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Jane Sheeba

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Interview With Santanu Debnath: On Facebook Groups, SEO and Blogging

March 14, 2019 by Jane Sheeba 10 Comments

Interview With Santanu Debnath: On Facebook Groups, SEO and Blogging

Today, I would like to share what Santanu has got to say about Facebook Groups, SEO and Blogging.

He is known to me for a long time as a friend, a client and as a fellow blogger.

I won’t waste any more time and let’s see what he has got to say!

Q:Hey Santanu please introduce yourself to the SBT community! 

Hi, I am Santanu Debnath. A software consultant by profession and a passionate blogger from heart.

I have been blogging since last many years, and have found my peace of mind through this. 

I always wanted to help people in some way, and I found this platform is the best way to connect with people and help them.

I am very much active on my Facebook Group and you can ask me anything there related to blogging & affiliate marketing.

Q:What is your online business? What are the websites that you own and what are your income streams?

Frankly speaking, I am pursuing blogging as my passion. I am a developer on professional level and am quite happy doing that.

Due to curiosity & passion in different topics, I have started couple of blogs which performed well.

Many of you may not know, Jane Sheeba is the person who guided me to WordPress blogging in 2012.

She is an awesome person and have answered many of my questions through email and helped me to set up my first blog on WordPress.

Right now, I have around 4-5 blogs, out of which I am mostly focusing to grow Bloggingjoy.com and Moneygyaan.com. Time management is the biggest concern to manage multiple blogs.

So, I stopped focusing much on other blogs and decided to concentrate only on this one.

Regarding income, yes I am making decent from Google Adsense & affiliate marketing.

I would say I am very happy with the earnings considering it as a passive income source.

I am not depending much on blogging income, however, this is helping me to support my blogging expenses like hosting, premium tools etc.

Q:You have recently started a Facebook Group and you are actively maintaining it (I’m a member :)). Let us know what motivated you to start a FB group in the first place?

As mentioned above, I have been blogging from last many years.

Throughout those years, I always tried to generate some extra income source through my blogs. It went really good for me in last few years. 

But one thing I realised is that, I am not able to help anyone or get connected with anyone with this kind of blogging.

In my personal life also, I am an introvert. And don’t have many people around me besides some good friends.

These things always kept bugging me. I was not satisfied with my way of blogging or the way things were going on.

Always wanted to do something good for people with my learnings & knowledge.

I have joined 100+ Facebook groups, just to promote my posts. I know those blind shares never worked. Then in December I came across 2 new FB groups:

  1. Anil Agrawal’s Group
  2. Sumit Sao’s group

I realised that people are building their groups to create their own audience or blog visitors.

I got connected and started responding to people’s queries. Very soon I have decided to start my own group as well.

But, I wanted to do something different. So I thought to start a Group for Like-minded Bloggers to create a friendly community.

In fact, I have not named my group with my website or blog name. 

The decision was taken on 9th December 2018 and it felt like a rebirth of my blogging journey.

With the launch of this group, I found a purpose of my blogging, a purpose of my life, a way to give back to the community.

Q:How is the group’s growth and progress? Does it bring the results you expected?

In one word if I have to say, it’s amazing. I am not comparing with any other group or community, but the response has completely blown away my expectations.

I never thought that I will be able to make so many awesome friends within just a few months after starting this Facebook group.

Frankly speaking, I don’t consider the traffic as a result of creating this group. Yes, I started this group with the similar mentality of increasing my blog traffic.

But gradually I found a totally different purpose of helping people & get connected with so many awesome people around.

I can say that it actually brings the result for myself. Personally, from many years, I wanted to do something for people in some way.

I am considering this Facebook group as a platform which helped me to explode my actual character to people.

I am also coming to know about this side of myself and I am very much happy for that.

Besides that, of course I am getting traffic from the Facebook group.

People started sharing my articles, reading my articles which feels awesome. Not only that, my work started getting noticed by authority bloggers. E.g.

  • Kulwant Nagi has mentioned my blog on his recent List of Best Indian Blogs
  • You have invited me to share my thoughts 🙂 
  • Get couple of mention from Ryan Biddulph (Bloggingfromparadise.com)

This is giving me a huge pressure of responsibility too. As people started caring for my work and views, now it is my responsibility to always create something useful or awesome for their benefits.

