7 Practical Tips on How to Be a Successful Blogger in 2020

7 Practical Tips on How to Be a Successful Blogger in 2020

7 Practical Tips on How to Be a Successful Blogger in 2020

Written by Zac Johnson

Ever wished you could earn at home?

You can with a successful blog. However, there are so many blogs flooding the Internet today. It’s estimated there are well over 600 million blogs live and active right now.

Unfortunately, so many of them go unnoticed. Avoid this by learning how to be a successful blogger, one that grabs people’s attention. Become the authority that people visit regularly.

Not sure where to start? It’s easy!

Check out these 7 tips showcasing how to start a successful blog:

1. Pick a Platform

Before you ever write your first blog post, you’ll need to first pick a platform. Keep in mind that your choice will forever affect how you manage your blog site.

WordPress, for example, has a high learning curve but it offers the most flexibility thanks to all its plugins and themes. Wix, on the other hand, offers fewer plugins or customization features but it has a unique AI-centered website builder.

List down the important features or plugins you’ll need, especially those for SEO purposes, chatbots, and design. Weigh which platform gives you more bang for your buck and which one you’re comfortable working in.

2. Know Your Niche

One of the reasons many blogs go unnoticed is the fact they don’t focus on a specific niche. Avoid this problem early on by identifying your niche and your target audience. Refine this even further later on by studying your visitor metrics — check the age, location, and other important demographics that make up your readers.

Don’t simply write about anything in your niche either. Yes, your blog might be about video game news but this doesn’t mean you should post every bit of gaming news out there. Go to Reddit or Twitter and check which topics people want to discuss and read about.

3. Diversify Content

Yes, your blog will focus primarily on written posts but it shouldn’t stop there.

Break up your paragraphs with images. This prevents monotony and raises the entertainment value of your post. Images can also help educate people more, especially those who rely on visuals to understand the content.

If you can, use videos too.

Videos will account for over 82% of all Internet traffic by 2021, which makes sense since videos are quicker and easier to consume compared to written blog posts. Some companies like Wired feature both a video review and a more in-depth written review of tech gadgets.

Why not step into experimental technology too? Diversify your content by adding VR or AR content? Use polls and fillable forms to encourage interaction from your visitors and readers.

At the end of the day, your blog should have more than walls of text.

4. Invest in SEO

You could have the prettiest site and the most entertaining content in the world but it won’t matter if people can’t find you. Your site will gather dust if it can’t increase traffic and this requires boosting expertise, authority, and trustworthiness.

Achieve this through proper SEO (Search Engine Optimization).

Trusted and reliable web platforms recommend using tools like Yoast SEO to audit your blog posts, meta descriptions, alt tags, and titles. Use Google Keyword Planner to identify which keywords to prioritize and create content around. Approach other blog sites for guest posting opportunities and backlinking options.

If you’re on social media, encourage people to share your content. Use proper lead generation tactics and forms on your site to boost your email marketing strategy.

5. Educate and Entertain

Always prioritize two goals: educate your readers and keep them entertained. Reading your blog shouldn’t feel like reading a wall of text from a school textbook. However, as easy and fluid as it is, your post should still pack a punch in terms of content and useful information.

One of the best examples is affiliate marketing. It’s a system where you can earn by educating people about products.

This is all about reviewing products and giving the average reader a good idea of whether or not they should buy. If they click the affiliate link on your review, you’ll earn a commission.

You can check here to learn affiliate marketing basics and tactics.

6. Encourage Interaction

Don’t let your blog be a one-sided platform. Encourage interaction because this can help in terms of SEO, brand awareness, and reader loyalty.

Not sure which one of the five topics you have is interesting? Put up a poll and ask your readers! Now you know for sure which topic is going to get more readers.

Did you post an epic 2,000-word review of the latest hit movie? Ask people to share it with their movie-buff friends and always encourage them to leave comments — keywords in the comment section helps!

7. Market Your Blog

If SEO is the backbone, proper marketing is the rocket that’s going to propel your blog forward.

Get busy sharing your blog posts on social media, forums, and on Reddit. Leave links to your blog site on your social media profiles. If you’re on platforms like Facebook, boost your posts so that people outside your usual followers will discover your content.

Again, encourage people to share your content. Get in touch with other bloggers and ask if you can guest post on their site or if they can mention or link back to your blog the next time they post something.

If you have the budget, invest in a PPC campaign. Paid ads can go a long way to spread awareness and build traffic.

However, keep in mind that getting traffic is only the beginning. Keeping people interested in your blog is the more important factor to work on.

Now You Know How to Be a Successful Blogger!

Learning how to be a successful blogger isn’t easy but these 7 tips can give you a good head start. Don’t hesitate to experiment. It’s okay to stumble around a bit since most platforms like WordPress and Wix offer free options to start with.

Of course, there are more advanced tips to follow if you want to get the most out of your blogging career. If you want to learn more, feel free to read all our other guides right here, today!

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A Practical Guide For Growing Blog Traffic Using SEMrush

A Practical Guide For Growing Blog Traffic Using SEMrush

A Practical Guide For Growing Blog Traffic Using SEMrush

grow blog traffic using SEMrush

SEMrush is one of my favorite tools, and I have mentioned it many times at ShoutMeLoud.

