Blogging Tips for Beginners That Actually Work
You may have heard blogging advice such as "write about your passions" or "write about how you feel." If these are the only two things you do, your chances of launching a successful blog are slim. The truth is that even if people are interested in what you're writing about, they won't visit your site if they can't find it, and even if they do find you, traffic is meaningless unless you can get them to read your content. So today I'm going to go over some essential blogging advice.
Let's break these down into three buckets to help you get more traction. The first bucket is all about becoming a better writer in the first tip that falls in this bucket is to focus on a specific part of your niche. Now you may label yourself as a food blogger but by covering the topic of food as a whole you may be spreading yourself too thin. For example, even if you were able to publish two posts per day for an entire year on subtopics like slow cooker recipes nutrition and more
It would be difficult to compete with larger sites or those that only focus on one of those topics. So, in my opinion, it's better to be a master of one thing rather than a jack-of-all-trades. As a result, concentrate on becoming the go-to location. People go in search of a smoothie. Recipes have become the go-to place for grilling techniques. After you've dominated that niche audience, you can try and expand to other subtopics in order to reach new audiences.
The second suggestion is to make referencing. Requires attribution, and in the world of blogging, attribution equals links. Links from other websites are significant because search engines such as Google use them to help determine which pages should rank high in search results. Now, how do you create content that is worthy of citation? I have three pieces of advice for you. The first is to create content that is unique and interesting to your industry, for example. We conducted an experiment in which we spent money that, to the best of our knowledge, no one had written.
This type of post resulted in approximately 140 unique websites linking to this page in a short period of time. Including statistics is another way to get people to refer to your posts. Because of a statistics, the HR blog has over 2,500 backlinks, and this is one of the reasons why we continue to publish data studies; They are literally link magnets.
To use this tip as an example, a good chunk of backlinko x' links come from stats and they're frequently referencing his own personal results like growing his organic traffic by 111% and boosting conversions by 785%. It also works outside of the marketing niche. Nerd wallet has nearly 29,000 backlinks because of a mention of a stat naturally. As people blog they want to provide supporting resources that back up their articles.
Finally, include one-of-a-kind images that are worth stealing. Creating high-quality images is difficult, which means it's a point of leverage for those willing to put in the effort. We frequently include custom images in our posts, whether they are graphs from our data studies or illustrations. That aid in better explaining concepts. They not only improve the reader experience, but they also result in links, as you can see. We have approximately eight hundred and twenty links pointing to JPEG images on PNG images.
Okay, the next point to remember is to make your posts easy to read. Nobody likes to read, according to our CMO. They are only interested in the information. They'd do it if they could download it to their brain. and to do so, you must ensure that your posts are easy to read and use. Here are some pointers on how to go about it. Instead of large walls of text, you shorten paragraphs. Short paragraphs allow readers to move through your article in small, easy steps. Next, break up long sentences because they are difficult to follow.
Use multimedia in your posts, whether it's videos, images, or gifts, as they can often help illustrate your points better than words. Finally, use a conversational tone when writing. The simplest way to ensure this is to read your copy aloud. If you sound like you're conversing with a friend, you're on the right track; if you sound like you're competing in a national debate, try again.
The next step is to use non-clickbait right-click worthy headlines. The one user is a click fail to get clicks and you fail to get traffic now because most people will find your webpages through search or social. You want to craft a heading that accurately represents your article without sounding boring. For example, an article titled 15 best headphones gets the point across but it's boring. An article titled 15 best high-end headphones for under $100 is more click worthy because it tells the reader that the headphones are of high quality and that high-end headphones are more expensive.
The job of the headline is to entice the reader to click through to the page. Your introduction must entice them to read the rest of the post. To accomplish this, we employ the app formula, which stands for align, present, and proof. First, you must align yourself with a reader's problem, then present your posts as a solution to that problem, and finally, you must provide proof as to why they should trust you.
Here's an example from our blog: we greet the first reader by saying, "Looking to grow your YouTube channel and attract more views?" We then present our solution by saying, "The trick is to target topics with researched amendments," and we conclude with proof by showing them that we've grown our YouTube channel from ten thousand to over two hundred thousand monthly views."