I think this is the true purpose of blogging and I am enjoying this phase.

Q:What strategies do you use to keep the group active and engaged?

In last 3 months after starting this Facebook group, I have read a lot of articles to understand how to grow a Facebook group effectively.

I saw many groups with huge number of followers, but hardly any interactions.

That is the biggest concern going on my mind too. I know that we can’t get 100% engagement, but still how to encourage people to engage?

Gradually, I have built few strategies and now working on them continuously.

  • I am running a weekly blog post sharing thread on Saturday. As I can give my time and engage with people smoothly.
  • On normal days, I try to create interesting questions or some discussions.
  • I made couple of good friends though this Group, they also contribute or create useful threads, polls, ask questions.
  • I am trying other different things like sharing some motivational Quotes, asking Quiz (WordPress knowledge) and many more.
  • I don’t like to stick with blogging too seriously, so always interact with people with light hearted jokes or humour. I try to discuss personal life stuffs, experiments as well, which is helping me to connect with people even if they don’t have any blogging expectation from me.

Q:At the moment, what do you think are the pros and cons of starting and maintaining a FB group?

I think I have shared enough PROS of starting a Facebook group. Of course, those are specific positives which I consider as per my expectations.

This may not be true for majority of the people who are running their Facebook groups.

Regarding disadvantages, I would say, there are hardly any. Though, I am getting less time for blogging or other things, but I am happy that I found some purpose with this Facebook group.

It is just like my kid, I always feel a responsibility to share something useful, interact with my friends, engage into some healthy discussion and of course help someone who is seeking knowledge regarding blogging & WordPress.

On my free time, especially during the weekends, I also check other Facebook groups and try my level best to help people by answering to their questions.

Q:I am sure you are part of other Facebook groups of your fellow bloggers. Which other group(s) do you think is(are) doing great?

I am waiting for this question Jane. Because I got the idea of starting a Facebook group after being active on some of the Groups for few weeks. Two of them are:

  1. Anil Agrawal’s Group
  2. Sumit Sao’s group
  3. HBB Group by Pradeep Kumar

However, if you ask me about the best Facebook group which has inspired me a lot till date, that is none other than HBB Facebook group, run by Pradeep Kumar.

Personally, I admire Pradeep a lot for his kind-hearted attitude of helping people selflessly through his Facebook group since many years.

Q:What are your views about the relationship between social media platforms like Facebook and SEO?

There is a significant relation between SEO and social media. SEO is one of the most interesting topics I love to read & explore about. In fact, you will find many resources related to SEO on my blog.

Over the years, I have read hundreds of articles on SEO and understood few things clearly. There are 2 types of SEO:

  • Actionable SEO: We put efforts to create those signals
  • Auto SEO: Things happen automatically

After starting this Facebook group, I have discovered that the 2nd option has started for my blog. Of course, a big reason for this is the quality of content. 

I would say, there is a big relation between SEO and social media. Each share & reaction in social media from genuine people is an upvote for that content.

And this is nothing but natural & positive SEO, which will surely help the search engines to understand the usefulness of that content with time.

Q:Can you give three SEO tips that works for you?

I have mentioned about the 2 broad types of SEO that I have realised in last few years of my blogging experience.

If I have to summarise them in 3 points, they would be:

  1. SEO starts with your website content. If your content is not 100% SEO optimized, then there is no point to go for other SEO techniques. So, start to learn the key on-page SEO factors and optimize your articles for both users & search engines. But remember, user experience is a major ranking factor. So, keep the dwell time high by creating visually appealing content with more insights like infographics, videos etc.
  2. Earning backlink is really tough. This is only possible with hard work and great content. One must focus on both earning backlinks by creating good content and at the same time go for quality guest blogging.
  3. Social media is the place where people are living in this age. So, the more people will share your articles, recommend your articles, the more upvote you will get. Social signals are one of the crucial ranking factors. But remember, social media like Facebook knows very well whether the person sharing your article is a genuine person or a fake profile.

Q:What is your best piece of blogging advice?

Blogging is no more just a way to pursue passion or hobby. People are jumping into blogging just to make money quickly.

Frankly speaking, if someone asks me how to make money from blogging quickly, then I have to say sorry as I am the wrong person to answer that.

