You will find the answers to your question in this free guide [www.seofingers.com/blogging-ideas] of becoming a successful blogger.

How To Start A Blog The Right Way In 2018 [A Comprehensive Guide].

For many peeps, running a website or owing a blog has only been a dream or a wish.

It is a fact to state that many aspiring bloggers are yet to understand the nitty-gritty of how they can start their journey into the blogosphere NOW rather than later.

To others, it seems unachievable because they have failed in their previous attempt to crack down the ‘How’ of making a living out of blogging.

If you find yourself in the mentioned categories, I have painstakingly put together this comprehensive guide to take you through all you need to get started as a newbie blogger and earn a living out of it.

But before I walk you through this guide, permit me to share my novey-dovey 3 years’ experience as a full-time blogger.

Unlike many, my journey into the blogosphere wasn’t a deliberate choice or decision, rather, it happened by chance in late 2016.

A childhood friend of mine got the idea about blogging from his friend who has successfully built a blogging empire that rakes in at least $10,000 monthly.

Together with his new bride, he traveled down to his friend’s location to get trained on how he can make passive income from blogging even though he was reluctant to commit to it on a full-time basis due to his Architecture profession.

Afterwards, he realised blogging demands a lot of commitment and equally time-consuming which invariably prompted him to think of someone he can trust to handle his newly established news blog.

He recognised I’ve got some decent writing skills to produce fresh contents and quite available to commit more time to the blog than him.

He put a call through and intimated me about his blogging ideas and how he thinks we can make it work and earn a decent living from it.

We had a lengthy discussion about the sharing formula and other important issues that are often contained in a partnership deed.

Then, I kick-started my journey into the blogging world and in two years, a lot has changed from being a total blog novice to an SEO Consultant.

In this guide, I will provide more insights into all I’ve learned along the way as a full-time blogger.

What Is Blogging?

Blogging is the act of providing informational or inspirational blog contents on a hosted website, mostly with the aim of reaching out to a target audience on specific topics or niches.

What Is A Blog?

A blog or weblog is the medium through which information or contents are published in form of blogposts, images, infographics, videos, podcasts and webinars.

The blogosphere is a constellation or community of all online blogs across the World Wide Web.

Why Start A Blog?

I can tell you this for free, there are no wrong reasons to start your blog today.

That said, I will give you some quick reasons why you should start a blog Now rather than later.

#1. To Share Your Thoughts And Be A Voice

Psychologically, it is a valid saying that there are millions of productive thoughts that go through the mind of everyman daily, yet only a few get voiced.

Therefore, if this assertion resonates with you, I believe you should launch a blog to share your thoughts with the waiting audience who are looking forward to getting an answer or a solution.

Your decision to start a blog today will arguably position you as a problem-solver to a waiting audience.

#2. To Showcase Your Passion

Yes, if you know how to create helpful contents about anything you're passionate about, you need to start a blog immediately.

Do you think you’ve got some passion for IT, Music, Teaching, Preaching, Writing, Project management, Herbal Medicine, Sports, Entertainment, Design and Interior decorations, Childcare, Humanitarian, Governance and many more?

Why not start a blog today and showcase your talents and passion to the global audience?

#3. To Build A Personal or Corporate Brand

You must consider operating a blog on your official business website if you are a budding entrepreneur or a business owner-whether a Start-up, Small-Medium Enterprise [SME] or a quoted company.

Operating a blog on your website will aid in brand promotion through your blog contents and content marketing.

For example, if your entity sells high-tech products such as drones, it is essential that your marketing department reach out to potential clients about the importance and usage of drones.

Even though there are other paid mediums like Search Engine Marketing (SEM) or Google Ads and Facebook Ads [to mention a few] through which a product be marketed to the public, yet, operating a blog helps in promoting the product for free using search engine optimization techniques.

When Should You Start A Blog?

‘’The best time to plant a seed was two decades ago, the second-best time is NOW’’-Old Chinese Proverb.

Yeah! The blogosphere has evolved over time and the competition is getting more keen than usual.

With frequent changes in search engine algorithms from Google PageRank to Google Panda, Google Penguin to Google Hummingbird, it is clear that the understanding of these algorithms will further deepen your skill to beat off some existing competitions in the search engine.

