Setting up a blog, promoting it a bit on Facebook and Google+, garnering some website traffic and then adding Google Adsense to monetize – is all about making money online, isn’t it?
Well, several months ago, a couple approached me for some guidance about making money from home without jeopardizing their visa status in the US. They were students from India here to do their Masters.
Interestingly, they introduced themselves to me in a grocery store but had been my blog readers for a while.
I asked them if they had already thought about doing something. Among other things, they made mention of making money online through blogging. And the first line in the post which I wrote, I paraphrased what they had said.
So, How Do You Do It Right?
Success is a planned event. When you don’t know what to do, it’s a good idea to get started somewhere. It does make sense to explore through your experience. Start, fall down, get up, try again, get up again, learn some more and try again.
It’s all great as long as you are doing it to learn, to understand, to test your skills, your strengths and your weaknesses etc.
But, as soon as you get serious about blogging and you begin to desire success online, to make money and brand yourself to success, you need a plan.
What I have learned through experience is, you really need to have a system around the efforts involved.
You need a checklist of things you need to do. You need an itemized list of everything you need to know and act on — to track and measure your progress, to attract readers, to develop engagement and to grow your online footprint.
So, here you go!
Putting A Strong Foundation
Foundation is the first and the foremost important thing for building your castle. Let's get started with the things that can and will help you build a strong foundation for your brand image online.
1. Identify Your Niche
Although you can just share about yourself, if that is what you want to build your brand image around, who you are — there is nothing wrong with it.
But, if you want to build a business, sell some products and/or services, you better identify a niche and commit yourself to building your brand identity around it.
2. Setup A Self-Hosted WordPress Website
Although you can build a popular blog on WordPress.com or Blogger.com, you may not want to do it because you don’t have full control among other reasons.
Setting up your Self-Hosted WordPress powered website is not that difficult and you can follow this guide and set it up yourself in 15-20 minutes if you want. Or, you can get a professional help in setting it up for you.
3. Get A Decent Website Design
There are so many ready to use website templates (called ‘themes’ in the WordPress world) available to you. Select a good theme that suits your business branding goals and use it. Make sure your design is not broken and ugly.
If you can’t get it setup by yourself, get some help. Let me know in the comment section if my team can help you get a good world-class theme configured for your website.
4. Display Your Headshot On Your Website
Although it’s part of your website design, I wanted to talk about it separately because it is important and you may not realize it without explicit mention.
Your personal branding is very important as an entrepreneur. Putting your headshot on your website makes people connect with you and your website instantly. That is such a tremendously powerful idea that most top marketers do it very effectively.
5. Secure Your WordPress
No brainer, right? Why would you not pay attention to security of your home on the internet if you won’t leave your house unlocked in real life?
There are hackers trying to get into your website from all sides. You want to make sure they can’t access your important files or infect your website while you are thinking you are doing okay. Tighten your WordPress security!
6. Have SPAM Protection
Blackhat SEO and web spammers are ready to hit your website at the first window of opportunity they get. You want to protect your website.
Set up Akismet. It’s a tremendously powerful and one of the most popular plugins that helps you eliminate comment spam.
Usually, you get this plugin installed along with your default WordPress installation, but you still need to activate it to put it into action.
7. Create A Good Tagline
Your tagline is a small little phrase that you say about yourself and/or your online venture. All top marketers have it and if you want to make a lasting impression on your visitor’s mind, you should work towards having a good one for you.
8. Have A Good ‘About Me’ Page
This is the second most visited page on your website, as you know. Most visitors will come to this page after they land on your website for the first time and enjoy what they found.
If you haven’t done it already and you want to make it impressive, it may be a good idea to look around and observe how other thought leaders in your industry have done it and mirror their approach. But the important thing is, you must pay good attention to this page on your website and get it done – right.
9. Schedule Regular Backups
Not just when your website gets hacked, there are many situations when a good backup can come in very handy. Situations arise when you are upgrading your WordPress and something goes wrong, a plugin you added corrupts your database or, you deleted a directory by mistake (well it happens.)
In such cases, if you have a backup, it becomes a life saver. Always take regular backups of your websites and if you are like me, you will rely on a premium service like ManageWP to auto-schedule a backup and have a good night’s sleep.
10. Create And Maintain Your Editorial Calendar
It is very important that you have a publishing schedule. You and your visitors should know which days of the week you post and you shouldn’t miss the schedule. It is a very important aspect of your branding.
So, one of the most important things you can do for your blogging is the know your schedule and know what are you going to post at least one or two weeks in advance. Maintaining an editorial calendar is very helpful in achieving this goal.
SEO, Usability And List Building
11. Setup Your Blog SEO Properly
WordPress plugins such as All In One SEO or WordPress SEO by Yoast are two awesome plugins to help your blog do well with SEO. All you have to do is, install them, activate them and configure their basic settings.
But it is very important that you do it. After all, you need search engines to send some people to your website, right? Why wouldn’t you want that?
12. Add Your Website To Google And Bing Webmaster Tools
If you have a website, doesn’t Google know that you own it? Does Bing know that you own that website? If not, it’s time to visit Google Webmaster Tools and Bing Webmaster Tools and add your website and get it verified. These tools are very important to your experience with Search Engine Rankings now, and in the long run.
13. Submit Your Website Sitemap To Google And Bing
Sitemap files are especially very important to your website’s performance on Google because it helps Google web crawlers to understand your website posts and pages and navigate through them. Bing has also started to ask for sitemap files and it is a good idea to submit your sitemap to Bing as well.
