Blogging for beginners

It only takes about 15 minutes to set up a blog, but it can take years to make money from it.

If you’ve ever seen blogs that appear to profit instantly, it’s usually because the person who started the blog already had a substantial following or personal brand. When that’s the case, they can direct their current audience to their new blog and quickly grow their readership.

Find a niche for your blogging

The first step is to decide on your niche. There are two key items when selecting a niche:

It should be something you’re passionate about.
It’s proven to make money.
Let’s tackle the first point now.

If you start a food blog but don’t enjoy cooking or baking, blogging on that subject will be just like any other job you don’t enjoy.

The niche you select is an industry you will have to build relationships in, and without natural curiosity about the subject, you likely won’t have the insight and expertise of those who love the subject.

Blogging for SEO

Adding content on a regular basis should be a part of every sustainable SEO strategy. If you write regularly, Google will see your site as active, alive and relevant – and that will definitely help your overall rankings. In addition, blogging allows you to rank for new keywords and to keep ranking for those you’re already being found for. Your site also provides you with an extra opportunity to target search intent – we’ll discuss that in more detail later on.

Blogging as a marketing tool

A blog is a great marketing tool for every website. It allows your readers to get to know your brand and your products better. What’s more, you can use your blog to actively present yourself as a reliable source of information for prospective customers. Not everyone visiting your website is already committed to you or your products. A quality site will work in your favor in those cases: if you can offer people useful information in a post, they’re more likely to remember and convert in the future

Keyword research

You’ll have to decide which terms you want to be found for, before you start writing your content. To decide that, you need to get inside people’s heads and find out which words they use while searching for your type of business. When you write, you’ll use these exact terms in your content to make sure you start ranking for them. Keyword research is the first step in SEO copywriting and an essential part of any successful SEO strategy.

Targeting the right search intent with your blog

As you’re doing keyword research, it’s not just important to know which keywords your audience uses, but also, what they want to find. People use search engines with a specific goal in mind, so they have a particular intent for each query. The results pages give you some insight into the intent of a query.

In many cases, people are purely looking for information, so the search engines will want to show them informational pages. That’s where your blog could come in handy as a marketing tool, for instance, as an online shop. Your product page will target commercial and/or transactional intent, but you also want to rank for informational intent, as that’s more common. You can use your blog to write relevant, informative articles that’ll get more people to your site.

How to write a high-quality blog post

Writing requires some skills – it’s more difficult for some people than for others. We’ll give you some tips to make writing easier for you later on, but first, let’s discuss two important aspects of high-quality posts: originality and readability.

Original content

Your posts should always be fresh, new and original. Each one should be sufficiently different from other posts and articles about the same topic already on the web. So, try to focus on what makes you unique, even if you’re in a competitive niche. Your posts should also be content that people will want to read. The increasingly fierce competition on the internet often means simply writing good content isn’t enough: you need to go the extra mile.

Write clear paragraphs

We advise that you always start each paragraph with the most important sentence, then explain or elaborate on it. That way, a reader will be able to grasp the most relevant content from your article, just by reading the first sentence of each of your paragraphs. Don’t make your paragraphs too long; 7 or 8 sentences is quite long enough. Think about the order of your paragraphs and remember they should follow each other logically. Next to that, consider using fewer uncommon and complex words to make it easier for readers to understand your text.

Blog engagement

Blog engagement is an important factor for SEO. If your audience leaves comments on your posts (and you respond to these comments), Google will see that your blog is very much alive and active. And of course, mentions on social media will also help with your blog’s ranking. If people share your post on social media or talk about it online, that will definitely lead to more traffic.

Replying to comments is an essential aspect of blog engagement and answering questions and providing appropriate responses in a discussion can take a lot of time. Handling positive feedback and answering questions is relatively easy, while negative feedback can be more challenging.

Marketing your blog

If you’re writing posts, you need an audience. Nobody wants to perform to an empty room! Ranking well in search engines through flawless SEO will, of course, help.

Social media and newsletters

Social media is an important marketing instrument. You definitely need to set up a Facebook page and create a Twitter account. If you’re focusing on a young audience, you’ll need Instagram and Snapchat as well

Also, consider starting a newsletter. Collect subscribers who want to stay informed and email them regularly.

Monetizing your blog

If your audience is growing due to great SEO and marketing strategies, this doesn’t necessarily mean that profit (if you’re making money with your blog) from your blog will also grow. For many bloggers, making money is not the primary goal. Still, you can make money from a blog. Advertising, affiliate marketing, and writing promoted posts are the most common strategies for making money. As mentioned before, you could also use the blog to improve the rankings of your online shop and as a result, to sell your own stuff.

Conclusion

Blogging is great! Whether your website is an online shop, blog or portfolio, it can boost your rankings in Google and is also an important and effective marketing tool. To get optimum results, devise an in-depth keyword research strategy for your blog. It’s also important to stay on top of things as your blog is growing. Use our tips to get started and write those blog posts. Happy blogging.

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