Greetings everyone, I hope we’ve all managed to get over the US election buzz and that things are starting to get back to a bit of normality. But on the subject of the election, did anyone else notice there was a massive drop off in promotional mails received on election day - I thought my email had stopped working until I realized what day it was!
Although if you cast your mind back to last week, I’d like to bet the vast majority of you received an email promoting a certain blogging eBook - blogging to the bank. (No affiliate link because I don’t recommend you buy the product!)
I’m sure that the author sold loads of copies, so well done to him, but it got me thinking. Are there really any “secrets” to creating a successful blog?
Now without wanting to sound too big headed, I’d say this blog was fairly successful. It averages around 200 hits each day, has a loyal following of regular readers (I know who you are!), and receives around 1,000 visitors each month from Google alone for various different keywords. Take a look at the screen shots below.
Now I didn’t achieve these results by using any sort of secret method, so here are my 3 main points to running a successful blog.
1. You Need Good Content
This is the most important aspect of ANY successful blog. You can install all of the fancy plugins you like, but they will all be worthless if your content is rubbish!
As an example, just take a look to your right and spend 10 minutes looking through the archive of this blog. You can see that I’ve been posting content on a regular basis for over 2 years now. This content has gradually built up over time and I now have a huge website full of valuable information that people want to read.
It’s also helped me to get a steady flow of search engine traffic to the blog, and to turn the new readers into regular subscribers. (Like you)
People won’t come to your blog if all they see are sales pitches thinly disguised as product reviews.
Writing good content not only brings you traffic, but it also allows you to throw in a few promotional posts every now and then. People don’t mind seeing promotional posts if you have given them something back in return. (The content)
2. Time
No blog is ever an overnight success, so don’t get disheartened if you have just started out and things don’t seem to be moving along. It takes time to build up a solid base of content and regular readers, but if you keep posting information people need to know, you will get there in the end!
One tip I would give you is not to make your very first blog posts “promo posts”. I wouldn’t post any sort of promotional pitch until you have made at least 10 informational posts. If a new visitor lands on your blog, and sees very little content and just a pitch for a product, the chances are they will go off your page and find another source for the information they are seeking.
3. Sort Out Your Links!
This is going to be the only “secret” that is technical in any shape or form.
If using Wordpress, it’s important that you change your link structure from the default:
http://www.yoursite.com/?p=62
To:
http://www.yoursite.com/my_really_cool_post
You can do this easily by:
1. Logging into your Wordpress admin area
2. Click on “Settings”
3. Click on “Permalinks”
4. Select “Custom Structure” and enter “/%postname%/” (Without the quotes!)
This will give you search engine friendly URL’s and will increase your chance of getting some traffic from the search engines.
So there you have it, my top 3 secrets revealed. Now I know they are not very secret, but in all honesty they are the top 3 things that have worked for me over the past 2 years. Of course there are other things to consider such as the theme you are using, the number of commenter’s you can get, the adverts and so on, but they are not as important as the 3 points above.
If you only take 1 thing from todays blog post, then let it be point 1 - WRITE GOOD BLOG CONTENT!
Thanks for reading,
Dan
