This is the situation: you’ve been blogging for a year or so and have earned your blog a fair amount of traffic. Other websites are linking to yours and your post count has just surpassed 100. Your email list is growing. Your confidence is growing. You’re beginning to think you’ve actually found a sustainable way of life. There’s only one problem; your blog still looks like it belongs to a beginner. It needs polishing. You know it needs work, but you’re not sure where to begin.
If your sentiment matches what I just shared above, you’re in the right place. As bloggers, we need to periodically step back to reevaluate what we’ve been working on and how we can improve upon it. In this case, we’d like to improve upon our blogs as a whole; the look, the feel, the quality, and the attractiveness to others. And that’s why I’m writing this post today; to give you a blueprint for how to bring your blog from the level of beginner to the level of advanced.
Advanced Blogging Tips
Please browse the headings below for helpful suggestions that may aid in carrying your blog from the beginner to the somewhat mature stages. Remember though, even though some of these tips are for advanced bloggers, there’s nothing here that isn’t doable during any point of your blogging.
Refine Your Niche
One of the most critical aspects of any blog is to initially settle upon and then refine its niche. Niches can be thought of as the blog’s focus. What is it you’d like to write about? Perhaps you’ve defined your focus early on, but now may be the time to revisit and refine that focus. Is there part of your initial niche that interests you the most? Is there an aspect of it that’s the most profitable? If you can winnow it down, now’s the time to do so.
Set a Writing Schedule
Blogging isn’t for the faint of heart. It takes a lot of hard work to become a successful blogger and part of that hard work is setting a regular writing and posting schedule. Why is a consistent schedule so important? Because once you let readers know that there will be a new post every, say, Monday, they look forward to it and come to expect it. The first and most insidious type of failure any blogger experiences is to stray from their consistency. Another reason scheduling your posts is important is because regularity is part of Google’s and other large search engines’ ranking algorithms. They reward scheduled content with higher rankings. So now that you’ve written a good amount of posts, it’s time to tighten things up to the advanced level.
Research Your Competition
Early on, your competition didn’t matter. Actually, you most likely didn’t have any competition. You didn’t have any posts either, so there was nothing to compete with. But now that you’ve defined your niche and have written a number of posts, it can be helpful to see what others in your blogging niche are doing. What are they writing about? How have they presented their blogs? What’s their posting frequency? How many visitors do they have? Do they offer a newsletter? Have a social media presence? Everything matters when it comes to making it big as a blogger. How can you research your competition? Personally, I suggest you write a big, long post that contains links to all of them. Something like, “The Top 50 Blogs About Photography” or whatever it is you write about. Click here to see an example of this type of post. It’s mine from this very blog. Trust me, you can learn a lot when you peek under the covers of your peers.
Create Your Social Media Channels
There’s a growing consensus out there that says social media is full of ads and that it doesn’t help websites nearly as much as it used to. This is true, but that shouldn’t stop you from signing up for accounts anyway. As I browse social media, I see posts all the time by those I follow. So while I might not see all of everyone’s posts, I do see the ones I’m interested in the most. Social media is critical for websites and bloggers who wish to be found. For instance, just the other day I was looking for J.Crew’s Facebook page so I could follow them. The idea just popped out of the blue. If this company didn’t have a Facebook page, I would have searched for another brand. Also, as you post and tag those posts, many people can see them in a variety of ways. Simply put, in order to become an advanced blogger, you’ll need to interact with and post to social media channels.
Titles & Headings Are Very Important
I’ve discussed titles and headings in the past and I can’t reiterate enough how important they are for every single post you write. Google loves keyword rich titles and relies upon informative headings – no matter if they’re H1, H2, H3, or H4 – and beyond. Titles are great for telling readers what your post is about and headings give your page structure. If you search Google for blog posts like yours, you’ll see both of these page elements at work in the search results. When it comes to titles, be sure to follow the tried-and-true format. It goes like this:
75 of the Best Photography Blogs to Learn From – Written by the Pros
Let’s take a look at the above title for a moment and break it down to see its elements.
