1. Do Blogging with Patience and Passion
Passion and Patience are the ultimate words for blogging. Always choose a niche for blogging about what you know (write what you know!) and are passionate enough to write about every day or twice a week. My blogging has really come into its own since I've started working for an online marketing company, where I blog basically every day. And, blogging won't make you money overnight, if that's your goal. You'll have to wait for the money and it will only come if you have a proper strategy.
2. Make Blogging Strategy
Make a schedule for blogging and stick to it. It's important to stay consistent with your blogging, as it will hold reader interest and encourage you to pump out fresh content for SEO purposes. Now, how many articles you will write in a day or a week? How much time you will spend in marketing your blog? How will you market your blog? For example, I now know I'm going to include my blog and twitter accounts the next time I order my business cards.
3. Make Social Media Marketing Strategy
Search engines are no longer the only source of generating traffic. If you target social media biggies(Facebook, Twitter, Digg, Stumbleupon, etc.) then you can get a great amount of traffic from them. Sometimes it can be much more than search engine traffic: but again, it won't come easily. You'll have to interact with people in Social Media in your niche and you'll have to build valuable relationship with them.
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| This is ME! :) |
Link building is important when it comes to search engines. Make proper link building strategy and try to get more backlinks from the blogs in your niche especially the higher page rank blogs. Find DoFollow blogs in your niche and the blogs using Comluv and Top Commentators plugins. Comment on those blogs but DON'T spam. No one likes to see that on blogs you comment on, it diminishes your credibility, and breaches blogger/blogging etiquette. Try instead to add value to the article: it's fun to check back and see how people respond.
5. Make Your Blog a Community
The environment of your blog should be such that when new visitor comes to your blog he should feel it as a community and become the part of it. So solicit comments at the end of your posts, and start a conversation!
6. Make Good Relations with Niche Bloggers
Interact with other blogger in your niche by commenting on their blogs and through social media. You can learn a lot from your competition, get more ideas, and competition breeds innovation.
7. Write Unique Content
Content is king in blogging and any website. Copying and pasting content onto your blog can result in your website being penalized by the search engines. So come up with something original: it doesn't have to be long or perfect, just get it up there! (Bonus points if you add some keywords you'd like to rank for!)
8. Always Reply to Comments
Interact with your readers by replying to their comments. Readers love it when their comment is replied and they will come back and comment again to create another conversation. Also be sure that it is easy for readers to make comments: users will give up trying to post if it takes them forever to add a one-sentence reaction.
How to get more comments on your Blog
9. Use Article Marketing
Write articles related to your niche in high PR article submission directories such as Ezine Articles, Hubpages and Squidoo with the backlink to your blog. It will definitely increase your blog authority and your blog will rank well in search engines.
10. Enngage in Mutual Guest Blogging
Try to write at least one article in a week to other blogs in your niche who offer you to write for their blogs. Guest posting on high traffic and high PR blogs is more beneficial as it will give you more exposure and quality backlinks.
11. Ask Readers for their Opinions
Ask readers for their opinions in your articles. It will increase comments on your blog and your readers will not feel that they are reading an article written by someone who's not real. Adding personality and invoking a conersation will score major points.
12. Write for Readers
Ever heard the expression, "Write like a reader"? Always give priority to your readers. SEO of the article is also important but it will be of no use if you can’t make a loyal readership from your articles...and often too much SEO work will make a post read awkward, and low-quality writing discourages readers.
13. Make Your Blog Design Reader Friendly
Your Blog Design should have a clean design with proper navigation. It should be such that readers can easily find the content of their choice. Even now, a year later, I'm still fooling around with my blog. Blogger.com has come out with some great new features that I always make sure to explore, like new template designs and widgets to make my site more interactive.
Use SEO friendly theme on your blog with proper header (h1, h2,..) tags. Always use h1 or h2 tag for post title. You can try Thesis Theme. Also be consistent with fonts, font size, and font color within posts. AND NO HIGHLIGHTING. It looks gross, just don't do it. You guys are artists, you know what's up.
15. Use Effective Title
Title of the article should be both reader and SEO friendly. Title should be appealing to the readers and important keywords should also be used in the title.
I hope these tips help out! While I know the average blog reader has ADD (I know I do) and merely scans titles, I hope you gained something from those bold headlines (like how I did that? OoOh sneaky!)
I'm interested to know if you guys do anything else to brand your blog. As always, feel free to email me with any questions!
Source Article: Tips For Newbie Bloggers