My advice to every new blogger:

  • Consider blogging as a career option very seriously. Learn from top bloggers, how they reached to their current position by putting their effort for so many years. 
  • Build an intent to help others. You don’t have to go anywhere, just look into Facebook or go to Quora where people are seeking for solutions. If you think you can help in any niche, go and help them.
  • Starting a blog is very easy, but building a community or audience is difficult. In 2019, blogging is completely different than 2009 (The year I have started).

Thanks again Jane for giving me this opportunity to share my views on your blog. I have really enjoyed answering your questions. Hope the readers enjoy them too 🙂  

Filed Under: Blogging Tips, Social Media Marketing Tagged With: Anil Agarwal, Anil Agrawal, blogging tips, Facebook Group, Facebook Groups, Pradeep Kumar, Ryan Biddulph, Santanu Debnath, SEO, Sumit Sao

Major keyword research mistakes that will disrupt your blog – how not to make

October 25, 2018 by Jane Sheeba Leave a Comment

Major keyword research mistakes that will disrupt your blog

One of the great things about this article is that I don’t really need to persuade you into admitting the fact that keyword research is essential (you already know that).

And it remains to be one of the highest return SEO activities that can prove highly necessary for the success of your marketing efforts.

For those who don’t understand what keyword researching is (or have been living under a rock all this while) here’s a quick recap.

Keyword research refers to the process of hunting down words or phrases that people will have more chances at searching for.

Having good knowledge about these aptly named keywords can not only help boost your content strategy but can also help you double up on its marketing efforts.

The keyword research process itself might look like a pretty easy thing to do (some would even say it’s a real cakewalk). I, for one though, politely beg to differ.

Anyone one can gather up a bunch of keywords and make a good content or a post out of it (it’s not that hard, you see), however, when it comes to dealing with great keywords that can actually make for a meaningful difference.

I am of the opinion that there is a ton of more things to be had than what the concept just lets on.

The problem with keyword researching – every SEO’s nightmare.

Getting your site listed for target keywords is one of the most cost-effective methods for efficient link building.

Therefore, it’s no wonder that marketers and SEO’ers tend to spend a ton of time optimizing their sites to get better ranked in the SERP’s and critical wordings, as this can better boost their conversion rates and can, in turn, level up their profits too.

It doesn’t really matter whether you are a newbie trying to learn the ropes or is an SEO master with years’ worth of experience; the chances are that you will already be familiar with the need for conducting a keyword research process.

This particular process can inform you better about the content types that you want to be concentrating on.

In addition, it can also help you tremendously with designing SEO strategies that can actually work and boost your online organic presences – brilliant, isn’t it?

However, even with all the best tools and research techniques available out there, there are times when mistakes are bound to happen no matter what – leaving you with results that are just unsatisfying and often very annoying.

My advices to you though, avoid them, the mistakes, like the plague. And fortunately, there are plenty of great ways to do just that.

Below in this article, you’ll be finding out more about some of the common mistakes that you may be making with your SEO game.

You will also find some remarkable, quality solutions for them.

Five keyword research mistakes you might be making now (and the solutions):

1) Choosing keywords that don’t reflect the average searcher

Perhaps one of the most common SEO mistakes out there, vying for the wrong keywords or the least popular ones to use is one of the main reasons why a lot of the good websites out there don’t get the traffic levels that they are expecting to land, even though they deserve it a lot.

Always opt for a set of keywords that brings something unique to the table. However, that doesn’t mean that it needs to be too unique or too specific, as this may limit your site’s visibility.

Use keywords that are bit mainstream, but not too much either because, unlike the former, these may make the users jump through several results before they are going to land on yours. My advice?

Shoot for the middle ground. Use keywords that are both a bit mainstream and unique to you (e.g., SEO master shop, New York – location being the unique factor).

2) Plural vs. singular

A common mistake is continuously made by SEO’s all around the world; it never fails to amaze me how even the most seasoned veterans tend to fall for the plural, single keywords trap.

While I admit that they will always be different in nature, and one will never affect the other, there are times when switching between them can boost or hamper your traffic flow by a ton – depending on what the situation is.

If you are running an e-commerce site or is trying to sell off something to the users, it’s best for you to go with plural words as this can help better with your product promotions.

On the other hand, let’s say that you are trying to promote a service or your business, single words will work better since they can bring a sense of uniqueness to the table that the former cant.

