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5 Things Your Blog Sidebar Needs To Have

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blog sidebar

The sidebar is one of the most important parts of a blog. While people are reading your blog posts, something from your blog’s sidebar may catch the visitor’s eye. That’s exactly what needs to happen in order to get the best effect from the sidebar. However, not everything on your blog’s sidebar is going to get the right kind of attention. In order to get the right kind of attention from your blog’s sidebar, these are the five things that need to be on that sidebar.

  1. Social media buttons. Using social media buttons allows people to know that you are on social networks. However, you want people to stay on your blog for as long as possible. If someone has to open a new tab, then that person is not likely to stay on your blog for long. People must be able to follow you on your social networks without leaving your blog. If you can do this, then you will also be likely to get more subscribers.
  2. A picture of 1-3 of your products. Less is more. If you showcase all of your products on your sidebar, people are not going to pay attention. You have overwhelmed them. The best option is to only display 1-3 of your products. One of the products you display should also be priced at over $100 (ideally a training course or membership site). The logic being this is that products on the sidebar tend to get low conversion rates. When I displayed all of my books at the blog’s sidebar, the conversion rate averaged out to be just 2%. If you want to boost your conversion rate for all of your products, create pages on your blog for those products and videos as well.
  3. The subscription box. There is nothing on your sidebar that is more important than the subscription box. The subscription box must appear on the top of your sidebar so people who visit your blog get to see it right when they enter the URL. Do not trust people to search for and eventually find the subscription box at the bottom of your blog. No one has enough time to do that. By making your subscription box more visible, more people will subscribe to your blog.
  4. The search box. There will be some people who visit your blog who want to read specific blog posts. The search box will allow your visitors to find specific blog posts based on title and topic. Your search box should appear below your subscription box, and a picture (of you or your product) should separate them.
  5. A picture of you. Including a picture of yourself on your sidebar builds authority. When people think of your name, they don’t think about your name’s spelling. Instead, they think of what you look like. Including your picture will allow more visitors to remember you.

Those are the 5 things that need to be on your sidebar. What are your thoughts on the list? Do you have any additional widgets that you use on your sidebar? Please share your thoughts and other widgets you use below.

 

7 Things I Wish I Knew Before I Started Blogging

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In any niche, you will learn things that you wish you knew earlier. Although you can implement new methods in your niche right now, it can take several months or even a year for you to learn first hand which methods work and which ones don’t. As a new blogger, I had no idea what I was getting myself into. SEO seemed impossible, I was stuck at 1,667 followers, and I had no idea how to grow my traffic. Throughout my journey, I learned several things about blogging that I wish I knew about earlier. Out of all of those things, these were the seven that I wish I knew before I even started blogging.

  1. The power of categories. Categories allow you to organize your content so readers can find what they are looking for faster. Categories also allow you to organize your content for your convenience. If you want to write a book about one of the topics you write blog posts about, you can go back to your categories and use your blog posts as inspiration. I found out about categories late in the game and had written over 800 uncategorized blog posts. I ended up categorizing all of those blog posts within 1 week, but categorizing that many blog posts in a short amount of time was not an enjoyable activity.
  2. The way you use your social networks is important. Many articles emphasize the importance of having social networks. However, it is also important to utilize those social networks properly. You do not get found simply by joining Twitter. If that were the case, everyone would have 1 million followers. You get found by implementing your social networks properly. Luckily for you, I created the Twitter category and have other categories dedicated to social networks as well. It was more than a year late because I did not know about the power of categories, but it’s better late than never.
  3. Quantity is just as important as quality. When I started to write two blog posts every day, I got more traffic. In addition, as this blog got older, blog posts accumulated over time. The blog with 800 blog posts has more visibility in the search engines than the blog with just 1 blog post. However, I am not telling you to write 800 blog posts in 1 day because it is very unlikely for anyone to write 800 quality blog posts in 1 day. Although it is a starting point, blogging once a week is not enough. You should be publishing 1 blog post every day.
  4. Patience is a virtue. When I realized my blog was not going to be the overnight sensation I thought it would be, I was not happy. I would spend multiple hours every day on my blog and only get 5 visitors for the week. Even though there were other things I could have done as a teenager, I decided to stick with blogging. I knew that most bloggers got their success by being patient, but at the time, the thought of being patient simply frustrated me. Understand that the process of becoming a successful blogger takes time, but if you put in the time, you will become very successful.
  5. Focus on one blog. Before I took blogging seriously, my topics were scattered all over the place. I had separate blogs for my dog, the Boston Red Sox, baseball news, Legos, Yugioh Cards, and others as well. As a result, my numbers got scattered. Some of these blogs got 10 visitors every week while others got 50 visitors every week. I believe that if these numbers were combined together into one blog, that blog would be very popular. That’s exactly what I did when I created this blog. I decided to abandon the other blogs so I could focus on this one. If you want to create multiple blogs, have people write guest posts on all of your blogs except one.
  6. SEO is overrated. I spent countless hours learning about SEO expecting to get thousands of extra monthly visitors just 30 days after implementing the SEO tactics. While SEO is not a dud, it is more important to utilize your social networks. How you use your social networks also happens to have a big impact on SEO.
  7. Email lists are super important. For multiple years, I thought that the most important thing to do was get more traffic. However, once you get that traffic, you need to keep those visitors on your site. In addition, you need to get first time visitor to visit your blog numerous times in the future. If you have a big email list, that means more people are getting notified about your new blog posts through email, and it seems as if everyone is checking their email these days.

