What is blogging all about anyway, and what are the best blogging tips for anyone to use?

 

Do you know where you are in blogging, and how to do better to promote your blog? Are you making classic mistakes?

 

We’re covering it!  Get your best content blog and great template ideas, and make them go viral. Increase earnings, write your best headlines, and get great SEO practices and tracking.  There’s something here for everyone at any level of blogging, and if you’re making mistakes, you can change them.

 

Don’t worry, we all make mistakes, but let’s answer first where you are in blogging. How do you fix mistakes if you don’t know where you are?

 

 

How do you know how to promote your blog, if you just don’t know?…

 

 

Promote Your Blog Tips: Which Lifecycle is Your Blog In?

 

 

Here are the five stages every profitable blog needs to go through to promote and reach success.

 

1. Birth: No Traffic, No Rankings

 

A lot of people underestimate how long this stage can last. Unfortunately, you can actually be getting just about no traffic for as many as twenty posts, sometimes more.

 

You’re probably still selecting your WordPress themes, have less than ten great posts, and are still experimenting with your tone and options.

 

In order to succeed, you just have to press through it, and keep going.

 

2. Baby: Just Bits of Traffic, Still No Rankings

 

At this stage, you start to have an audience, though a very, very small one.

 

You’ll start to get a trickle of people coming to your website from a variety of random sources. Perhaps you have a link in your signature in forums. Perhaps you’re commenting on blogs that interest you.

 

People may be finding your site through totally random searches that you’re not really optimizing for.

 

3. Toddler/Adolescent: Some Visitors, 1-5 Pages Ranked, Some Trust

 

At this stage you may want to consider beginning to promote and build a newsletter. If you’re still using a free theme or design, you may want to pay for a great custom design.

 

Though you’re not the top guy in the industry, you’re beginning to get a small following of people who listen to and trust your great advice.

 

You have a couple of pages that are ranked in the search engines. This isn’t great per se, as by this point you’ll probably have at least fifty posts, but it still feels great to see some of your pages getting decent rankings.

 

4.Teenager: Moderate Earnings, Strong Reputation

 

At this point you’re making enough money from your blog to just about support yourself. You may even get 1-2 direct advertising deals.

 

You’re getting backlinks without having to ask, and a higher percentage of your great post pages are getting ranked.

 

When you recommend a product, people begin to take it seriously. Sales come easier, because people are starting to trust your reputation.

 

The Teenager phase can last awhile, and at various degrees. This is where you need to pay attention more to ideas and better blogging post tips. Implement strategies to promote your blog, and elevate your performance. As in the birth level, keep pressing through if you want to move on to the next stage.

 

5. Adult/Expert: Strong Earnings, Known Brand in the Industry

 

At this point your blog is one of the top 3-5 in the industry. If someone mentioned your name at a conference, more often than not people would recognize the great name.

 

Most blogs never reach this stage. However, if you do make it to this great point, you’ll get to enjoy many perks.

 

One perk is that in addition to high levels of traffic, often direct traffic, you also get paid more for that traffic. Your rates from direct advertisers are many times higher than AdSense or the CPMs of other sites. You’ll also generally be selling your own great products at a decent conversion rate.

 

 

Promote Your Blog Tips: Are You Coming up with Great Blog Post Content Ideas?

 

 

Even top bloggers struggle with this one, but here are a couple you may have forgotten.

 

1. Read Your Competitor’s Blog

 

Your competitors can be a great source of inspiration. What are they doing right to promote? What are they doing wrong? How are their customers and readers responding to them?

 

Read both the content of the posts and the comments. See which of their posts are popular and see if you can address similar post topics in your own great style.

 

If there are any “holes” in their coverage, be the first to address those holes as well.

 

2. Just Start Ranting

 

Another great strategy to get great post writing is to just write. Get it all out on paper or a Word doc, and throw it all down. Write about any old thing. Write about random tips, or write about great off-the-wall ideas you’ve had.

 

After that, you edit…throw out bad, and keep the good, and find something useful to promote. You might not, but most likely there will be something there. What’s important is that you’ve gone from stuck and stopped to writing and going.

 

 

Promote Your Blog Tips: Are You Making Your Great Content & Blog Post Go Viral?

 

 

Try Quizzes

 

Basically, you create a great quiz that appeals to your specific audience.

 

Once people answer the quiz, they have the opportunity to share it and promote it with their friends on Facebook, Twitter, their own sites, etc. The trick is to have the code to embed the quiz on their own sites include a backlink to your own site with relevant anchor text.