If you haven’t submitted your sitemap files, go ahead and submit them using the webmaster tools of both these major search engines.
14. Display Your Social Media Profiles
Encourage visitors to connect with you on social media. This builds trust and deepens the connection with your target audience. It also increases your influence on social media and on the internet in general.
15. Establish Google Authorship
Google Authorship is becoming more and more important as Google is pressing towards Author Rank and Google+ is the way you establish your Authorship.
If you haven't already, go ahead today and setup your Google Authorship right away and make sure you verify that it is set up correctly.
16. Display Your Blog Category Archives
It is very important that you show your blog categories promptly using the widgets in the sidebar because that way your readers get to read some of your old posts. It is easy to setup and is a very powerful technique to showcase your work.
17. Display Your Most Popular Posts
When someone visits your blog, don’t you want them to show them some of your best work yet? Having a widget in your sidebar to showcase your popular posts (all time hits and recent – both) to impress your first time visitors is a very important technique to engage them with you.
18. Sign Up For A Good Autoresponder Service
If you ever want to build a loyal reader base and have your website generate qualified leads for your growing business, you definitely want to build a list. You need an Autoresponder service to build and maintain a list.
I use and recommend Aweber as my favorite list building tool and I would encourage you to use them too.
19. Display Main Sign Up Form Prominently
Make sure you have a well-designed sign up form in your sidebar prominently displayed at the top. Many top marketers prefer to add the sign up form as the first thing on their website above the content and it works great for them.
You decide which is the best place on your site and make sure your sign up form for list building is at a prime location on your site and that it is converting.
20. Display One Sign Up Form In Your Post Footer
Sometimes, people are more inclined to sign up for your blog updates and email newsletters after they read a post or two and like your content.
You want to leverage that opportunity and make it easy for them to sign up. So, remind them to sign up and make it very easy for them to sign up right as soon as they are done reading your post. So, add a sign up form at the end of every post.
21. Create Your “Contact Me” Page
As soon as you start getting some traction in terms of traffic and engagement, some of your readers will want to get in touch with you. Create a clean contact page using some awesome WordPress plugins and give people a way to contact you. It is one of the most important pages to add credibility to you.
22. Make Your Blog Posts At Least 500 Words Long
From a SEO perspective, any post of 300 words or more is considered valuable. But, unless you are writing poems, you really can’t teach much in less than 500 words.
Therefore, use at least 500 words in your blog posts. By the way, don’t make 500 words just for the sake of doing it. Do it because you have something of value to say. Only when you add value to your reader will you have value for yourself.
23. Add Images To Your Blog Posts And Pages
Images not only make your blog posts look prettier but also please search engines. Not just that, when your posts get shared on social media, your images are picked up and displayed along with your blog post title which draws the attention of others.
Do not forget to add at least one image large enough to be easily visible easily and depending on your blog’s layout, the larger, the better.
24. Link Out To Resourceful Websites
You can’t know everything. Nobody does. So, when you are writing a blog post to teach your audience something, make sure you do your research and share references of a few good resourceful posts from thought leaders about the topic.
Your audience will appreciate you, the bloggers whose post you share, will appreciate you and also Google will like you because you are sharing resources with your audience thus increasing the quality of your posts.
25. Link Your Previously Written Posts
From a SEO perspective, you should use WordPress plugins like SEO Smart Links to automatically link your current post with related tags, categories etc.
Also, it is a good idea to reference to your previously written articles related to the same topic. That way, your posts from past come to the front and get some SEO benefits. It adds a lot of value to your blog in terms of SEO.
26. Make Use Of Headings And Sub-Headings
Do not make your blog posts look like a few big paragraphs. If you do that, most people will not read it. Plus, search engines do not consider your paragraphs for keywords or ranking purposes.
However, if you use Heading2, Heading3, Heading4 etc. type headlines and sub-headings within your posts, not only does it make your posts more readable to your visitors, search engines consider headlines as an important text on your pages. Thus, it will help in your SEO as well.
Social Media And Your Website
27. Add Social Sharing Buttons To Posts/Pages
Social Media dominates the internet. Social Media also influences search engine rankings today more than ever before. The more your content gets shared on Twitter, Facebook, Google+ etc., the greater your chances are to rank higher.
To enable your visitors to share your content when they like your posts, make sure you have provided them sharing options. You can use WordPress plugins like ShareThis, Digg Digg, JetPack etc. to provide those share buttons.
28. Ensure Your Social Media Profiles Represent You Correctly
This is very important for your branding. Make sure your social profiles descriptions, your profile images are inline with your website design, your tagline and your mission.
If your social profiles say something else about you and your website says something else, you confuse people. Make sure you keep it consistent and simple.
29. Identify Your Two Or Three Favorite Social Media Platforms
There are too many social networking sites. It is a very powerful thing but it can also get intimidating if you aren’t careful.
So, instead of trying to be everywhere, identify a couple (or may be three) social networking sites that make sense for your business and become active only on those places. This is better than being everywhere and not being effective anywhere.
30. Stay Active On Your Favorite Social Media Platforms
Staying active means engaging with your connections. Share quotes, ask questions, answer questions, share images, comment on influencers and promote your blog posts. You should at least perform some activity every few hours. Use HootSuite or Buffer to manage your social platforms.
31. Promote Your Blog Posts On Social Media Platforms
Every time you write a blog post, make sure you consciously share your posts with your friends and followers. If you have good people connected to you and you are feeling comfortable sharing your content with them, that means you are writing good content. It is also your test of quality.