3) Not focussing on the local side of things

Not focussing on the local side of things

Many SEO’s especially the newbie’s, tend to focus more on expanding their visibility to the maximum thinking that the more reach their site has, the better chances it’s going to have at being a true-blue success.

While I admit that it’s true to a certain extent, local SEO too is something that must be had your attention just the same.

Offering steady traffic flow to small-scale businesses and helping users to find better, relevant info’s near where they are.

Not having an area specific keyword can definitely prove detrimental to your local SEO game, as this would hamper your site’s chances at getting noticed despite being within the same area.

4) Auditing previously used keywords

I know that it is widely accepted that SEO is an on-going process and is something that’s never going to see the end of the day.

But how frequently do you review the pre-employed keywords to see if they are still viable and working like the day they were put there?

If a marketplace is like the web and is always shifting and turning (which it is), then it’s only natural to assume that the users searching habits too will evolve and develop over time – making keywords that were once awesome now pretty obsolete and even non-usable.

In most cases, I am of the opinion that a yearly review is enough to get the job done.

However, any period that’s shorter than this and you will run the risk of having a chaotic process that’s going to make everything harder.

That is being said though, in some fast moving and competitive markets, a regular keyword tracking may prove a ton more useful than having long termed ones.

5) Having an uneven keyword presence

Having an uneven keyword presence

Not everything is created equal, and this is even truer in the case of keywords; some are going to be quite challenging to get a ranking for, while others can prove to be a rapid win for your businesses.

In my opinion, though, the trick to seeing consistent gains from SEO strategy is going to lie with the habit of addressing all keywords despite their difficulty levels.

Be open to everything, even for those long-tailed ones.

The key here is to embrace them for what they are, and also though some of them can prove to be a hassle unlike any, they can prove extremely convenient in the long run, seeing that they would have a less of a competition to fight against.

Conclusion

An essential part of any good SEO strategy, having the right keywords at your disposal can not only ensure that you’d have a right place in the SERP’s but can also make sure that you’d get a good amount of traffic flow to your sites – something which I think every SEO’ers are looking for.

It doesn’t matter how careful and confident you may be, sooner or later, some mistakes are bound to crop up.

Above you can read about some of the standard errors an SEO would typically make.

Furthermore, I have also provided some handy tips to help you better walk around them.

If you have any questions or queries regarding keyword research, SEO, or anything along the lines, feel free to drop a comment below.

Filed Under: Keyword Research, Search Engine Optimization Tagged With: content types, keyword density, keyword research, Keyword research mistakes, keyword research tools, local SEO, long tail keywords, Search Engine Optimization, SEO, SEO mistakes, SERPs, uneven keyword presence

35 Blogging tips for beginner bloggers

October 13, 2016 by Jane Sheeba 27 Comments

35 Blogging tips for beginner bloggers

Blogging is a crucial part of any online business. Both beginner and advanced bloggers actively seek for blogging tips to help them improve their blogs.

No matter whatever you sell online (or offline) having a blog highly boosts the value of your website.

Rather than having a simple landing page that talks about you and your company, a blog gives you a great chance to publish awesome, useful content for your readers.

But without proper knowledge about the stuff involved in blogging, you are prone to fail (not trying to scare you).

The blogging tips I share in this post will not only help beginner bloggers, but will also be useful to experienced bloggers.

Let’s get started with tips for good blogging!

#1. Have a blogging purpose in mind

mind

It really boils down to this question: Why do you want to start a blog?

Without having clarity about the purpose of your blog, please remember that your blog is bound to fail.

I am not trying to discourage you or scare you here! But that’s the plain truth.

Sit down and think about why you are starting this blog in the first place.

Once you get a clear picture, write it down and keep it in a place where you often see it.

From now on, whatever you do with blogging should be to fulfil that purpose. Anything else you do is pure waste of time!

#2. Devise a blogging action plan

Once you have a purpose or goal in mind, it is time to devise an action plan.

Your goal is your destination. Your action plan is the map that tells you how you are going to achieve that goal – to reach that destination.

And this is very important.

Without a clear action plan, you might be wasting a lot of time on doing things that actually don’t contribute to moving the needle towards your goal!

Follow your action steps.

You might want to tweak your action plan as you move and as you learn/measure things – that’s totally OK.

What matters is that you have an action plan in place.

