Blogging
New Blogger ?Let Me Tell You How To Improve Your Blog
Just like a lot of people, when I first started my blog I did not know a lot about blogging and what made a good blog. Over the following months I started putting a lot of work into my blog and experimented with a lot of different ways to make money and make my blog look more professional. however my lack of experience meant that I was using a free WordPress theme and a lot of my blog posts were full of useless information that people were not interested in reading.
Since then I have found out what creates a professional blog and how to make money with it and I took a lot of inspiration from other bloggers and popular websites such as Mashable. There seems to be a lot more people starting a blog these days and I am always coming across new blogs, and I can tell that they are new blogs just by looking at them. A lot of these blogs have good content on them but they are not getting a lot of traffic because of the same things that they are all doing wrong and for that reason have decided to write this post and share some advice on how to improve your blog.
Use a top-level domain
All big websites on the internet today use a top-level domain such as a dot-com domain. However I often come across a lot of new blogs that are using sub-domains of blogger or WordPress and I think that it is well worth paying a small fee for a top-level domain. Using a top-level domain makes your blog look more professional. This is more appealing to advertisers as they want to advertise on big, professional blog that is worth them paying to advertise on. Furthermore a top-level domain is more easy to remember and looks great when branding your blog. If people cannot remember the domain for your blog then they are going to find it hard to return to your blog in the future. If you are going to spend time putting a lot of work into your blog then it is well worth buying a top-level domain and these days you can get them for as little as £5 from places like 123 reg. If you are using Blogger or WordPress.com then you can just redirect the domain to your blog.
Use social media with your blog
I find it hard to believe when I come across bloggers that are not using social networks with their blog. I personally use Facebook and Twitter and they have been key to the success of my blog. Using social networks allows you to market your latest posts and instantly start driving visitors towards your blog. The first thing that I do when I publish a new blog post is to share it on Twitter and Facebook and I get a lot of visitors to the post within seconds. Furthermore social networks are an easy way to build a community around your blog and build a fan base of loyal readers.These are the people who come to your blog, read your posts and decide to connect with you on social networks to keep up to date with your latest posts. I find it a must to have a Facebook and Twitter widget in my sidebar so that my blog readers can easily connect with me. As well as this it is also important to use social sharing buttons after your blog posts so that readers can share your content on social networks for you.
Checkout my blog post on How To Get Over 5000 Twitter Followers On Your New Blog
Write on popular subjects
Blogging is great as it allows you to write on whatever you want but I see a lot of people who want to make money and have a high traffic blog but are not writing about stuff that other people are interested. A key aspect of creating a profitable blog is to entertain and help people and just because you like your content,it does not mean that other people will. If your readers are being helped or entertained then they will want to come back and read more of your posts.
If you want advertisers to advertise on your blog then take a look at your blog and have a think on whether it will appeal to them and have a think on what kind of products could be advertised on your blog. A good way to improve your blog is to expand into similar niches that your readers will be interested in. For example if you are blogging about graphic design and digital art then it is most likely then that your readers are also going to be interested in photography. By expanding into photography then you could appeal to new blog readers and also appeal to advertisers of photography products.
Tell your readers a bit about yourself
There is no point in you spending your time writing a load of great content if you are going to remain anonymous. Furthermore this can also put readers off reading your blog if they do not know who’s blog they are reading so it is crucial to put information about yourself, even if it is just a few lines and a small picture. The idea behind this is to establish yourself as an expert in your niche, someone who your readers can trust and want to connect with. What I do is use a widget in my sidebar with a picture of myself and a few lines about me so my readers know who’s blog they are reading.
Showcase your other content
When a reader comes to your blog you want them to stay around and read some of your other posts on your blog. Therefore you want to try and persuade readers to do this and also make it easy for readers to click from post to post. on this blog I have a widget in the sidebar which displays some of my popular posts that could interest the person reading my content. As well as this i also use a WordPress plugin called upPrev where a box flies out of the bottom right corner of my blog when you scroll down to the comments section after you have read a post.
Do not try to make money too early
A lot of people set up a blog with the main aim of making money from it and this is not going to happen unless you spend a lot of time writing high quality posts that people are going to want to read. There is no point in covering your blog in advertisements if you are only getting 100 visits a week because you are not going to make any money and you will ruin the user experience. This should be one of the most important things to think of when choosing your blog design as it should look professional and should be easy for people to read your content.
Avoid using traffic widgets
A lot of new bloggers want to monitor their traffic and decide to use a widget on their blog that shows their traffic to them and all the visitors to their blog. This is one thing I would definitely make sure that you avoid. If you look on any big blog then you will not see these widgets being used, even when they have a load of traffic. Your blog traffic is a personal thing that you should keep it to yourself, especially if it is low because you do not want to let other people know this and sharing your blog traffic with the world will make your blog look unprofessional and there are far better ways to use the space on your blog.
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