The 3 Steps to Setting Up a Popular and Successful Blog - DailyBlogTips

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The 3 Steps to Setting Up a Popular and Successful Blog Posted: 03 Sep 2012 05:47 PM PDT There are hundreds of different formulas or paths to achieve a successful blog, but most pathways will have some basic concepts that will always remain the same. I am so sure you must have read most of it on many blogs (the most often repeated one – Original and well written content) , which is quite a necessary factor , but not the only factor. To keep it easy I have broken it down to three simple steps. This post is made for basically word press based blogs but can be applied to other websites as well. Get Traffic and make your blog Popular In my 10+ years of blogging, I have realised that these three factors that make up the basic recipe of any successful blog is just 3 factors as given below Content ( Regularly Posted Content) SEO (Search Engine Optimization) Design (Look and structure of the blog) Good Content is necessary mainly to build up a regular audience that comes back to your blog repeatedly and also get your posts linked, leading to AUTO SEO for your blog. An yeah don't forget that Google also likes good content except once in a while when their evil pandas and penguins do stuff that they are not supposed to do. People also bookmark good content which make them comeback at some part of time to your blog. SEO is needed like every good product that needs advertising to get it noticed. Unless you seo optimize you blog, it's unlikely that you will be found on the vast internet where millions of blogs are vying every day for every person's attention. This is made easy by word press SEO plugins that make the job easy for you. Design is a concept that pretty much needs no explanation. If you seen any makeover show on TV , you can get what I am trying to say , you make something look good ( like a blog – not a ugly chick) and people will come back and it will also register on their mind. Design includes the colours of your blog, structure of your blog and also the overall look of your blog. If you notice most successful blogs have a light colour (or white colour) theme. So now that you got a good idea of why these 3 steps need to be implemented on your blog or website, I will show you how to do it the easy way and the hard way. Content Content can be the hardest part of these three steps to get your blog popular, just because it's the most time consuming of these 3 steps. To make this part easier its always recommended to have a blog topic or niche that you are passionate about and like to write about. I Have never SEO researched my topics to post before blogging and I still get decent traffic for my niche, because the content is good. Get windows live writer for blogging and save content that interests you in your niche on windows live writer and finish and post it when you get time. One way to keep the regular flow of your blog posts going is to at least write four articles for your blog and keep ready to post ( which takes care of at least 4 posts for a month) and then in between when you get time and find articles that interest you and you want to blog about just add them as bonus posts to your blog in-between your this 4 posts. YOU can vary these numbers of posts to suit yourself depending how frequently you want to update your blog. This was the hard way, some easy but not as effective Ways are given below for the people who are always short on time or are just part time bloggers like me. The easy way to get content for your blog Get content for you blog from other people, this can be done in two ways PAID and Free FREE content – The easy Way to get free content is to get people to do guest posts for your blog on you blog niche topic (to keep it relevant). This becomes easier the when your blog has got a higher Google rank as people will want to feed of your high Google ranking. Nowadays you will also get many paid offers from SEO companies ( with provided content and link ) to post on your blog for a fee, which is happening even more after the GOOGLE PANDA & PENGUIN update. These sort of offers are good because they content provided is free and you get paid as well. Hard way and Paid way to get content for your blog PAID for CONTENT, for blog – This method involves a bit of work, mainly trial and error until you get the right person, with the use of content writing services that can be offered for a fee to you on freelance sites. You can get an article written for as low as $5 an article, but also finding a person who can write it for $5 without grammatical errors and good content is a bit of a hit and miss until you find that correct person. I Myself do article writing , so I know the time it can take to write a well written article , so if someone can do that for $5 and come up with good well written content then it's cheap. Some