Blogging is meant to be fun but unfortunately, sometimes it happens you find yourself struggling really hard to grow your blog, even after putting in so much effort, time and energy.
Frankly, this is not supposed to be so. But then it happens to so many bloggers, far too many times. So, are you experiencing this with your blog?
Have you put in so much energy into your blog and then it turns out you’re not getting out as much results from your effort? If you just nodded yes to this question then this post is for you.
And as you read through this post, you’re going to learn the quick proven tips to get off the struggle stage and grow your blog, even if you started blogging this year.
But before we dig into these tips, I’ll like us to recap a bit on what blogging is all about.
What is Blogging?
Blogging is the process of creating and posting web content on a website over a certain period of time, in order to achieve a certain outcome.
As a blogger, this content you’ll be posting could be anything from a video, audio or text content. It could also be case studies, white papers or even Infographics.
Usually, the purpose of making these posts is to drive a specific outcome. And this outcome is always determined by you, the blogger.
These outcomes could be things like making money off the traffic, getting new clients or getting visibility for your business.
Often times, some bloggers do not get to grow their blogs to the point where they can achieve their expected outcomes. And this can be very discouraging.
So, if you’re part of these set of bloggers, the following are the five key steps you can take to grow your blog from where it is right now, to where it needs to be;
Understand your Audience
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If you really plan to grow your blog, one of the most vital steps you need to take when you start out as a blogger is to know your audience. The moment you identify your audience, a lot of things become easier for you.
For instance, you get to know who’ll be consuming your content, where they are, the kind of content that matters to them ad the format they’d like the content to be presented to them etc.
When you have all this information, you’re already poised, to create the kind of content that will attract this kind of audience to your blog. And since you already know what matters to them, it becomes even easier to get them into becoming repeat visitors to your blog.
Create valuable Content
Content is in fact, the life wire of blogging. And it is one of the key things you need to put in place, if you really want to grow your blog.
The reason behind this is not farfetched. Content gets you the traffic. It is part of what will bring the readers over to your blog.
So, the next step you need to take to drive growth for your blog is to create content. And don’t just work on creating content; be consistent with the content creation process.
Create a content plan that will outline your content over a certain period of time, based on what works for your audience. And then put in the effort to publish this content, on a regular basis.
Beyond consistency also, another thing you need to work on to grow your blog, is the value of your content.
Do not just be satisfied with churning out content, be sure the content you’re creating adds adequate value to a potential reader, to the extent that they will prefer to come back to your blog over others.
These value could include things like making your content informative, entertaining, up to date, filled with relevant information or any other value that will make a potential consumer of your content feel satisfied, after the read or view your post.
These are part of the things that will make them bookmark your blog or come back for subsequent posts.
Build Backlink
A backlink is a link from one website to the other. Most search engines like Google use backlinks as a factor to rank the popularity of a page or website because it is believed that when one website links to another, the website that’s sending the link would have believed that the content on the receiving website is trust worthy.
Naturally, everyone wants other websites to link to theirs. And this is how it’s supposed to be but, too many times, it doesn’t just happen that way. Sometimes, you need to use your initiative to build links back to your blog.
Now, the first step you can take towards getting natural backlinks is writing great content. The kind of content that’s valuable, up-to-date, informative and well detailed with accurate information for a specific audience.
This kind of content can naturally get you back links.
Where it’s difficult to get natural backlinks, you can then use some link building strategies to get other websites to link to your blog.
These strategies can involve things like writing guest posts on other websites, requesting for link from other relevant websites or posting on forums and other web 2.0 websites to get the backlinks.
Here’s a complete guide on link building for SEO here.
PS: Remember that for this to work effectively in growing your blog; your backlink must be high quality links from reputable websites. Also, avoid black hat link building strategies and links from low quality websites.
Optimize SEO
To grow your blog effectively, you will need to put in place robust search engine optimization strategies that will make your blog visible on the search engine, drive in traffic and deliver on expected outcomes.
This is what it should be but unfortunately, a lot of bloggers do not have an SEO strategy that works. Making such mistakes as this will affect the growth of your blog to a large extent.
So, to fix this, you need to figure out your blogging goal. Find out, what does success mean to you as a blogger? Is it in getting more readers for your blog, making money off your traffic or getting visibility for your business?
Whatever it is, begin to intentionally create an SEO strategy that is in line with that goal. If your goal is to attract a large traffic for instance, build your SEO strategy around that.
With this, you’ll begin to create content around popular topics and optimize for keywords that will send in more traffic. After that, promote the content aggressively to get to as much audience as possible.
Combined with a good marketing and promotional strategy, SEO can always deliver the search engine traffic.
Promote your Blog
Blogging doesn’t start and end with creating content and posting on your blog. A lot of bloggers have made this mistake of posting content and forgetting about it entirely. You don’t want to do this if you plan to grow your blog.
So, after creating and posting your content, you need to reach out and promote it on other platforms.
It could be social media, web 2.0 platforms, forums, groups and other places with a good number of audiences that will be interested in reading your content or following through to your blog.
Doing this does three things for you, it creates visibility for your blog as a brand, gets the content across to many other readers outside your blog and also gets you a backlink to your blog.
There are a handful of plugins that automates this promotion for bloggers on WordPress. You can check out a list here by Divvy Q.
Go ahead, utilize these automation tools, to get some work load off your shoulders but beyond that, you still have to put in the effort to ensure that your promotional strategies are working.
As part of your content promotional strategies, you can also use Guest Posting and social media marketing to get the word out for your blog.
Here’s a guide on how to promote your blog online.
Final Words
There are still a lot of other strategies you can utilize to grow your blog but these are the most important ones that can get your foot to the door.
In order not to get overwhelmed, start with these ones and create some results. As you keep creating the results, you can then introduce as much more strategies while your blog continues to grow.
Remember, you can’t really grow your blog in a single day but you can take steps to grow the blog every single day.
So, there you have it. And to get more clarity on how to become a better blogger and be more equipped to grow your blog, signup for our Blogging Mastery Course where you’ll get mentorship while learning other important blogging tools.
Right now, It’s over to you. So, what are your most peculiar challenges you’ve faced as a blogger when it comes to growing your blog? I want to personally read your opinion in the comment section.
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