32. Be Approachable On Social Media Platforms
If you are too big to talk to, people will stay away from you. Make sure you are friendly and approachable by people in your network. If somebody asks a question which is genuine, make sure you respond in a reasonable amount of time.
33. Write SEO Friendly Content
When you are writing your blog posts, it’s important to remember to write your content in such a way that Google/Bing can send people to your articles based on the words they search for.
What does that mean?
Write SEO friendly blog posts. Use those keywords in your post headlines, sub headings etc. and variations of the keyword within the body of the post. SEO optimization of your content is important.
34. Make Your Content Pleasant For Your Visitor’s Eyes
If your content is too flashy, has too many color combinations, too many font variations, it becomes painful for your viewer’s eyes. If people feel stressful while reading your posts, they will just walk away.
Do not use too much styling. Keep it simple, keep it easy to read. Use a friendly font such as Arial or Georgia and either size 14 or 16. You will do just great.
Content Creation And Syndication
35. Decide A Writing Frequency And Stick To It
Your regular readers need to know when is your next post coming out. Do stick to your blogging schedule as you work your editorial calendar. Whatever the posting frequency, stay the course!
36. Consistently Maintain A Blogging Ideas File
It is hard to come up with a new blogging idea everyday and every time. That is why it is important that you always be on the lookout for new ideas for getting inspired to write.
Have a place on the cloud where you can easily record your blogging ideas so you can refer back to them later when you need. I use Evernote as my online diary. Here is how to use get going with creating your blogging ideas.
37. Take Time To Promote Your Content Every Day
What’s the point of having great content if it can’t get readers? Make sure you promote your new blog posts on as many social networks and forums and bookmarking sites as possible.
However, you need to make sure you don’t come across as a spammer (You will if you only promote your content). Promote other people’s content more than you promote yours and you will be fine.
38. Observe Thought Leaders And Duplicate Their Strategy
Confused about what works and what doesn’t? Watch out for leaders in your niche. See how are they writing, how are the promoting, how are they engaging and emulate them. You will find success pretty fast.
39. Create Great Headlines
You have one great opportunity to make your audience curious, that is your blog headline. You need to always make your readers understand the goal of the post through your headline. The better your headlines are, the better your chances of getting readers to actually read your content.
40. Hone Your First Paragraph Writing Skills
After your headline, the first paragraph is the one which makes people continue to read your post or walk away. If you want people to read your posts, make sure the first paragraph is as interesting as possible.
41. Write Short Sentences And Paragraphs
No brainer! You do not like to read big long paragraphs, do you? Then don’t write it and put others through the pain of going through your big long paragraphs.
Also, the shorter your sentences, the better. I had to work on this a lot and actually, I am still working on this one.
42. Draw Your Readers Into Your Post With Stories
You should incorporate a story or two into your posts. Preferably, start with a story early on in your post to draw your readers into your post. Everyone loves stories, everyone loves drama. You can capitalize on that craving and build great posts!
43. Teach Something In Every Post
What do you want your reader to do? As a blogger, another way you build your authority is by teaching something to your readers. You want them to walk away with something to act on. So, if your post teaches them something, they will come back next time to learn something new.
44. Create Some Very Detailed Guides
This is a great way to establish authority of your blog in your niche. Create some really awesome, long and very detailed guides for a few topics in your niche. Make the guide as resourceful as possible.
This will get you incredible traffic, awesome backlinks and higher search engine rankings. Work on it.
45. Syndicate Your Content To Social Bookmarking Sites
Submit your content to various content syndication sites. This is important for SEO and also important to getting some targeted traffic. Here is a very comprehensive list of syndication services you may want to leverage.
Monetization – Offers, Products And Services
46. Offer Something Of Value For Signing Up Into Your Email List
People will be more inclined to sign up for your email list if you offer them something of value as a bonus for signing up. Create an awesome e-book or an online course or solve a problem for your email subscribers and offer it.
47. Create A ‘Hire Me’ OR ‘Work With Me’ Page
You’re running a business online. So, start acting like one. Add a ‘Hire Me/Work With Me” page for all your readers to see. If you don't have this page, people don’t know how can you help them professionally or what to expect to pay you for your service. Help them. Let them know what you can serve them with.
48. Add Appropriate Advertisements
Get a Google Adsense or Media.net account to begin with and add a few non obstructing advertisements and monetize your blog. If you have 10000+ visitors a month or so, you can also apply for BuySellAds account to have even better control and good looking ads.
49. Recommend Some Affiliate Products
When you are blogging, living life, fixing your problems, using an Autoresponder service, some premium theme, you will have enough exposure to enough number of products and services others are looking for.
Make sure to check with the service provider if they have an affiliate program and if they do, make sure you use your affiliate links to promote those products. This is a great way to make some money while you blog.
50. Create Your Own Products/Services
You may not have it right away. But, if you have been blogging for some time, marketing some affiliate products already and doing well, you will have enough expertise that you can sell some of services to others in need.
Smart marketers work towards creating their own products and services while they are marketing other people’s products and making money through advertisements etc.
51. Build Joint Ventures
Content marketing needs time and energy. It can be overwhelming at times if you try to do everything on your own. Therefore, get smart about it. Launch some products and services using joint ventures with other authorities in your niche. There are so many opportunities available to you. If you don’t know where to get started, check out founder2be website.
