If you’re new to blogging for your e-commerce or online business, you’ve probably learned it takes a lot of work to make your voice heard. Luckily, there are blogging tips you can implement to stand out from the crowd.
For starters, could you focus on social media and SEO?
According to statistics, only 12% of bloggers do paid advertising, but 90% use social media to network. And 66% of bloggers focus on SEO.
So, if you want to get your blog noticed, those are two great places to start.
But it’s not all about numbers.
You also need to offer high-quality blog content that’s relevant and engaging. Readers will quickly lose interest if your posts are total of grammatical errors or are boring and outdated.
Consistency is essential, so please make sure you’re posting fresh, original content regularly.
Let’s dig deeper into proven ways to get your blog noticed.
According to Orbit Media’s survey on bloggers’ process and content, the following analysis revealed the most significant challenges bloggers faced:
The biggest challenge bloggers face is finding time to create and promote content. To get your blog noticed, you need to be consistent in both the quality and quantity of your posts.
In addition, could you try to develop relevant topics for your audience? Getting traffic and attracting visitors is also a significant challenge, so focus on networking and SEO. Say, for example, you provide software for field service business owners. You’ve done your research, talked to your customers, and understood that they’re looking for resources on hiring top talent in their home service fields. If this is you, something like an industry-specific salary guide could help attract visitors to your website.
Blogging requires commitment, patience, dedication, creativity, marketing skills, and more; somewhere in between, bloggers need help to attain success and sustainability.
Here are the top common mistakes bloggers make and how to overcome them:
Most beginners fail to specify their blog’s content niche, confusing readers and search engines. It is essential to be clear about the purpose of your blog from the start to maintain consistency in content and design.
How to overcome: Think about what you want your blog to achieve and who your target audience is. Once you have a clear idea of your niche, could you ensure all your content is relevant to that topic?
Also, you can redirect your focus and create a list of your passions, then evaluate your knowledge about each topic and research its competition. After that, you can choose the most appropriate niche for your blog.
Many fail to write quality content as they prioritize quantity over quality, thus decreasing readership and traffic.
When creating content, focusing on delivering value to your audience is essential instead of just trying to hit a word count.
How to overcome: Write about something you are interested in and inspired about, and research competitions regarding your chosen topic to bring something unique and new.
Also, be mindful of your audience’s interests. Also, invest time in editing and proofreading your work before publishing it. Getting someone else to read it and give you feedback is also helpful.
The tone of your writing style becomes a problem if it is too formal, monotonous, and dull. Blogs are usually personal and informal, so finding a balance in your writing is essential.
How to overcome: Write how you speak, be yourself, tell stories, and use humor. Also, keep your sentences short and easy to read. It is also helpful to use free stock images, videos, or infographics to break up text and add visual interest.
Setting the right voice or tone for your audience may go downhill if you fail to define yourself and your blog and meet their expectations.
Also, many bloggers need to remember that the voice of their blog should be consistent throughout all posts. Do not switch from first person to third person or use different tenses in a single article.
How to overcome: Determine the purpose of your blog and who your target audience is, then decide on the appropriate voice or tone for your blog. It is also helpful to read other blogs in your niche to understand what kind of voice they use. Once you know your voice well, be consistent in all your posts. Lastly, provide diverse expressions for your content and audience based on their culture, slang, and style.
Copying ideas or having the same content significantly threatens a blogging career. The best content is displayed, and you might unconsciously steal someone’s intellectual property after thinking the same idea.
Search engines punish plagiarism, and it will also lose your blog traffic and reputation.
How to overcome: When you research, please take note of the main points you want to include in your post, then paraphrase or summarize them in your own words.
Also, quoting or referencing when using the ideas of others, and potentially a paraphrasing tool, is an excellent tool if used correctly. Lastly, could you read from several online or tangible sources to widen your knowledge and mindset?
High-quality or low-quality content, one of the major setbacks for bloggers, is attracting and retaining visitors.
Less traffic also means fewer people subscribing to your blog, and this will give you a difficult time promoting your content.
How to overcome: There are many ways to increase blog traffic, but the most common and effective method is through search engine optimization or SEO. You can start by doing keyword research to find out what keywords or phrases people are using to search for content related to your blog.
Once you understand your keywords well, you can optimize your blog posts by using them in the title, throughout the camp, meta tags, meta description, and the URL. Another great way to increase traffic is through social media.
You can promote your blog posts on social media sites like Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn. You can also use paid advertising to drive traffic to your blog.
No feedback
Content with no features of any interactive elements, such as comments and reactions, will lose readership as they cannot interact, converse, and share their ideas with fellow readers and the blogger.
How to overcome: One way to overcome this is by using a comment box, adding polls, reaction buttons, and voting surveys to your blog posts, and encouraging readers to leave their thoughts and feedback. You can also add social media buttons so readers can share your content on their social media accounts.
Another great way to get feedback is by holding contests and giving prizes. This will encourage readers to leave their feedback to have a chance to win the award.
Lastly, you can also create a forum on your blog where readers can start discussions and interact with each other.
The drive of some people to pursue blogging is profitability, and having a low income is an issue for them.
This is caused by a need for more advertisements or low traffic, which lessens the chance for companies to put their ads on your blog.
How to overcome: There are many ways to make money from your blog, such as through affiliate marketing, selling products or services, and accepting donations.
But again, as said, patience is the key; continue promoting yourself to gain more popularity as it comes with more profit. You can also find other sources of income while waiting to become a famous blogger.