Those are the seven things I wish I knew before I started blogging. What are your thoughts on the list? Is there anything else that you wish you knew before you started blogging? Please share your thoughts and advice below.

And if you are considering starting your first blog now, then you’ll find this guide to be very helpful.

 

Are You Throwing Away Your Blog Traffic?

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There are many bloggers who dream of getting hundreds of visitors on their blog every day. These people believe that getting these extra visitors will translate to more sales, more shares, and more subscribers. However, there are some people with hundreds of visitors who are not satisfied with their results. Even though these people took the time to grow their presence on the web, they are only getting 5 extra sales.

I noticed this problem for my books. I used to show all of my books on my blog’s sidebar, and when I did this, the links generated over 200 clicks every month. Alas, I only made two sales from those clicks. Having those pictures on my blog also made it slower (and hurt SEO). The people who clicked on the links left my blog, and I lost a visitor who could have possibly subscribed to my blog.

If people leave your blog to click on a link to one of your products or a link to one of your social networks, that traffic is being thrown away. Even if someone follows you on a social network, who knows when that person will see one of your social media posts. I do my best to make sure all of my followers see one of my tweets. However, if someone does not log in for an entire day, then there’s nothing I can do about it. The better option is to have people subscribe to your blog. It is better to have 1,000 subscribers than it is to have 1,000 followers. Subscribers get emailed every time a new blog post gets published, and who doesn’t check their email? Followers may not see all of your posts.

If you are getting someone to subscribe to your blog, you are not throwing away your traffic. If anything else occurs, traffic is being thrown away.

The big question you may have right now is how it is possible to still gain followers even though it is bad to have links that lead to your social media accounts. The solution is to have a button on your blog that will allow someone to follow you without leaving your blog. The button for my Twitter account allows anyone reading my blog to follow me without going on Twitter. All a reader has to do is click the button and that’s it. Not only do you make it easier for people to follow you on Twitter, but you also allow them to stay on your blog. Even if you have to make your social media buttons smaller to get the desired effect, it is more important to keep someone on your blog (and possibly get that person to subscribe) than it is to get another follower. 100 followers are not going to be the difference between your book becoming a bestseller, but 100 people on your email list (in some cases, big fans) who can get notified the moment your book comes out will be very likely to buy that book.

Getting someone to stay on your blog for an extra minute can be the difference between someone who subscribes to your blog and someone who walks away. Over the long-term, it can be the difference between getting a lot of sales and getting no sales at all.

 

3 Overlooked Blogging Tips

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overlooked

I have learned about and implemented a fair share of blogging tips. I wrote a blog post with 100 blogging tips. There are several blog posts on the web that also have their fair share of blogging tips. However, there are three particular tips that get overlooked. While implementing these tips has allowed several bloggers to get over 100,000 visitors every month, most people forget about, under appreciate, or don’t even know about these tips. These three tips get overlooked often, and now you have the opportunity to give them your undivided attention.