Therefore, no need to wait any longer, Create a blog NOW!

What Are Profitable Blogging Niches?

One common blogging mistake we made as a newbie blogger was our inability to understand the importance of focusing on a niche, especially a profitable blogging niche.

In my opinion, we ventured into some categories of niches that was already saturated and has a low ROI until we discovered that if we keep doing the same thing, we will continue to get the same result.

Although we were left us frustrated and discouraged the moment we acquired the understanding that if we are really interested in succeeding as a blogger, we need to reset our blogging journey.

Hence, it is important you pick a clue from our mistake and get things right before you invest a lot of time and resources into your new blog.

Here are profitable niches that will see you get a massive audience and a higher ROI if the right effort is invested.

 Nutrition Niche.
 Health & Fitness Niche.
 Finance Niche.
 Business Niche.
 Entertainment Niche.
 Blogging Niche.
 Search Engine Optimization Niche.
 Technology Niche.
 Food Niche.
 Dating or Relationship Niche.
 Sports Niche.
 Automobiles Niche.
 Money Making Niche.

The listed niches above are blog niches you should consider before getting started.

However, much more than the listed niches, it is important for you to discover that niche where you can easily find your voice and create helpful blog posts.

This is because blogging has a lot to do with creating contents and you need to show some good grasp of a niche to frequently create useful blog contents.

Common Mistakes To Avoid Before Launching Your Blog

The success of a new blog starts with getting the little details right and avoiding these common blogging mistakes from the word ‘go’.

#1. Niche And Not Niches

Back in 2016 when we launched our news blog, we had little insight into some basic information that rightly positions a new blog for success, one of which centered around creating blog posts for a niche rather than different niches on a single blog.

The reason why it is advisable to concentrate on a niche is that it obviously allows a new blog to get easily and quickly identified by the search engine robots or crawler.

Ooh, you might think that creating contents for web pages on different niches will allow you to extend your reach and ultimately drive more audience from different sphere of interests.

As reasonable as this claim seems, it simply doesn’t work that way in the blogosphere.

You need to know that a blog niche often has sub-categories for example; A fashion blog could be sub-divided into the following blog pages…
Men’s Fashion, Women’s Fashion, Corporate wears, Native wears and Kid’s Fashion.

All these are sub-categories under the umbrella of a Fashion niche.

Therefore, there is no reason why you cannot reach a larger audience when you focus on a niche.

All you need to do is to have a blogging strategy on how to reach out to all the sub-categories enlisted on your blog.

#2. Failure To Optimize For Search Engine.

This mistake is most common among newbie bloggers, yet it has a lot to do in helping your blog gain authority and visibility.

Before launching your blog or e-commerce website, I will advise that you should take an e-course about search engine optimization (SEO).

This important move will expose you to a lot of information on how to create a well-optimized content to rank your contents on search engine results pages (SERPs) using Keyword Research and link-building techniques.

#3. Not building An E-mail List.

It is very important that you collect e-mails from visitors who landed on your website home page.

This is because research shows that daily blog visitors are mostly new and do not return to keep abreast with the fresh contents published.

Therefore, to establish an immediate chord between the new visitor and your brand, you need to keep an effective e-mail list anytime you realize your blog is getting some reasonable number of daily visitors.

Furthermore, an e-mail list is an asset to your business and helps in promoting any product offer or services to a waiting audience.

You can consider integrating the popular e-mail marketing brands like MailChimp or Convertkit to help build your blog e-mail list.

#4. Not Diversifying Our Monetization Stream

This point is reasonable to get you to understand the need to diversify the monetization of your blog.

Moreover, you will soon find out that blogging requires some financial investment if you are serious about getting it done the right way.

Therefore, I’ll like to consider that you are aspiring to own a blog not only to offer a voice in your area of interest but ultimately to make money and earn a decent living.

I always admonish newbies to create two income possibilities for their new blogs using Google AdSense and Affiliate Marketing. [As you read on, I will soon offer more insights into these blog monetization methods].

#5. Choosing a Wrong Domain Name, Blog Theme, and Web Host

Nothing is more frustrating than operating a blog site that showcases a poor user experience.