Improving Engagement And Influence Online
52. Encourage Your Readers To Comment
One of the best things you can do on your blog is to create engagement where people who come to read your posts, also ask you questions, answer your questions and interact with you though comments. You should encourage them to do it using every opportunity you have.
Using a good commenting system like CommentLuv or DISQUS will help tremendously. Explore your options and focus on this aspect.
53. Ask Questions At The End Of The Post
Many times people love your posts but they don’t know what to say. Plus, they don't want to say “Great Post” and run away because it looks like SPAM. So, in confusion, they don’t say anything and leave.
You can help them by provoking their thinking brain through a question. Add a question at the end of the post so they can at least comment to answer your question. It helps a lot in getting more organized comments.
54. Respond To Genuine Commentators
When somebody leaves a comment, they took time to share their thoughts on your blog. You should show your appreciation to them by responding to their comment and preferably, have a configuration on your website so your commentators can get an email notification when you reply to their comments.
You don’t have to do it to every single person. But have some criteria for responding to commenters and then respond as appropriate.
55. Comment On Other Related Blogs
What do bloggers love the most? Comments on their posts. You do too and so do I. So, how do you build great relationships with other bloggers? Start by regularly commenting on their blog. Eventually, you will get enough opportunity with them to engage and build relationships.
And yes, do not expect them to reciprocate right away. You do it with an intention of giving and sooner or later they will recognize you and start to value you too.
56. Share Other People’s Content
Promoting your blog posts is great. But you can’t promote your same content many times on the same social networking site, right?
But, your content can get shared by many people on the same network and thus creating buzz about your blog, buzz about you and increasing your impact on search engines. You can do that by this simple rule.
You share other people’s content enough and some of them will begin to reciprocate. Eventually, you will start seeing your posts being shared on every social network by a large number of people.
57. Join Blogging Communities And Build Relationships
To have a system around your blog syndication, social sharing and relationship building, joining a few blogging communities is a great idea. Check out websites such as Triberr.com, Blogengage.com and SocialBuzzClub.com and start building a routing around your activities.
Visit these websites on a daily basis, share other people’s contents, comment on their blogs and share your valuable content so others can do the same for you and it works great!
58. Guest Blog On Authority Blogs In Your Niche
One of the best ways to build authority around your brand image is to become a guest author on blogs with social authority. Not only does it help improve your credibility in the marketplace, but also it helps you get more exposure and increased traffic for your own website.
Make a list of influential bloggers in your niche, build relationships with them and once they start to recognize you, request them to publish you as a guest author on their blog. If a few of them do not allow guest posts, do not get discouraged. Move to the next one.
59. Follow Authority Bloggers On Social Media And Engage
So, you met some of the thought leaders from your niche through one of the blogging communities. You start commenting on their blogs, start sharing their content. That is all great. But, are you engaging with them on social media? If not, start doing it now.
It is very important because that adds to your social media influence which in turn feeds right into your main blogging objective.
60. Invite Authority Bloggers To Guest Blog
Similarly, after you have developed a meaningful connection with thought leaders in your niche, check with them if they would like to be a featured guest author on your blog (and may be suggest them an idea or two) and teach your audience something.
61. Link Out To Authority Bloggers Regularly
Do you realize how many authority blogs I have linked out to right from this post alone? Linking out to popular blogs in your niche is actually good for your SEO and besides, it gets you the attention of the author you are linking out to.
Your audience appreciates you because linking out is what makes your blog more resourceful. It shows you care and you want to provide the best content to your readers. Be generous and link out.
62. Conduct Interviews With Thought Leaders And Publish
Just as you feature guest blogs, sometimes, you may not be able to get famous bloggers to write for you. But, you can still feature them on your blog by interviewing them. If you check some of the top bloggers in the world, they take a lot of interviews and publish on a regular basis.
You can publish interviews as text or audio if you don’t want to go live in a video. But, if you can, video interviews are the best! You can use Skype to record video interviews and publish. It’s that easy!
Thought Process Development
63. Treat It Like A Career – Invest In It
Blogging truly can be a career you can be proud of. Take it seriously. Invest in your blog. Don’t cut corners. If your blog need a good hosting, invest in it. If your blog needs a premium theme or plugin, invest in it. If you need to learn a new technique, a new marketing strategy to take your blog to the next level, do it. It will grow at the level you want it to and growth needs your commitment.
64. Stay Consistent – Do NOT Do Yo-Yo!
Do I need to even talk about it? You can’t be a yo-yo and succeed in anything for that matter – blogging included. Consistency is the name of the game. Stay consistent no matter how you feel. It will pay big dividends in the long run.
65. Always Be Learning Something New
Do you read a good book every day for at least 15-20 minutes? Do you participate in educational workshops regularly? To lead yourself to success, you need to keep learning at least one new thing every day. To be a pro-blogger, you need to keep learning every day. Invest in your time, money and energy on your own personal development.
Some Final Thoughts About These Tips
Looking at the number of things in this list, you might be feeling overwhelmed at the moment. It might as well seem very complicated.
But the good news is, you don’t have to do it all in day one. Instead, it’s a checklist of items you need to keep checking off as you take care of them one by one.
As you start checking the items on the list off, your to-do list starts to shrink and you would have already started to see some awesome results already!
There are many items on this list which are just a one-time thing. Once you do them, you don’t have to do them again, ever. How relieving is that?
Do not feel frustrated because anything is worth having is worth putting in an organized effort. Get to work and begin to put a strong foundation for your bright blogging career!
