While creating and putting a blog online can be done in just a few minutes, developing and increasing the notoriety of your blog online is not a simple task.
You need to be creative and make your blog meet the needs of your audience as well as search engine standards.
But let’s face it, this is particularly complex and requires a lot of creativity, especially when you’re just starting out.
Fortunately, there are a number of strategies you can implement to elevate your blog to the best in your industry.
Being also a blogger and a digital marketer, I have put together some practical tips that already allow me to obtain results for my blog, but also for those of my clients.
Without waiting too long, let’s discover together these tips that can help you start and boost your blog! ????
1. Identify the main goals of your blog
Before starting to create a blog, the first thing to do is to define the main objectives to achieve. In other words, if you decide to start a blog, you must necessarily list your business goals.
As an example of goals, you can create a blog to:
- Increase the notoriety and visibility of your business by prioritizing keywords;
- Promote your business;
- Earn money with your blog content;
- Generate more conversions by writing product-focused content;
- Etc.
By determining the overall goals for launching your blog, whether it’s a business page or a personal blog, you have an idea of the trajectory your blog can take. This helps you in creating your blog.
2. Choose a blog type and the right niche
As a beginner, when considering setting up a blog, you must necessarily choose the type of blog that will meet your business objectives and the expectations of your target audience.
THE types of blogs the best known and which will be beneficial to you are:
- Business Blogs;
- THE Content blogs ;
- Travel Blogs;
- THE Personal blogs ;
- Financial Blogs;
- THE Food blogs ;
- THE Fashion Blogs ;
- The Design Blogs;
- Etc.
In fact, to find the type of blog that really suits you, you can ask certain questions such as:
- What are your passions and interests?
- Are there people who share your interests?
- Who are my competitors in the market?
- What are the areas in which your experiences can be shared?
- Do your topics get a lot of traffic?
- How to monetize your blog?
Furthermore, most bloggers enjoy writing about topics that appeal to them and are newsworthy. When you show your passion for a topic, your site visitors will be more motivated and more invested in what you write.
So, you need to focus on a specific area in which you have experience, because the blog niche which you choose will determine your online presence.
Just remember that choosing a blog template as well as the blog niche are aspects to take into account after thinking about your main objectives. So base yourself on your passion and your performance to make a better choice.
3. Research your audience to identify your persona
Putting the audience aside when creating your blog is one of the big mistakes that some bloggers or businesses make.
In fact, if you want your blog content to generate more traffic, sales and leads, you must necessarily interact with your target audience and inspire them to action.
By creating your persona, you will have an overview of what you can write about. It’s about determining your typical customer’s challenges, problems, and goals in order to bridge the gap with your content.
By writing about topics related to the problems of your persona or your target audience, it is likely that they will have the impression that you are speaking to them. This gets your customers to spend time on your blog and turns them into a loyal audience.
4. Perform Competitive Content Marketing Analysis
If you can identify your competitors, you can know the kind of blog topic and format that resonates best with your audience. You can also understand trends in your industry.
To help you analyze your competitors, you can use this free competitive content analysis model. From this template you can easily:
- Locate your competitors’ websites online;
- Evaluate the visual and textual appearance as well as the formatting of your competitors’ blogs;
- Find out how they monetize their websites;
- Review their social media content posting channels;
- Identify and analyze the categories of content they have on their blogs, the keywords they rank for and the most popular pages.
In detail, if you want to see the topics and keywords that are working for your competitors, you need to examine their sites to identify the most popular blog section and the topics they target the most.
To do this, you can research the most relevant keywords related to your business and then analyze the websites that appear on the first page of search engines.
But if you find this process a little complicated, you can use the tool biological research or BuzzSumo, competitive analysis tools.
You can also take advantage of them to identify the needs of Internet users and find original topics.
5. Creating a Content Strategy
Now that you have an idea of your audience, your competitors and the content of their blogs, it is time to start by developing a marketing strategy. content marketing.
Next to 78% of marketers say their blogs often perform well when they have a content strategy in place.
With a good strategy, marketers can easily focus on their business goals and create more measurable progress.
You can also promote your brand. This way, your audience gets an idea about you and your services. In your content strategy, you must include the following elements:
- Your customers;
- The main goals of your blog (for example, building a list of people and converting them into paying customers);
- The techniques you will use to track the performance of your blog (for example, traffic and subscriptions);
- Resources and budgets.
Once you have this information, put together a content plan for your blog. For more ideas, read our detailed guide on how to create a blog content strategy.
6. Choose the best platform for your blog
Choosing the best platform depends on several factors, in particular your budget, your needs, your customers, etc.
In fact, there are several CMS, but the four main ones are:
WordPress : A free platform that has been developed to personalize your blog content using plugins and themes;
Joomla: This is a good option for managing multiple custom content and users. It is mainly aimed at institutions;
Drupal : This platform is in third position, despite this, it is more secure than WordPress and Joomla and ensures the hosting of personalized content;
Shopify : It is a CMS that you can use to create and personalize an e-commerce site, to sell online and to manage your stocks, your orders and your deliveries.