 

Using this technique, you can generate hundreds or even thousands of great one-way backlinks to your site with your keyword anchor text.

 

The key blog post tips and great ideas here are:

 

1) Create great content that catches attention, or that would be bookmarked.
2) Create fun experiences for people that they’d want to share and promote.
3) Create some sort of easy-to-use mechanism for people to link back to your site.  (Blog buttons used to do this a lot, but they can cause clutter, and less people place them on their sites these days.  You’ll need to get creative about your mechanism.)

 

Use Infographics

 

Infographics are incredible sources of great backlinks too.

 

The key components are the same as the above: unique, attention-catching content that’s both fun and easy to link to.

 

A great infographic needs to contain shocking information about a specific topic. Include surprising statistics and facts, and present in a humorous way.

 

Be sure to include a thumbnail version of the infographic with easy-to-copy HTML code to put the thumbnail that is linking to the infographic on someone else’s website. Also include Facebook like and Twitter re-tweet codes to promote, etc.

 

 

How to Promote Your Blog Tips: Are You Using Great Article Templates for Good Blog Post Content?

 

 

These are 7 great template examples used by bloggers from many different markets. When written well, readers love them.

 

Promote Your Blog Tips Template 1 – How to Do ________

A how-to article on something your audience really wants to know how to do.

 

Promote Your Blog Tips Template 2– X Signs of Y

Share any number of signs that Y is true.

 

Example: 5 Signs That Your Blog Needs a Makeover
Example: 10 Signs That Your Date Doesn’t Like You
Example: 20 Signs That You’re Spending Too Much Time on Social Media

 

Promote Your Blog Tips Template 3– Common Questions and Answers

Give the most common questions and answers you get asked. This article can be repeated again and again with different questions and themes of questions.

 

Promote Your Blog Template 4 – An In-Depth Analysis of a Technique or Theory

Take a popular theory or technique and dissect it. Take apart its strengths and weakness, point out things others hadn’t noticed before and give extra tips for people who want to use the technique.

 

Example: The strengths and weaknesses of forum marketing as a traffic-generation method, plus little-known tips on how to get the most out of forum marketing.

 

Promote Your Blog Tips Template 5 – State a Prediction about the Future

State a strong case for what you believe is going to happen in the future, with an emphasis on how it’ll affect your reader.

 

Promote Your Blog Tips Template 6 – Share a Personal Story with a Moral or Lesson

Give your readers a personal story that ends in an educational lesson or moral.

 

Promote Your Blog Tips Template 7 – Why X Popular Sentiment Is Wrong

Take a popular stance in your industry, and take the opposite sentiment. It helps to actually believe the opposite stance, so pick something that works for you.

 

 

How to Promote Your Blog Tips: Are You Writing Attention-Grabbing Headlines for a Great Blog Post?

 

 

Make no mistake: People reading your blog are always just a click away from reading something else. Blog posts need great headlines.

 

In order to win new readership and keep old readership interested, you need to write headlines that draw people in. Here’s how…

 

 

 

Promote Your Blog Tips: Be Extra Unique

 

 

In most industries, topics have been written about again and again, and people are just tired of the same stuff. If you can make it unique, you have a winner to promote.

 

Even if you’re writing about a topic that others have written about in the past, make sure you imply that you have a unique spin. In fact, if you can present your blog title as controversial or even counter-intuitive, you’re sure to get more readers.

 

Don’t write what people already know, or what they think they know. Your title needs to imply that whatever you’re writing about, it’s nothing they’ve EVER heard before.

 

 

How to Promote Your Blog Tips: Always Make It about Your Readers

 

 

This is THE cardinal rule, yet one of the most commonly violated by bloggers.

 

Posts like, “What I did today” or “Updates from my _________” are classic mistakes, and from bloggers who think they have an interested audience.

 

If your titles are about you, you’ve lost your audience right off the bat. Your titles should always be about your reader, what reading the post article could do for them, and about the powerful benefit they might receive by reading the full, great article.

 

Are you guilty? Change it!

 

 

Promote Your Blog Tips: Serve Up The Inner Conversation of Your Niche Audience

 

 

Your average audience tends to have a very similar internal conversation. For example:

 

Beginner Bloggers: “I want to earn money with my blogsite, but I don’t really know how to start.”

 

Novice golfers: “I know there’s something wrong with my game, I just don’t know what it is.”

 

Intermediate crafters: “My crafting skills are pretty decent, but I just don’t think I’ll be able to earn money with them.”