Before starting a blog, you need to choose a domain name, Content Management System and Web hosting platform.

I advise that you avoid free blog themes or free web hosting packages. You’ve got to know that things offered for free do not give total freedom in the real sense.

Therefore, you’ve got to spend some dollars to install a good web host, responsive WordPress theme, and a domain name.

In hindsight, we fell short of this important point when we started our news blog back in 2016.

Starting from the domain name to the website theme and blog hosting, we never really did anything right in this aspect.

In our quest to cut our start-up expenses, we choose a cheap web host that frustrated most of our early efforts as a new blogger.

The downtime of this web host is on the high side with a very poor customer support which took days before getting a response.

For our blog theme, it lacked responsive features and never really did well on mobile devices.

This made our blog experience a high bounce-rate which often results in keeping our income analytics low.

Lastly, it is important to avoid registering a domain name that is not related to your brand or business.

The reason for this is because your domain name should resonate with your brand and create a brand identity when a new user hops into your landing page.

For example, if you are in a food niche, you can target to create a domain name like XYZFoods.com, XYZDishes.com, XYZCuttleries.com or XYZTaste.com.

The idea is to ensure that your choice domain contains a generic phrase that rightly defines a food niche.


However, if you are building a personal blog identity, you can use your name or initials to get started.

How To Drive Traffic To Your New Blog

After setting up your new blog, the next hurdle and quite important to all bloggers is how to drive blog traffic.

This is because you can create a good and helpful blog post but if no one is clicking to check it out, it becomes a toothless weapon.

Hence, its high time you understood how to get your contents out there to the waiting blog readers.

Majorly, your new blog can get traffic using the following methods;

 Search Engine Optimization (Local SEO).
 Search Engine Marketing (SEM).
 Pinterest SEO.
 Social Media platforms like; Facebook, Google+, Instagram, Twitter, and YouTube.
 Community Forums like; Reddit, Nairaland, Quora, and StumbleUpon respectively.

However, let me state clearly that you need to understand where your blog niche audience hangout in relation to choosing the most effective platform to share your blog contents and drive traffic.

Also, avoid trying to incorporate all these mediums into your content marketing strategy.

All you need do is to gain a mastery of maybe one or two at a time and when you’ve carved a presence for your brand, you can then opt to explore other platforms to expand your content reach.

How To Monetize Your New Blog.

Earlier in this guide, I revealed that it is important that you create monetization streams for your blog to maximize the ROI.

After setting up a blog, there are effective blog monetization methods which will see you earn money from it.

These methods include;
 Google AdSense.
 Affiliate Marketing.
 Selling Advert Space.
 Selling E-courses or product.

Google AdSense: This remains a veritable monetization method for any new blog. All you need is to apply for Google AdSense website monetization through this link.

However, your site should have some reasonable and helpful content coupled with a seamless user experience to get approved according to the Google AdSense policy guidelines.

Affiliate Marketing: This blog monetization method is globally used by the newbies including the established bloggers.

It entails an Affiliate partner getting a pre-agreed commission on every product bought by a customer or blog visitor through an affiliate link which has been embedded on a blog content.

There are popular brands like Amazon and Clickbank offering some huge commissions through their Affiliate programs.

However, it is important you establish a very good understanding of affiliate products you need to promote in order to realize huge turnover.

There are some affiliate programs that pay as high as $18 per product sale and you could even receive $800 in commission if your niche features some high paying products like Automobiles, sophisticated Gadgets, and high-tech products.

Selling Advert Space: If you’ve got some reasonable number of traffic monthly, you can decide to offer your audience some Ad space on your blog to promote their products or services.

The rate at which you’ll charge for each Ad space depends on the number of traffic you generate and the size of the Ad banner.

Selling E-courses, Product or Services: Many bloggers also sell their know-how through e-courses and charge a subscription fee.

If you’ve got some reasonable number of customer base on your e-mail list, you can strategically create a product or e-course towards helping them acquire a better understanding on a subject matter related to your niche.

This monetization method gives you the freedom to set a revenue target on a monthly basis.

How To Create Contents For Your New Blog

Content creation is a vital tool employed in building trust with your audience and blog visitors.

You must understand that creating helpful content for your blog will help promote your brand and weblog.