  1. Write in a conversational tone. If you want to write better blog posts that get shared more often, you need to write in a conversational tone. You need to include “I” and “You” in your blog posts. The conversational tone will make the visitor feel good because you remembered that the visitor is also a human. In addition, but using “I” more often, your visitor will realize that a human wrote the blog post instead of a robot. Look at a blog post on this blog (like this one) that uses “I” and “You” often. Then imagine what would be different if those words were removed from that blog post.
  2. Write more blog posts. While quality content is important, it is just as important to provide an abundance of content (another way of saying quantity). Writing more blog posts allows your blog to appear for more keywords. If you write a blog post about blogging tips and a blog post about social media tips, those are two different keywords that you blog can appear for. The more keywords your blog appears for, the more traffic your blog will get from search engines.
  3. Use categories to organize your blog’s content. Out of all of these tips, this was the tip that I overlooked the most. You may be on this blog just for blogging tips and have no interest in the social media tips on this blog (for now). If you only wanted to read blog posts on blogging tips, you can go to the Blogging Tips Category and then read all of the blog posts that I put in that category. Categories allow you to specialize your content and give readers more of the information that they are looking for. By giving your visitor what he/she is looking for straight from the get-go, that visitor will stick around which reduces your blog’s bounce rate and moves your blog up on the search engines.

Those are the three blogging tips that often get overlooked. If you have been overlooking these blogging tips for a while, you need to implement them as soon as possible. Implementing these tips will definitely result in a very noticeable increase in traffic. What are your thoughts on the list? Do you have any additional suggestions? Please share your thoughts and tips below.

 

The Two Major Components Of Your Blog’s Success

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Blogging

There are many components that make a blog successful. Some of these components are getting more blog subscribers, content marketing, and so on. However, all of these small components are subcategories of the two most important components of any blog’s success. If there was a way to measure how successful your blog is, this would be as close as you can get.

The first major component of your blog’s success if how many visitors your blog is getting. A blog that is getting 10 visitors a day is not getting as much visibility as a blog that is getting 10,000 visitors every day. You need more people to know about you in order to have a big presence on the web. This first major component is the more obvious of the two. Content marketing, building a presence on social networks, and improving SEO among other things all contribute to this major component.

The second major component of your blog’s success is what happens when your visitors go on your blog. Traffic exchange sites will make your numbers look bigger than they really are. Although I am not proud of it, I admit to have used traffic exchange sites for one of my blogs (not this one). I was able to get hundreds of extra visitors every day, but those hundreds of extra visitors did not subscribe to that particular blog or buy any of the products being sold on that blog. In addition, using a traffic exchange site hurt that blog’s SEO because Google looks down on that kind of stuff. If you measure a blog’s success based on how much money it brings in, this major component comes into further play. If you get 10 visitors every day, and two of those 10 daily visitors buy your $50 training course, that’s $3,000 every month (this is being very optimistic). If a blog gets 10,000 visitors every day, then that’s 300,000 visitors every month. However, if only five of those 300,000 people buy the same training course, the person who is getting fewer visitors is more successful than the person with 300,000 monthly visitors.

Getting the results you want to see when someone goes on your blog is just as important as growing your traffic numbers. By focusing on these two major components in your blogging strategy, you will be able to get more visitors who will do what you want them to do (subscribe to your blog, buy your product, share your blog posts on their social networks, and so on).

 

Why It Is Important To Focus On SEO Even When Small Results Come In

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Focus On SEO

SEO is overrated, and there’s no question about it. Many people think of SEO as a way of getting a very noticeable increase of traffic in a very short amount of time. When quick results don’t come in, many people give up on SEO. Little do these people know that SEO is a critical part towards having a successful blog in the long-term.

There are many examples of how blogs went from under 50 visitors every month to getting well over 50 visitors every day. The statistics above are from this blog. Although Twitter has played a big role in those statistics, search engines started to become more significant as soon as traffic from Twitter went up. When I first created this blog (and several months after it was created), this blog got little to no visitors from SEO. I remember jumping up and down with joy if my blog got 5 visitors from search engines.

I am sure there are people who are still not sure about SEO. Some people need the traffic now, and SEO is not a great way to get immediate traffic. Although you may not see your efforts pay off in the first few weeks, rest assured that you will start to see your efforts pay off 6-12 months later. If you plan to turn blogging into your full-time job, then you need to have SEO as a part of your strategy. One of the reasons my WordPress statistics spiked upward is because of SEO. Although it took a very long time to get the spike, the spike did come, and now this blog gets over 100,000 visitors every year.