Over To You – Have Questions Or Suggestions?
How many of the items on this list are you already doing? And how many of these are in pipeline for you to accomplish this year?
Are there a few more tips that I have missed? Please suggest through your comments in that case. I would love to hear your thoughts!
Please click here to go to comment section or scroll down. Thank you kindly!
I definitely need to write some of these points down; I will do that once I submit the comment.
For me, things have not been going according to plan. Well, it’s my fault. I have been kind of lazy with marketing. Like you mentioned, what’s the point of writing something if we don’t market it well enough?
I do have a checklist (with specific days assigned to each social media site) but I don’t always follow it. Sometimes, I do feel that I am complicating things. I mean, it is great to be organized and all (and assigning each day to each site). But, things don’t always work out.
Sometimes, there is extra HW to catch up on..or there is something more to study (I guess that’s what I hate the most, when things don’t go according to my normal routine).
Of course, if they went according to my routine everyday, the routine would become boring 😀
It was much easier last semester; I wasn’t taking any classes, so I could break it all down and distribute everything (Unfortunately for me, I didn’t have a blog back then…spending all the time on commenting).
Anyways, I hope I can figure something out in the coming days 🙂
You know, sometimes I do wonder if things are working as planned (like checking and rechecking my backup plugin). I wanted to run 2 backup plugins at once (paranoia?). That didn’t work out (caused a few errors on my blog).
I guess I should just relax and think about it!
Anyways, thank you for sharing this awesome checklist, Kumar. Appreciate it!
Hi Jeevan,
I know the feeling and trust me, life isn’t going to be any better. 🙂
You will be amazed to know that you are never going to be more free than you are today. And I am telling you from personal experience 🙂
I think you are doing great with your blog and keeping up with it on a regular basis is all you need to do at this point. Consistency is the keyword.
Keep up your good work 🙂 and good luck to you moving forward.
Cheers!
Kumar
Excellent advice! I’m taking note of a few points, especially on deciding a writing frequency
WOW, you amaze me. You have covered this precisely and with great detail in a minimal way, bravo. I have said it before, this is a great checklist for a new blogger. I sure wish I had seen this when I first started. 🙂 My favorite is #63 – “Treat It Like A Career – Invest In It” that is so very very true. 🙂
Thank you Susan! Well, I wish I knew these when I started out as well. But you know what, it’s better late than never 🙂
Regards,
Kumar
There is a lot of great information in this post. Thanks for sharing. I’m going to have to print this out so that I can have it for a reference.
You are very welcome Jay 🙂
What a comprehensive blogging checklist. Good for new and not-so-new bloggers.
Thank you 🙂
Hi Kumar,
Wow! What an awesome list! You certainly nailed it with this one 🙂
I think there’s nothing left for any of us to add anything to this awesome list – you’ve said it all. I was nodding with most of your points, and making a mental note of the ones I still need to do. I think social media presence is becoming more essential now than ever before. Tough to manage and be all over, but yet, if you aren’t, you’re missing out on a lot of things.
Blogging is never easy, at least for professional bloggers like us. So, unless you follow all the steps you mentioned, it’s tough to make a headway with it and achieve success. It all takes time, and it’s certainly not easy, for new bloggers at least who enter the Blogosphere and are rather lost. Reminds me the time when I started off too and being a writer, I had NO idea what a blog was, let alone what all goes into blogging. But where there’s a will, there IS a way and we all need to find that, isn’t it?
Thanks for sharing ALL these tips, which surely must’ve taken you long to write, but so worth it. Have a nice week ahead 🙂
Hi Harleena,
Taking long, it did actually and it also frustrated me while writing because there were so many points to cover and I was feeling tired after finishing the 17th one. But patience is the virtue 🙂
Well I am glad I got it done and that you found it interesting. Glad to hear from you.
Thank you for adding value through your thoughtful comments as usual. Have a great day!
Regards,
Kumar
I must admit, I did not read every word, but I did read the social media part with interest and the last section. I blog regularly and am a student of Jon Morrow, of Copyblogger fame. It takes an incredible amount of work to monetize a blog without being too advertorial. I am working on my opt-ins and building my following. Joining this group on LinkedIn was one of the best things I have done for my blog. It’s risen in Google and I’ve met some great people. Nice list, will definitely bookmark it and share!
Hi Laurie,
You are right about social media engagement. Social signals are becoming more and more important factor for SEO.
Congratulations on your rise in search engine rankings! That is awesome!
Thanks for sharing your thoughts and also for sharing on social media.
Regards,
Kumar
This information is invaluable to someone like me wanting to make my blog more interesting and get more traffic. I’m going to print this out and work my way through step by step. Thanks.
Lenie
Aha! I am glad you found this so interesting that you need to make a print out of this. That is an honor for me to hear that.
Thank you for dropping by and the words of appreciation.
Regards,
Kumar
thanks for your valuable posting,it was very informative.i am working in
Erp in Chennai
Excellent article. Even when writing a blog that is more to the creative side, it still takes time and requires an awful lot of promotion. Thanks for sharing these tips. I’ve bookmarked the page.
Thank you Jacqueline! Glad you liked it. Have a great day!
That’s quite a list! I must admit, some of this I have done, and some of it takes quite a bit of time. I’ve been reworking my own website for my business, and it’s been taking quite a while (in large part because my priorities are my current clients).
I think you could take any one of these points and write a whole post.
Hi Leora,
Customers are always the first priority and isn’t it the reason why we stay consistent with our content marketing activities anyway?