I used a number at the beginning to let the reader know what to expect. 75 is a lot, so you know the post is going to be awesome. Then I explained what is inside the post – in this case, a list of photography blogs. Then I expressed the advantage the reader will gain by clicking through to the post – to learn something. Finally, I reinforced the message by telling the reader who owns the blogs I linked to in the post – the pros. All said and done, I couldn’t imagine why anyone wouldn’t click through to find out more. Now that’s a great title!
If you’ve been writing lazy, uninformative titles and headings in your posts, it’s high time to put some energy and intelligence into them.
Cultivate an Email List (Newsletter)
Just the idea of creating a newsletter can be daunting. When I think of completing a task like this, I immediately conjure up thoughts of adding signup forms to my blog and then somehow integrating those forms with Mailchimp or another newsletter purveyor. The entire process can get confusing – that is, if a person even knows where to begin. The thing is, the process doesn’t need to be confusing at all.
I’ll be writing a post soon about taking advantage of Substack as a newsletter provider. I currently use it because it can quickly become a blog unto itself and, as opposed to Mailchimp, GetResponse, MailerLite, ConvertKit, HubSpot, AWeber, Omnisend, Brevo, ConvertKit, Mailjet, and Moosend, Substack has no limits on how many subscribers you can attract and mail for free. The entire system is free to use and after your newsletter becomes popular enough, you can actually charge for access to it. So yes, now that you’re gaining some traction with your blog, you’ll definitely need to initiate a newsletter. Which solution to use is up to you, but I heartily suggest Substack. To view mine for this blog and to sign up for it, please click here.
The question still remains – why offer a newsletter at all? Think of it this way; when a visitor clicks through to your blog from a search engine, that visit may be a one-off occurrence. He or she may never visit your website again. If you were somehow able to persuade that visitor to sign up for your newsletter, he or she may stick with you for life. They’d receive an email message every single time you sent one out. That’s a pretty huge benefit.
Choose Your CMS Wisely
There are so many excellent alternatives for content management systems today that I find it quite challenging to choose one over another. It really depends on what the blogger’s goals are. I do know that if you began blogging using WordPress.com’s free option and have grown your audience over time, it may become necessary to either upgrade to a paid plan or download WordPress.org and install it onto your own hosting server. Most mature big players in the blogging world run their own WordPress software on their own hosting accounts. That’s not to say that huge websites don’t run on the hosted option – it’s really up to what the blogger needs. WordPress is definitely the most popular though, so if you’d like to use what TechCrunch, Meta Newsroom, PlayStation, Time Magazine, CNN, and Disney use, go with WordPress.
There’s a wild debate currently raging that has to do with which is better, WordPress or the hosted Substack or Medium-type options. I actually wrote a post that discusses this topic, so if you’d like to read it, please feel free. Again, every option is incredible and you should choose one or the other, depending on your needs. Most can import posts from other CMSs, so don’t concern yourself too much with that. As I mentioned above, huge websites are running WordPress, but big profitable blogs are also taking advantage of Substack and Medium. My advice is, if you’re running some lower level free plan of some CMS and you’re blog is growing, switch over to something more substantial sooner rather than later. The process will be easier when your site is still relatively small.
Link Internally – a Lot
After you’ve written a few dozen posts, older posts tend to get hidden the farthest away from the homepage. This means they won’t be crawled often and their rankings will fall more and more until they don’t rank anymore at all. It has to do with how PageRank flows through a website, which is a conversation for another time. Internal linking can help keep older posts crawled, which will help their rankings. When writing a post, think about older posts that relate to the one you’re writing and then link to it. This is an acceptable tactic if you’ve got an excellent memory. Since most of us don’t, however, feel free to take advantage of one of the many WordPress plugins that can automate the process. Examples of these internal linking plugins include Internal Link Juicer, Link Whisper, Interlinks Manager, YARPP, Rank Math, Yoast SEO, WP Tasty Roundups, MonsterInsights, or All in One SEO. Do your research and choose a plugin that suits you. I’ve used Internal Link Juicer in the past and it was more than enough for my needs.