So you can use one of the free platforms to create a website and blog that you can easily customize according to your preference.
Remember that CMS (Content Management System) is a content management system that helps in the creation and management of articles on a website.
7. Optimize your website for loading
According to statistics, almost 55% of Internet users are able to leave your site as soon as they notice a slow loading of the page. In this case, you risk losing a large number of customers.
This is the point of reducing the loading time of your web pages as much as possible and making your website explorable by search engines.
To do this, you can for example use the tool d’audit to check your site’s loading speed and find issues that need to be fixed.
8. Secure your website
Site security is something that the majority of bloggers neglect. As a beginner, it is important that you take some precautions when creating your blog to make your site efficient. To secure your website:
- Use a password that will be more or less difficult to crack;
- Limit the number of connection attempts;
- Change the web address of the login page;
- Prevent username discovery;
- Use automatic logout;
- Set up an activity log plugin to be able to track site updates and any other changes made to the site;
- And take care to check the plugin as often for any malicious activity on the site.
By securing your website, you are sure to maintain your site performance and save your site.
9. Find quality topics for your blog
Based on research done on your target audience and your competitors, now is the time to find content topics that align with your expectations and business goals.
The topics you select should be likely to attract visitors to spend time on your blog. This will give you optimal search volume and more visibility.
To find these topics, use the search tool thematic research. Just put a key theme and you will see around ten related subtopics.
From these subtopics, you select those that best fit your topic. To do this, you can use the Keyword Magic tool from SEMrush. Thanks to this tool, you will have the main keywords that your blog articles can contain.
10. Pay close attention to your titles
The titles you propose for your articles should encourage readers to read your content. To achieve this, it would be simple to specifically evoke an emotion.
By writing for example about web writing, you will only have to write a title which shows the problems that the editor encounters when creating content.
To easily capture the attention of your readers from your title, I will give you some tips, namely:
- Write your title in the format of a question;
- Use phrases such as: “don’t miss” to convey a sense of urgency;
- Using “secret” words to gain the attention of readers with exclusive knowledge;
- Highlight the help you think you will bring to people in your article;
- Etc.
It should be noted that you do not have to worry about your title when you are still in the draft.
Once you have completed writing your article, then you will have a better understanding of the content and you will have less difficulty in creating a good title.
11. Consider SEO when choosing your blog title and domain name
It may seem fun to you to choose the title of your article. But you should also think about optimizing it for search engines.
In fact, a good title and a domain name on which your blog will be hosted can appeal not only to your target audience, but also to search engines.
Therefore, it is important to make a good choice, which makes it easier for you to rank in the top results of Google.
To ensure your blog title and name are optimized, there are two ways you can do this.
First, you can insert one of the most searched keywords into your domain name. And the title of your blog must give a clear idea to search engines about the services you provide on your website.
For example, you can put the word “copywriting” in your name to indicate to prospects that they will have copywriting services on your site.
Second, you should avoid using a domain name that is similar to an existing site. You must necessarily take care of this to prevent your site from being confused with another. To avoid this, do enough Google research.
For example, you can enter the blog title or domain name of your choice and consult the list of closest site names. You will then know whether to change or retain the name you plan to use.
If you ever get confused in this exercise, you can use a domain name generator.
In most cases, these generators allow you to have information and suggestions about a domain name based on the keywords you type.
12. Start with a writing plan
Once you have the essay topic and the number of words you want to write, the next step is to plan the structure of your article. In other words, you develop a writing plan.
This step is very important to produce quality and original content. Indeed, the plan must contain three elements, namely:
- The introduction is the opening paragraph of your article. It introduces your content and orients the reader to the rest of the content.
- The body of the article which is the part where you develop your ideas. The key ideas you will cover should contain sections, if possible, subsections and bulleted lists to make your content readable, engaging and understandable.
- Theconclusion which is the last part of your article. You summarize the main points covered in the body of the article.
After the conclusion, you can add an incentive sentence that can lead your readers to consult other content.
Such a phrase can significantly increase the visibility and traffic of your website, especially when it links to other content on your site or to your landing pages.
13. Write readable and actionable content
Blog posts that are text-only and not visible or engaging tend to drive readers away from your site. This reduces the time they will have to spend on your page, which significantly increases your bounce rate.
As a beginner, you must necessarily ensure that your content retains your readers. To do this, you must consider the following:
- Keep your paragraphs short (1-3 sentences);
- Add bulleted lists and subsections in the body of the article;
- Make the effort to develop one idea per paragraph;
- Avoid using complicated words, be simple;
- Insert visual content (images and videos) into your textual content;
- Use bold and if possible italics (only for quotes) to highlight important parts of the text.
