Blogging 101: Think it through before you begin...
You're wise to check out the basics of blogging before you begin your first post. Because, if you're posting on purpose of profit, what's the sense of going through all that work if nobody's out there reading it? So my "Blogging 101" tips have to do with determining your target market and how to build your blog post around the right keyword phrase that people are searching for. You don't need to know everything before you start blogging, but you should pay attention to these three critical tips to starting a blog...
Blogging 101: 101.1 - Determine your Target Market
What do I mean by "target market"? I mean you can't sell beef to a vegetarian, no matter how Grade A wonderful it is. Likewise, no matter how awesome you believe your product or service it, you can't sell to everyone. As the saying goes, "you can't please all the people all the time". Or better put in internet marketing terms, "you can never please all the people all the time".
So pick a target market with a "narrow niche", which means a small select group of people who you think might like your product. For example, if you're selling an online marketing training blogging platform, you'd think that everyone would want to learn how to earn money online. Right? No so. Some people aren't computer literate and have no ambition whatsoever to start learning.
So, in this example, you might pick a target market of the group of people who want to learn how to make money from blogging. Now, imagine you're in that group of people, and try to imagine what you would enter into the Google search engines to find out how to get your end product. For example, you might think of "how do I make money with my blog" as your keyword phase to build your blog around.
Blogging 101: 101.2 - Keyword Research
Now that you've determined your target market, you'll want to do a little keyword research to find out how many people are actually searching for the keyword phrase "how do I make money with my blog".
Type in your keyword phrase and click search. (The first time you do this, the system will ask you to enter a "captcha" code to prove you're really a human being.) By the way, "long tail" keyword phrases (several words) are easier to rank in the search engines, and they are usually directed to a narrower niche, so that's a good start.
You'll see that the keyword phrase we've chosen gets 1300 searches per month. Also, the CPC (cost per click) is $2.55 which is a good thing.
The CPC column will show you what people are paying for that keyword phrase. The more people pay for the phase, the more money you are likely to get; however, this also means it will be harder to rank your blog page for that phrase.
And, there's another problem here because, when you look at the competition, you'll see it has "medium" competition. So why not look for another phrase with low competition that means the same thing?
Click the tab that says "keyword ideas" to give you more ideas. In this scenario, I would maybe pick "best ways to make money blog" which gets 720 searches, or "how does a blog make money" which gets 1000 searches.
Blogging 101: 101.3 - Creating your Title
Your title should have the keyword phrase in it, preferably in the beginning. For example, look at this article where I start to "Blogging 101". That's my main keyword phrase. The second part of the title, "Three Critical Tips to Starting a Blog" is for human attention.
So begin with your keyword phrase, and end with something that will capture attention, preferably a phrase that promotes curiosity. What phrase would make you click a link if you saw it on Google?
This "Blogging 101" post should help you to hit the ground running...
These preliminary tips to starting a blog in this "Blogging 101" post should aim you in the right direction. You should start blogging right away. Don't wait until you "learn all the information", because no one actually has all the information. And, by the time you learn it all, it changes!
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