Today, I'm happy to inform you that there is nothing magical about growing your blog to success. You just need to understand what these established bloggers are doing and apply the same with extra efforts. In blogging business, traffic translates into money so the basis of increasing your earnings from blogging is to work on improving your blog traffic.
1. Do Extensive Niche Research
Before you launch you blog, be careful to carry out deep analysis of the main topics that your blog will be discussing. If you want to earn well through thirdparty ad publishing programmes like Google Adsense, your blog's main theme must be capable of attracting advertisers who are looking to do serious spending to promote or sell their goods and services. High paying niche topics include insurance, loans, online colleges, small business, technology, mobile and PC softwares and tips, health etc. You earn less from niches like art, poetry, music, entertainment, sports, jokes etc. An example of a free tool you can use for this niche keyword analysis is Google Keyword Planner. (Post Here)
2. Pick Quality Blog Platform And Design
Wordpress and Blogger are two commonly used blogging software. Each one comes with its own unique properties. Your choice of blogging platform can go a long way in influencing your blog traffic, blog pageviews and rankings on Search Engine Result Page (SERP). Whatever software or platform you decide to use, make sure it loads fast and is well optimized for Search Engine Optimization (SEO).
When your blog has a good design, it encourages clicking on adverts which increases your blog Click Through Rate (CTR). With a good theme, your blog readers can easily discover and visit related posts which translates to increased page views and time spent on your blog. It has also been discovered that some layout facilitates subscription, following, sharing and tweeting of posts on social media which increases your blog's social presence.
3. Learn About SEO
As a serious blogger, you should be able to find out why some other blogger's post rank higher than yours when you search for things on Google. Understanding what it takes to improve SERP rankings is essential when it comes to increasing visitors to your blog especially from search engines like Google, Bing and Yahoo. This is because a large fraction of traffic to most blog comes from these search engines.
I find it discouraging at times when I come across fellow bloggers who do not understand basic SEO terms like pagerank, metadata, H1 tags, keyword density, SERP, CPC, CTR, Moz authority, longtail keyword, backlink, outbound link, inlink etc. If you are determined to succeed with your blog, you better sit down and master SEO. Download tutorial manuals and videos from the internet and study them. It is more than just writing posts or writing thousands of them. For instance, a careful choice of words (keywords) in your post title can make that post rank very high in Google search results. Optimize first, don't waste your time writing post that people won't get to read.
4. Let Your Post Solve Readers' Problems
Entertainment bloggers generally publish events and happenings as they trend all in a bid to meet people's desire to inquire into celebrities lifestyle and happenings. Aside from this group, most successful blogger write posts that answer people's questions. They learn to research into what major questions people ask. If your post provides solutions to problems, organic traffic to your blog will increase naturally because more people will be referred to your post. The post will rank high in search results when people type their problems(questions) in Google. You can gather ideas on what problems to solve with your post when you look through:
==> online forums like (
Nairaland and
WeTalkNaira)
==> comment sections of popular blogs in your niche.
5. Carry Out Keyword Analysis Before Publishing
It is good to know you can write articles really fast. You have tens of posts ready which you are eager to put up online. It is wiser if you can take the pain to carry out in depth keyword research before you publish. Not all keywords can generate enough traffic for your blog, not all keywords will guarantee low competition so you can rank easily in search engines and not all keywords have satisfactory cost per click (CPC).
Seo Tool Book and
Google Keyword Planner are keyword research tools you can use at no cost.
SEMRush,
Moz,
Market Samurai and
Longtail Pro are paid tools that gives you value for your money. The rule of thumb is to use keywords that offer decent traffic, low competition and medium to high CPC.
6. Avoid Duplicate Content (Copy And Paste)
Well, I'm sad to say this. Most entertainment and tech bloggers in Nigeria just copy and paste articles and pictures gotten from other sources. I shake my head when I see the same post and pictures appearing on many of these blogs. To you, you are working hard at blogging but to Google you are a plain cheat who deserves to be dealt with. If you are the type of blogger whose hobby is to steal posts and pictures from bellanaija, linda ikeji etc and then put them up on your blog without rewriting in your own words or giving credit, I pity you. Apart from the fact that law action can be taken against you when you use other people's materials without their consent (
Linda Ikeji's Case), Google raises the hammer on blogs that contain articles and pictures that have been posted online before, reducing their rankings. Try this, paste a part of the article you copied into
Copyscape or
Google search and you will see the link to the original post staring at you.
Writing unique contents (and including original pictures) is necessary if you want to succeed in blogging business. Although this is not easy if you are just setting out, you can develop great writing skills with time. The pictures you use in your blog post can also generate traffic to your blog.
