Blogging can be an awesome way to increase the online presence of your business. It does a lot of things in terms of helping you to be more successful, such as: improving the SEO of your website, helping you reach out through social media, helping you engage in meaningful conversations with customers, peers, and prospects, increasing your brand presence, etc.
Here are some tips and shortcuts to help you make blogging a successful venture and to help you be more prolific with it as well:
Post Often
Online success happens with volume. You need a good mix of quantity AND quality but do your best to achieve both. Post often so that search engines will index more of your pages and send more traffic your way and so that you have a great opportunity to interact with your subscribers. Blogs with high subscriber numbers tend to post very regularly.
Blogging Shortcuts: Post in advance to save time. Consider setting up time each week to get a week’s worth of posts in advance. This can be easier than trying to remember to post every day.
Use Social Media
Don’t underestimate the power of a Twitter tweet or Facebook update. These will help you drive traffic and search engine value to your blog.
Blogging Shorcuts: Put an AddThis! or similar button on the blog so that your readers can post to social media for you. Add services, such as FriendFeed and others that feed multiple services in to one place for you as well so you can increase the power and the reach of your updates.
Guest Posts
Guest posts bring a new element to your blog. They bring in a new voice and they bring in a new audience because the guest poster may send their tribe in to read the post as well. Welcome guest posters (provided the posts are on topic and high quality).
Blogging Shortcuts: If you need to, consider going to article syndication sites such as Ezinearticles, GoArticles, Articlesbase, and others for help on occasion as well. You can find high-quality articles with permission to reprint. Other articles will also give you some great ideas for topics to write about.
Search Engine Optimisation
Take the time to look up the best keywords to use for your blog posts. Optimise your title, meta, and H2 tags. Use a relevant photo and keyword optimise the name of the photo.
All these factors will help you reach your organic traffic goals as well as to help your site overall if you’re doing a pay per click campaign as you’ll attain a higher Google quality score (which translates to lower click costs and better page placement for your sponsored adverts).
Blogging Shortcuts: There are many keyword research and SEO plugins that can help with blog post optimisation. Don’t forget to check out the search engine optimisation checklist for blogs here on SeanSEO as well!
Blogging is easy and effective in helping you with your internet marketing efforts. Do all you can to take full advantage of blogging and it will help you succeed online.
About Sean Rasmussen
Hey Sean,
Some great tips and shortcuts here, which I will be referring back to once I start getting full steam ahead, underway!
Having the collection of social media buttons to help refer on would definitely have to be a big boost.
Cheers,
Pete
Great tips, as soon as I get a website I will be able to put them into action!
These are all great tips, I feel that my first blog is not too far away! Getting very excited, and will make sure to put these tips into action. Especially loving market samurai and analysing keywords. It really does make a difference!
Sounds great Tegan, all the best with your first blog
Great ideas, also can be used as a checklist. You don’t want to leave out any of these points and miss any opportunities to get traffic to your blog.
Hi Sean, My first post on my new site went to page one of google (on a key word) in just one week! (Just using your SEO strategies). I was very happy, a few days later it dropped outside the top ten pages.
After reading this post I think I understand why. We need to keep updating our sites because the search engines keep updating their page listings.
Anyway I did the second post the day before yesterday and I am back up to page two of google for keyword phrase “new online opportunities”. I have a lot to learn about key words but this small success has encouraged me.
Maybie you could do a post for us ‘competition people’ that says something like ” how to fast track your understanding of key word phrases”.
Just an idea.
Great work on your ranking success David. I have many articles on keywords on this blog that will give you a better understanding, here are some for starters: http://seanseo.com/category/keywords/
Hi Sean,
I’m learning that blogging is very important for on-line success and the more I learn about blogging the better. Posting often with a good mix of quality and quantity is important to remenber.
I need to increase my blog posts also and post more regularly. SEO is important and important that I take the time to properly research the best keywords for each blog post. Market Samurai is a great tool for this purpose.
Wow!
So much information here, and like Melanie said, it is a great checklist as every fact is important to remember.
I was not a writer until I imagined, reinvented myself as one, practiced (like I am doing here) and then took massive action. Now I love writing and will need to get my fledgling blog site up and running properly. I like the one day a week for writing approach and keeping ahead of schedule.
I have gathered lots of ideas for writing just in the past couple of weeks being involved in this competition, so have a notebook and pen by my keyboard and have been taking notes.
I think having guest writers is a great idea, and likewise, I would like to post on other peoples blogs too – it is so exciting, all these endless possibilities.
Thankyou Sean
Blessings
Elly
An excellent list to keep things in check.
I think I have the keywords sorted. Mostly I’ll use images or videos where I can but I’ve slipped a bit on how often I post. Needs urgent action.
Having the social buttons has helped as friends can really help in spreading the word around the social world.
G’day Sean,
Thanks for this comprehensive lot of blogging shortcuts. Installed AddThis and its’ toolbar yesterday, but didn’t know about how to place an AddThis button to my blog. Zodiacs to the rescue.
I like finding pages of other forum members where they have the buttons so the bookmarking system is much faster than the BMT and there is no logging in. The streamlined look.
Cheers
Harry
Great blogging tips… good to see I am on track. Except the addthis button. Next one on the list to do…
It’s hard to know when you have enough on your site – digg buttons, retweet, “sexy” bookmarks. How much IS too much??
Depending on the plugin you use Samantha, you may very well only need one. Many of them utilise a great deal of the social networks
Hi Sean,
Thanks for the list. There’s a lot to this blogging caper and sometimes I end up neglecting areas I really shouldn’t. These tips will help me to maximise my blogging efforts.
I need to write a new plan and make sure that I have everything covered. Blogging is like a giant puzzle and you have to have all of the pieces in the right place to succeed.
