Websites can be a very marketable and very profitable tool if used correctly. In this SEO Magnifier article, you will learn about the 13 most essential steps to successful blogging.
1) Where to start?
You should begin your blog with a free blog hosting service such as Journal Home or Blogger. Beginning with a free blog hosting service allows you to start blogging instantly without having any advance knowledge of scripts, hosting, or programming. It allows you to focus on your content and not the internal maintenance of the blog. The best benefit of starting with a free service is, if your blog does not become successful you don't lose any money or are you left holding the bill.
The great thing about a website is that they are organized in chronological order; your most recent entry is displayed first. If your blog traffic grows greatly and you are ready to upgrade to your own domain then you can simply make your last blog entry the announcement of your"move", which directs visitors to your blog site, keeping your following, without a major inconvenience to anybody. Upgrade as you want to... .but only once you need to!
2) Niche
A niche is a targeted product, service, or subject. You should first choose a product, service, or topic which interest you. Choose an area which you can enthusiastically write about on a daily basis. You can use keyword research services like Google Zeitgeist or even Yahoo! Buzz Index to find popular searched topics. It doesn't matter if your topic is popular as long as there's an audience for your topic and the topic is precisely focused then your blog ought to be successful.
Anything can be considered a niche as long as it has a target audience no matter how big or how small the audience is. A blog about your cat can be a niche or a blog about the species of the cat family can be a larger niche market, if there are those that are interested in hearing about your cat or the species of the cat family. . .you may also choose to build your audience for a marketplace which an audience does not exist, but first, you must build your blog.
3) Update Daily (nothing less)
This step is essential and not a proposal. Updating your blog daily not only keeps your blog more interesting to readers, but it also gives your blog fresh content on a day to day making it more attractive to search engines. Not updating your blog on an occasional holiday or one day here and there is understandable to many, but missing days at a time or weeks is unacceptable and will probably cause your blog being unsuccessful.
To keep your blog traffic and retain your visitor's interest it's a must to update your blog daily with multiple entries. You need to attempt and update your blog every day with at least 3 or more daily entries. The best way to manage the content writing using the marketing tools like the best English paraphrasing tool to accomplish this is to set aside 1-2 hours a day for tending to your blog and adding new entries. It may even be a good idea to schedule a set time which you dedicate to your blog each day.
Give yourself work hours and treat your blog as a job, what happens if you don't come to work for a couple of months, you lose money or worse you get fired! Same applies here, if you do not update your site for days or weeks you'll lose visitors.
4) Traffic
It's no secret. You need to have traffic to profit from blogs. There are numerous ways to construct traffic. Paid advertising, free advertising, viral marketing, search engine advertising, RSS/XML feeds, and word-of-mouth. You need to submit your blog URL address to search engines and site directories. You should submit your RSS/XML URL feed to blog ping services like Technorati, Ping-O-Matic, and Blogdigger.
You should confidently share your blog with family, friends, co-workers, partners, and business professionals when it relates. Many blogs can be regarded as a selection of articles, for this purpose you should submit your blog entries (those that are valuable and lengthy articles) to content syndicators like GoArticles.com or ArticleCity.com. Once submitted your articles can be picked up and published by others.
The trick is to be certain to include your Blog URL address in the"About the Author" passage. What this does is create link popularity and backlinks for your blog, when someone picks up your article from the syndication then publish the article on their website the"About the Author" passage is included with each publication and the link you included is followed, crawled, and indexed by search engines. Imagine if your article is popular enough or controversial enough to produce 10,000 publications throughout the net.
The search engines are bound to find your website in no time with that many publications and credit you an authority on the topic, in return increasing your rank on search engines. You should attempt and compose at least 1 full-length article every week for syndication and submit your article to at least 10 article syndicators.
5) Track Your Blog
How can you know if your blog has traffic? Just because nobody is leaving comments doesn't mean your site is not growing. Many visitors don't leave comments but they are returning visitors. I know it sounds crazy but with blogs, people are more interested in what"you" have to say! Many visitors do not comment on their 1st, 2nd, or 3rd time. Some do not comment in any way but are active daily visitors.
Tracking your blog does not need to be overly sophisticated usually a simple free page counter like StatCounter.com or Active Meter will do the trick. Install (copy/paste) the code into the HTML of your blog template and start tracking your traffic. It's better to use a service that provides you advanced traffic analysis, such as keyword tracking information, referral information, and search engine optimization. Visitors, returning visitors, and unique visitors should be standard for any page counter service you choose.
