Why Your Blog Needs a Good SEO Strategy

It requires a bit of technicalities to set up a good blog. Experts advise that no one should try to learn everything about blogging at once and right from the word go. The process is gradual and takes some bit of learning on the job.  It is best to begin with and to learn from the basics as you make progress in your blogging efforts. Once you begin and start getting some results, it acts as the tonic and motivation to encourage you to learn more and to do more. One of the things you’ll learn along the way is SEO strategy which from my own experience appears to be the hardest part of blogging. Every blogger really needs it because without it, search engines will tend to ignore your blog in its entirety. If that happens, your blog loses out in the much needed traffic which search engines would’ve been sending to it.
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No doubt Search Engine Optimization, SEO, involves a bit of technicalities which experts can help you with if you are not too sure you can handle it on your own. It is very important you get a good SEO strategy in place. How the search engines find your blog and send traffic to it depends hugely on your SEO strategy. It is about the most challenging aspect of blogging and it must be done right at all times because a huge percentage of the traffic expected in your blog will be sent by search engines. Simply put, SEO is a way of playing around with and position keywords in your blog posts to enable them rank high in search results. The higher they rank, the more people find them and the higher traffic your blog gets. You can use web tools like Google Search Console, Ahrefs, UberSuggest and the likes to research keywords to know what people are searching for most and how best to use such keywords in your posts to take advantage of these popular searches. That is how SEO works.

When you are getting started as a blogger, it is very essential to have a good SEO strategy. With it in place, search engines will be sending you free and high-quality targeted traffic. This is about the best organic traffic you can get on the internet. You cannot afford to miss out on it. A good SEO strategy positions your blog in very good stead to receive this traffic steadily. If you are not too sure of what to do, don’t allow the technicalities involved to discourage you. There is a way out. You can arrange to work with WordPress because it has a content management system which is optimised for search engines by default. With a good web-hosting, lightweight theme and SEO WordPress plugins, it helps you to find your way around many technicalities involved in developing your own SEO strategy. With your blog linked to WordPress, you are all set to receive organic traffic courtesy of search engines.

That is one SEO problem resolved. The second is how to research the demand for various keywords related to your blog niche. This is where you’ll need to sign up with Google Search Console and Google Analytics. These tools will help measure your traffic inflow and even the sources of the traffic. They let you know exactly what keywords people are using to find your blog posts on the internet. As part of your own SEO strategy, these same popular keywords can be deployed to write more content for better search results.

Aside Google Search Console, you can also take a look at other keyword research tools to find out which works best for you. Some of such user-friendly tools are:

Google's Auto-Suggest: As you type in a keyword in Google, it will automatically show you suggestions for longer tail keywords. These keywords are showing up because people are searching for them in Google. The reason Google is suggesting them to you.
UberSuggest: A free keyword research tool.
Ahrefs: A keyword research tool for deep researches.

Last line! Even though SEO is a blogging technicality, you should not allow all the technical analysis to demotivate you. In blogging world, you can always manage to find your way around many technicalities even if you are a newbie. What is important is to first have a blog running. Along the way, you can learn about more technical things and how to go around some of the technicalities. That is what all bloggers are doing in our highly saturated and competitive blogging world.

 

Can Blogging Really Be a Legitimate Business?

 Blogging is something anyone can do provided they have the passion, knowledge and expertise. It is a legitimate business to the extent that it does not go against any known laws regulating legitimate businesses anywhere in the world. Not every blogger gets to make money and lives on blogging as many people do in other businesses. Successful blogging takes patience, persistence and dedication over a prolonged period of time. Expert bloggers believe that blogging can become a legitimate business career if the blogger can successfully latch on to all the available opportunities to generate revenue through affiliate networks, brand partnerships and even speaker engagements.  


 
Some of such revenue opportunities many bloggers do make money from, include but not limited to:

#1. Display ads. Measured with Google Adsense where income comes from PPV, pay per view or PPC pay per click.
#2. Affiliate Display ads. Income comes from agreed percentage in commissions from products actually purchased from ads displayed on your website as an Affiliate Marketer.
#3. Sale of E-books.
#4. Fees from Webinars.
#5. Sale of how-to videos.
#6. Earned fees from Packaged Courses and Speaker Engagements.
#7. Direct payments for display ads to announce or promote Events or Products.
#8. Earned fees for letting others market with your Email list.
#9. Earned fees for helping to run surveys on your blog.
#10. Fees from Resource Magazine or Bulletin subscription.

Many bloggers need 2-5 hours daily to develop and add good content to their blogs. That is really time consuming and quite engaging as most other businesses are. This precious time that you may be investing in your blog is similar to what other people invest in their businesses. It needs to be compensated for as well. That compensation somehow comes from the earnings you get from the blog. It counts as legitimate business earnings. Without these earnings from your blogging efforts, it will be very difficult to admit that what you are doing qualifies for a business.

For most bloggers, making money with their blog is readily their most important objective for blogging. The reason they take it as a legitimate business. The better and more consistent they become at it, the more money they make. Many bloggers make averagely $5,000-$20,000 per year with some even posting much higher figures. These revenues come from one of or a combination of the many streams of revenue making opportunities in blogging. That is business no doubt.

Many bloggers now proudly introduce themselves as bloggers to other persons. Some even carry complementary cards identifying them as professional bloggers. These people see blogging as a legitimate business and publicly identify themselves with it. There are persons now known as celebrity bloggers who appear to earn well, live fabulously well and mix freely with the high and mighty in the society. That looks like acceptability which other good businesses confer on people as well. It thus appears that blogging has become a lucrative business judging from the way it has taken off in recent times all over the globe.

These days, anyone who has what it takes can make a career out of blogging. Some few years ago, blogging was considered a mere hobby. That notion has since changed with many high flyer bloggers springing up around the globe.  Everyone now agrees that there are very strong revenue opportunities for content creators who manage to generate a large audience and are very focused and consistent at giving out good quality content which this large audience likes and appreciates. These content creators are great bloggers who see themselves as business persons.



Just like most other businesses, blogging has its own challenges some of which can be very huge and discouraging. One of the biggest challenges within the blogging world now is saturation. Some recent studies project that the number of bloggers in the United States alone will exceed 30 million by year 2020. Now, that is a huge challenge for most bloggers around the world since they all depend on the same cyberspace to get noticed and to struggle to make some impact. However, for those bloggers who have the ability to think outside the box and are able to create interesting content consistently in an ever-changing technological landscape, there is hope. Experts believe such bloggers will be able to excel just like it is in many other businesses which thrive irrespective of stiff competition. Things at times do not pan out to be that easy though because blogging is business, real business, remember?