The final writing tip I have for you is to create feedback. Your last at 8 refs were known to go through a pretty rigorous editing process. The writer generally starts with an outline. After that's approved they write their first final draft. And no doubt they should think it's pretty good. Then someone else from our team will review their post, question any claims, suggest different formats or whatever anything goes at this point. This usually ends up with a document that's completely high quality.
This feedback loop allows us to always put our best foot forward on every post we publish. Now if you don't have a team to work with. It's worth connecting with other bloggers in your space who also want to become a better writer. But don't just reach out and say hey can you edit my post I'll let it be yours too. This type of process can occur through relationships, which I will discuss further later. For the time being, let's focus on the more technical aspects of blogging.
Write about topics that people are looking for, also known as keyword research. 51 percent of all website traffic comes from organic search, and if you want a piece of that traffic, you need to use keywords that people are actually searching for. Fortunately, search engines like Google provide clues through features like autosuggest; simply type in a topic you want to write about, and you'll see a few other closely related terms appear. There are other freemium tools available, such as keywords phrase.
The problem with these tools is that you can't see keyword metrics, which means you don't know how much traffic you can get. To find this information, you'd have to use premium tools like Ahrefs keywords explorer, which allows you to generate lists of keyword ideas. Examine important metrics such as search volume and keyword difficulty to determine whether they are worth pursuing for your site.
To cover your competitors' best topics, and by best, I mean the most popular. I'm referring to the pages that send them consistent traffic each month. To find your competitors' popular pages, enter their domain into a tool like Ahrefs Site Explorer and then go to the toss pages report, which shows you the pages that get the most monthly search traffic. If I were in the prepping niche, I would definitely consider going after these topics because they account for approximately 45 percent of the entire website's organic traffic.
This brings us to our final technical tip, which is to perform some basic on-page SEO. The practice of optimizing webpages to help them rank higher in search engines is referred to as on-page SEO. So, without overcomplicating things, include your primary keyword in your title and URL, and make sure you cover all of your main topic subpoints. For instance, if you're discussing how to make the perfect cup of coffee, you should probably discuss things like finding the right roasting methods.
Our final category is to get social, and I don't mean which social media networks you should use. So the first tip is to connect with other bloggers in your niche who you admire. Smart bloggers reach out to one another in order to build relationships. They often promote each other's content, which is why it appears that all of the big players in your industry are friends. They began early and grew together. Not everyone will want to be friends, but there is a good chance that people in your industry will want to connect. They simply aren't aware of your existence, at least not yet. Consider five to ten people you admire in your field; these could be people who run blogs or newsletters to which you are subscribed.
Write their names down on a piece of paper and make a note of something you admire about their work. Now, send them an email with the sole purpose of connecting; do not ask them to share your content, review it, link to you, or ask for any kind of favor. Simply send a simple and genuine email, such as hello name. I just wanted to say that I really admire whatever you do, and I appreciate whatever you admire. Congratulations on your name. In 2017, I sent a similar email to the CMO and we became good friends. Nothing was manufactured here; everything happened naturally.
The following social tip is to create an email list. Have you ever had one of those moments where you're trying to remember which website had that awesome recipe, tutorial, or whatever it was? You'd know if you'd joined that email list. You're preventing your readers from receiving future content or product updates if you don't use email opt-in forms. Establishing an email list gets traffic to your new posts and because subscribers are warm visitors rather than cold traffic. Some of them may share it on social media or even link to you if they have a blog. Bottom line: Begin compiling a list from the start.
Finally, now is the time to promote your content in online communities. This is a touchy subject because you don't want to spam Facebook groups or Reddit with things that will enrage people instead. Spend your time assimilating yourself a recognizable name and face, and as you see a need, share content that can help solve the problems of other group members. If you nail it, you can get thousands of visitors; if you don't, you could be banned from those communities, so share links sparingly and spend the majority of your time meeting like-minded bloggers to build mutually beneficial relationships. Now I'm curious if you have any blogging tips that I've missed. Please let me know in the comments, and if you enjoyed this article, please comment and share it with friends.