6) Listen to Your Audience
When using the proper page counter you should start to observe how others are finding your blog and if through search engines then which keywords are used to locate your blog. If constantly your blog is being found by 1 or more keywords then focus your blog around those keywords to make it even more powerful. When writing entry titles and entries use the keywords as often as possible whilst keeping the blog legible and interesting.
7) Multiple blogs
Use multiple blogging accounts to attract more people. As a consequence, you should have a blog with JournalHome.com, Blogger.com, LiveJournal.com, Blog-City. com, tBlogs.com, etc.. You can copy/paste from 1 blog to all others. Having different blog accounts is like having a publication in various newspapers. This allows you to attract more traffic and this also increases the chance that 1 of your blogs will be in the search engine results for your focused keywords.
8) Short & Concise
Occasionally there are exceptions to the rule and you have no choice but to blog lengthy entries, but try to prevent this as far as you can. You don't want your blog entries to become hours of reading. Visitors like to easily find information and skim through your entries. It is good to be detailed and provide useful advice, but do not include useless information or run away sentences that veer away from the topic.
Try to include non-advertising graphics, images, photos, and art in your blog entries. Not too much. After a week is fine, graphics can sometimes bring your blog to life. Obviously, the content of the blog has become the most important aspect and you don't want to overshadow your content with graphics, but displaying graphics can add a little spice to the website. Be choosy about your graphics and make sure they fit your entry topic. You need to add content with the graphic, at least a caption. Original images, photographs, pictures, and graphics is suggested.
10) Keep it Personal
A blog is most effective when it is kept private. Try to include personal experiences which relate to the topic of your blog entry. Stay away from the business style of writing. Write with a more personal style and utilize first-person narratives. Don't write any of your entries as sales letters, instead share product reviews and personal endeavors.
11) Interact With Your Visitors
You now have the traffic you deserve. You should start interacting with your visitors. Create a regular theme such as: "Monday Money Tip" or"Picture of the Week" which entices your readers to look forward to every week.
Give your readers advance notice about a product, service, or topic that you are going to review and then talk about later. When the President was scheduled to give a speech than in your blog you should say that you"will discuss the speech and give your opinion after the speech airs. Comments will be appreciated".
Try to do your very best to find exclusive information that not many have. Do not disclose any secret or confidential information which is deemed illegal or can potentially get you into trouble, but try to get the scoop before everyone else does. Such as: If your blog was about Paris Hilton (the socialite) and you also had a blog entry about"Paris Hilton Getting Married" then it would be interesting to your readers if you had an actual picture of Paris Hilton engagement ring.
Give your very best effort to dig and search the internet for exclusive information and you'll possibly come up with something helpful. Your subscribers will appreciate this and they show their appreciation via word-of-mouth referrals. Imagine how many readers will tell their friends, family members, and others about information they only can find at your blog.
12) Make Money
Once your blog has gained some real momentum and your blog traffic is increasing then it's time to begin considering turning your traffic into profit. Contextual advertising is usually text links which use the content of your blog to publish targeted ads on your blog. The payout is usually based on a nonprofit model, meaning forever click an ad receives you are paid a small percentage of their profits.
13) You are a Professional
You're an expert now! What are you still doing with that free blog hosting service? It is time to update to a domain hosted solution. You need to get a web host and choose a domain name on your blog then check its availability. Pick the blogging software you want to utilize, for example, Squarespace.com, WordPress.org, MovableType.org, etc..
When you have your new blog domain setup and ready for traffic then it is time to announce your move on all of your previous blog accounts. Your last entry to the site should be a"move" statement. The title should be"Moved" and the blog entry should state something like"Old Website was transferred to New Blog please follow and bookmark this link for future reference. This way all returning visitors and new readers should have no problem finding your new blog domain.
Conclusion: At the level of a professional blogger, you might choose to team up with 1 or more other bloggers. This will make a more interesting and more powerful blog. The old saying"two heads is far better than one", more authors mean more advertising and exposure because each author will have a vested interest in the site. The idea of a team blog is to make it profitable and rewarding for all authors while continuing to target the blog topic and keeping the blog interesting for visitors.
There's no guarantee your blog will become popular or a household name, but the effort should at least put you one step closer. Making money online isn't an overnight experience like many may believe, but making money online is definitely a foreseeable possibility. Also, growing popularity on the internet isn't an overnight experience, but through time, dedication, and persistence you will be rewarded with all the intricacies of blogging.
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