Thank you for sharing your thoughts!
Regards,
Kumar
Hi Kumar,
Hi Kumar,
Great tips here. Fabulous!
Wow, thank you so much for the reminder to add my site to Bing Webmaster. Don’t think I’ve done that. What a shame!
However, for some reasons, it seems that Bing recognized my sites much better than this crazy Google does, which doesn’t recognized my Personal Development blog at all! What a shame. Its nowhere to be found EVEN I put the ESACT keywords of my site.
To me Google Authorship doesn’t always work. I think that its confused when one has more than one blogs. I wonder what’s your input on that?
Hi Sylviane,
Google Authorship is linked to you and not to a specific blog. The whole idea behind Authorship is to identify every content written by you no matter which website it is published on.
That means, if you write a guest blog on my website, it will still be authored by you in Google searches and your picture is supposed to be showed along with my URL. That is the beauty.
Speaking of your personal development blog, there seems to be something wrong if Google isn’t indexing that website. Are you sure you have submitted it correctly to Google?
Let me know if you need some help.
Regards,
Kumar
This is really a long check list. I was marking myself with each point and the interesting thing is that I am doing great!
Awesome Emmanuel! That is great stuff! Congratulations for doing a great job!
Hi, Kumar!
That’s exactly what I was looking today and when I saw your post in my email 🙂 Great and very valuable information! Thank you, you are making a great job helping people:)
Thanks
You are very welcome Aistis. Glad to hear from you. Hope you are doing great!
And yes, glad to also know that you found the content useful to you!
Have a great day my friend!
Hi Kumar,
My goodness this is one pillar post! You have covered it so well that this can be an ebook!
Thank goodness I found you and Krishna World Wide. That has made such a difference in my blog. I cannot boast enough how grate your service is. Plus, when Krishna WW. was designing my blog, we went back and forth easily and quickly. You had put so much time and effort with great suggestions, I cannot thank you enough.
I must say what popped out for me is your “Thought Process Development” part of this post. Yes indeed we do have to treat our blog as our career. It is our own business and we cannot cut corners. Investing our time and money to always be on a learning curve is just part of the business. The more we stay on top of things, the more we can share with our readers. And the more we can apply to our business.
Yes, our blog is our own real estate. We can be renters or owners. I rather be an “owner” and take pride in my ownership of my blog. This is why I constantly invest in it and other learning curves because when I do, the ROI does work!
Thanks for all these tips!
-Donna
Excellent checklist for bloggers! You cover everything from starting and how to continue to promote yourself. I will be saving this list for sure 🙂
Thank you Sandy! Appreciate the appreciation.
Kumar what a lot of great points. What you are creating is an awareness of your knowledge of SEO and a guru of the internet. I do like this point Google Authorship is linked to you and not to a specific blog. This is something I need to work on.
Hi Kumar,
You’ve really outdone yourself with this list, I mean it’s one that anyone can benefit from.
There are many things we know we need to look after, but they invariably slip our mind or something else comes up and we decide to do it later. With this list of tips in one handy place, you’ve made it easy for people to come back and systematically go through and look after them. I have yet to do many of these myself. Thanks so much!
Make it a great week!
Bil
Thank you Bill. Your contribution to this post is much appreciated as well.
It wouldn’t have been this easy for me to publish a massive content such as this one with so much ease.
Thank you for all your support.
Regards,
Kumar
You have some good points. It takes a lot of work to blog professionally. There is no leisure to it when you want to build your brand. You have posted some really great tips to get people started.
Thanks for stopping by to share your thoughts Niekka. You are right. Pro blogging does take time, money and efforts. We must be willing to do these if we desire to achieve significance in blogging arena.
Have a great day!
Hi Kumar,
That was an exhaustive list! Had to spend some amount of time to go through it completely! But guess what, the time spent reading it can be said to be ‘time well spent’! Because, I learned many new things there.
At the same time, I can say that I’ve been doing many things right. That I’m making progress and travelling in the right direction. As I went through the article, reading each entry, I realized that I have been doing many things right, just the way you described in there. That made me happy! 🙂
And talking about room for improvement, I came upon some factors that were neglected by me. I mean, I need to work upon those factors with consistency!
This article is one such, which is worth getting bookmarked! Good write up. I appreciate the effort that you put in.
Arun
Hi Arun,
Glad to meet you and thanks for your enthusiastic response. Your response makes me go and build another post if this magnitude 🙂 for sure!
Okay, but I am also happy to see that you doing many of these things already is a great testimonial that these methods do work and smart people are already doing these. Thank you for sharing about it.
Look forward to visiting your site and learning a few things from you!
Cheers!
Kumar
What an incredibly detailed and well thought-out list Kumar! There are so many ways to brand, monetize and drive traffic to our site. I think you hit every one of the top tips and then some.
Thanks Kumar!!
Aha! Thanks Rebekah! Coming from the social media guru, makes this post all worth an effort! Thank you for the words of appreciation.
Have a great day and a terrific rest of the week!
Regards,
Kumar
All I Can Say Is Wow Kumar, This is an incredible list my friend, I dont think you left anything out! You have outdone yourself here my friend. I had no idea how to get set up with my Google Authorship, completed now thanks to you.. You Rock!! Chery :))
Congratulations Chery! I am glad my Authorship post helped one more person today 🙂
Thank you for dropping by and putting efforts towards your Google Authorship. It is really worth doing it and has good benefits in the long run.
Have a great day!
