Starting a blog can be intimidating in the beginning. Imagine you will write a piece, and thousands of people will read it and form opinions about it. It is a feeling that can not be described.
But definitely, writing a blog is not fun and games. It takes a lot of effort and hard work to make it a huge success. Especially if you are a budding blogger.
So many pitfalls are witnessed during this journey. Therefore, in this blog, I will share some expert tips with you to ensure you avoid any mistakes you are making currently.
So, grab a cup of coffee and be ready; we are about to begin!
Table of Contents
13 THINGS BLOGGERS NEED TO KNOW DURING BLOGGING
In this section, I will discuss some tips that I feel each and every blogger should know while starting a blog so that you don’t have to worry about making your blog successful.
1. ALWAYS PUT QUALITY OVER QUANTITY
This is one lesson that I have learned through practicing blogging for a long time. After publishing various blogs, SEO has taught me that” Quality always wins over quantity when it comes to blog posts.
Yes, you heard it correctly! “Quality wins over Quality.”
This means Posting daily or even weekly posts simply isn’t mandatory. If you do it correctly, posting once a month is sufficient. In fact, this gives you the entire month to spend on promoting your content. Google used to give some advantages to new websites. However, sites started abusing that and launched a dozen of irrelevant articles per day. It worked for a while, but then Google banned this leverage. Now those sites are extinct.
Would you rather have ten OK or two amazing posts on your website? I would rather have the two amazing posts. This is because the two posts are high Quality, gather more engagement, receive more backlinks, have more authority, and boost our website SEO. Check out if you want to learn how to create a rewarding blog from scratch.
2. FORMATTING YOUR POSTS IS AS IMPORTANT AS WRITING THEM
Just like great content with catchy images and videos increases the reader’s time on the page and post engagement, so does a well-formatted blog.
The one big truth we must face is that “People don’t read everything word-by-word anymore.” With increasing time, the attention span of people is getting shortened. Now, an average reader just skims through the posts that he/she reads. There’s too much content and too little time to do anything else.
That’s where formatting comes into play. A well-formatted post makes it easy for your readers to skim, then dive in if they feel it is worth their time.
So, one obvious question that might pop up here is, “How do you format your blogs the correct way?”
Here are some tips for you to consider:
- Divide long parts of your content into different sections by placing headers and sub-headers
- Use bulleted or numbered lists to focus on key information
- Use Bold words or sentences to emphasize important points
- Break the monotony of texts and use images and videos to make your content more digestible.
- Use short paragraphs (no more than 4 to 5 lines)
- By default, the reader’s point of reference is left to right. Therefore, place your images on the left side(preferably) or center. Do not break the uniformity.
Remember these tips while drafting your content; they will make a considerable difference.
3. BUILD AN EMAIL LIST FROM THE VERY BEGINNING
Many bloggers make the mistake of not focusing much on their email lists. An email list can take your blogs to the next level.
Just Imagine:
You wake up not that excited for the day. You start making a cup of coffee, and while waiting for it to brew, you open your emails.
You saw over $1000 in sales from your email campaign last night.
Wouldn’t this brighten up your day?
Creating an email list should be a priority when starting a blog, even before posting your first blog. But if it wasn’t, that’s OK – “better late than never.” Get an email marketing platform like Mailchimp, Hubspot, and Drip, and get started. There are billions of users actively using their emails, making email marketing a lucrative way to boost your online presence, brand value, and user engagement.
4. STICK TO ONE NICHE IN ALL YOUR POSTS
One of the biggest mistakes I made while starting my career, and I noticed other bloggers, too, is not sticking to one theme in all the blog posts.
I understand that you are urged to do something different with each post you make. Also, different people have different interests, so you might want to switch themes in every blog to cater to everybody’s needs. For Example, if you are a photographer, you also love traveling and watching movies. So, you decide to start a blog that has all these three topics sprinkled all over. But in reality, this does not work.
Here’s why:
- Finding the right readership for your blogs will be difficult. Different themes in every blog post will also confuse your audience.
- Achieving great results in SEO will be more difficult. Google likes sites mainly dedicated to a single topic since this makes it easier to understand.
