Blogging Tips for Beginners 2021
Thursday, March 18, 2021
Blogging Tips for Beginners 2021
Now, while there's nothing wrong with bloggingabout your passions, creating a successful blog goes beyond just you. You should be a half-decent writer, understand the technical elements of blogging as well as social strategies that can help youtake your blog from nothing to something. So rather than giving you a popcorn bowl fullof random blogging tips, let's break these down into three buckets to help you get more traction. The first bucket is all about becoming a better writer. And the first tip that falls in this bucketis to focus on a specific part of your niche. For example, even if you were able to publish twoposts per day for an entire year on subtopics like grilling food, smoothies, vegetarian diets, slow cooker recipes, nutrition, and more, it'd be tough to compete with larger sites or thosethat are just focusing on one of those topics. So in my opinion, it's better to focus on beinga master of one than a jack of all trades. So focus on becoming the go-to placepeople go to find smoothie recipes. Become the go-to place where peoplego for grilling techniques.
The second tip is to create content that'sworth referencing. Referencing requires attribution. And attribution in the world of blogging equals links. Links from other websites are important becausesearch engines like Google use them to help decide which pages should rank high in the search engines. Now, how do you create content that'sworth referencing? I've got three nuggets of wisdom for you. The first way is to create content that'sunique and interesting to your industry. For example, we ran an experiment where wespent over $50,000 on podcast advertisements. And to the best of our knowledge, no onehad written this kind of post. And this resulted in around 140 unique websiteslinking to this page in a short period of time. Another way to get people to reference to yourposts is to include statistics. And this is one of the reasons why we continuallypublish data studies. They're literally link magnets. Now, we have access to a ton of data becausewe integrated into our suite of SEO tools. But you don't need anything fancy like thisto use this tip. For example, a good chunk of Backlinko's linkscome from stats. And they're often referencing his own personalresults like growing his organic traffic by 111%. And boosting conversions by 785%.
Nerdwallet has nearly 29,000 backlinks becauseof a mention of a stat. Naturally, as people blog, they want to providesupporting resources that backup their claims. Make sure yours is in the mix. Which means that it's a point of leveragefor those that are willing to put in the effort. Within our posts, we often add custom imageswhether they be graphs from our data studies, or illustrations that help better explain concepts. Not only do they create a better experiencefor readers, but they result in links. As you can see here, we've got around 820links pointing at JPG images on our site. And then another 1,600 links to PNG images. They just want the information. If they could download it to their brain,they would." And to do that, you need to ensure your postsare easy to read and use. Use short paragraphs instead of big walls of text. Short paragraphs help readers progress throughyour article in small and easy steps. Next, break up long sentences because they'rehard to follow. Break up these sentences by finding places whereyou used words like "and," "because," and "that." Next, use multimedia in your posts. So whether that be videos, images or GIFs,they can often help illustrate your points clearer than words. Finally, write in a conversational tone.
The easiest way to check this is to read yourcopy out loud. If it sounds like you're talking to a friend,you're on the right track. But if it sounds like you're competing ina national debate, try again. The next tip is to write click-worthy headlinesthat aren't clickbait. The one thing that separates your websitefrom a user is a click. Fail to get clicks and you fail to get traffic. Now, since most people will find your webpages through search or social, you want to craft a headline that accurately representsyour article without sounding boring. For example, an article titled: "15 Best Headphones"gets the point across. But it's boring. Something like "15 Best High-End HeadphonesFor Under $100" is more click-worthy because a) it tells the reader that the headphones areof high quality, and b) high-end headphones are usually a lot more than $100. The next tip is to write introductions usingthe APP formula. The headline's job is to get the reader toclick through to the page. Then, your intro needs to hook them in, sothat they'll read the rest of the post. So to do that, we use the APP formula, whichstands for "align, present, and proof." First, you need to align yourself withthe reader's problem. Then you present your post as the solutionto that problem. And then you finish off with some proof asto why they should trust you. Here's an example from our blog. In the first sentence, we align ourselveswith the reader by saying, "Looking to grow your YouTube channeland attract more views?
