Marc's Blog

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how to become a successful blogger

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.

 

 

Why You Need To Respond To The People Who Comment On Your Blog

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blog comment

Why do you want more comments on your blog posts? Most bloggers want more comments on their blog posts to show that people interact on their blogs. Bloggers want conversations to get started on their blogs to indicate that their blog is popular. The most popular blogs also happen to have numerous comments on every blog post. It’s not a coincidence.

What most bloggers forget is that they can build conversations by simply responding to other people’s comments. Responding to someone else’s comment counts as a comment in the grand total. If you respond to 25 comments, people will see that your blog post has received 50 comments. That shows bustling activity and popularity: the two things that people look for in a blog.

Not only is responding to the people who comment on your blog a way to bring up the numbers, but responding to other people’s comments will allow you to further open discussion. By further opening the discussion, you will encourage more people to comment and possibly learn about things in your niche that you did not know about before. As you continue replying to comments and building your presence on the web, some people will write a good comment on your blog just to get your reply. There is a point when a blogger becomes so famous that a reply from that blogger means a lot.

Another benefit to responding to comments is your ability to build stronger connections. The advantage with WordPress (and many others) is that the person who comments must enter their email address. By requiring everyone who comments to enter their email address, you will be able to reply to those comments and send emails to those people. The people who commented on your blog will be very grateful that you took the time to send a personalized message, and that will allow the connection to build. A new connection can end up becoming a customer, subscriber, or better yet, a returning customer.

There are many benefits associated with replying to comments on your blog. Do you reply to the comments on your blog? If you leave a comment below, I will be sure to respond.

 

The One Thing Most Bloggers Forget To Do

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Blogging mistake

Authors do this several times for their books. However, many people skip this part of writing blog posts. What could it possibly be? I could say that I will reveal the answer in 9 minutes and have callers guess the answer similar to the Lite FM Radio Station. However, I am going to simply reveal the answer right now in bold letters.

Most bloggers forget to proofread their blog posts.

There are many bloggers who make the mistake of misspelling words. I recently read an article on a very credible blog only to discover towards the end of the blog post that tweets was spelled as “tweeets.” That is a mistake that could have been avoided with a spell check, but since the blogger did not use spell check, readers will notice that mistake. However, there are some mistakes that the spell check does not catch such as run on sentences and words that have been misplaced in the blog post.

A blog is a free book for your readers to read. If the free product does not deliver the way it should, people will be less likely to buy your products. The logic behind this is that if the free product does not deliver, the paid product probably won’t deliver either.

Proofreading a blog post will probably take up 5 minutes of your time, and really lengthy blog posts can take gasp 10 minutes of your time. However, by proofreading your blog posts, you will be able to provide your readers with better blog posts, and you will see the rewards of your hard work as you see your sales go up.

Proofreading your blog posts will allow you to see the mistakes. If you wrote 99 flawless blog posts, but one of your blog posts is flawed, then the proofreading was worth it. What are your thoughts on proofreading blog posts? Please share your thoughts below.

How To Jump Start Your Blog

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Jumpstarting Blog Statistics

Whether your blog is about gardening or food, you can easily jump start that blog. As you continue writing blog posts, your blog will eventually see a dramatic rise in traffic. That’s what plenty of the experts say, but there is a shortcut. Although this shortcut requires more work on your part, it will allow your blog to become successful at a much faster rate. In order to jump start your blog, you need to build a targeted following on your social networks.

The numbers game no longer works. Tools like TwitterAudit are being used every day to find out who has the real followers and who has extra cash in their pockets to buy fake followers. Building a targeted following is the only option we have left to be successful on social media. The blogs that we all know about were created by a blogger who now has a big presence on a social network.

Having a targeted following on a social network guarantees that your followers like the content that you post. In addition, these followers are eager to click on your links and read your blog posts. The reason this blog experienced exponential growth over a span of several months is because I got targeted followers at a much faster rate. Although the exponential growth has sizzled down, I will expect to see more exponential growth in the summer. That’s what happened last year, and this year should be a repeat.

The moment it becomes much easier (and free) to schedule pins, my traffic will be able to exponentially increase. The reason is that I have over 10,000 targeted followers on Pinterest. In addition, I gain hundred of targeted followers on Twitter every day.

Ever since I started to focus on gaining targeted followers, I have seen a noticeable increase in my blog traffic. In August 2013, I got 587 views. Less than 6 months later, to start off 2014, my blog got 11,709 views for the month. That is what exponential traffic looks like, and in order to get that exponential traffic, you need to grow a targeted following on your social networks.

Social media has played a big role in this blog’s success, and social media will continue playing a big part in this blog’s success. My prediction is that once my blog starts to gain traffic exponentially again (last year, this started in the fall), my blog could reach 100,000 monthly views by the end of 2014. If you want to give your blog a big jump start, do not focus on the search engines. Focus on growing a targeted following on your social networks. In fact, building a strong presence on a social network improves your SEO.