Contents
Building a successful blog takes time, effort and hard work. Many bloggers quit way too early because they don’t see the traffic come flooding in right away.
A feeling of discouragement is understandable if you don’t see good results, but there is more to the process than just building a site and posting content. You have to find ways to get readers to your blog, and once you have them, you have to deliver on your promises.
One of the problems for many of the blogs that fail early is that the owner of the blog site just expected it to grow organically without putting much effort into getting visitors to the site. In the early stages, you have to position your blog in a way that will give it the best chance for success, and you need to develop a strategy that will spur this growth. If you want to give your new blog the best chances of success, the following tips can help to get things going when you are starting out.
Location Matters
Just like with a physical business, location can have a significant impact on your chances for success. The idea of using a free blogging platform can be attractive, but there are several benefits to going with a self-hosted blog where you own the domain name.
Self-hosting looks more professional and visitors will be more likely to take your content seriously when it is hosted on your own domain. Additionally, with a self-hosted blog, you have more control over the site and more control over your content. As a final point, search engines tend to give preference to blogs that are self-hosted, so it can give you an edge in search rankings.
If you want to go one step further, using an expired domain from a previously successful site can be a good way to start with a bit of a traffic boost. You won’t want to start out with any expired domain you find, but there are techniques you can use for finding expired domain names that will be relevant to your blog.
Read and Comment on Relevant Blogs
Getting involved with other small business blogs in your niche can also be a good way to get noticed and build connections. Research some of the blogs in your industry and find the ones you like. Subscribe to the blogs, read their content regularly and make comments on their posts.
You do not want to flood a blogger’s comments section with a bunch of short, low-value comments. If you are interested in the subject, you should be able to make comments that actually add value to the conversation. When you do this, you will get noticed by the readers, but more importantly, you might be able to build a bit of a relationship with the blogger.
Make Some Connections
If the comments you make on the posts of other bloggers are decent, there is a good chance they will respond. You may even end up having some conversations. After commenting for a little while, you can reach out to different bloggers to tell them about your site. You could reach out through the contact information on their blog, or you might want to try connecting with them through social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter.
You could even try writing some posts that connect with some of the content they have written and in the post, you could link back to their blog. When you reach out, you could tell them about the post you wrote and how you backlinked to their post. If you build a bit of a relationship with the blogger, you could then ask them if they could reciprocate by linking to your blog or if they would recommend your site to their readers.
Do Some Advertising
One of the problems for many new bloggers is that they are reluctant to invest money in helping their blog grow. While advertising does cost money, it is an investment in getting your blog going, and it can really help when you are trying to build a base of regular readers.
Advertising on the internet does not require a huge budget.
You can advertise on Facebook with a low budget, and the platform has a ton of features that can make it easy for you to reach the types of people that are most likely to read and enjoy your blog.
Try Guest Posting
Getting content up on your own site is important, but you may want to consider developing some content for other sites. This may take time, and you may have to give the content away for free, but there is some real value that comes with getting your content posted on other sites.
Find sites that either are in your niche or closely related. If you have developed some connections with other bloggers, you might be able to guest blog on their site. The key is to find blogs that have large active audiences. Once your content is featured, it can steer a significant amount of traffic to your blog.
Optimise Your Site and Posts
Steering traffic to your blog is one way to get readers, but there is also a chance that you could get organic traffic from search engines. Generally, it does take time for Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) to have a significant impact, but it is something you want to do from the very beginning.
To start, SEO is beneficial to the search engines because it makes it easier for them to properly index your site. In addition to that, it is the key to getting good rankings in the search results. You can employ a simple SEO strategy without having to invest any money, and as long as you stick with it, it will pay off in the future.
As a new blogger, you need to recognise the fact that building a big audience takes time. While the above-mentioned tips can help you when you are getting started, you still need to commit yourself to the process and have realistic expectations concerning how fast you expect your blog to grow.
“The opinions expressed by BizWitty Contributors are their own, not those of BizCover and should not be relied upon in place of appropriate professional advice. Please read our full disclaimer."
