Creating a successful and profitable blog is no longer a bed of roses.
Gone are the days when bloggers would just sit on their couch, write a few articles each month and rank on the first page of Google.
The competition is getting stiff by each passing day. It is especially daunting for a new blogger to compete with established websites and bloggers in this already saturated field.
Similarly, keeping abreast of the latest changes and updates introduced by major search engines requires a lot of effort, energy, and experience.
However, all is not lost for you if you are a newbie blogger. Everyone can make a name of himself in the world of blogging.
All you need to do is to follow certain rules and implement a few tips which all the successful bloggers do. More importantly, you have to work tirelessly and be patient and your time will definitely come.
The following are the 13 effective blogging tips that should help every aspiring blogger get on his feet in this extremely competitive profession.
First of all, it takes time to build a successful blog no matter you are blogging as a hobby or for the sake of money.
If you cannot devote enough time to your blog, you should give up the idea of pursuing one. An average blogger takes three to four hours to write a blog post. And, you have to write a large number of articles in the beginning.
Similarly, blogging is not a part–time job. It is a full-time occupation that requires your total dedication, effort, and strategic planning.
You cannot become a successful blogger if you intend to blog just an hour on weekends, nights, or outside regular work hours. You may be able to earn a meager $500 a month but it is not worth the effort. Therefore, only start a new blog if you can spend a sufficient amount of time on it.
As mentioned above, blogging has become very competitive. In fact, you have to lock horns with more than 31 million bloggers in the United States alone and the number is rising.
In order to be successful, you have to be special and stand out from the crowd. There is only one way of accomplishing this task that is to select a unique niche. It simply means selecting a very, very specific topic to blog on. Even, this is not enough. You have to become a complete authority on that topic as well.
For example, you can select aviation as a topic if you are going to start a travel blog. Similarly, creating a successful knitting blog for housewives is a good idea if you want to create a business blog. You can always expand your blog and cover additional topics once you start gaining some followers.
Another method to gain traction as a newbie blogger is to write about popular topics. It is not an idea but a necessity because organic search is responsible for 51% of all web traffic. Finding topics people are searching for is not very difficult either.
You can use any good keyword research tool such as Google Keyword Planner and Ahref to find and generate ideas. Just put a keyword in these tools and they would come up with numerous questions people are finding answers to on Google.
Google always provides the most relevant and highest quality results against search queries.
What it means is that you should also provide the most relevant results for queries if you want to rank on the first page of Google. It is also the only way to get organic, passive traffic without spending a lot of money.
However, creating content that aligns with search queries requires you to understand the search intent.
How do you do that?
Well, you can find the search intent simply by looking at the top 10 results in Google. They will provide you with a clear picture of what kind of stuff people are reading. Just follow the trend, create similar content and you are good to go.
Most of the bloggers quit blogging within the first few weeks of starting a blog.
The reason?
Nobody reads what they write.
Keep in mind that every blogger suffers from the same fate at the start. Only those achieve their goal who write consistently without worrying whether or not anyone is reading them. Just give vent to your thoughts, opinions, and ideas. Just keep writing and more people will come to your blog over time.
Consistency and quality content are the keys if your goals are to become a prominent blogger. We have already discussed how important it is to just keep producing content. Now, it is time to talk about consistency.
All the big blogs and marketing efforts involve consistency as an essential part. Not following a consistent schedule is one of the biggest mistakes new bloggers make. And, they make this mistake consistently.
Reasons like lack of readership or time can put you off but you have to overcome these hurdles. The one way of doing so is to write consistently as it also boosts your SEO results. The constant growth of your blog depends upon producing quality content on a regular basis. People will only come back to your blog if they get something new to read every single time.
You should use all the free tools, help, and equipment you can get your hands on at the time of starting your blog. This is imperative because you may not have enough money to invest in good gear such as a decent camera.
However, you should replace your smartphone camera with a DSLR when you get financially stable and the same is the case with everything else. For example, you should spend some money on improving the design of your website. Similarly, using a real camera will totally change how your website looks just because you will be able to add beautiful, quality images to your blog. (You still don’t have to spend thousands of dollars, just go with good economical gear.)
All the new readers have the tendency to hit the “Submit” button without thoroughly checking their posts. This is one of the reasons for their downfall. Not checking the posts for grammatical and spelling mistakes is the greatest blunder a blogger can commit.
To make matters worse, the majority of bloggers don’t bother to go back through the post and try to align it with search engines as well as with the reader’s minds. Spend some time on the post to remove glaring spelling mistakes. Similarly, try to ensure the article is appealing to the search engines and has nothing which repels your readers.
The design of your blog can make or break your blogging efforts. Now is the era of neat and clean grids devoid of crowded layouts and rainbow colors which were the hallmark of the internet’s early days. Your website’s design should offer a pleasant, exciting experience to your readers instead of frustrating them to their core. A user-friendly design keeps the readers engaged and entice them to visit again.
Similarly, do not stick with the same design for too long. Always try to adapt and keep on introducing new things that are consistent with current trends and users’ interests. Instead of resisting change, embrace it with open arms and you would definitely get good results.
You may be surprised to learn that more than 50% of internet traffic comes from mobile devices.
Similarly, 80% of internet users own a smartphone. These statistics are pretty astonishing, to say the least. It also emphasizes one thing.
You should try to go mobile if you want to get a major share of your relevant web traffic. There is a good chance people are using a mobile device to open your blog while they are traveling on a bus, sitting in a canteen, or simply walking on the street.
Therefore, it is important for you to optimize your beautiful blog design for mobile as well. In fact, your blog should have a minimal design that should look equally beautiful both on desktop and mobile.
You should avoid wordpress.com if you are serious about blogging.
Most serious bloggers choose wordpress.org which is a paid service. As such, it offers you complete control and freedom of your blog. You can customize your blog the way you want.
In addition, you can do whatever you like including adding new features and of course, making money. In fact, more than 30% of blogs now use WordPress as a blogging platform.
You have developed a really beautiful blog. Similarly, you have plenty of great content to publish. But, how do you make people come to your blog and actually read it? One way of promoting your content to a larger audience is to use different social media platforms.
Creating an effective marketing campaign including press releases, videos, and social media is the best method to engage your readers and gain traction. All these things amplify your content quite considerably, helping you significantly grow your blog and public following. You just have to ensure that your content is relevant, engaging, and refreshing continuously.
Last but not least, you would want to make money blogging at some stage. As you know, you have to wait long and hard for this moment. But, when this time comes, you should already have a full understanding of different revenue resources. This would help you decide which of these resources you want to use and which not.
Two of the most popular money making methods are affiliate programs and Google AdSense.
Different affiliate programs such as Amazon Associates offers you a small commission for the products you promote on your blog.
In fact, hundreds of websites such as 10wares.com are earning a substantial amount of money from affiliate programs. The total revenue you generate from these streams is directly proportional to your monthly traffic. In simple words, your income grows when your blog traffic grows. Therefore, you should try to consistently publish quality content on your blog if the main aim of your blog is to make money.
With this, we conclude our list of the 13 best blogging tips for newbie bloggers. Remember that we have only scratched the surface. You should keep on learning continuously even after launching your blog and work on building a large community. It is the only way to maintain a relevant and successful blog.
Happy blogging.
Bilal is a passionate blogger and editor at 10wares.com. He loves to digital marketing and worked many organizations & eCommerce ventures.
