How to Create a Monstrously Successful Blog
At this point, it probably seems like every business and random person you’ve ever met has a blog. There’s a good reason for this: blog posts dramatically raise a website’s SEO profile, and they make it much easier to be quickly indexed by Google. However, simply having a blog isn’t enough to guarantee solid results. Fortunately, there are a few proven steps you can take to create a blog that is monstrously successful.
1. Focus on Quality Content
Blogging is one of the easiest ways to drive traffic to your website through inbound marketing, but you must provide high quality, well-written content if you want this to translate into a higher conversion ratio. In fact, Google places such an emphasis on well-written content that you may end up with a lower search engine ranking position (SERP) if you publish blog posts that contain misspellings, typos and other errors. Additionally, poor quality writing is going to turn off the vast majority of your audience. Therefore, if you are unable to do the writing for yourself, it will be worthwhile to hire a content writer.
2. Select a Niche Topic
If you can imagine it, someone has already published a blog about it. In other words, there isn’t a topic that is too specialized to blog about, as long as you choose something that has a narrow scope but also has enough depth to provide a lot of content ideas. For example, if you have plans to monetize a blog about movies, it will be easier to find a large audience by selecting one specific genre or subgenre. Choosing “zombie movies” would be both narrow and deep enough to help you connect with a large audience.
3. Choose Your Target Keywords Wisely
Keywords are a blog’s lifeblood, but you have to walk a fine line between using them frequently enough to get attention and overusing them to the point that it turns off Google and your readers. Before you can even get to this point, though, you’re going to need to select somewhere from 10 to 50 appropriate keywords to add into your posts. Of course, if you are targeting 50 keywords, you will never put them all in one post! Keyword Tool is a good resource that can help you decide which words and phrases are searched the most frequently for your topic.
4. Use a Content Calendar
Blogging daily is by far one of the most important factors for a monstrously successful blog, but it may seem difficult to come up with fresh content on a daily basis. Keep in mind that your blog can alternate between featuring written content, videos and imagery. You can also use a content calendar to help you organize your ideas and pull off a cohesive inbound marketing strategy. Companies that blog every day have an 82 percent success rate at converting readers into customers, versus 57 percent for less frequent postings. Clearly, daily posting is where it’s at, and this will also give Google a massive amount of links to index from your website.
5. Ensure Everything Works Smoothly
You could have the most interesting, well-written content in the world, but this wouldn’t do much of anything for your sales if the blog’s navigation doesn’t work smoothly or if the theme you choose is visually distracting. Keep everything as clean and smooth as possible, and be sure to check the maneuverability and aesthetic appearance from a mobile device and multiple popular browsers before you begin advertising your new blog.
6. Use a Featured Image for Each Post
Would you like to easily boost traffic to each blog post by a staggering 94 percent? All you have to do is add a relevant featured image. That’s it. The image doesn’t even have to be extremely clever or eye-catching to provide huge results, although those things can certainly give you an even bigger boost with the right target audience. As an added bonus, blog posts with an image will capture a lot more attention when they are shared on social media.
7. Make it Easy for Your Audience to Find the Blog
If you want to have a successful standalone blog, make sure that you choose an easy to spell and remember domain name that is relevant to the topic. On the other hand, if you are a business owner and your ultimate goal is to drive more traffic to your website, make sure that you incorporate the blog into your template and existing domain. Additionally, it is essential to ruthlessly self-promote your blog on all applicable social media pages, including your personal profile. Standalone blogs should also have their own social media accounts.
As you can see, none of these steps are extremely difficult, but they all offer a high level of success. Be sure to also use tags and categories liberally to make it even easier for the right audience to find each post.
Written by Holly Chavez
Image credit: Hard Work with a Book by Viktor Hanacek/Pic Jumbo