By respecting these different elements in your content, you will see the readability of your articles and your readers will be much more motivated to spend time on your blog.
14. Create a mailing list of your content
The mailing list is nothing more than a collection of email addresses of visitors who appreciate your content. These are actually your page’s followers or the people most likely to read and publish your articles.
By creating the mailing list, it will be easier for you to notify these people that you have published new content by sharing the links.
We find out in the next section how to increase the number of subscribers in your mailing list.
15. Creating a blog newsletter
Even after posting for a month or so, there will always be a looming question. How to keep people on your site or blog? Getting Internet users to read your content and follow you regularly is not complicated.
To do this, you get visitors to your site to register directly from your blog articles by adding a call-to-action to your content. This leads them to subscribe to your page so you can collect their email addresses.
You can also obtain these addresses by offering your readers a free resource such as an e-book, guide, webinar and more that they can download online in exchange for their contact details.
From their email, you will be directly in contact with your customers. You will also have the opportunity to retain your readers.
In short, the newsletter is an effective strategy to easily get subscribers to your blog.
16. Develop a powerful linking strategy
Having the right internal and external sources in your blog posts makes you much more credible. As a beginner to blogging, it is essential to understand the value of links in your blogging strategy.
Generally, there are three main types of links that you will necessarily need to pay attention to:
- THEinternal links: These are links that redirect readers to other content on your website or blog. This type of link is involved in the SEO of your articles and leads your readers to explore the pages of your site.
- THEoutgoing links:These links connect to third-party sites. When you plan to support your remarks or give explanations or cite a study or statistic from an external source, you can use outgoing links.
- THEbacklinks : These types of links come from sites that connect to your blog. The more backlinks you get from other sites, the more visible your site is to search engines.
Each of these links is involved in the optimization of your website. So, don’t neglect them. Just try to insert links throughout your blog post.
17. Grow Your Online Presence From Social Media
Promoting your blog on social platforms allows you to get new leads.
So whether you promote your site on YouTube, Facebook, Twitter or Instagram, you simply use your blog logo as your profile picture.
Then you publish the link to your articles on these social networks with a short description to capture the attention of your customers. Once your customers click on the link, they will have a preview of the featured image and the article title.
In addition to sharing your articles on these platforms, it is possible that readers in turn share your content. This is why you must make your publications accessible to everyone.
Furthermore, you must add the share button on social platforms to your content to allow readers to share it with their friends on social networks. All this can increase your visibility as well as the notoriety of your website.
18. Track the performance of your published content
Once you have published an article on the web, you should move on to writing the content that follows. But that doesn’t stop you from monitoring your posts to see what’s working well and what’s not.
Therefore, the aspects you need to follow on your site are as follows:
- Traffic to your blog;
- Classification ;
- The time spent on your blog posts;
- And the conversion rate on blogs.
With the extension SEOquake or certain analysis tools like Google Analytics, you will easily obtain this information.
You will therefore be able to follow everything that is happening on your blog, which will guide you on the reforms to take into account to make the content of your site more effective.
19. Update your old web content
Most bloggers tend to create and publish new content, but mostly neglect old posts. This is a serious error.
Indeed, when bloggers start by writing articles regularly, they devote almost all their time to publishing new content.
However, neglecting your old articles can easily affect your click-through rates and your SEO. The reason is very simple.
If your content becomes obsolete and less relevant to the expectations of your target audience, they will no longer see the point of spending time on your site.
For example, if you had content on Facebook pages with images that were years old, unfortunately this content would no longer be useful enough for your readers and its ranking may drop.
This drop may be due to the fact that your content is not up to date and other sites have offered fresher content. Google can therefore lower your ranking in favor of these sites whose content is up to date.
The ideal is to update the information in your old blog posts from time to time, checking for consistency of ideas, errors, etc. By doing this, you improve your content in the eyes of Google as well as your click-through rates.
You also ensure that your articles are relevant, up to date and enrich the user experience.
20. Create a process for quality control of your blog posts
The quality of your content determines your ranking in the SERP, that is to say in the first pages of search engines.
To ensure your content is relevant and meets the needs of your readers, you can create a quality assessment process for each article published on your blog.
Based on the list of free blog content quality control, you will be able to design the inspection process for your items.
Additionally, be sure to be on the lookout for new ideas to improve your content. This could help you with your website ranking.
Just remember that by creating this control process you have an overview of the quality of your web content.
Conclusion
All in all, starting a blog can seem overwhelming, but it’s nothing complex. You just have to stay consistent, be original and do your research in order to have authentic blog ideas.
By using these practical blogging tips, you’ll find that designing and managing blog posts will be really easy for you. It is also possible that you will turn your blog into a powerful and popular publication.
Did this list of blogging tips for beginners benefit you? Let us know your answer in the comments.
You can also read the article on 20 web writing examples, tips and resources to create quality content that attracts and retains visitors to your site.
