other people within your community.
Social media signals are another big element to promote your blog. This relates to the likes, shares and comments you get on posts that link to your site. This shows that the piece of content you’ve created is of use and people find it interesting.
Monetising Your Blog
Now that you’ve done all of that work you may want to get something rather than just praise back out of it. Even if it’s just to cover the costs of hosting and your domain, monetizing your blog isn’t a bad idea.
Guest Posts
Charge people a fee to write a post on your website and have it link back to their site. People will email from within your niche asking to write on your page. This is against most search engines policy so proceed with caution.
Ads
Although Ad Sense isn’t what it once was, you can still generate revenue from displaying ads on your site. There are also alternatives out there to Ad Sense and if this is something you’d consider we would say they are worth investigating.
Affiliate Marketing
Gain commission by selling products for companies indirectly. Have a list of items relating to your niche that you? Reach out to those companies and offer them your services in exchange for a small part of each sale.
Blogging Tips Conclusion
Blogging is in no way done and dusted. It is still a thriving community and is one that you can make your own space in. Follow the blogging tips in this guide to start the right way.