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The holidays are coming early, because I have thought of 5 blogging tips for beginners. Man what can be sweeter than blogging tips in your stockings?
So, why the sudden interest in blogging tips for beginners you might ask?
I have been setting up some new blogs lately, Your Mortgage Calc and Periodic Tables, and I was thinking about all the ways that I messed up when I started my blog, and decided that it was a good thing to reverse that in future sites. Revisiting what I had done right and wrong helped me to understand what I needed to do for my new sites. That was also the basis behind this post for blogging tips for beginners.
5 Blogging Tips For Beginners
- Do your keyword research first. One of the things that I did not do when I started AndyNathan.net was that I just assumed that it would be good to have a site with my name in it. That is fine, but the challenge with that theory is that you lose some keyword searches. While, I do not regret using my name for a blog, I understand that I might not always out against a social media or social networking .com site. These sites were designed to avoid that challenge.
- Start SEO immediately! When I started I thought that I would just use social networking to drive traffic. 40% of my traffic now comes from search. Up until January it was around 10-20% of traffic.
- Have a plan to monetize your site. I set up this blog with the intention of documenting my goals to 10 million followers on Twitter. It was on a lark that I just committed to over time. Five months after I started blogging I started to devise a plan.
- Along with having a plan to monetize your site, you also need to have a plan to market your site. SEO is definitely a big part of this strategy, but also do not forget email marketing, PPC, social networking, and other marketing techniques.
- Be OK with changing the plan. I moved slowly on this site. Part of it was fear that this is somewhat working. There needed to be more experimentation when I started to drive more traffic to this site. That being said, I have definitely made up for lost ground. These new sites are based off my experiments, plus allow me more freedom to test out other ideas. Better to mess up early, so you can either ditch a project or reverse course if necessary.
With any attempt at blogging there will be a mixture of fear and excitement as you start. By removing the fear and adding some excitement, hopefully this post has helped you use these blogging tips for beginners effectively to your blog.
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Great list Andy, and well timed for me. After a little online work this morning I’ll be digging into plans for my next site so I appreciate the reminders.
Marquita,
Sorry about the late approval on this one. I missed it for some reason! Glad you enjoyed this post!
Andy
Hey Andy,
Thanks for sharing these 5 great tips for beginners…they are solid tips and will help a lot of beginners to get started the right way.
I like what you are doing on your new blogs with the static Homepage and separate tab for the blog, which will be great for SEO and optimizing your keywords.
I see you have taken steps to monetize the blog, too.
Also, like anything else, including personal development…you have to periodically take a step back and evaluate where you are and what may need to be changed and you have certainly done that.
Keep on Schmoozing,
Marc
Marc,
Your welcome!
I am glad that you appreciate what I am doing with the new sites. It was just made sense to monetize from the beginning, so I can set the expectation that the site should be profitable.
Andy
Great tips, Andy. You know, there’s nothing wrong with using your own name in your site URL. As you build up a name for yourself through the other sites and this one by using SEO and keywords, your name will become better known… and then people will start looking for YOU, and not just finding you via the keywords.
Willena Flewelling
Willena,
For branding purposes it is useful for including your name, for SEO is not always the best thing. A mix of sites might be the answer.
I agree. One suggestion might be to have a site (or several) dedicated to articles/blog posts focused on one keyword phrase, set up for the sole purpose of getting backlinks to your primary blog.
Willena
Willena,
Agreed! That is why sometimes having a multiple blog approach is better, because you can leverage different words. At the same time, focusing on one blog really helps as well!
Andy
Your article on the topic 5 blogging tips for beginners. Your post have the information that is helpful and informative.Your post great tips and you managed to keep it simple and understandable.it has great post. I would like you to keep up the good work.thump up and thank
The holidays really have come early – thanks for these tips, they are really helpful to a new blogger just starting out (ME!) and I’m very appreciative that you posted them. Would you still recommend using social media to promote, or just the seo techniques alone?
-Gina
Gina,
Use these techniques together. Do not just blog and do seo and forget social media. Using them together makes you more effective.
Andy
Great tips, Andy. I have one for them as well. Never forget to start with the basics. It’s best thing that we could have for the long run ahead. Most people skip them and end up having so much trouble alone the way, that’s why a lot of new bloggers just give up.
Dr. George,
Sounds like a sports tip, but definitely something to keep doing. The basics every day move you miles farther even when you do not see it.
Andy