#3. Set everything right so you’ll stick to your action plan

Identifying your blogging purpose and devising an action plan are just the starting point.

But what will make sure that you stick to the plan is the tools/systems you use.

Without a proper system in place and without the use of right tools you will not be able to follow your action plan to achieve your blogging purpose.

And that could be pathetic.

Because that’s what makes most bloggers quit – they don’t have the right tools in place.

  • They do everything the hard way, and not the smart way.
  • They lose control of stuff.
  • They don’t know how to manage things in the long run.

And, it ends…..

#4. Have a content strategy that aligns with your blogging goals

strategy

Having a blog means publishing awesome content. Publishing high quality content.

But that doesn’t mean “any” content.

Every piece of content you publish should align with your blogging goals. It should help you with conversions.

You know what you want your readers to do after they arrive at your blog, right?

Perhaps you want them to sign up for your newsletter. Or you want them to buy your ebook.

Or your course.

Whatever it is, every piece of content you publish should act as a funnel to get that goal accomplished.

#5. Use the right tools to get things done

tools

As I said earlier, tools play a crucial role in helping you progress towards your goals.

And if you are ignorant about the tools or refuse to use them for any reason, you will miss out big.

You need to catch up with technology and start using the tools.

For instance, in order to capture blog post ideas you might need a solution like Evernote.

In order to launch a beautifully designed, search engine optimised website, you will need a framework and/or theme like Genesis Themes or Thrive Themes.

In order to place beautiful and highly converting optin forms, you will need a solution like Thrive Leads.

In order to capture emails, segment them, maintain them, send them useful content on a regular basis, you will need an email marketing solution like Aweber.

If you fail to use the right tools, it will be highly challenging and even impossible to get your stuff done.

#6. Outsource mind-numbing tasks

task

Let’s admit it. Even though you are all passionate about blogging and your business, there are certain tasks that are totally mind-numbing and boring.

After all blogging incorporates a lot of things – you enjoy some. While you do some out of compulsion.

Consider outsourcing those kind of tasks that you don’t enjoy.

You need not do everything by yourself.

By outsourcing a few tasks you will have some extra time on your hands for doing things that you actually enjoy!

#7. Be determined to create high quality content

Never ever compromise on the quality of content! This is my strong advice to you.

It is not the amount of content you publish but the quality of content that matters.

Keep this in mind throughout your blogging journey and only create and publish content that is of high quality.

For the same reason you must set realistic publishing goals.

Don’t promise yourself to publish one blog post every day – as you might burn out soon, or run out of ideas soon or just lose motivation in the long run.

If you have a handful of guest bloggers willing to write for you, publishing every day could be possible.

But if you are the only one creating content for your blog, only take up as much as you can produce without compromising on the quality.

I strongly recommend you to take up my content writing course: How to create great content for your business?

#8. Stay consistent with whatever you do

Just in relation to what I said above, staying consistent is another important factor.

Don’t jump with excitement soon after you launch a new blog and start publishing content every day.

Over the time, you might burn out and might not be able to keep up.

Publishing 5 blog posts a week for 1 month and then going MIA for a few months isn’t going to cut it!

Only with consistent efforts you can succeed with blogging.

Not just with publishing content, but this advice applies to whatever you do with blogging.

Only by being consistent you can scale up results.

Otherwise you might see some spikes (of traffic, subscriptions, sales or whatever) and that will settle quite soon. That’s not what you want.

You want results that consistently grow and scale up!

#9. You must embrace SEO

I totally understand that you might hate SEO altogether. Especially when you are a beginner, SEO can be overwhelming – both to understand and also to keep up!

But here’s another harsh truth – you must embrace SEO.

You don’t have to go for any advanced SEO tips.

Just have an idea of the basic SEO tips and implement them on your blog, right from the start.

SEO not only helps to rank your content better in search engines, but it also helps your readers find your content.

After all you want your readers to find your content, read it, appreciate it and convert.

It all starts with your readers finding your content.

Of course they can find you via social media, email and other means. But those traffic are momentary.

The moment you publish a post and hit a few shares, you will get a spike in traffic. But that traffic usually fades off.

Similarly when you send out a newsletter you will get a spike – but you cannot expect that to be consistent.

Only search engine traffic will help you in the long run.

Initially it could seem hard to understand and implement SEO techniques. But once you do things right, in the long run, you can pretty much enjoy the search traffic (almost) hands free.

