With great excitement and joy you start to post unique articles, your own widgets and everything you can dream of. You’ve made it just the way you always wanted it to be. And then you wait, like a spider waiting for its prey you open your site and wait for visitors and hopefully some revenue through some Ads or affiliate marketing.
However as the days and weeks go by, you start to notice that the counter has not really moved yet. Some peaks here and there but no constant and consistent traffic. You tried everything to make it perfect, a very nice niche, unique articles but still no one is visiting your page, out of sheer frustration and anger you quit blogging.
It’s not only you but 80% of people quit blogging in the early stages out of anger or disappointment. The problem is most people start their blog after reading some goofy articles that say “How to be Rich Overnight” and show all those $500K check sheets. But once you started your blog you start to realize it’s not as easy as it said in the article you just read.
However only 20% of people will work harder and usually end up with 10K+ monthly visitors and great income out of it.
It’s not your fault that people are not visiting your blog; there are a lot to do to get your blog out of the shadow so people and mainly search engines starts noticing you. To be frank it’s not an easy walk in the park, you need to work really hard especially during the start; you need to work day & night. Write up fresh and engaging contents, improve your on-page & off-page seo, do social media promotions, and most important part- drive enough traffic.
The Google updates Panda-Penguin-Hummingbird decreased rate of foul play, spamming, bulk linking instead gave value to quality over quantity, meaning a DA40 or DA30 backlink is actually worth 100 DA2 backlinks or maybe even more.
But for starters and new bloggers this is the perfect time since literally thousands of websites and blogs got penalized with that recent update there is plenty of space to fill in, which means if you try hard enough and do it properly you can get to the first page of Google too (Ah! the dream of every blogger😎).
Now I won’t lie, the process to even get noticed by Search Engines is somewhat hectic and tedious it cannot be explained in a single post, but I will give you the basic outlook into the works you must go through to reach top search positions.
The Basic BluePrint for any Successful Blog
Think like your audience
The blog you are about to create is for other people who want information. So the importance is given to your visitors and hopefully customers. The site should be built with this in mind, you may have made the site aesthetically pleasing for yourself but not for your visitors.[post_ads]
Make sure you mix some nice mixture of colors and perfect fonts so that it will be appealing for your visitor and will drag them to your site. And always try to stand out from the crowd, and remember to think from the visitor’s point of view, and you’d do great here.
Quality Content
Most important part, Content is King; People are always looking for quality information and new ideas, so you provide them what they want and they are going to be your loyal visitors and they might even promote it if it’s worthy enough.
Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
You might have heard this word a million times already, it is the way to make your site better and optimized so search engines will rank you higher. Social Media integration
Everyone knows the importance of Social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn and how they are taking over the world. So it is important you are also a part of these sites and do everything to promote your new blog. Don’t think it’s silly or worthless; you’ll be amazed by the number of visitors you get from these if you’ve done your promotions perfectly.Be engaging and entertaining
Remember you’re not preparing a project report or a thesis, blogging is different. You want people to actually engage with you and feel like you are actually talking to them.Try to be entertaining & witty, crack some jokes in between the lines; most important try to have a personalized style of writing. Ask for suggestions and ideas from your audience and always try to make your site alive and fresh by replying in time and having active discussions.
Post more often
Try to post more often during the start, one post per day will get you noticed by Search Engines quickly and improve indexing rate. And your visitors will know you’re here to stay and you are updating more often. After a couple of months once you start seeing a consistent traffic you could post twice per week or even less.No Blackhat Methods
You may think if you actually get some weird traffic bot you’re going to get tons of traffic and will reach the top ranks while you rest. Always that “ Google is the best at what they do and have a smart team and huge funding just to experiment on new anti-blackhat ideas, you’ll get caught eventually”. Always think long term, follow the proper methods and slowly you’ll start seeing organic traffic.
Don’t start with Ads
Even if you get approved for any Ad networks don’t start applying them during the beginning, it will surely make a bad impression on the visitors. Moreover with the small amount of traffic you receive at the start, Ads will only help in slowing down your page and won’t make any significant income from it.Even if you decide to continue with Ads don’t squeeze them everywhere in your site, try to maintain a balance.
Don’t buy your own domain
You might have heard the opposite everywhere, it’s true you need your own domain if you’re really serious into it. But the problem is you still don’t know it yet, so I recommend you to get some free blogging platform like Blogspot or Wordpress and experiment yourself and find out whether you are really blogger materiel first. If it’s a Yes, then go buy your own domain and build your own site.Backlinks
Backlinks help you get more authority in the eyes of Google, without enough you will not make it to the top. Building backlinks takes plenty of time and patience. There are couple of ways to build backlinks for your blog.[post_ads]
Guest Posting
The term Guest posting explains the method easily, it just means writing posts as a guest in other people's blog. You will get more exposure, publicity, backlinks and authority by Guest posting. It is not easy to find Guest posting opportunities but it is totally worth it.Blog Walking
Literally means to visit other blogs, more precisely sites and blogs related to your specific niche and provide valuable comments and suggestions. Now this works in two different stages, you get direct traffic when people who like your comment decide to check out your site and you may get a backlink.Forums
Same as blog walking but in forums you have higher chance to get more visitors. Join some highly engaging and active forums and provide your valuable outputs and people are sure to follow you back to your site.These are some of the main points that you must follow in order to start your own blog, get more visitors and rank better in search engines.
I know these points alone will do you no good without proper explanations. But the aim of this post was to just to give you a blueprint of the steps you must follow in order to succeed your blogging journey.
So be sure to share it with your friends and as always looking forward to your comments and suggestions. Do ask any questions you may have and I’ll try to help you.