Basically, if you’re a beginner blogger who hasn’t yet written many posts, don’t worry about internal linking too much. As you grow and as your post numbers climb, internal linking becomes a much more pressing issue.
Write Captivating Intros
Beginning bloggers oftentimes concern themselves with simply getting posts written on their blogs as a means of accomplishment. Think of an idea, type it out, and let it loose into the blogoverse. The goal is to just get it done. If you find very popular blogs today and click all the way through to their very first posts, you’ll find some absolutely horrid material. Food blogs are especially fun to browse. For example, Pinch of Yum is one of the most popular and successful food blogs on the planet today. Its current photography and writing is on point. It hasn’t always been that way though. If you browse back to the blog’s very first post, you’ll find no captivating intro paragraph, no snippet, and lackluster photography. Lindsay, the owner of the blog, has even made light of her early posts in the past. We all have and we’ve all written terrible posts at the beginning. Take a quick peek at ProBlogger’s first post. It’s another blog about blogging and its early material…well, let’s just say it’s not nearly as good as its current material.
My point is, as a beginner, your writing won’t be all that great. That’s fine, but as you transition into becoming a mature blogger, you’ll need to take your content up a notch. You’ll need to focus much more on your writing as a whole and will need to especially focus on your hook, meaning, your intro paragraph for each post.
Intros, or, introductions, let your readers know what to expect of the rest of the post. It’s also responsible for enticing your readers to click through, or, if on the same page as the post, continue scrolling to read the entire thing. Without this, your website’s bounce rate will be higher than it would be otherwise and that can have a negative effect on search engine rankings.
Snoop on Your Competitors
I’m sure you launched your blog with your own writing ideas in mind. I’m also sure you’ve run out of ideas about which to write. Don’t worry, this is a common conundrum. While thinking of blog article ideas, let your competitors do the work for you. You may either visit competitor blogs directly to see what they’re writing about, or, if you subscribe to any of the many SEO services, such as Moz, Ahrefs, Semrush, Backlinko, or any other, simply research your competitors and sort their pages by popularity. Once you have some hard data, you’ll have your next blog post writing idea. Now that’s what the pros do!
Begin Promoting Your Blog
Beginner bloggers focus primarily on content, while advanced bloggers not only focus on their content, they also focus on their SEO efforts, link building, search engine optimization for their small business, and website promotion in general as well. I’ve written many posts on this topic; for instance, I’ve written about what makes a popular blog as well as how to market your blog for little to no cost. Yes, in the beginning, you’ll have your hands full with writing, but as your blog ages and as your content library grows, you’ll need to focus on website promotion. Unfortunately, stellar content isn’t enough. Promotion matters just as much and sometimes even more.
How should you promote your blog? Start off by following my recommendations for SEO and then consider posting to popular forums to link back to your wonderful content. Only do this if you have something that’s actually relevant and helpful to share. Please, please, please avoid spamming forums with junk. The world will hate you for that. But if you’ve got some good stuff, let the world know about it.
Start Guest Posting on Other Blogs
Guest posting can have a huge impact on a blogger’s career. One well received guest post on an extremely popular blog can launch the target blog’s traffic into the stratosphere. I remember reading a post about link building on Moz that was written by an otherwise unknown author. It was a guest post. After he shared his post, his popularity soared. So it really is possible for this promotion strategy to work wonders. The thing is, your post will need to be awesome. And you’ll also need to locate and convince popular websites to allow you to write for them. How can you do these things? I’ve got the answer for you here.
Conclusion
You’re a beginner blogger today, but you’ll be an advanced blogger tomorrow. That means you’ll need to begin laying the groundwork for that advancement. If you follow the suggestions that I laid out above, you’ll enjoy a strong start. To continue moving forward after you’ve completed the above, please feel free to browse through my other posts. Also, if you have any comments or questions about this post, please share and ask down below. Thanks for reading!
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