My nephew was pretty naive too Kumar and had a very rude awakening once he put his blog up and realized everything involved.
Oh my gosh, your list is exhausting and I’ve even been doing this for going on five years now. Wow, when you look at everything you need to have in place all listed out like that it could scare anyone away. I mean let’s face it, most newbies don’t even understand a quarter of what you’ve shared here. I’m kind of glad there was no list like this when I was started or I probably wouldn’t have. I would have been so overwhelmed although I was, I just didn’t know it! LOL!!!
All in all though Kumar, great list! Well done my friend and I’ll definitely pass this one along as well.
~Adrienne
Hi Adrienne,
I know how intimidating it may be for newbie bloggers. But the fact is, I did not write it for them. This is a bit advanced topic and probably I should have added a disclaimer on the top somewhere 🙂
Thank you for the warning though and taking time to share your thoughts.
Regards,
Kumar
Very informative post! I have noted down some of the points you mentioned! I just want to know how to integrate free version of commentluv in my blog? It will be helpful if you can write something on that too!
Hi Tuhin,
That is a great topic and I will share about setting up CommentLuv very soon.
Have a great day!
-Kumar
Hi Kumah, what a wealth of knowledge and information about tips on traffic management. Thanks for the advice I definately have been overwhelmed with points of note.
Thanks Welli. Please don’t be overwhelmed. Remember how to eat an elephant? One bite at a time 🙂
Hey Kumar
What a list.
I thought I was writing helpful content on my blog, but you are putting us all to shame.
This is really a great accumulation of all your experience I am sure. There are many things in there I am doing, but a couple I had not thought about, so thank you my friend.
As Jeevan says, time to write a few down and get on with my homework!
ashley
Aha! So you really liked it 🙂 well, that us an accomplishment for me to make you feel that way my friend! I learn things from you many times and so, may be, it was a time to pay some of it back 🙂
Thank you for your enthusiastic comment. Appreciate you!
Regards,
Kumar
Hello Kumar,
Very interesting post, I guess I need to read it twice to make it memorable. I’d say these 65 tips are really essential to get lot of traffic.
Thanks
Thanks Samir! Appreciate your feedback and glad to know you found them helpful.
Cheers!
Hello Kumar Gauraw,
This Is one of the most imformative post I have ever read. When I started blogging I thought it was a child’s game. Just posting articles and earning bucks. That’s it. But after few months I realized a bloody shit thing ” competetion “. This made me frustrated. I got no response on my posts, no shares and no comments !
I truly agree with you that the people considering blogging as a hobby are living a much better life than ours. They don’t need to worry about SEO, warnings and penalties.
But when a person is blogging for money then he must have a good mind setup towards blogging. And I must say this is an awesome guide you have delivered for newbies. My younger brother is going to start a new blog and this guide is a miracle for him. Thanks again for sharing this ultimate guide 🙂
Hi Nikhil,
Now that is am awesome spirit! I like the idea of putting your brother on the right track right from the beginning of his journey!
You are there to guide him through your experience and that will be a smart thing for him to do. He can learn from you and avoid those potholes without gaining from his own personal experience 🙂
Good luck to you and also to your brother. Let me know if I can be of any help.
Thanks,
Kumar
Congratulations on such a detailed post. It must have taken a lot of time and energy to generate such a long and accurate list. It is very nice advice for people like me who are new in blogging.
Success is really planned and takes lot of time and energy , there is no short cut at all.
I am not in position of joint venture but I am trying to respond all the comments , I am trying hard to read all the posts and also using social media to get some readers. I will also try to improve security of my blog and few more things that you mentioned to improve my blog.
I have book marked your post and I am about to refer this to few of my friends to go through and get some advice.
As I just read welli post who talked about using brain capabilities , so you must have utilized a lot for this post.
thank you for a nice informative post.
These are some great tips. They are good for anyone that is thinking about becoming a blogger.
Thanks Jason! Glad you liked it.
Hi Kumar,
Long post. Maybe way too long 🙂 I was quite surprised by your “Linking out to popular blogs in your niche is actually good for your SEO”. I have to admit that the SEO section of my brain LOL is quite outdated and I don’t plan to change this status so soon. However, that phrase made me curious…
Is that your assumption? If it’s not your assumption, could you pls let me know where I can read more about it?
Thanks.
Adrian
P.S. Good article 🙂
Hi Adrian,
As far as I am concerned, that is not an assumption but based on my chat with a few authorities including Neil Patel of QuickSprout.
If something comes from Neil in SEO world, I tend to put my faint into that knowing that the man won’t say something he doesn’t know.
But then, as you always know I keep an open mind. Let me know if you find it otherwise and then we can round him up 🙂
Cheers!
Kumar
Hi Kumar an engaging post on engagement and well presented as always
Thank you Paul.
I was very impressed with your this week’s post as well. Thank you for dropping by and taking time to appreciate!
Regards,
Kumar
Hello Kumar,
When I started blogging, I was as naive as the couple you met…the only difference, perhaps, was that I was willing to learn – and learn real fast. I guess that is what has made all the difference.
However, if I was fortunate to have come across such an awesome list like yours back in the days, I would have definitely done things differently and as a consequence, would have experienced completely different results, I’m sure.
It is my belief this entry would help newbies who are interested in making money online…I have already tweeted!
Do have a very great day!
Always,
Terungwa
Wow..do I have a ton of things that I need to be working on! Thanks for the detailed list including the why we should be doing it too.
