Ask The Blogger

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.

Unless you have been under a rock these past 5 or 6 years than you absolutely have heard about how critical a blog is to your website and your business.

You’ve heard that it will pull in targeted, interested traffic that converts. You’ve heard that it will help you build a brand and a reputation for yourself that is unparalleled and more importantly, unreplaceable. You’ve heard that it is the key to building a responsive email list full of eager buyers just waiting to hear from you every day…

… And I’m here to tell you that this is absolutely true. All of it. Every single last bit.

Why Having A Blog Is Critical

If you still aren’t convinced that having a blog is important – I can understand your skepticism. When I first started out with building websites and trying to get traffic to them, I thought blogs were just for trendy hipsters with some social or politic message to spread. I couldn’t be more wrong.

The fact is that a blog is the best tool you can have in your marketing arsenal. There is nothing that you can ever buy that will replace it. There is nothing you will ever find that will compliment your goals, no matter what they are, as well as a fully function and interactive blog will.

In fact, without a blog I’m not entirely sure what you or your business is doing online at all… I’m sure that sounds harsh but let me give you some reasons for understanding why a blog is so critical to what you do online.

Reasons Your Website Needs A Blog

SEO and Search Engine Traffic

Your are going to want to actually have people come to your site and see what you have to say or what you are offering to them. There are a few ways you can get traffic to your site but nothing really beats search engine traffic.

• It’s Free
• It’s Targeted
• It Responds To Your Offers
• It Spreads Your Brand & Message

You can imagine search engine traffic as the life giving nectar to your website. Without a presence in engines like Google and Bing, it will be much harder for people to find your website. If they can’t find you, they can’t buy from you.

But not only is important for people to find you, those people also need to be engaged in what you are doing or what you are offering. Traffic from search engines is the cream-of-the-crop when it comes to being highly engaged and responsive. They already want to know what you have, all you have to do is offer it to them in such a way that they respond to it. Normally speaking a blog is great for providing that kind of presentation that people respond it. [Read more…] about Do You Need A Blog Afterall?