 

How to Promote Your Great Blog Tips: Any niche has this.

 

 

An extremely powerful principle in headline writing is to simply echo or address your reader’s internal dialogue. If you know your niche audience, you can focus down even more here.  Just show them that you understand what their frustrations are, and that you can help.  You will win their trust.

 

 

How to Promote Your Blog Tips: Are You Increasing AdSense Earnings?

 

 

Try These Ad Format Tips

 

 

One option that most publishers forget to change is the ad font. By selecting larger-sized fonts, you can often draw more attention to your AdSense blocks. Play around with different fonts and font sizes, track them with channels and see what kind of great results you get.

 

The large and medium rectangles tend to perform best for bloggers. The text link ads on navigation bars can also sometimes work quite well. Skyscraper ads tend to perform poorly.

 

In general, aim to have your ads either blend in or stand out.

 

Generally “stand out” ads work best when your advertisements are things people genuinely want to see.

 

Use Your Advertiser Controls

 

Google has given publishers quite a bit more control. You can specify to Google what kind of ads you want to promote to your visitors to see.

 

Google does a great job of finding relevant contextual ads, but you can also experiment with targeting users in peripheral markets.

 

For example, if you run a recipe blog, you might experiment with ads targeted at kids, as many recipes are motivated by what kids eat.

 

Put AdSense in Your RSS Feed

 

A lot of bloggers neglect this source of revenue. Many blog followers use RSS readers. Let Google AdSense take care of this issue with AdSense for feeds. Once you turn on AdSense for feeds, you can earn money from both visitors to your blogsite, and people who follow your blogsite via RSS feeds.

 

 

Promote Your Blog Tips: Are You Making Money with Direct Advertisers?

 

 

Bloggers who make their money from direct advertisers rather than through AdSense can earn as much as 3-4 times more. The direct ads market is a significant step up from other monetization methods, but when should you take this step?

 

When Should You Take on Direct Advertisers?

 

Generally you’ll want to be getting at least half a million pageviews per month before seeking out direct advertisers. Your brand needs to be well recognized in your space, and your home domain’s Page Rank should be at least 3 or 4.

 

Keep in mind there are many budgets out there, and you can help promote advertisers who are on budgets, if you don’t quite have the great ranking and numbers yet.

 

You’ll find people start approaching you to advertise on your site, because they are seeing your site as reputable. They think you have great traffic, and are starting to believe in your brand.

 

Once you’ve made your first sale or two from people approaching you, you can start taking a more active role in soliciting future advertisers to promote.

 

What Are Direct Advertisers Looking For

 

They’re looking for great traffic. If your site doesn’t get enough traffic, they’re not even going to bother with negotiations.

 

They’re brand conscious, and want their ads to be displayed on websites that complement their brand.

 

Words of Caution Dealing with Direct Advertisers

 

It’s best to set up your own ad serving software, if you’re taking on direct advertisers, and be ready to go.

 

Be aware of, and be sure to have your policy around text link buys, and know the rules from Google link schemes and FTC disclosure requirements. You’ll almost certainly be approached regarding buying text links. Though they can be a good source of revenue, selling links can damage your rankings.

 

 

Promote Your Blog Tips: Are You Using SEO Great Practices for WordPress?

 

 

WordPress is one of the most powerful blogging platforms for getting ranked in search engines . Unfortunately, out of the box WordPress is actually quite poorly configured.

 

Here are some of the SEO great practices to implement for your WordPress blog.

 

Promote with Internal Linking and Categories

 

It’s best to link related post articles to one another within posts on similar topics. This will pass relevant link juice between your own pages, as well as show real people other pages they might be interested in.

 

Categories can help a lot with internal linking. Make sure you have well-named categories and place each post content into the specific category they belong in.

 

Search engines will tell what each category is about, and see that you have a lot of relevant content in that category.

 

Promote by Changing the Title Structure

 

By default, WordPress places your blog title first, then the blog post.

 

For example, if your blog’s name is “John’s Blog” and your title is “How to Learn Woodcarving,” WordPress displays:

 

John’s Blog | How to Learn Woodcarving

In reality, you want it reversed:

How to Learn Woodcarving | John’s Blog

That will give you the most powerful rankings for your individual post content.

 

Promote Keyword-Rich Permalinks

 

By default, WordPress uses a numeric system for creating permalinks. Instead, it’s better for both your rankings and the human eye to actually have something that’s readable, and has your keyword in it. For example, example.com/great-blogging-tips/.

 

Promote & Tag Your Images

 

Images that are actually part of your posts should always be tagged in your alt text.