In creating blog contents, you need to have a good grasp of carrying out a Keyword Research and SEO Copywriting.

Gone are the days when bloggers loosely churn out contents that have no real significance to users. If you are serious about blogging the right way, you should get some basic training in Keyword Research and how to write for SEO.

The reason for engaging in Keyword research before creating a blog post is to ensure that your keyword resonates with what the users are interested in and not what you think would please or interest them.

You’ve got to understand also that the motive behind every post you create on your blog is to help your audience and not necessarily to soothe your feelings or sentiments.

Furthermore, it is important that you install plugins like Yoast SEO plugin on your WordPress website which will help you properly optimize your blog content for the search engine.

In the body texts of your blog, it is equally important that you include some images, video, infographics or webinars which are relevant to the choice keyword on your content and optimize the ALT tag, meta tags and meta descriptions appropriately.

You can get new blog images and infographics using stock photos websites like Canva, Shutterstock, and Pexels.

How To Get New Content Ideas for Your Blog

As you advance in your blogging career, you should expect to experience moments of blankness in terms of content ideas that would interest your audience.

Hey! Don’t fret..this happens to everybody.

To always ensure your blog offers fresh contents, you need to understand how to get topics and interests that will keep your blog readers coming back.

Therefore, you can join Facebook, Quora or Reddit community forums focused on your niche.

Also, endeavor to check out influencers in your blog niche and follow the trending topics they focus on from time to time.

On a Final Note…

Your level of success in blogging is determined by many factors ranging from the amount of information available to you to get it right, finance, skill amongst others.

However, the major factor why many failed as a blogger is that they assume it is a cash-cow industry that rakes in huge returns in the short-term.

Well, if you understand how to get it right from the word 'GO', you can make some huge profit from it at the turn of a calendar year like Alex and Lauren of Createandgo and Avocadu.com did in their first year of blogging.

Much more, you must be dedicated to learning and finding new ways to beat off your competition in a very dynamic blogosphere.

I wish you all the best in your blogging career.


Source: https://seofingers.com/blogging-ideas/

If you claim to be a digital marketing expert and desire to get your product, services or web pages on the first page of search engines, it is important that you embrace the mastery of SEO Copywriting.

But more importantly, it is valid to state categorically that in the Digital marketing industry, what works a decade ago will not totally get you the expected result in 2018.

This is due to the dynamic nature of the information technology world which is consistently driven by innovation.
Therefore, before I launch deep into SEO Copywriting best practices that work in 2018, it is important for me to expose you [in case you are a newbie] to what SEO is all about.

What is SEO?

SEO is an acronym used for ‘’Search Engine Optimization’’.

SEO is a digital marketing area that focuses on the process of getting a web page ranked for an increased visibility on the web search engine anytime a searcher submits a text search, image search or a video search otherwise called ‘’Query’’.

Most importantly, the organic results displayed to the searcher on the first page of a web search engine are presumed to be the best results arranged often arranged in a descending order of importance or relevance.

What is SEO Copywriting?

SEO Copywriting is the technical process through which you can create a webpage content on your website to give it a chance of ranking high on web search engines and get organic free traffic to your website.

Central to this definition is to tell you that there are other ways you might be willing to consider if you desire to get your webpage on the front page of search engines.

This can also be through the paid approach otherwise known as Search Engine Marketing-an example is the popular Google AdWords.

Funnily, many webmasters still adopt some archaic methods of SEO Copywriting which includes stuffing of keywords [this is the process of repeating the focus keyword of a page severally in the texts]. This approach no longer works!

For the White SEO experts, SEO Copywriting is central to everything that makes them avoid the Black-Hat approach; which often comes in paying advertising agencies to build link farms for their web pages.

#1 Install Yoast SEO Plugin On WordPress

Yoast SEO is a free SEO plugin on WordPress, often used by publishers to ensure the text content meets some basic SEO standards before the webpage(s) gets created or published for indexing by a crawler.

To install the Yoast SEO Plugin on WordPress, follow these quick steps;

• Login to your WordPress Dashboard.
• Locate ‘Plugins’ on the Left-hand side of your WordPress Dashboard.
• Click on ‘Add New’ option.
• Go to the ‘Installed Plugins’ option and ‘Activate’ Yoast SEO Plugin.