- Money comes from direct and targeted traffic. If you are discussing different topics all over your site, getting targeted traffic will be difficult, making monetization hard.
If you want to discuss different things, I recommend starting a separate blog. Until you can find a niche audience and have strong posts around each topic.
5. PAY ATTENTION TO PAGE LOADING SPEED
Whether you’re running an e-commerce store, blog, or online business, page load speed matters a lot.
People will bounce off if your page takes over 3 seconds to load( especially on mobile devices). Moreover, Google uses your blog’s page load speed as one of its ranking factors. Your website won’t get ranked high if the page load speed is not fast.
To see how fast your blog page loads, you can use various speed testing tools like GTmetrix, Google Pagespeed Insights, Pingdom, and many more.
If you find that your blog is not loading quickly, here are some ways to speed it up:
- Optimize images: Images make up 50-60% of blogs nowadays, as images are a great way to enhance the user experience. However, if your images are larger than 50KB, it can bulk up your blog pages, slowing their speed. Optimize your blog images, shrink their size to under 50KB, and add them to your blogs.
- Use a cache plugin: What a cache plugin does is when a visitor returns to your website to see a page again, then it delivers a cached version. This considerably reduces the page loading time.
- Pick a faster host: Choosing a host for your website with high speed and less downtime is necessary.
What’s important is to be performance-oriented from the very first day you begin writing and uploading your blogs and not treat them as something you can return to later on.
6. ADD VIDEOS IN YOUR BLOGS TO SPURT UP THE ENGAGEMENT
Do you know? One of the most essential metrics for SEO is your visitor’s on-page time. Adding videos to your blogs is the simplest way to increase users’ on-page time.
However, I do not see many bloggers using videos in their posts. Videos are a great way to stand out from competitors and boost engagement. I understand you are not a videographer but a blogger. But you don’t have to be a professional videographer or spend tons of money on fancy equipment to get started. In reality, your smartphone is just enough. If you are wondering how to create videos for blogs, then click here.
No problem, even if you do not want to make your own videos, no problem! Try to add relevant Youtube videos already present online. Here’s how to add Youtube videos to your blog.
Finally, even if you do not want to go for any of the above options, you can hire professional video creators. Various online platforms like Freelancer.com will help you with the process. Always check their reviews and ratings before going forward.
7. RE-SHARE YOUR OLD CONTENT TO BOOST YOUR ENGAGEMENT
As your blogs start to grow, there will be new visitors or followers to be tapped into. There isis a high chance that your new followers will skip your old posts simply because they have joined later. In fact, as different people are online at different times, you can not target all of them with your post. Unsurprisingly, even your old followers can skip your blogs. Therefore, you must circulate your old content to hit multiple time zones and boost your engagement.
You can freshen up your old content and post it again on your blogging site or social media handles. Refreshing old content and sharing it again also indicates to Google that the website is being updated with newer relevant content, boosting your ranking. Thankfully, you can add various scheduling plugins that you can use to put this on autopilot.
8. BLOG HEADLINES ARE AS IMPORTANT AS THE BLOG CONTENT
Your blog headline matter as much as your blog content. Here are a few reasons to know why:
- Blog Titles make it easier for readers to find your posts and make them want to click more.
- You have 5 seconds or less to grab user attention; a good blog title does this exactly.
- Titles are a great way to tell what your readers can expect in the blog.
- You can put keywords in your blog titles which helps in SEO.
- Get readers excited with intriguing and unique titles.
Now that you know why titles are important, you might want to ask-“ How to create one for yourself?”
Here is a list of a few tips to make a great blog title:
- Use numbers n your headlines.
- Most people are on the web to solve their queries. Using “How to” in your titles is a great way to target all these people looking for suggestions/solutions.
- Use promising headlines. These headlines will ensure readers get much information as they read the blogs. One example is “The Ultimate Guide to XYZ.””
- Do keyword research and add keywords in your headlines to attract new audiences and boost blog SEO.
Go on…Use these tips and work on your titles as much as you do on your blog content.
9. ADD A FAQ SECTION TO SAVE TIME
Adding an FAQ section to your blogs is a must; here are a few reasons to support this argument:
- FAQs considerably reduce your time since half of the customer query is resolved after reading the FAQs. Therefore, you can reduce the number of redundant emails immensely by just adding a FAQ section.
