I started blogging in 2015. And, to be exact, I published my very first article about Airbags in Cars on June 21st, 2015.
Nothing fancy, it was just a free subdomain from WordPress.com where I wrote about some random stuff — mostly engineering and technology.
Even 5–10 monthly views used to excite me. And, somehow, I kept doing the same for the next 2 years — writing poorly constructed short articles on random topics.
I was happy till I met a friend. He said that there’s no benefit of writing if I’m not getting anything out of it.
Harsh words!!! But… eye-opening at the same time. Before that, I was in my comfort bubble and really didn’t know that people can even make money writing.
My friend’s words got me searching for ways to make money online, SEO, marketing and stuff. I spent months reading and following what “experts”, said and started 3 blogs that FAILED.
Reason?
Because all the “experts” I followed mostly talked about SEO, content distribution and all. But, the main thing “content creation” was missing.
Like, you must have heard the old saying that “content is the king”, right? Believe me, it’s very real. As long as you do not assign most of your time and effort to create great content, you will struggle with getting traffic on your blog.
And, I learned that the hard way — 3 failed blogs.
Why is my blog not growing?
Blogging tips I wish I had discovered earlier:
1. 80/20 rule
Put 80% of your time and effort into creating contents and just 20% in marketing it. Because… if your content is great, it will find its way even with a little push.
And, if the rule is reversed, you will have to forcibly push your content.
2. Ignore monthly searches
Even if the SEO tools show that a particular keyword has only 10 monthly searches, do not ditch it. Sometimes, SEO tools seriously underestimate the search data.
For a keyword, I’m getting 10,000 monthly visitors but Ahrefs shows only 360 monthly searches.
Clearly, you can not completely trust any SEO tools. They just provide an estimated data.
3. Spreadsheet of ideas
Do not wait for your current article to be finished to start searching for new ideas. Keep a spreadsheet of all the topic ideas that you ever get from anywhere.
I keep all these in Notion like this:
4. Cover everything
No matter what niche/topic you choose, create great contents about all the questions, queries, or (and) doubts that people might have.
If you provide answers to peoples’ burning questions, you will get noticed.
Use tools like Answer the Public and interview real people to get those unattended questions.
I interviewed some people about blogging and got some very interesting questions like:
- why do people I don’t know will read my articles?
- how can I compete with the people who started before me?
- will I have to work every day?
And… there’s no way I would have gotten these questions by using some SEO tools.
5. Collect emails
Do not wait for your monthly traffic to be 10,000 to start collecting emails.
Have an email collection set up on your website from day #1. You can offer a valuable PDF in exchange for visitors’ emails or simply ask them to subscribe to your newsletters.
You can use tools like MailerLite which is free to 1000 email subscribers.
6. Use forums for ideas
On platforms like Reddit and Quora, people ask a lot of questions on almost everything — technology, health, personal development, and what not! You can get a lot of content ideas from there.
If I need some interesting topic ideas on blogging, I can go to the r/blogging subreddit and find some interesting topics like:
7. Master your skills
You learn writing by writing.
Indeed!
Spend more time and effort on your copywriting and content creation skills because in the long run that’s what matters.
8. 1000+ words
If possible, try to keep your articles above 1000 words. It’s good for SEO.
But… do not forcibly stretch your articles by using repetitive blocks and sentences.
Avoid jargon.
9. Do not focus on all social platforms
Choose a stack of a maximum of 1–2 social media platform to promote your contents and engage your readers.
You can focus on more but soon you’ll get bored and leave… because initially, you will be the only one doing everything — writing, editing, designing graphics, handling social media, etc.
10. Interlink articles
Interlinking (internal linking) your new articles to the old ones and vice versa is very important for SEO as well as for the user experience.
Whenever you publish a new article, search for the related keywords in old articles (and, vice versa) and link to them.
That’s it.
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