#2 Carryout A Keyword Research

Keyword research is essential to discovering what I like to call ‘’Marketable keyword(s)’’.

There are some free Keyword research tools like Soovle and Keyword.io which help publishers discover some important statistics about a keyword.

To carry out a Keyword Research using Google AdWords Planner, follow these steps;

 Click on the Google AdWords URL
 Login using your Gmail account to get into Google AdWords dashboard.


• In evaluating the marketability of your chosen keyword, pay attention to;

• The search volume of the keywords either on a monthly or yearly basis.
• The level of difficulty to beat the competition on the existing top-ranked web pages [You will find this information by using a paid SEO tool like MozPro, SEMrush or Ahrefs.

In addition to the suggested SEO tools, you can check out kwfinder.com for longtail keywords with low SEO competition.


#3 Insert A Keyword In Title Tag Of Your Content.

When a searcher submits a query to the search engine, the query submitted is often expressed as ‘’Focus Keyword’’ or a ‘’Long-Tail Keyword’’.
Furthermore, for search engine robotic crawler to easily understand what your webpage is centered on, it is important for you to always have an H1 title that is in sync with the keyword of your blog title.

A slight tweak to the old-fashioned method of Keyword stuffing is to ensure your content have multiple sub-titles otherwise known as H2s that are equally relevant to the choice Keyword.

#4 Avoid Common Words Or Stop Words In Your Title Tag

When creating your content for SEO, ensure you compose your texts in a robotic way.

Hmmmm…hilarious or dump suggestion you’ll say? Wait before you jump into conclusion and read on.

The search engine crawler is a robot and it seeks to analyze submitted queries by interpreting them using its integrated programming language and not the familiar human linguistic expression.

For example;

Human sentence: The Lion devoured its prey
Robot Sentence: Lion devoured prey
Robot Analysis: Lion, predator, animal, jungle, carnivores and so on.

Therefore, when engaging in Copywriting for SEO, you should avoid featuring stop words like {‘a’, ‘it’, ‘are’ ‘to’, ‘where’, ‘what’, ‘by’} in your permalink H1 title.

#5 Include Related ‘Theme Words’’ To Your Content Title.

Before kick-starting your Copywriting for SEO, find out some theme words related to your content title.

Related ‘’theme words’’ are words that can be classified in a similar category with your chosen Keyword(s) and while you write out your content, you should include them in the body texts.

Usually, you can find these words at the base of web search engines as shown in the image below.

The reason for finding related terms to your choice Keyword is to help a copywriter cover all the essential elements that better explain the subject or focus of our content.

In addition, it helps SEO Copywriters get a clear blueprint or outline while drafting the body text of their post.

Other methods through which you can get related search or terms to your chosen keyword include;

• Using the Google AdWords tool to discover related terms or Keywords
• Finding the related Wikipedia article(s) and identify the major categories being discussed.
• Search your Keyword [use incognito window] to find out the related terms integrated by the top 10 web pages in their respective content.

For example: Suppose your choice Keyword is Cryptocurrency.

Quickly engage in searching for related keyword or terms using the techniques suggested in [Best Practice 5 above], you can come up with this content outline for keyword ‘Cryptocurrency’

• Meaning of Cryptocurrency.
• How does Cryptocurrency work?
• Cryptocurrency Mining.
• Types of Cryptocurrency.
• Cryptocurrency Market Index.
• Digital Currency.

The outlines could go on so far it supports your choice keyword throughout the body text and equally provide a comprehensive detail which is favorable to the Header 1.

#6 Include Images Or Videos And Optimize The ‘Alt’ Tag.

For a content to be best suited for SEO, it is important to include images and videos in preferred sections of the body texts while you also optimize them accordingly.

To optimize these features, you need to include the choice keyword of your content in the ‘ALT’ tag provided by your Content Management System (CMS).

Always ensure that you take note of this point because as ignorable as it might seem, optimizing the ‘alt’ tag of the images has a lot of impact in getting your content suited for the top search engine.

#7 Avoid Making Grammatical Blunders

This point cannot be over-emphasized in SEO Copywriting.