- No matter how elaborate your website is, if you do not have a FAQ section, people will have to scroll through various blogs to look for their answers. However, adding a FAQ section enhances the user experience of your website.
- What is more interesting is that you can boost the SEO of your website through FAQs by adding internal links and keywords to them.
- FAQs widen your audience as they may bring people who don’t know about your company onto your website after reading some questions they were looking for.
- In fact, FAQs are a great way to build strong relationships with your blog audience. Since people will look forward to your content more if you resolve their queries.
- FAQs are a great way of projecting yourself as an industry expert.
- Additionally, FAQs help you understand your audience better, allowing you to serve them better.
Do not just create your blogs but also a FAQ section to get better results.
10. DO CONTENT AUDITS
It is difficult to accept, but not all our written content will remain relevant forever. This is because there are always new developments and ideas emerging, regardless of the topic we choose to write about.
Predicting the future and how long a piece of content will remain evergreen or relevant is impossible. Therefore, conducting regular content audits is wise, especially if your blog has been online for over a year.
A content audit helps determine which posts are still relevant, which need to be updated or removed entirely, and which can be combined or consolidated.
Our suggestion is to create a spreadsheet that includes all your blog posts and categorize them into three sections:
- Improve: This section includes posts that are still relevant but require improvement to attract more prospects. You can modify, delete, or edit some parts according to your needs.
- Delete: This section consists of posts that have become irrelevant at a given time and can be deleted entirely. These may include old sponsored posts, news posts, reviews, and how-to guides.
- Consolidate: To make a more comprehensive resource, you can merge smaller posts to create a single comprehensive post.
Upgrading your old content through an audit demonstrates your concern for your blog audience and signals to Google that your site is up-to-date and should rank well.
By conducting site audits more frequently, you can experience the benefits firsthand.
11. WEBSITE SECURITY IS VERY IMPORTANT
I understand that some things are out of your control. If your server crashes, there’s not much you can do about it, but just wait for it to be up and running.
However, there are a few things that can be under your control.
Firstly, keep your website updated. If you do not update your site, it will become prone to malicious activities. Secondly, get yourself a security plugin or trustworthy solution to keep your website security under check. Keep yourself updated about all the notifications it sends you. You absolutely need to secure your website. It is really, really important.
Some tips to secure your WordPress Website are as follows:
- Implement SSL certificates
- Use Strong passwords
- Install a security plugin like Wordfence Security, All In One WP & Firewall, iThemes Security, etc.
- Update your core WordPress files
- Use themes and plugins by a credible source only
- Frequently backup your data
- Hide your WP-admin page from hackers with plugins like WPS. Hide your Login
Go ahead, and secure your website.
12. GIVE YOUR BEST STUFF FOR FREE
The common mistake many bloggers make is making their best stuff available only to their subscribers. Is it helpful? NO.
Think about it this way: while listening to the radio, you hear songs that are Number 1 or popular. This is probably why you hear to that channel. On top of it, all these songs are for free. Why? Because this is how they get you tuned in.
You may call this “The Radio Technique” if you like.
The thing is this:
Free, great stuff gets people through the door, and they start looking out for more when they come. They say, “Damn, if this free resource is this good, how amazing will the paid content be. “”
Here is where you win. This is where you get to sell your subscription and online courses effectively. In a nutshell: If you are starting a blog, always give your best stuff for free. It has a huge ROI!
13. KEEP GOING AND HAVE FAITH IN YOURSELF
As they say correctly, “Winners never quit, and quitters never win.” If you set your mind on a goal and consistently work towards it, nobody can stop you from reaping the benefits. Starting a blog is not an easy process, and it takes a lot of time to succeed. Sometimes even years! During this process, many bloggers lose out on hope and switch to other occupations. However, this should not be the case! Be patient, work hard, and success will follow. Just trust the process. Even if by any chance (1%) you don’t get the success you will gain experience and a wide knowledge which will only help you.
I hope these tips helped you in some way. If they did, please share this blog and forward it to your contacts. Do let me know if you have any suggestions. Drop in your query, if any, and we will happily serve you. Stay tuned for more content; see you!