#10. Network right from the beginning

network

Blogging and networking go hand in hand. In the sea of big companies, bloggers and loads of content, you need to have extra hands to help you out.

Be it promoting your blog posts, offering you guest posts and guest post opportunities, helping you with launches – you need fellow bloggers to help you out.

They also help you by offering great suggestion, and motivation and trust me you need these on a regular basis.

So start networking right from the beginning! You will not regret.

Personally, I find networking to be the wonderful part of my business – a stress free thing that I can do on a regular basis.

It is not something tough, or something that feels like “work”.

At the same time it pays off really well!

But just make sure you don’t hit up people for selfish reasons. Build genuine relationships and see what follows!

#11. Start building an email list, right from the start

email

This is a dumb mistake I myself made when I started out back in 2007.

Somehow I thought that I should only start building a list when I get a certain number of visitors to my site.

At that time, in the first month I was getting about 100 visits per day. And I waited out.

I did not do anything to build an email list for about 2 years! Can you imagine how many subscribers I just left out?

And when I decided to put up an optin form, I got 82 signups within a few hours.

I now realise that mistake and never will make it again.

#12. Design a clean blog

design

Clutter is dangerous. It can instantly turn people off your site!

And there are numerous beautifully-designed, visually appealing, clutter free websites on the internet.

People are used to visually pleasing web pages – and anything with clutter is going to be a strain on their eyes.

Especially as more and more people are using mobile devices to access the internet, it is very important to go clutter free.

Analyse your website and see if there’s anything that’s annoying – this includes annoying pop-ups (not all pop-ups), ads that are cluttered on the website, unnecessary widgets, use of too many colors – I can go on. But you get the idea.

This post will be an additional help in this context.

#13. Have conversion elements in place

You blog to attract visitors. You get traffic.

But what if that traffic just comes and goes by? That’s wasted traffic, right?

You absolutely cannot afford to waste all your hard work to get traffic and then let it slip by without taking any action.

You got to take all measures to convert your traffic.

So what’s conversion? It could be anything depending upon your blogging purpose.

It could be that you want your visitors to sign up for your newsletter – in which case you must put up sign up forms at appropriate places.

If it is about your product sales, you need to put up call to actions inviting people to check out your product/services at appropriate places in your website.

You get the idea.

#14. Answer readers’ questions

question

One of the easiest ways to emphasthize with your readers and to make them relate to you and your content is to answer your readers’ questions directly.

And by answering your readers’ queries directly, you also make your blog’s content highly useful.

After all if readers can find answers to their queries on your blog, they are simply going to love that!

#15. Keep yourself in the loop by reading other blogs in the niche

It is highly crucial for you to keep yourself updated.

You should be up-to-date with happenings in your industry, as well as anything related to your online business.

For instance if you run a fashion blog, you should keep yourself updated on the latest fashion trends.

And at the same time, you should keep tabs about any search engine updates, a new SEO technique, a new feature or a theme released for fashion bloggers and so on.

This will help you stay on top and keep up with your competitors in implementing new things.

#16. Be patient. Be persistent

silent

Blogging is not something you do one off and reap the benefits. And it is not something that will give you instant results.

It will certainly take some time for the results to show up (if you’ve been told/promised otherwise, you’ve been hearing the wrong advice).

You must keep this in mind when you start with blogging, because most bloggers have wrong notions about getting there.

They expect results too soon, and when they don’t get it, they become frustrated. And decide to quit.

In order to keep your motivation up and in order to keep working on your blog with focus, you need to be patient – and have realistic expectations about blogging success.

#17. The important pages on your site have to be complete, and up-to-date

Your site should have certain important pages like About, Contact, landing pages etc.

When you launch your blog you should make sure that these pages are complete and more importantly, up-to-date.

If these pages are totally absent, your readers will find it hard to know about you, connect with you and so on.

And as per guidelines for content you need to have some of the pages like Privacy, Disclaimer etc. on your website.

So you must make sure you have these pages always ready and updated.

#18. Use your own voice. Never imitate others

microphone

It is OK to monitor and follow your fellow bloggers – to know their strategies, to get inspired and so on.

But if you are going to imitate their voice just because that voice of theirs is successful, you are making a big mistake.

Their voice works for them and for their business. And I am sure it will not work for you.

