20 Blogging Tips To Help You Improve Your New Blog

Have you just started blogging and you feel overwhelmed with what to do next?

And after publishing your first post, you start to think, Is this really good enough?

Then, finally, you felt so ashamed you went offline.

Starting a new blog can be staggering, especially when you’ve no technical experience with websites; it all feels and seem so hard.

It’s normal and OK to feel this way. Know that it doesn’t have to be perfect right from the beginning, and I’m not sure there’s a perfect blog anyway.

Why? Because I know the feeling: I have been there. And really, I’m still there.

I felt the same about my first post and was reluctant to share it with anyone.

But I made up my mind to make it work.

I desire to achieve my goals, and I’m not giving up so fast.

You can do it, too; keep trying. With hard work and commitment, you will get there.

In this post, I will show you some blogging tips I use to help you improve your blog and give you that confidence you need to move on.

If you’re ready, let’s move on.

Yet to start your blog, here’s is my step-by-step guide on how to start a blog. Rest assured, you will find it easy to follow.

Why You May Start A Blog

Build an audience – A blog is an avenue to connect with your target audience; you do what you love most and get people attracted to reading and learning about them.

Writing valuable content responding to their questions and comments helps build trust and better relationships.

Connect with others – Blogging helps bring people who have similar thoughts together. When you share your experience and challenges, you help people with similar situations.

Increase your SEO – Witing fresh and valuable content consistently on your blog can improve your visibility and rank on search engines.

Tell Your Story – Having your own blog is an avenue to tell your story, life journey, challenges, inner feelings to inspire and help others.

Blogging is business – it’s an excellent way to launch your own business and earn income online. There are various ways you can make money on your blog: Google AdSense, affiliate marketing, online courses,  coaching classes, ebooks.

Brand Awareness – Blogging helps establish your brand identity and authority, making your business more credible.

20 Blogging Tips To Improve Your Blog

1. Pick A Niche

Starting a new blog today is quite competitive, and that’s why you may need to niche down to stand out.

Pick a field of interest that you would like to write about: establish your authority in that field.

Then, with time, you may diversify and include broader topics.

2. Blog On Your Domain

You may have started with a free domain, but having a domain of your own is the best option if you’re looking at blogging as a business.

A free domain is mainly considered unprofessional, and there’s the risk of losing your account without prior notice.

Choose a shared hosting service like WordPress.org, get reliable web hosting, register your domain and start blogging.

3. Create High-Quality Content

Content is still the king and vital to the success of a blog. Without a post, the blog becomes almost lifeless.

The best method to get readers glued to your post is by writing valuable content that helps them solve their problems.

So, when you write, please don’t make it focused only on you; have your audience in mind. See things from their views.

What are their pain points? How can you help them solve it?

Steps to take

• Do thorough research of the topic.
• Use Google keyword planner to check for a popular keyword
• Write in conversational method: make the post easy to read.
• Use subheadings, bulleted and number lists to break up the text
• Keep to short paragraphs of 2 – 3 sentences.
• Check for spelling and grammar mistakes with a grammar checker like Grammarly.
• Check for plagiarism – make your content unique.

4. Use Compelling Titles

The post title is the first thing readers will see and make up their minds to continue reading or not.

Hence writing captivating titles that capture your readers and keep them glued to the content is vital.

When drafting your post title, check the following steps

• Keep to the promise as stated in your title
• Use numbers when needed
• Use keywords in the title
• Don’t make the title too long, so it doesn’t get cut off in the search (under 70 characters).
• Position the title to address your audience’s pain point.

5. Optimize For On-Page SEO

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is the process of optimizing your content to rank for specific keywords on search engines.

If you don’t optimize your content before publishing, you will miss out on many details, even if you’re the best writer.

How to optimize your content

• Use Seo plugins like Yoast SEO and All in One SEO – it will analyze your readability score, usually from 0 – 100, 80 and above is a good score.
• Use keywords in the URL, introduction, and headings in the main article.
• Add internal links – link other relevant posts on your website
• Add external links – link from other websites
• Optimize your images, add alt text
• Optimize for mobile devices

6. Use keywords in the meta description

A meta description or tag is an attribute of HTML that summarizes the content of your page, so users understand what the article is all about.

A captivating meta description can influence the readers to click through the link to an article.

Use important keywords, keep the length under 160 characters, add a call to action to encourage readers to click through.

7. Start An Email List

Building an email list is vital when starting a blog. It’s the most effective online tool for connecting with your readers.

About 300 million emails are sent and received daily (source).

In addition, details from Statista prove that the number of email users keeps increasing and will grow up to 4.6 million by 2025.

You might be wondering why you need an email list when you’ve nothing to sell. A friend once asks the same question.

An email list is an avenue to increase your brand awareness. For example, suppose you decide to promote or sell a product tomorrow; your contact list will be the starting point.

Moreover, there could be a change of policies on social media, and you wake up one day only to find your social platform shut down entirely without prior notice?