 

Promote by Adding Caching to Increase Speed

 

Search engines place quite a high importance on load times. If your site loads fast, it gets quite a few great points for that. To decrease your load times, install a caching plugin like W3 Total Cache or Super Cache.

 

Promote & Use a Sitemap Plug-In

 

A sitemap makes it easy for search engines to find all the pages on your site.

 

By decreasing the computing power it takes for a spider to crawl your site, you’ll win a few extra points in the search engine’s eyes.

 

The easiest way to set up and maintain a sitemap for WordPress is to simply install a plugin that will automatically do it for you.

 

More on SEO to Promote Your Blog

 

The All In One SEO plugin is a free, and used by many in the WordPress community. It makes it easy to change your title structures, permalink structures and more.

 

Preventing comment spam is also an important part of ranking. The best way to do that is to use the Akismet plugin.

 

 

Promote Your Blog Tips: Do you Have Great Services for Distribution?

 

 

Here are a few services you should know about. These services make the content distribution process much easier.

 

Promote with ISnare

 

ISnare is an article distribution service, and one of many on the internet. ISnare has built up a reputation as being trustworthy and consistent.

 

They have thousands of article directories, and for $20 a post or article can easily be syndicated out to thousands of sites, and get you thousands of backlinks.

 

You don’t want to duplicate, and syndicate out a main article on your site, but you can use iSnare to syndicate out articles written primarily for posting to article directories for backlinks.

 

Keep the duplicating factor in mind for any article submissions,  You want to re-write and submit.

 

Promote with Ping.fm

 

Ping.fm saves all your social media logins, and allows you to post to all of them in one fell swoop, with one login.

 

You do need to sign up for these social networks first, and once you have an account, Ping.fm makes it very easy to post to all of them at once.

 

That means that any time you publish a new post, you can post a quick blurb on all your networks, and in five minutes have twenty backlinks pointing back to your new content.

 

Promote with Triberr

 

Triberr.com is another great source of distribution for your blog posts.

 

Create a free account, and search and follow tribes related to you.  If you log in regularly, and show that you are sharing the posts to your Twitter and other social media accounts of those tribe members, the chief of the tribe can add you to the tribe.

 

Then, your blog posts will go out to all of the Twitter followers, etc. of all of the tribe members.  You can really increase your distribution reach through Triberr.

 

Promote with RSS Directories, Blog and Ping

 

Blog and Ping has been around awhile. Though the power of pinging has decreased significantly from all the ping traffic around, it can still be a good source of one-way backlinks.

 

Be sure you update your blog and ping list. WordPress comes with a small list to start, and it’s not comprehensive.

 

You can also submit your blog to a few of the main RSS directories, and seriously consider paying for an RSS distribution service to get your RSS feed more coverage on the net.

 

If your content would be well suited for a podcast, that can be an extremely powerful way to automatically get your content syndicated out to Apple’s entire network of podcast listeners.

 

These are just some of the services available to bloggers to help get content and distribution.

 

 

Promote Your Blog Tips: Are You Tracking and Using Analytics?

 

 

Here’s how to use analytics to figure out what you’re doing right or wrong and how to get more traffic in the future.

 

Setting Up Great Tracking and Analytics

 

Google Analytics is easy to set up. All you need to do is set up an account in Blogger, and flip the switch. In WordPress, all you need to do is install a plug-in to get your tracking off the ground.

 

Track Your Top Posts

 

One of the things you always need to be looking at is which posts are popular on your blog.

 

Which posts get the most traffic? Which posts do people spend the most time on? Which posts get the most backlinks? Which content gets the most search engine traffic?

 

You can find this data under the “Content” tab of Google Analytics.

 

Once you know what your readers love, you can put out more content along those lines.

 

Track Your Referring Traffic

 

Who’s sending you traffic? Where are your backlinks coming from?

 

Find out who likes your great content enough to link to you. Then reach out and see if there’s more you two could potentially do together.

 

Track Your Keywords

 

The actual keywords people are typing in to get to your site could be totally different than the keywords you first set out to target. By tracking what keywords you’re ranking for and what people are typing in, you can have a better idea of what you might want to target in future posts.

 

Track Your RSS

 

Track how many people are reading your RSS feed, and which pages are most downloaded via RSS. You RSS stats can give you a very good idea of how strong your headlines are.

 

 

Great & Best Blogging Tips to Promote Your Blog: Are You Making Classic Mistakes? Don’t anymore!

 

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~Courtney & Betina