References

(SEO, Marketing)[https://www.codeinwp.com/blog/starting-a-blog/]

Writing

• Write blog posts about specific issues in your industry that people are interested in (right now).
• Write catchy headlines.
• Listen to feedback and questions from users.
• Consider your audience and the actions you want them to take.
• Speak to your audiences goals, pains and challenges.
• Define your buyer persona - what matters to them, their pains.
• Write in a conversational style, don’t be too stiff.
• Write in a style that is effortless to read.
• Get rid of jargon, talk like real people talk.
• Keep touching upon the main point of the article and drive it home (in small ways).
• Keep your topics specific and not too broad. e.g. ‘Business best practices’.
• More specific topics tend to get more targeted audiences.
• Tie your specific topic into the broader goal (e.g. one specific topic on WACC ties into the goal of educating the reader on how to value invest).
  • What will they gain by taking action?
• Structure your blog with an overall outline and section headers.
  • Different post styles will have a different structure (tutorial vs list).
  • Outline (template) to organise your thoughts.
  • Come up with a list of top take-aways. Break up take-aways into sub-headings.
• When you finish the article ask yourself ‘can the reader now implement what I have tried to teach them?’
• Use data, evidence and references to back up your points.
• Do not plagiarize, apart from anything else it will impact your Google rankings.
  • Instead you give credit to the original author.
• Proof read.
• Publish (after good editing and proof reading of course), but the update it in the future if there are more improvements.
• Publish consistently .
• Schedule article release to be consistent if need be.
• The ROI of the blog is organic traffic over time.
  • Try to write ‘evergreen’ posts, that are relevant for a long time.
• Put a call to action and build a subscriber list. Current readers will give you an ‘initial surge’ of traffic.
• Update old posts. Updating old posts will show Google that your content is evolving and still relevant.
• Use different mediums to spread the same message (Video / Podcasts). This gives you more reach but you’re practically saying the same thing so it helps your content stretch further.
• Don’t write intros like a high school essay.

SEO

• Target popular keywords using tools like Ahrefs, Moz or SEMrush.
• Email outreach to influencers.
• Write guest posts.
  • Find blogs you’d like to write for.
  • Check domain authority and contact those sites with high authority.
• Get people to link to you (creating backlinks).
  • Create content specifically for the people you want to link to you.
  • Link to websites on the post, make them look good and reach out to them and ask for a backlink.
• Quality over quantity. Better to have 1 good post a month than 10 crappy posts per week.
• Internal linking - one article linking to others. Good for SEO and also helps readers navigate to other content on your site.
• Social media -
  • It’s not just about pushing out posts and hoping for engagement. It’s not an RSS feed.
  • After you post, tag relevant people in it.
  • To get social engagement you have to engage in social media.
• Create amazing images
  • Tools, canva, iconfinder.
  • Create charts / graphs.
• Add videos to your page.
  • Adding videos increases the users time-on-page which is good for SEO.
  • You can create animated videos by paying people (use Fiverr or People Per Hour etc.).
• Improve load times, Google ranks pages higher if their load times are better.
  • Optimize images, use lazy-loading.
• User competitors keywords. Use an SEO tool and plug in your competitors URL and see what they’re ranking for.
  • Use their keywords and write something better.

Marketing

• Use a ‘lead magnet’, e.g. create a PDF of your post and offer it via an email signup.
  • e.g.2. download a cheatsheet for the post.
• Call to action.
  • Ask your reader to share your post.
  • Ask reader to subscribe to a newsletter.
  • Ask them to check out your app.
• Reach out to influencers.
  • (Influencer database)[https://influence.co/]
• Networking
  • Join slack groups and help people out.
  • Share other bloggers content.
• Build email lists and send your articles to them (i.e. from the call to action).
• Use your audience to pick topics.
  • Get topic ideas from questions on sites like Reddit and Quora.
  • Read comments left on your blog.
  • Use Buzzsumo to find common questions on your topic.
• Share your post in niche forums (like Reddit and Quora).
• Join social media groups related to the topic you blog about.
• Write a compelling about page. People want to read stuff from people they can relate to and connect with.
• Paid advertising - think about using paid advertising on social media, make sure to have a call-to-action and measure the conversion rate on each ad.
• Give away your best content for free. It attracts users.

Maintenance

• This helps Google rankings.
• Update old posts.
• Delete irrelevant posts.
• Check for dead links.
• Delete comments when you republish.
• Use a fast internet host.