The contact list may be the only saving grace to connect with your audience?

Some bloggers now regret not building their email list early enough. So even if you have just a few posts on your blog, start building your email list straight away.

It’s an excellent way to stay connected with readers, increase brand awareness and update them on the latest post, product, and promos.

8. Reach Out To Other Bloggers

Blogging can become overwhelming when done alone but becomes easy when you reach out to other bloggers within your niche.

When I started my blog, I didn’t know how important it’s to reach out to others until I met a fantastic community of entrepreneurs reaching out to assist one another in Wealthy Affiliate.

I follow them, comment on their blogs,  and do the same.

It’s pretty difficult to survive as a lone ranger in the world of blogging.

9. Pay Attention To Keyword

Keyword research is the best way to get insight into what your target audiences are searching for online.

It’s also good for finding what products, services, and content people search for on the internet.

You need an email marketing service like Aweber, Convertkit, Mailchimp, and GetResponse to collect and manage your subscriber list.

Good enough, most of them have a free plan you can leverage to see which one best fits your business needs.

Embed the opt-in form on your blog, then design a lead magnet or freebie to encourage your website visitors to register.

10. Back up your content

It’s essential to back up your website content for protection against hackers and data theft.

Moreover, something might go wrong during a website update or delete an important file by mistake.

Some web hosting like SiteRubix has a regular backup scheme, but installing WordPress backup plugins might still be necessary.

11. Improve Your Web Design

You can customize your blog to a beautiful design using a free WordPress theme. You may upgrade to the pro version if you need more features.

But as a beginner, the free version is enough to get you started.

Use high-quality images, organize and simplify your navigation, optimize for mobile and improve the page speed.

12. Blog Regularly

The key to blogging success is consistently creating and posting quality content, even if you can only publish an article in a week.

Set realistic goals, stay focused, and maintain a stable blogging plan frequently.

You may start by publishing one or two posts per week and then increase it with time. The most important thing is to be consistent in your schedule.

13. Add A Compelling CTA

Always include a call to action (CTA) to encourage your readers to take a specific action at the end of your post.

It can be to leave a comment at the end of the post, sign up for an email, or share the post with others.

You may also ask them to share their experience relevant to the post.

14. Use High-Quality Image

Adding images to a blog post is vital as visuals create an emotional connection with readers, increase the desire to read, and aid information retention.

Adding images to your blog helps break the text into shorter paragraphs; thus, improving the user’s experience to ensure they read the post to the end.

So, if you want your reader to get glued to your article, include high-quality images in the post.

Here are a few sites where you may get free and paid stock photos and images: Canva, Unsplash, Pixabay, etc.

You can get quality pictures both paid and free. Most of the images on this blog are from Canva.

15. Optimize For Mobile 

It’s essential for your site is to be mobile-friendly and responsive. Most people now use their phones and tablet to browse the web more often than a desktop.

You may lose visitors coming to your website if it’s not mobile-friendly and responsive.

So, ensure images are correctly displayed and your website can be viewed properly on mobile devices.

16. Add A Clickable Table Of Content

Including a table of content in your post will make it easy for readers to move ahead to any section they find most pressing.

You can use free WordPress plugins like the easy table of content to craft out simple tables.

17. Utilize the Social Media

It’s not easy to have a successful online business without being active on social media.

The social media platform is an excellent place to promote your blog post immediately after publishing.

You can generate a lot of traffic from Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, Linkedin, and likes.

But, again, you don’t necessarily have to use all the media; you may pick two or three and be active on them.

Ensure you place social icons at visible places on your site, so readers can locate them quickly when sharing your content.

18. Note down Important Ideas

Have a paper and pen handy and when an idea crosses your mind, write it.

Research shows that writing something helps to embed it in the memory. You can develop those ideas into a blog post.

19. Improve Your Site Speed

When visitors land on your site, they want a quick solution to their problems. Research shows that 50% of users won’t wait more than two seconds for a website to load.

Hence, a slow loading site may impact their experience of your website.

What you can do increase your site speed

• Use image optimization tools Kranken.io, TinyPNG, Wp Smush, and reduce images to the smallest size.
• Build your site on WordPress.org
• Use a fast and reliable web hosting service
• Use caching plugins like Wp Super cache, Wp Rocket, Wp fastest cache.

20. Check Competitor’s Performing Keyword

You can improve upon keywords used by your competitors and find those that have not been targeted.

You can use a free tool like Google keyword planner.

• Log into Adwords, then navigate to the keyword planner
• Search for new keywords using a phrase, website, or category
• Input your competitor’s URL
• Click get ideas

Final thoughts

Blogging is an excellent way to kick start a successful online business, but it takes a lot of effort, commitment, and time to see the tangible result, especially for a new blog.

The key to a successful blog is creating content that adds value and helps your audience solve their problems.

By implementing these blogging tips on your blog, you can improve users’ experience on your site and thus, gain more organic traffic.

Over to you.

Do you have any tips to add to the list?

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