of the websites where you can source article writers for blogs are Freelancer.com Odesk.com Fiverr.com There are plenty more websites (vworker.com , guru.com, elance.com) which provide these services but I myself have not done any business with these sites so far .People can charge you from $1 an article to $25 an article on these websites, but you can get either well written article or a bad grammar article for somewhere between $2 to $10 an article. If your blog is making a decent amount of income this strategy is well worth considering to free up your time to focus on SEO and other aspects of the blog that needs some tweaking and attention. When you compare all the three aspects mentioned, I believe content is one of the most important aspects of a blog, because good well written content will make people come back to your blog and also is the reason for you getting more natural links to your blog and therefore getting more traffic. Beginner Bloggers often overlook the importance of this factor and later on there is a lot of reverse work to be done to fix this. SEO SEO is an acronym for Search Engine Optimization. When a website or blog is search engine optimized it is using tools and methods to rank higher within search engines like Google, Bing, and Yahoo. The easy way to get SEO for your blog is to get a theme which is seo enabled or then has a specific SEO function added in. SEO in a theme will only help you a little bit now days, as the definition of SEO today is rapidly changing, no thanks to Google's regular updates on SEO. The other factor that is increasingly being taken in as measure of your seo value is you popularity on new popular social websites like Facebook, twitter and Goggle+. One good strategy for improving you SEO and Traffic rapidly is to focus your energies on one thing – get links from authority sites. A website that is highly ranked in search engines results in more traffic to your website A good way to be up-to-date with SEO for your blog is to read what's going on in the SEO area, by reading reputed SEO blogs like SEOMOZ.com/blog, SEOJOURNAL, DAILYBLOG TIPS and also Google and BING webmaster tools blogs. If you got a Google account, a Google webmaster tools account or a Bing Webmaster tools account will also help keep you in good stead and help you keep a watch on your site to check if everything is proper and functioning as it should. Design Design is not only a feel good, look good factor but also helps bring in more people back to your blog, even more if the content is good as well. Who doesn't like to be associated with a good looking person?, the same goes for a blog to a small extent. When a website looks professional and neat more clients and Viewers will be attracted to it. SEO needs a nice looking website design in order for them to both work more effectively. If a website does not appear clean and friendly customers and clients will be put off by it One of the other important factors for good design that is often overlooked is easy navigation and structure. Your blog visitors should not get frustrated trying to find things on your blogs. A well laid out top navigation bar with appropriate sub- links under appropriate headings, a search button for your blog and Social buttons placed in optimised positions will improve the likeability of your blog as well, due to a better user experience. Contrary to some beliefs, your blogs design could actually be responsible for your lack of traffic. Design for a blog is getting cheaper by the day thanks to heaps of new freelance sites as mentioned above. Due to these cheaper prices, Websites that provide themes have also started reducing their prices to make it more affordable an affordable word press theme. Good design isn't only about the aesthetics of the blog. It also affects how your website looks on all the different web browsers that people use to browse websites. The only safe way to make sure your website does well in all browsers is making your site compatible with all of them. Internet Explorer, Google Chrome, Mozilla Firefox, Opera – your website should be tested against each of them or at least at a minimum the most popular of browsers and how they look and render on them. "No matter how great your blog looks, if it's hard for your viewer to navigate your blog and find what they want, you've defeated your own purpose. Great design is a good marriage of form and function and usability." To conclude I can say there is no magic fix that your blog will become popular overnight, there are a just a few things you should get educated or get some focus on for a successful blog "I suggest learning about blogging, especially content marketing, then perhaps social media, how search engines work, and copywriting, for starters. This is a guest post by Jeff J. You can read more from him at SheldonShing.com. Original Post: The 3 Steps to Setting Up a Popular and Successful Blog