YouTube channel from 10,000 to over 200,000 monthly viewsin around a year. Keep your intros short, on point, and focuson addressing why the reader is on that page in the first place. The last writing tip I have for you isto create feedback loops. Your first draft should never be your last. At Ahrefs, we're known to go through a prettyrigorous editing process. The writer generally starts with an outline. After that's approved, they write their first "final draft." And no doubt, they should think it's pretty good. Then someone else from our team willreview their post, question any claims, suggest different formats, or whatever. Anything goes at this point. This usually ends up with a document that'scompletely highlighted in yellow with suggestions. Then the writer makes any necessary changesand will have those reviewed one last time before publishing. This feedback loop helps us to always putour best foot forward on every post we publish. Now, if you don't have a team to work with,it's worth connecting with other bloggers in your space who also want to become a better writer. But don't just reach out and say, "Hey, canyou edit my posts? I'll edit yours too." This kind of process can come through relationships,which I'll expand on later.
The first tip is super-important and that's towrite about topics people are searching for, more commonly referred to as keyword research. And if you want a piece of that traffic, thenyou need to use keywords that people are actually searching for. Fortunately, search engines like Google giveyou clues through features like Аutosuggest. Just type in a topic you want to write about,and you'll see a few other closely-related terms. There are other freemium tools out there likeAnswer the Public where you can find keywords phrased as questions. Now, the problem with these tools is thatyou can't see keyword metrics, meaning you don't actually know how much traffic you can get. To find this information, you'd have to usepremium tools like Ahrefs' Keywords Explorer, where you can basically generate lists ofkeyword ideas, see important metrics like Search Volume and Keyword Difficulty, and decidewhether they're worth pursuing for your site. We have a full tutorial on doing keyword research,so I'll link that up for you. Another strategy worth doing is to cover yourcompetitors' best topics. And by "best," I'm referring to the pages thatare sending them consistent traffic every month. To find your competitor's popular pages, just entertheir domain in a tool like Ahrefs' Site Explorer.
Then go to the Top Pages report, which shows youthe pages that get the most monthly search traffic. So if I were in the prepping niche, then I woulddefinitely consider going after these topics since they make up around 45% of the entirewebsite's organic traffic. Plus they all seem pretty relevant to me. Which brings us to our final technical tipand that's to do some basic on-page SEO. On-page SEO refers to the practice of optimizingweb pages to help them rank higher in search engines. So without overcomplicating things, you shouldinclude your primary keyword in your title and URL, and make sure you cover your main topic's subpoints. For example, if you're talking about how to make theperfect cup of coffee, you should probably talk about things like finding the right roast, watertemperature, grind, and brewing methods. All of these would be relevant, if not crucialto truly cover the topic in full. We have a full step-by-step tutorial on doing on-page SEO for blogs, so I recommend watching that and mastering this process. And now we're on to our final category,which is to get social. And I'm not talking about which social medianetworks you should use. So the first tip is to connect with otherbloggers you admire in your space. Smart bloggers reach out to forge relationshipswith one another. They offer feedback, help, and often cross-promoteeach other's content. And this is often why it seems like all of thebig players in your industry are friends. They started early and they grew together. Now, not everyone is going to want to be friends. But there's a good chance that people in yourindustry want to connect. They just don't know you exist. At least at this point. So to get started, think of 5-10 people you admirein your space. These might be people who run blogs andnewsletters that you're subscribed to or maybe people you follow on social. Write their names down on a piece of paper and note something that you actuallyadmire about their work. Now, go and email them with the purpose ofjust connecting. Don't ask them to share your content, reviewit, link to you, or ask for any kind of favor. Just send a simple and genuine email like… "Hey [name], Just wanted to say that I really admire[whatever you do]. Thanks for [whatever you admire].
Nothing was manufactured here, it justhappened organically. The next social tip is to build an email listfrom day one. Have you ever had one of those moments whereyou're trying to remember which site you were on that had that awesome recipe, or tutorial,or whatever it was? Well, if you had joined that email list, you'd know. Without any kind of email opt-in forms, you're preventing your readers from gettingfuture content or product updates. Building an email list also acts as a good way toperpetually get traffic to new posts you publish. And since subscribers are warmer visitorsthan cold traffic, some of them might share it on social, or even link to you if theyhave their own blog. So bottomline, start building a list from day one. Finally is to promote your content in onlinecommunities. Now, this is a bit of a touchy subject becauseyou don't want to spam Facebook groups or Reddit with things that people are goingto get angry about. Instead, spend your time integrating yourselfinto these communities. Become a recognizable name and face. And as you see a need, share content thatcan help solve other group members problems. If you nail it, you can get thousands of visitors. If you don't, it can get you banned fromthose communities. So share links sparingly, and spend most ofyour time just meeting like minded bloggers to build mutually beneficial relationships.