Blog traffic mostly begins when people visit a link or a site-directed to you. It can be through words, questions, or phrases looked up on a search engine.
The best way to maintain organic traffic is by identifying marketable keywords that fit the business and making content. There are several sources you can choose from to draw visitors to your website, including:
You can also connect your blog to your Twitter account to share your posts automatically. This will allow you to save time and share your blog posts regularly, thus increasing the chance of getting more clicks.
One important tip for getting your blog noticed is using search engine optimization (SEO) techniques.
SEO helps make your home page easily accessible for visitors and enables effective blog indexing and crawling through search engines. Additionally, it can help to organize and design your sitemap so it is clickable and easy to access the blog’s content.
Lastly, SEO can enhance your content with HTML, subjects, and search engine-friendly keywords.
There are many other ways to get your blog noticed. For example, you can submit your blog to directories, post comments on other blogs, and participate in online forums. You can also use social media to promote your blog.
Here are some practical SEO guidelines for successful blogging:
On-page search engine optimization – These are internal measures to improve standing in search rankings. Considerations to include for effective optimization:
Off-page search engine optimization – refers to activities used externally on other sites (outside of your own) that influence your site’s visibility and ranking in SERPs.
When engaged in off-page SEO, it’s best practice to use caution so that tactics employed do not violate Google Webmaster Guidelines, which could lead to penalization from the search engine giant.
A few popular (and generally safe) methods of off-page optimization include:
John Martyn, Content Manager at Brightest Minds (a lead generation agency), says link-building does more than build authority for your company’s website; it also impacts your brand for the better. If you’re starting, several examples of “dos and don’ts” are also in this article.
Technical search engine optimization – meets the technical standards of present search engines by improving the technical elements of your site that will help boost your web page in search rankings. When it comes to technical SEO optimization, there are a lot of technical SEO factors to consider. From ensuring your website is accessible and easy to navigate to optimizing your site for search engine crawlers, there’s a lot to ensure your site is ready for organic traffic.
Another tip to get your blog noticed is through social media promotion. Social media is a great platform to market and promote selling points, such as content and brand, of any type or business, including blogging. You can also create and edit videos using an Online video editor and share them on different social media platforms for promotion.
According to Search Engine Journal’s survey poll question, the social platforms that contribute the most to their website are:
By utilizing the proper strategies in social media marketing, bloggers can increase their blog’s popularity and brand awareness.
Some effective methods to promote blog content on social media are as follows:
Engaging in communities is a great way to network with other bloggers and build relationships. Commenting on others’ blogs, featuring other bloggers, and reading others’ content are all effective ways to encourage reciprocity.
Additionally, joining and participating in communities relevant to your blog’s niche can help you learn new things, share your content, and gain valuable backlinks.
Utilizing e-mail as a promoting platform provides versatility in marketing, such as using custom or email marketing templates to design email automation.
Email can be used to Issue a newsletter with blog updates and other information related to your niche or industry. Some of the effective e-mail marketing tactics include:
Link building is a strategic practice that connects other websites to your website or webpage through a link to increase search engine visibility, boost website traffic, and raise page rank in search engines.
It is another way to promote a blog and surge readership that provides multiple opportunities to become a frontrunner and an authoritative voice in the field or industry. Here are some techniques for an effective link-building strategy:
Here are some popular ways to build backlinks:
Digital PR – earn backlinks by creating quality, linkable resources and introducing them to appropriate journalists and publications. People will automatically reference you as a source if you produce in-depth, engaging, and accurate help. Sources such as:
Resource link building – is a simple yet effective way to get backlinks through resource pages providing a curated collection of links for any topic. Example of topics:
Broken link building – is a tactic of finding broken links from other sites and suggesting or offering site owners to replace broken links with an alternative page from your site.
Linking brand mentions – there are cases when your site is mentioned across the web but with no links attached, and the possible solutions are to reach out to the webmaster to link your site or to use digital tools to link your site, such as a brand monitoring tool and link building tool.
Supplier links – if you sell your own or other people’s products, you can contact the supplier to list your website as one of the retailers to increase backlinks.
Business Association links – if you are a business association member or joined one, find the members page and ask the site administrator to add you if not listed. You can also offer to write an article for the blog or website in exchange for a backlink.
Listicle link building – listicles are listed articles where you can ask the site to feature your brand or business site on their lists to increase your backlinks and traffic. Listicle examples:
Link gap analysis – conducting link gap analysis opens backlink opportunities by finding sites that link to your competitors and using them to earn the same quality of backlinks or even surpass them, as long as you can justify.
Skyscraper technique – the best of the best automatically draws people’s attention, and this technique is finding successful content that gained a lot of links and traffic, then writing better content from it and promoting it to become a skyscraper-like structure in your space and industry; hence, people will link it if the content is excellent. When writing the content, keep these in mind:
Help a Reporter Out (HARO) – is a tactic where you earn links from the press by sending journalists relevant sources to their queries. They will usually give you a link to your website or blog to thank you for your help. HARO link building is a fantastic way to build credibility for your website by getting featured in authoritative publications.
Provide reviews – writing a blog to review a product or service may earn you backlinks by notifying the site owners you mentioned. Your content may be linked or featured within their sites or social media platforms. It may also draw the audience to view your review content, earning additional backlinks and traffic.
I’ve found many ways to promote blog content and get noticed effectively.
The important part is to test a few, see which ones work best for you, and then focus on expanding them.
How have you promoted your ecommerce blog? What strategies worked best for you and your team?