Why am I so sure about this?

In the sea of sameness, all you have to easily stand out is your own voice.Click To Tweet

Don’t ever compromise on that!

#19. Have a means to measure the results

So you might start a blog, publish a few blog posts, do social shares and network with people.

But how are you going to measure the results you get? How would you know what strategy works and what doesn’t?

Only by knowing what works (and that too by numbers) will only enable you to do more of what works and drop anything that isn’t working.

You can only unveil working strategies and identify non-working strategies if you measure results.

By all means use the right tools that help you clearly measure your goals and results.

Use Google Analytics for keeping tabs on traffic, track your income/sales, and track your signups/conversions.

Without this knowledge, it is pretty much hard to improve in your blogging business.

#20. Have a means to capture blog post ideas

ideas

With blogging, consistent content creation comes a crucial thing.

And in order to create content consistently, you should have a list of blog post ideas ready.

Else, you will certainly hit the writer’s block syndrome. And it is dangerous in the long run.

Over the time, this can lead to frustration and even quitting – being unable to create content consistently.

So by all means, have a tool to capture blog post ideas.

It can be a tool like Evernote (which I personally use), or as simple as a notebook and pen.

Just have one tool for idea capture – don’t have your ideas scattered all over the place since that will totally defeat the purpose of idea capture.

#21. Reach out to readers outside your blog

Your blog is your space where you share awesome content and connect with your readers. But don’t stop there.

You should actually be actively reaching out to readers outside your blog since that gives a greater chance of discovering new visitors by actually visiting those places where they hang out.

Examples include other blogs (in the form of guest posts, blog comments), social media (responding to updates, participating in group discussions, sharing others content etc.), interacting in blog communities like DoSplash, Klinkk and so on.

#22. Format your content properly so it is easy for your readers to consume

formatting

The internet is loaded with content, and a lot of visually engaging stuff. Now your content should be such that it doesn’t overwhelm your (already overwhelmed) readers; and at the same time stand out and feel easy on the eyes of your readers.

This can be accomplished by formatting your content properly.

Nothing so techy about this – you just have to use sub-headings, bullet points, images, paragraph breaks and the like!

That’s there all to how to write blogs, seriously!

#23. Help readers to share your content

Shares on your content help spread the word, and yes a great source of traffic.

Social sharing not only helps you build buzz and attract traffic, it can help your content go viral.

This is a big plus!

But you have to help your readers to share your content. Of course the first step here is to create awesome content that your readers would want to share.

But the next important step is to make it easy for your readers to share your content by putting social sharing buttons at appropriate places on your content.

I’d suggest both at the top and bottom of your blog posts.

This way your readers can share away just with a click.

I highly recommend Social Warfare plugin for this purpose.

#24. Create evergreen, pillar content quite often

Evergreen content is something that is not news-like. The tip or advice or suggestion or the discussion you make in a piece of evergreen content applies to the current date and also to a future date.

It is something that stays fresh for a long time.

By creating evergreen content you also do yourself a favour – that particular piece of content that you’ve worked hard on can help you bring fresh readers in a consistent manner.

You also do your readers a favour by providing them with such content.

And such content will form pillar content for your blog, that you can often refer to in your blog posts, promote in guest posts, and put up as links in navigation or sidebar.

And yes, evergreen content helps strengthen the SEO of your site in general.

#25. Make time for blogging, no matter what

timing

As a blogger you will certainly have a lot on your plate. It doesn’t matter if you are a full time blogger or a part time blogger, finding the time to blog can be quite challenging.

For a part time blogger, the day job will already take up a lot of time and energy, leaving very less of those for blogging.

For a full time blogger, overwhelm and other challenges (like household chores, screaming kids, people interrupting all the time and so on) make it challenging to work on their blogs.

But here’s the thing –

you have to make time for blogging, if you consider it as a business.Click To Tweet

You cannot find the time, but you have to make it.

#26. Be honest. Don’t fake anything

When you start out as a blogger, or when you have not yet reached your goals, it could be highly tempting to fake it.

Publishing fake income reports, fake success stories etc. are some of the examples.

But here’s the thing – your readers are smarter than you think and they can smell your fake-ness right there.

And being honest never hurts. Your readers will love you for being honest.

In fact honestly letting them know what didn’t worked for you or how you failed terribly on something will be really useful to your readers and they can easily relate to what you are talking about.