It was around 2012 when I started using this simple search engine marketing tool, and in the past 8 years, it has become one of the go-to tools for bloggers and SEO companies.

If you are an existing user of SEMrush, awesome! You must know how great it is.

14 days is a good enough time for you to try out all the below-mentioned features as you improve your blog’s search engine presence (which will significantly increase revenue).

Recently, SEMrush has added some amazing new features. Here are my favorites…

New Features Of SEMrush To Grow Your Online Business:

1. Site SEO Audit

SEMrush now offers a complete site SEO audit with every plan (including their most basic “Pro” plan) which lets you find all of the SEO issues on your blog.

You can set up your site audit as a “campaign” and let it run at specified intervals (every week, every month, etc.).

SEMRUSH project

 

 

Here is a report from a WPSutra.com (formerly WpFreesetup.com) site audit:

SEMrush site audit 

  • Bonus Tip: If you are setting up Site Audit for the first time, you have an option to select different crawlers. By default, the SEMrush desktop bot is selected for crawling, and you can change it to the Google desktop or mobile bot. I prefer the Google bot and suggest the same for you as it’s better to see the SEO report from Google’s perspective.

Crawler settings SEMRUSh

2. Social Media Analytics

This feature is in beta, but it is available for all current SEMrush customers.

Social analytics are a very important aspect of SEO and are often overlooked by bloggers.

This feature of SEMrush lets you audit your Facebook, Twitter, and G+ account.

Social media analytics SEMRUSh

You can also check your competitor’s social media account to measure how well you are doing against them.

social media email report

  • (At this time, SEMrush’s “Social Media” tool only supports the above-mentioned reporting.)

Your goal is to always get the green mark in your weekly report.

Here is the report from ShoutMeLoud’s social media channels:

Social media report

What I like here is the comprehensive detail on everything, including number of updates and engagement rate.

If you have a close competitor, you can get vital data like how often they are updating their social media account, and you can plan your strategy around their marketing campaign.

Since this tool is still in beta, I have a couple of suggestions:

  • YouTube integration: Having YouTube here would be really helpful. These days, all bloggers are quite active with video blogging, and YouTube is always the platform of choice. I have mentioned earlier about VidIQ for YouTube users, and having that kind of data (data shown by VidIQ or TubeBuddy) would make SEMrush’s social media feature an idle choice among video bloggers.
  • Improve engagement: Optimizing social media accounts based directly on a competitor’s report would also be very useful (especially for newbies).

3. SEO Ideas (You will love this)

This is a holy-grail for bloggers who understand the importance of keyword optimization.

The SEO Ideas tool simplifies the tasks associated with web page optimization.

By auditing your landing pages that appear in Google SERPs and comparing them to your competitors’ pages for the same keywords, SEMrush will give you recommendations for your optimization strategy and keyword targeting that could improve your search engine ranking.

Check SEO optimization of a page

You need to manually add all the pages of your website and add in keywords for which you want to get ideas. The report will be generated instantly.

Here’s what that looks like:

SEO optimization ideas

The coolest part is that it automatically pulls up landing pages with keywords based on your position checker settings. (I talk about the keyword position checker in the next section.)

This tool analyzes the top 10 pages ranking for the same keyword (in Google) and suggests you changes on how to improve your rankings.

For backlink building, you also get suggestions for domains where you should try acquiring a backlink for higher ranking.

Here is an example of an SEO Ideas report page:

Improve webpage ranking

  • You should not miss their SEO Ideas statistics page, which is a dashboard in itself.

Here you can find the pages which need optimization (provided you have added them as mentioned above).

SEO suggestion dashboard

This is one feature that is under-utilized by many SEMrush users, and it really is something that you should not miss.

4. Keyword Position Tracking

Tracking your keyword position is probably the most important aspect of your website’s SEO.

The keyword tracking feature is the reason I started using SEMrush regularly.

Recently, they have just made a bunch of changes, and their tracking now includes:

  • Support for local SEO
  • Tracking keywords based on device

Keyword ranking tracker

What I like most about this feature is the ability to add keywords directly from Google Analytics. This really helps speed up the process.

In the below image, you can see some keywords which have been picked from my Google Analytics account.

The “Sandbox” is where suggested keywords are shown, and you can add or remove keywords as you wish.

Track Keyword ranking in Google

Don’t forget to check the “Send me weekly updates” section. You will receive a weekly email where you can track which keywords’ rankings have improved and which keywords have lost their ranking.

SEMrush Can Do A Lot more

I have been a long time user of SEMrush and it’s only because they keep raising the bar and adding new features which are amazing.

Not only did SEMrush help me grow my main blogs, it also helped me keep the SEO of my micro-niche site up-to-date. Usually, these micro-niche sites are ‘set it and forget it’, so manually keeping track of their SEO progress is a real pain. But SEMrush has stepped in and made this process a breeze.

If you are using SEMrush already, log in to your dashboard and start playing with these awesome features. If you don’t yet have an account, you can use the link below to get a 14-day (completely free) trial with access to all of these cool features included.

So now it’s your turn to let me know: How’s SEMrush working out for you? What’s your favorite feature? Do share your review and experiences with me in the comments below.

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