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“5 Lessons I Learned About Blogging in Queensland #QLDBLOG” plus 1 more

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5 Lessons I Learned About Blogging in Queensland #QLDBLOG Posted: 03 Sep 2012 01:04 PM PDT This guest post is by Rebecca Cooper of simpleasthatblog.com. It's hard for me to believe that just three short months ago I was in sunny Queensland enjoying the sites and attractions across the world from my homeland of Canada. Being chosen as one of the ten bloggers to go on this once in a lifetime trip was exciting to say the least! I was thrilled for the adventure and equally as thrilled to learn what I could about blogging while there. Though I've had a blog now for over five years, I'm relatively new to the idea of monetizing and was feeling ready to take my blog in a new direction but I needed some help to get there. Amidst helicopter rides over the Reef, ocean kayaking and zip lining through the rainforest, we had the chance to sit through two blogging workshops with Darren and the open discussion and interactions between all the bloggers was so helpful and really opened my eyes to a lot of possibilities in this world of blogging! Besides the obligatory Koala and vegemite souvenirs I brought home for the kids, here are a few blogging tidbits I brought home from Queensland with me. 5 Things I learned about blogging in Queensland Blogging buddies are the best: Discussing blogging with other bloggers is a lot different than chatting on the subject with my husband, who does not blog. So very different! Make products prominent: If you want to sell ebooks, or other products for that matter, make them easy to find.  I had links to my ebooks on my blog’s sidebar, below the fold, and I was only selling a handful. It was recommended I move them to the top of my sidebar. I was so surprised to see my ebook sales more than double just by doing this. It’s something so simple and obvious to some, I'm sure, but I told you, I'm new to this monetizing thing, remember? Write with intent: One thing that really stuck with me from Darren's blog workshops was to ask myself what is the one thing I want my readers to do after they read each post. I find myself asking this question before I hit publish, now. Whether it’s to have readers purchase a copy of my ebooks, have them subscribe to my RSS feed, or simply to feel inspired, with this intent in the back of my mind as I write, I've found my posts being more driven and accomplishing better what I want them to. I find myself writing with more intent. Editing published content is wise: Going back and adding to past content is okay. I learned a few things about what I should have done in past posts, so I fixed them. I went back through my past photography-related posts and provided links to my ebooks, for example. Believe: One of the biggest things I took away from my experiences in Queensland is to be confident in who you are as a blogger. Believe that you have something to offer, that your content is valuable. That belief in yourself really does shine through. While I still have a very long way to go in growing my blog and monetizing it the way I'd like to, the things I've learned and the small steps I've made so far have certainly made a difference. Sitting down with the other bloggers and doing an open critique of each other’s blogs was one thing I found especially helpful during the workshops and I came home with a list of goals and ideas I can't wait to implement in my blog! What new ideas do you have on your blogging to-do list? Let us in on them in the comments. Rebecca Cooper is a mom, blogger and photographer from Alberta, Canada. When she’s not busy taking care of her four kiddos she enjoys crafting, running, being outdoors, taking photos and blogging about her family’s adventures at simpleasthatblog.com. Originally at: Blog Tips at ProBlogger 5 Lessons I Learned About Blogging in Queensland #QLDBLOG

Why I Switched Blog Hosting Companies (and Who I’m With Now) Posted: 03 Sep 2012 07:02 AM PDT One of the most common questions I’m asked about how I run my blogs is, “What web host do you use and recommend?” Over the past ten years I’ve used around eight different hosting services, ranging from the very early days of relying upon free host Blogger, through to my more recent use of Amazon’s Web Services. The challenge has always been that my blogs have constantly changed in terms of what they require, given new designs, added features, and growing traffic. As a result, we’ve had our fair share of nightmares: numerous periods of blogs crashing due to load problems, and a couple of security issues that required a lot of time, energy, and money to resolve. In the last six months, I’ve made a switch in the hosting of all of my blogs, which has resulted in the most stable period for my blogs in the last decade. The switch was to move over to Synthesis—a managed hosting service created for WordPress users by the team at Copyblogger Media. A number of things attracted me to Synthesis: It’s designed for WordPress: All of the hosts I’ve used over the years were certainly WordPress-compatible, but when problems arose and I sought support it sometimes became apparent that WordPress was just one of many many platforms that they could work with. As a result, functionality and processes were sometimes were clunky, and to get set up well, I often had to bring in experts. The Synthesis team knows WordPress inside-out. Not only have they designed a service that works with it from the ground up, they’ve been very supportive in helping iron out some bugs I’d not been able to resolve previously. Genesis support: I had recently moved ProBlogger over to the Genesis framework, which is also created by CopyBlogger’s StudioPress team. While they’ll host non-Genesis sites, their familiarity with it gave me confidence. I’m moving dPS to Genesis in the short term too, so I’m excited about having everything running on compatible and well-synced systems. Security: I’ve had my fair share of security attacks over the years, so finding a secure host was key for me. Support: I’ve got people on my team who are able to offer support on some levels, but the Sythesis team have added to this incredibly—particularly when it came to migrating from my old host to their services. Being in Australia isn’t an issue, either—their support desk is open 24/7 and their response time is super-quick. Expense: This is the first server switch that I’ve done where I ended up paying less than I was with the previous service. While I’m sure you can get cheaper services, for the features you get, I find this service very reasonable in comparison to what I was paying. View their pricing plans here—plans start at $27 per month. All in all, my blogs are now faster, more secure, and more reliable, and they’re experiencing just a fraction of the problems that they were on other system. I sleep a lot easier these days with Genesis and Synthesis! Disclaimer: I am a proud affiliate for Synthesis and Genesis. They are two of the few services I use and have no hesitation in recommending. Originally at: Blog Tips at ProBlogger Why I Switched Blog Hosting Companies (and Who I’m With Now)

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