If you’re a new blogger, there are important blogging tips you should be armed with. Some of us started blogging when nobody was there to advise us, nowadays there are hundreds of online tutorials with useful blogging information. The few blogging tips I have gained over time will be of much help for new bloggers. If you aspire to grow and become a brand, here are the important things you should know:
Choose the right hosting company
The type of hosting company you choose will determine the growth level of your blog. Make sure your preferred hosting company has features like SSL certificate,30-day money back guarantee, upscaling of resources and CDN.Some hosting companies would deliberately suspend your site when it becomes popular, others will come up with hidden charges once you register with them. I will suggest that you join reputable companies like Bluehost which hosts over 2 million sites.
- Develop your own unique style of writing
Having identity is the best idea for any blogger. The style of writing should be unique such that when someone stumbled on an article written by you, they’ll automatically recognize it.
I am sure you have noticed that every established blogger has his/her own style of writing—the worst thing to do is to be determined to be like someone you’re not.
- Never be in a hurry to post, make sure all your articles meet international standards.
Typos are common among bloggers, even CNN and BBC commit such kind of mistakes, but they shouldn’t be prominent in your articles. Make sure that each of your blog posts has less than 3 spelling mistakes.
Take time to create a post and go through it at least ones to make sure it’s a quality one. When someone reads, they will be motivated to read another one and another one until they end up clicking on the adverts.
In the back of your mind you should note that millions of humans will be reading your articles, the more you excite them the more regular they’ll visit your site. A blog won’t grow with poorly written articles.
- Create a light and decent blog
Your blog should be light, decent and easy to navigate. First impression matters and any user friendly blog will attract more readers. It’s very discouraging when a reader tries to open a site and it takes 20 minutes to load.
To make your site user friendly, ensure that images are well optimized—you can use Snipping Tool to crop images.Alternatively,choose a good hosting site like Kinsta which have CDN that ensures websites open at blazing speed, you can check Kinsta plans here
Hosting companies have big influence on the loading speed of a website. If you choose a cheap hosting company with old or weak servers, your site will result to slow loading. Loading speed affect the SEO of a website.
- Avoid too many banner adverts on your website
The more adverts on your site the more you chase your readers. I am one of those who hate to see Adverts taking all the space in a post. By putting more adverts on your site, you may think your income will increase but in the real sense, you’re chasing away your readers.
If possible, place one advert on the header, one between the post and the last one below the post. Give enough room for someone to read the post without so much interference.
If possible, don’t use pop up adverts.
- Your site must have the following sections
There are some important sections a website must have: About us, Advertise, header and footer. Many of us ignore the footer section but it’s important. In the footer, ensure that you write something about your blog—what it’s all about. The footer should also have your contacts and a logo.
In most cases, the content in the footer is the one displayed on Google especially when someone wants to know more about a particular website.
About us and advertise are two important sections most bloggers ignore. Advertisers always want to know more about your blog and will navigate through for “about us” section to learn more. They will then click on “advertise” to get your contacts. By not having these two sections, it means that many potential advertisers would not reach out to you.
- Learn about long tail keywords
Almost all new bloggers don’t know much about keywords, they come to learn about them after gaining substantial experience. Each site ranking is implemented based on how various blogs have used the long term keywords, those with the correct long tail keywords rank better than others. It’s good to learn which keywords are trending and how many people are likely to read your content. If you aren’t conversant with longtail keywords, employ SEO tools like SEMRush.Most bloggers use SEMRush to search for keywords especially those doing better for other bloggers. You can sign up for the tool here for free
- Collaborate with other bloggers
What has helped me during this time of blogging is collaboration, I have always worked with other bloggers. Make friendship with experienced bloggers. There is no single blogger that knows everything, each one of us has something unique we to offer.
When you have good working relationship with other bloggers, you’ll grow faster than when you work parallel.
- Post regularly and stick to your niche
One mistake most bloggers make is to post anything and everything, thus confusing their readers. If you started a web hosting blog, don’t think of posting about gadgets, you’ll dilute the blog. Your articles will rank better when it’s identity is clearly defined.
You should also post regularly not to lose your readers. People love to read blogs with fresh content.
- Your first paragraph in any post is the most important
There is one thing bloggers won’t reveal to you, that your first paragraph is the most important in every story. Always ensure that at least 90% of the words used in the title appear in the first paragraph. If you do so, your articles will be indexed faster and will appear on page one of search engines.
- Post original content
Plagiarized content will always put you in trouble. Issues of copyright are taken seriously when it comes to blogging, if your blog is reported regularly, Google will stop indexing it’s content and you’ll lose almost all your readers from organic searches.
Currently, few copyrighted content are indexed, Google is very strict on that.
If at all you’ll copy another blogger’s content, make sure you acknowledge them.
Another thing, try as much as possible to use original images. Google has a section where images are reported.
- Your posts should contain more than 500 words
Finally, make sure that at least 95% of your articles have over 500 words.If your articles contain images, it’s good that the text cover more space than images.
Bots work better when an article has more text than images. They are able to understand the article better and rank it accordingly. It’s because of this that articles with over 2,000 words rank better than those with less than 400 words.
The standard size of an article should be 500 words.
- Try to solve a problem
More often than not, people search for content online because they are looking for a solution to something. The blog with more useful content will be the ultimate winner. If someone discovers that your blog solves their problem, they won’t even think of any other blog.