Making unpardonable grammatical blunders in your body texts could be a turn-off for your webpage visitor.

Mind you, should your audience discover a lot of unignorable blunders in the paragraphs of your content, they might never bother to read through your highly-worded content which could affect your Bounce-rate.

I recommend that you install Grammarly, which is a free writing assistant that help publishers auto-correct some mis-spellings and grammatical errors.


#8 Insert Choice Keyword In The First Paragraph

It is essential for you to insert the chosen keyword in the first sentence of your content.

This practice is very valid as it helps the search engine crawler to quickly relate with the content as it is expressed in the focus keyword.

Also, if you desire to see your top-ranked content get more favorable click-through-rate than other displayed results on the top page of search engine, endeavor to write an inviting introductory statement.

#9 Keep Your Title Length Short And Well Optimized

As an SEO Copywriter, you need to understand the different features in your body texts which search engine robots get to demystify easily without much ado.

Unfortunately, many webmasters often fall short of this simple but very essential practice by leaving a lengthy title in their meta description.
As shown in the Blue circled image below, a well optimized should be short and each word separated using hyphens (-) and not an underscore (_).


#10 Insert Relevant Links In Selected Texts.

You need to understand the importance of link-building as an SEO Copywriter.

Text links could be internal links which often lead a web visitor to another related webpage within your website or to other websites often called outbound link.

In the image above, the red circled sign on the WordPress new page indicates the link-insertion tool.

#11 Produce An Helpful Article Of Not Less Than 2,000 Words.

According to research carried out on selected top-ranked web pages, articles not less than 2,000 words often secure the first page on the search engine after a searcher submits a query.

However, it is equally important that you keep your content engaging and helpful to your prospective webpage visitors.
Well, you may argue that online searchers often prefer the shorty articles which they could peruse as quickly as possible.
Nevertheless, as reasonable as this view might seem, the fact is that the more helpful and engaging your content is, the better it gets ranked in the search engine.

#12 Include Numbers And Hashtags

Many leading social media platforms increase the visibility of their posts using hashtags, often represented by the sign [#].

Suffix to the foregoing, it is equally essential for SEO Copywriters to insert numbers or statistical data in their title tags or body text.

These simple tips provide more and in-depth guide helping the crawler rank your web pages as it is relevant per time.

For example; you will agree with me that the SEO strategies that worked back in 2010 no longer has much relevance in the year 2018, right?

Therefore, if you agree with this statement, should a searcher submit a query to web search engine today, the results displayed will show the relevance of the present time and not the well-optimized content submitted to the engine back in 2010.

#13 Integrate Related Unique Words In Your Body Texts.

Friends, know that if a newly submitted webpage to the search engine does not showcase a spot of difference or uniqueness from its already ranked competitor in the search engine, it will not displace the top competition.

The way Google determines if you’re contributing a new point of view that worth beaming to the top of the rankings is what I refer to as ‘’footprints’’.

Footprints could either be a positive or negative one depending on how the search engine crawler interprets all the data included in your content.

The footprint is positive when new words featured in the SEO optimized article compared to other top-ranked web pages, while it is negative when there are no new ‘value-added’ words.

Hence, if you want your content to hit the top spot in search engine rankings, research on unique words which other competing web pages do not showcase or feature.

#14 Use Long-Tail Keywords.

Long-tail keywords are the combination of three to four keyword phrases which are closely related to whatever you are selling.

If you operate an e-commerce website, whenever a customer uses a highly specific search phrase, they tend to be looking for exactly what they are going to buy. Examples include; Blue men’s shoes, Thick Winter Cardigan, Hard Tennis Racket and so on.

Therefore, for your web pages to beat the competition for a less competitive keyword, ensure you often include long-tail keywords in the body text of your web pages or even the header title.


#15 Improve Your Knowledge On SEO Copywriting

Finally, as much as you think you’ve gotten a grasp about SEO copywriting, it is advisable that you keep upgrading your skill and knowledge about new methods which are being introduced from time to time.

Should you desire to hire an SEO Copywriting expert or trainer who will guide you through the fundamentals of creating a well-ranked SEO optimized webpage.


Source: https://seofingers.com/seo-copywriting/