To optimize your images for image search; ensure that the image is:
==> attractive
==> less than 100kb in size,
==> in JPeg (.jpg) format,
==> renamed to contain your keywords separated by hyphen (not spaces) and
==> given a good description in the alt tag.
7. Publish More Often
How often do you publish on your blog. It is a sound advice to write at least 2-3 original blog posts weekly. Your blog will be crawled more often by Google bot because Google loves this. If you want to make decent income from your blog, please take it as serious business. Many bloggers have some other work they do during the day. Well, if you are the busy type, you could compose posts anywhere during the day immediately the inspiration drops, after which you garnish it up with more research and then publish on your blog when you are back from work in the evening. This basically what I use my phone's notepad (memopad) for. If you call yourself a blogger but you are in the habit of writing one post monthly, then I can boldly assure you that you are very much prepared to fail. Just like I recommended previously, you can help yourself out when you run short of ideas on what to write about with the following tips.
==> read related blogs daily
==> look for tips in the comment sections of popular blogs
==> check sections of established forums related to your niche.
8. Avoid Blackhat SEO Methods
Blackhat SEO are illegal techniques that some bloggers employ to rank high in search engine results. SEO techniques such as building bulk backlinks, buying traffic, link exchange farms, using traffic bot, keyword stuffing, publishing spinned articles that are unreadable, using bulk blog commenting softwares (like
Scrapebox,
Xrummer and
Senuke) etc are greatly frowned upon by Google. Though you may come across popular gigs selling these services on Fiverr and Seoclerk, please do well to avoid using blackhat. This is because Google rolls out updates (e.g Panda, Penguin) periodically which are targeted at penalizing blogs that engage in these blackhat methods by reducing their rankings or removing them from search results (de-indexing). It's worthy to note also that most of the algorithms that blackhat SEO targets no longer count in ranking. Quality content is the new king.
9. Establish Social Presence
Do you know why many successful bloggers have thousand of followers on their
Facebook and
Twitter pages? Here is the reason. Your outreach on social network is one of the indices search engines calculate to know how much love people have for your blog. This invariably hinges on how much value your blog add to visitors and translates to how high you will rank in search engines. Increase social interaction on your blog by concluding your posts with statements that compel readers to drop comments. Google understands that when readers enjoy your post, it will attract comments inform of appreciation or questions. Install widgets and themes that encourage visitors to subscribe to your feeds, follow your blog and share your posts on social media. Ensure you have frequently updated profile pages on major social networks such as
Facebook and
Twitter.
10. Diversify Your Blog Monetization
Blog monetization are methods that you use to make money from your blog. As a blogger who is determined to make it big in blogging, I'll advise that you look beyond publishing ads for third parties like Google Adsense, Chitika, Adbrite, Infolinks, Addynamo etc. Strive hard to achieve decent traffic so that you can sell banner and text link adverts directly on your blog. Advertisers pay straight into your bank account and you put up ads on their behalf. If you doubt me, send a mail to Jide of
Ogbongeblog or
Linda Ikeji for their ad rates.
It is also important that you apply for affiliate programmes like Konga, Jumia, Amazon, Media.net etc. Understand that affiliate companies whether indigenous or foreign will reject your application if your blog does not have their traffic requirements. So work on improving traffic first. While most affiliate sites will pay commission when someone you refer to them buys a product or service, a few such as Mobofree will reward you when your referrals sign up free with them.
What Does It Take To Grow A Blog Into Success As A Beginner?
New bloggers sometimes wonder what
successful bloggers do that make them earn so much from their blogs. They are surprised that some people somewhere are raking in millions monthly from the internet even though this 'set of gurus' discuss the same topics and use the same blogging software as them.
If you have a large reader base or social media followers, you can make money writing sponsored posts from companies and individuals, as well as by tweeting or sharing sponsored links to your followers. Some bloggers charge between $100-$150 per sponsored post/tweet. That's cool money if you can get an average of 2-3 offers weekly.
The best way to make consistent income from your blog is create and sell information products and services. Information products may be inform of tutorial manuals or videos. Many established bloggers create tutorials that will help upcoming bloggers which they offer for sale at a price on their blogs.
Examples of hot info products are Forex trading videos, fish farming manuals, tutorials on soap and cream making, video lessons on bead making and wire works, training on Adire tie and die, Blogger to Wordpress conversion services, weight loss guides etc.
To become a successful blogger, you need to work hard at improving your blog's traffic, loyal followership and monetization. Finally, I feel delighted to have revealed these top secrets to you. I'm also expectant that you will put all this into good use. Your beginning may be small now but continue working hard. Success is just by the bend.
Is you blog new or already established? Please ask questions on what's bothering you. You can also share tips that worked for you.