#27. Be a prolific writer (a crucial blogging tip!)

Blogging involves lots of content creation. It doesn’t matter what type of content you create, your content creation process will involve a lot of writing.

Even if you don’t publish that much written content and let’s say you are all about making videos.

You still have to write the script for your videos, social media updates, newsletters and much more.

So train yourself to become a prolific writer.

#28. Use a variety of content forms

People need variety these days so they are not bored. Also with a variety of content you can cover readers whose interests are varied too!

For instance, instead of simply publishing text form posts, add videos, podcasts, slides, infographics into the mix.

This way you can make your content highly engaging, visually appealing and entertaining.

Plus you can reach out to audience in a variety of ways/places (like Youtube, Slideshare, iTunes etc.).

#29. Make sure your site is properly set up

This is something very serious. Not setting up your site properly can tamper your SEO efforts, can interfere with user experience and loading speed.

So I highly suggest you that you first make the basic set up totally right.

If you are using WordPress, here is a list of things that you need to do immediately after installing WordPress on your website.

Also please refer to Chapters 3 and 4 of the How to start a blog guide!

#30. Don’t EVER indulge in black hat SEO techniques. Ever.

black hat

With black hat SEO techniques you just complicate SEO. SEO is not at all complicated.

It is quite easy these days and you just have to stick to the basics.

You don’t have to spend a ton of money on SEO to build links or whatever. And Google hates being manipulated.

With all the efforts and money spent to do black hat SEO, you will only reap penalties and slaps from Google rather than a SEO boost.

Never ever waste your time and money on that!

#31. Make navigation easy and straightforward

Navigation in a website plays a crucial role in helping both readers and search engine bots.

If you don’t have a clean and clear navigation your readers will be left confused. And yes, they will leave!

Your website should have a clean navigation so any page on your site (not the blog posts) can be reached within 2 or 3 clicks.

#32. Use simple language

Jargons don’t work all the time. Especially when your website helps beginners, jargons are best avoided.

Even for advanced visitors, some jargons might work and some might not.

So keep jargons away and use simple language to talk to your readers.

Do not use too much hype or too sophisticated language on your blog post titles – they can be misleading, confusing and many people simply won’t understand.

And if that’s the case they won’t click through to check out your content.

Even while they are reading your content if the language you use is complex, your readers will simply leave.

#33. Work on your website’s loading speed

A fast loading website keeps search engines and your readers happy.

People are busy and they won’t wait for your slow loading pages to finish loading to read your content. They will simply click the back button and seek the same information elsewhere!

And too many click backs like that contribute to a high bounce rate which is not good for SEO.

Also search engines do not favour slow loading websites in their search engine result pages (SERPs).

#34. Don’t forget to make your site responsive

screen

Many people are switching to accessing the web via their mobile devices.

This includes smartphones (of various screen sizes), tablets, portables and the like.

People read a lot while they are on the go rather than working on the table.

So you need to make sure that your website is responsive – that it appears neat and clean in all screen sizes.

Most solutions like Genesis and Thrive themes offer you with responsive themes.

#35. Know what it takes to succeed with blogging (and develop the mindset)

Blogging is not easy peasy. If you were told so, you’ve been cheated.

It takes a lot of hard work and persistence to get there.

And in the meanwhile you are prone to get demotivated and lose track of your goals.

In order to avoid such negative stuff, prepare yourself right from the beginning.

Know what it takes to become a successful blogger. And be prepared.

Blogging tips for you to succeed. There you go!

Alright, I am pretty sure I’ve covered the essentials here as blogging tips for beginners.

In addition I strongly suggest you to check out the How to start a blog guide.

Please share your thoughts in the comments.

Good luck with your blogging journey and I hope these business blogging tips will help you in the long run.

35 Essential blogging tips for beginner (and advanced) bloggers

Filed Under: Blogging Tips Tagged With: blogging goals, blogging tips for beginners, blogging tools, build an email list, content marketing, content strategy, create blog content, how to start a blog, how to start a successful blog, how to start your own blog, make money blogging, prolific blogger, SEO, work from home

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About Jane

Jane Sheeba is the founder of Jane Sheeba Media. She shares everything about business and blogging that she learned the hard way! Don't forget to claim your FREE access to her Blogging Success Foundation Course.

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