Blogging is not only a passion but also a good online income earner for many people throughout the world. There are tonnes of Blogs all around but only some of them are successful in blogging and only a few yield good income.
The reason?
Bad maintenance of Blog.
Maintenance is not something we need for appliances but also for a blog. When a blog is new, everything works fine and everything looks good. As the number of users increase and the blog gains more reputation, you should make some changes to your site.
The following factors are crucial for any blog.
1. Choose the right blogging platform:
I have personally seen many people start with a BlogSpot (Google’s exclusive blogging tool) and then shift to WordPress or Joomla for a better CMS. It is often a bad practice as importing a blog from one format to another often bring lot of new issues like missing links and more 404 errors.
2. Choose a right Hosting /VPS:
Shared hosting is what every start up Blogger chooses, but let me remind you that if you are serious about making some money, then you need to think in an advanced manner. Share hosting always has tonnes of issues where as Cloud Hosting or a Cloud VPS has 99.9 % uptime with better functionality.
They are simply flexible and offer many advantages to the price you pay. Better than all, you have complete control over it.
There are good VPS providers like Linode, DigitalOcean and good WordPress specific cloud hosting offers like WPEngine all around the internet.
3. Choose a Niche you love to write about:
The most used niche is Technology. It is because they are vast news in that criterion and many former blogs are available for latest updates. But keep in mind that you can only write well if you are proficient in it.
Consider a simple example like French and English. If you are proficient with English, then you can’t write anything in French because you know nothing about it right? The same goes with a Blogging Niche.
Don’t choose something you can’t write about. Always try blogging on something you know well. Something you can improve by blogging about. Something that’s not complicated like rocket science or human anatomy.
Don’t just choose some niche that is saturated because you can’t try anything new.
4. Choose a simple layout for your Blog:
Always don’t go for themes that are flashy and have tonnes of images in them. Try to get a theme that is simple and flexible. Maintain the web standards and check for valid HTML and XHTML themes so that errors are reduced.
Stay away from NULLED and CRACKED themes, they always have malicious code hidden somewhere.
5. Always Optimise Images:
This is something that many Bloggers and Webmaster forget. Images play a crucial role in the loading time of your Blog. So make sure that all your images are optimised for better loading times. Use tools like Yahoo Smush.it to reduce the images size by compressing it.
6. Always stay up to date:
Make sure your CMS and your server packages are up to date. If you fail in updating them, then you are seriously taking the risk of getting your blog hacked.
Updates are issued by software so that previously open cracks and bugs will be healed. Use a CMS exclusively created for Blogging like WordPress or Ghost.
7. Take security seriously:
Never think that plugins and updates solely provide you good security. Keep in mind that “Your Security is your Concern”. No one takes that burden except you should be. If your blog gets hacked, all your hard work is lost in a few seconds
Implement good firewall rules and use good plugins and security patches so that you are always protected. Make use of Backup plugins often.
8. Give your users some space to read what they like:
Most bloggers use Pop Ups to show Ads and Social Network pages so that they get clicks, Facebook like and much more. But this is what the users don’t expect.
They come to your Blog to read what they want, if they don’t find that first then you will never have a second chance to get that visitor back again. So always make sure that you follow this:
“Content First, Ads next”
9. Don’t copy content, create it:
Copying content is the easiest way to flood your blog with articles, but it doesn’t attract any Search Engines or any Users. Plagiarism is taken seriously by users and Search giants like Google and Bing. So make sure you are blogging uniquely.
In fact they take Plagiarism Damn Seriously!
No one likes reading the same article twice, nor the search engines. So create content and make it look different to the eyes of both users and search engines. Creating daily content doesn’t bring more users but creating unique content does.
10. Interact with the users and gift them often:
Use a good comment system and interact with the users who commented on your blog. Hold some giveaways so that your gain some good reputation and more traffic.
You can also ask users to like you pages and follow you during Giveaways, which is legal and non-obtrusive. Remember, everyone like free gifts and licenses and it improves your blogging strategy 😉
Running a successful Blog needs a lot of homework and it is far difficult than you thought it would be. So work hard keeping your users in mind. Don’t write for Google, Bing, Page Ranks, Page Authority and Alexa Ranks. Always write for readers, readers, readers…readers.
Apart from that you need to follow healthy back linking techniques and good SEO strategy. Black Hat SEO is always free and easy, but these techniques are always a Fail and will remain that way. No one can cheat Search Engines and their algorithms.
If anyone is selling anything that claims to cheat Search Engines and boost your rankings, then that is surely a scam. Stay away from they and try getting genuine links from bigger websites. Make sure you improve your on page SEO score too.
Use good hosting and CDN, to speed up your websites loading times. All of them are vital for higher search rankings.
Failing in any of these techniques will make you repent for choosing Blogging as a career. So, work hard and earn hard 🙂