I keep thinking about writing a plan for blogging. There are lots of great tips around and I want to incorporate them all, then remember them all for all the new blogging I do. Thanks Jazz I am going to write this plan.
Hi Sean,
Blogging is an area of internet marketing that I feel I will have problems with. I have difficulty finding enough to say, like Elly’s reinvention I require re-engineering and multiple practice.
If writing is not for you Angus, outsourcing may be an option.
If you are going to look at outsourcing, be sure to really scrutinize the writers.
While there are some really good ones at great prices, there are also some that are almost too cheap and it shows up in the quality of their work.
Outsourcing can be a great way to free up your time and concentrate on the things that you are good at.
Great to see blogging tips for success broken down into logical bite sized pieces. It really does come down to planning doesn’t it. Brainstorming topics, fleshing out the content, posting it and leveraging the post through social media. Once you get the planning routine started and follow the SEO rules, success is your welcome byproduct.
Sean:
What is more important, blogging often or blogging consistently? By consistent, I mean blogging on the same days of the week so your readers know when you will be posting.
Thanks!
- Rick
A bit of both in my opinion Rick. If you can publish once or twice a week on the same days, you will keep the search engines and your readers happy
Thanks Sean – think it’s a great idea to post them in advance when you’re in the “writing zone”
Hi Sean,
some very important tips here for our blogging techniques going into the future. l also found the tip on inviting a guest blogger intrigueing and food for thought. lt’s good to have the option of writing our own articles or borrowing them from elsewhere too or a mix of both to keep up the consistency of it all.
I have bookmarked this into favourites so I can keep coming back to refer to this. Really practical advice. Especially the SEO and posting in advance tips. Best to do something once and do it properly!
Being a person of few words I wondered about being able to write interesting blogs often.
Having read Elly’s comment about “imagining being a writer” I’m beginning to think it’s like a lot of things in life – if your not naturally good at something just keep practising to get better at it.
Great advice about spending one day a week writing blog posts which you can then publish daily during the week. Keyword research is what eats up a lot of my time and I find it may take me at least an hour to find the relevant keyword to write about. Is this normal?
It can take time to research a good phrase for an upcoming article Jackie. You will find you will get faster with it as you progress
A great list of tips to help with the blogging – including the shortcuts to make it even easier and more successful. I guess I will have to take the outsourcing help to get more regular posts out there, as I am struggling with getting enough writing time at the moment …
Hi Renee
There are lots of good writers out there.
You just have to be choosy and check their work
Thanks Sean, again very helpful blogging shortcuts & tips here to boost online success. I’ve just learnt how important the social media is too!!
Cheers
Rose
I was starting to feel a bit swamped with everything, so the idea of writing the blogs in advance for the week sounds like it should work well for me
Hi Jean,
it definitely is a great tip, as it makes it so much easier to stay on topic. You can create one long post and split it up into a series of 2 or 3 and have the appear online with a few days in between.
That way your blog stays interesting for the search engines and your readers, and you don’t have to start from scratch every time.
I have to admit though I am still not using that tip enough myself
That’s a great idea and you can write when you are on a “roll”.
A great blogging shortcut and a great way to keep your readers coming back for more.
Cath
Excellent tips – just reminded myself I need to put the social media buttons onto my blog & check my spam filter/plugin & other settings to enable comments, or I should say, to make it easier for me to quickly check & approve comments, instead of dealing with hundreds of spammers BS comments day after day… Time management becomes a huge issue without some organised planning, so scheduling the future posts is definitely the way to go!
Great advice Sean. Time management is a huge issue and I really need to do some intense planning. Thanks for pointing me in this direction again.
The quality of the content that you provide should also be a important factor that is taken into consideration. There is no point in posting daily if the content that you are providing is sub-par. Your readers aside, this should be something that you should not stand for.
I started posting once a week then went up to twice a week, then three times a week. However the quality started to suffer as I felt that I was not offering the value that I would expect if I was reading my blog. I have now cut it back and believe that the quality and value of the content that I put out is far better.
Quality is far better than quantity in the long run. If you can provide both, great
Some great tips. Once you start your blog, make sure you post on a regular basis. And always include some keywords in your first paragraph, but don’t overdo it. With a little bit of persistence you’ll find yourself on the first page of Google and other search engines.
Sean your articles are so informative, specific and educational. No wonder you call the competition the Learn and Earn! These will be great references to come back and refer to-like a work manual
I am excited to read about blogging shortcuts and tips for success as my first blog won’t be far off.
(I have some websites built, but haven’t actually run a regular blog)
I agree with all comments above. Content is still King, so quality is better than quantity. However, if you can outsource, then you can have both, quality and quantity.
That will be a little down the track for me, but I can see if I want to do this seriously and duplicate the system, I will need to look into it.
Cath
Hello Sean,
Blogging Shortcuts and tips for success has a lot of information that I can take on board for my blogs. I love blogging and sometimes write far too much!! But forget about the shortcuts that helps the blog to be found.
Guess I know which area I need to work on next !!! Thanks Sean for the Blogging Shortcuts And Tips for success. Here’s to all of you with your success
Cheers
Lisa
Blogging shortcuts … now we’re talkin’! One of particular interest is the article syndication. Can’t quite get my head around that one with the ‘duplicate content’ rule but I will certainly be looking into that one.
Anything that helps is good news. I am off now to my blogs and check all this out.
I have friendfeed and some others I need to add in.
Loved your ideas and then the shortcuts to go with them. One of them – setting posts to publish at a later dae is one which I have embraced and have really appreciated this function in WordPress as it takes the urgency and the time limits away and really helps you managing different blogs.