Hey
I really like your post and your writing skills to write such long and good article. Is authorship really needed for a blog for SEO to gain more visitors is it just something for side by side. Please tell me
Thank you
Hi Nitin,
Yes. Google Authorship is becoming more and more important to Google and you don’t want to take chances.
While there is no indication from Google that it is important to drive traffic, psychologically, it makes your chances of getting people to visit your blog more when they see your picture along with your post in search results.
Hope it helps clarify your question?
Thanks,
Kumar
Nice tips thanks for sharing, will give it a try
Dear Kumar,
This is a terrific post especially for me. As you know, I am a baby in this field. But I now see that step by steps, with you I will get where I deserve. I pointed out some mistakes and errors made in the previous posts, but as you know and probably believe, we all make mistakes. I am here to learn and get ready for success in coming days, weeks or years!! by the way, John Wrote a book “Failing Forward: Turning Mistakes into Stepping Stones for Success”
Back to this post, I need to work hard for many points.
Happy Tuesday,
Charmant
Happy Tuesday Charmant! Glad to hear from you 🙂
By the way, which post you are talking about? Is it on my blog somewhere that you commented on?
HI AGAIN,
YES, I was talking about your article 65 Tips…”.It is amazing,! It has more info regarding naive like me.I think, I just learned something I was planning tomask you in this week! Hope we can keep learning from you.
Thank you.
Charmant
What an awesome post Gauraw! Any newbie reading this article is saving months of time trying to figure out all these strategies. I’ve very excited to see that I am following most of the strategies, just need to focus on creating more and more quality blog posts.
Btw I’ve found this resource to be very useful http://www.buzzblogger.com/2014-mindmap/ Hope you’ll like it too.
Hi Saurav,
Glad you enjoyed the article and happy to know that you are doing already most of these things. Great job!
And also, thanks for sharing the mindmap. It is definitely very helpful tip.
Cheers!
Kumar
Maybe way too long, I was quite surprised by your “Linking out to popular blogs in your niche is actually good for your SEO”. really a great post.
Dear Kumar Gauraw
greetings for the day !!!!
So far I was under the impression that publish the articles and earn some money online. But your article has given me immense value and i will follow all your steps. It is great article to be noted by all the new bloggers.
Glad I was able to help Sri Katyayani. Please let me know if you have any other questions as well.
Have a great new week!
Hey Kumar,
nice post and Thanks for sharing these tips with us. This post is full of great advice and every point which you mentioned above are important. Choosing a good design and spam protection is very important factor. Submitting our sitemap is also very important factor as it helps in indexing our post. This post really gonna help many newbies.
Hi!
Awesome, very nice suggestions. I like your valuable suggestions.
Hi Kumar,
Sensational! Get clear on your niche. This step alone helps your creative energies flow, and attracts readers keen on your subject matter. Add in a dash of SEO and you’re on your way to building a blog and brand.
Thanks for sharing!
Hi Kumar,
Great tips, I agree with your point Blogging is not easy as it look it from outside, but with tips like these will surly help new bloggers like me.
Thanks for sharing.
such a huge list but a nice list,specially for new bloggers.
Hey, thanx for this awesome post. These tips will prove to be “must” for newbie bloggers and if you want to create your own brand image on the WWW. Awesome one… Can you please post an article on increase DA & PA of a blog?
Thanks.
Apurva Nagar
This is awesome.This is the complete guide for newbie bloggers to succeed in their blogs.Thanks for posting such good and clearly explaining guides.
This is a great list, and too long :-). I like the way you explained every single thing. This is good to read these tips. I agree with your point that blogging is not as easy as it looks.
This is nice how you explained 65 points. if we follow half of these tips I think we can get positive results.
I don’t think that you’ve missed any part. Its a complete information for a blogger to run/optimize the blog. Great Kumar, Thanks.
hi kumar
I must thank you for your info..
You really made a good research for this post.
and thanks for the time well spent on this…
am applying it on my engineering blog and it is helping me a lot
It’s been a real pleasure reading your amazing post.Great stuff,thanks for this.
Hello Gaurav,
I really enjoyed your article about website traffic generation. These are very informative tips to increase website traffic and set-up website accordingly.
Thanks for this excellent post
Hi Gauraw,
All these steps are goldmine for whoever wants to start promote their website/blogs, i think these steps are also useful resource list, I have preparing for some of my speech for next week and i got ample steps now to talk. Thanks Gauraw for this informative article
thanks for providing excellent tips for boosting up traffic and seo. i think i need to follow all these steps to scope up my blogging career, thank you very much for providing these tips.. i will definitely share this site to my frnds.
thanks for the great insights of how to build traffic in my site, i will definitely implement your ideas.
thank you so much for publishing this great article and i find this article since 2 years so thank you.
I like all the tips you have given to improve traffic. I have a new blog and I would definitely try your tips.
Thanks a Ton!
Thank you for the so many tips that i can use to increase traffic in my website. i have already utilized some but am looking forward to borrowing tips from your list. thank you once again.
Being in website i keep on referring to this link every time am working on my website. thank you once again for the great article.
This is a great list, and too long :-). I like the way you explained every single thing. This is good to read these tips. I agree with your point that blogging is not as easy as it looks.
Amazing tips! I have read the whole article and it was so stuffed with ton of handy information for anyone. The author gave the full knowledge about this topic. Keep up the good work.
I really enjoyed your article about website traffic generation. These are very informative tips to increase website traffic and set-up website accordingly.
Thanks for this excellent post