Every year, learning institutions are sending graduates to the job market. As much as this is a good thing, there are no sufficient opportunities to accommodate everyone. That has left many students desperate and in urgent need of alternative source of income. In some cases, they tend to go for trades they never learnt at school. One of these alternative occupations is, without doubt, blogging.
Considering the number of frustrated bloggers, especially the owners of blogs receiving low monthly traffic, some tips are in order. This article, therefore, is going to describe five secrets that can make a blog look awesome and enable it to compete with others for traffic. However, the ability to know when someone’s business/blog needs help always determines the level of success.
The following are the 5 effective practices that can turn around your blog:
Captivating Design and SEO-friendly Template: Always use a well-designed site with all the necessary SEO features incorporated. More often than not, it is faster and cheaper to purchase a design template than to build one yourself. In addition, not all student bloggers have a background in HTML or programming. Therefore, buy a responsive template (i.e. a template that can display your blog on different devices such as tablets and smartphones). A template with HTML 5, clean code, CSS social media integration and popular widgets is an added advantage.
Quality/Unique Content: An aesthetic and SEO friendly template, although important, are never enough. For you to get loyal readers and subscribers, you must generate unique and quality articles. It is advisable, at times, to contract an expert freelance writer to write for your blog. To guarantee originality in every blog post, always write on subjects you understand well, or that you have researched on extensively.
Quality Backlinking: The most linked site with the highest number of unique daily visitors gets the top position. Consequently, advertisers will look for such sites to place ads and ensure maximum exposure. Since Alexa and Google rankings are both based on the number of quality and relevant links to your blog, you ought to dedicate time (daily) to create links. However, you need to build these backlinks in the most natural way possible to avoid being categorised as spam by major search engines.
Reliable Hosting/Domain Registration: Host your blog with a reliable webhosting services provider and choose a domain name that points to your main niche/keyword.
Daily Posting/Updating: Ensure that you have fresh content for the search engines on a daily basis. The best practice is posting/updating at least two articles per day. Another factor is your audience, can your audience consume two articles per day? If you are providing shorter blog posts, then that is entirely possible; if you are publishing more detailed guides, on the other hand, then you may need to tone this down somewhat.
Using the above ‘secrets’ is effective if made a routine and not a one-time effort. In fact, with dedication and eagerness to learn new blogging tips, you are guaranteed a reasonable income from your blog.