Hey guys, so I’m going to assume you read Why Blogging Is The Best Business On Earth And How To Start Yours and now understand that blogging can give you the life you have been dreaming about.
I’m also going to assume you are an action taker and have started your own blog (or at least thinking about starting your own blog).
Now that you are on your blogging journey trying to reach success and freedom, I want you to know that in order to reach success there are two factors that you need to focus on more than anything else.
The two most important factors that will determine your success are content quality and SEO (search engine optimization).
Many bloggers will tell you SEO is bullshit and that you should’t worry about SEO, just write quality articles and you will be fine. Don’t listen to that stupid advice.
Yes it is possible to find success without paying any attention to SEO, but you either have to get lucky, or wait many many years for Google to rank your blog posts and key words on the first page or two.
Why rely on luck when doing proper SEO in conjunction with writing quality articles will Guarantee you high Google rankings for your targeted articles and keywords?
Take both SEO and content quality very seriously because they are both vital to your blogging success. Remember this, SEO brings visitors to your blog and quality content keeps them there.
I will break down the most important components for both SEO and content quality in detail, once you get a handle on both of these I guarantee you will reach blogging success (as long as you are determined and consistent).
Table of Contents
Content Quality
Guys, quality content is king. It always is, always has been, and always will be.
Without quality content you will never be a quality blogger. You will never be successful at blogging, plain and simple.
As I mentioned earlier, content is what keeps readers coming back to your site. Quality is what motivates readers to subscribe to your blog via email.
Email subscribers = $$$$$$$
The good thing about quality is there aren’t that many quality bloggers, there are much much more shitty bloggers than quality bloggers.
What does that mean? It means that as long as you consistently put out high quality content you will have no competition. You will only be in competition with yourself, to always grow and get better at blogging.
So what are the components that make your content high quality? Glad you asked.
Your content must be uniquely yours
I am not talking about copying information word for word, I’m talking about the manner you present the information.
Listen, trust me you are not going to write a blog post on a totally ground breaking new topic, whatever you are blogging about it has been discovered and talked about.
The key is to present the information in a unique way, a way that is different from how everyone else is doing it.
99% of blogs present information similarly, so you must be in the other 1% to stand out.
Create eye catching blog post titles
Remember we talked about being unique? This applies to blog post titles as well.
Make your titles unique and pragmatic, you want your title to scream value on a certain topic that’s different then everybody else. If you have a blog post titled How To Be Strategic, you will be competing with tons of other blogs with the same title.
Instead make yours unique and interesting and you will have less competition. Using the same example what would intrigue people more, How To Be Strategic or How To Be Strategic As Fuck-The Principles Of Strategic Thinking? You bet your ass its the latter.
Make your content visually appealing
People are visual, not only when it comes to the opposite sex, but also when it comes to your blog posts.
When you are blogging about a certain topic don’t just type your whole post as one giant paragraph, it is hard on the eyes of the reader. It will come off as boring, ugly, and chaotic.
You should have lots of separation and differentiation throughout your post. There variation of things that will make your post easy on the eyes and appealing. Use different font sizes for headings, bold and underline certain sentences that you want to emphasis.
Want an example? You are at the right place, take a look a this very article. It is visually appealing and easy on your eyes.
Be a good writer
This should be a given, but its crazy how often I come across a blog post with horrible grammar and punctuation.
Don’t write like a 5th grader. If you are horrible, fix it. You have no excuses, there are tons of books and educational resources available to help you improve your writing.
The difference between successful people and mediocre people is this, when successful people come across obstacles they believe they can get across them and therefore find a way. When mediocre people come across obstacle they drop everything and quit because there is an obstacle in their way. Its all in the mindset, and successful people have the I will I can mindset.
Its all about practice practice practice, practice makes perfect, with blogging the more blog the better you will become at it. When I look at my first blog posts and compare to my latest, I think holy crap I have improved at writing.
Don’t be boring be inspiring
How many of you thought wow holy moly this school textbook rocks during one of your classes? Not ever, so don’t be like a textbook spewing information like a robot.
You want to inspire readers, not put them to sleep. Inspiration is super important if you want to make it blogging. Inspiration is what motivates people, its what will hook people in and keep them coming back for more.
How do you inspire with your words? You write with emotion, you want to make people feel your words. Your words should paint a picture in the reader’s mind.
The successful blogger writes with their soul just like a successful singer sings with their soul. That’s why fake it until you make it doesn’t work with blogging.
Remember, if you are to emotional your content will come off as unprofessional and you wont be taken seriously, if you are to formal and professional (like a textbook) you will put your readers to sleep.
you don’t have to be super dramatic throughout all of your content, its about be well balanced.
Deeply understand the topic you are blogging about
You don’t have to be a top expert with the topic (even though that helps), but you should bell informed on the topic.
If you are blogging about anything technical or anything that must be factual make sure you have your facts straight. If not, your readers will eventually find out that you are full of shit and your reputation will be shot.
Your reputation needs to be good if you are going to reach sustained success with blogging.
SEO (Search Engine Optimization)
Did you know that Joseph Swan produced the worlds first efficient light bulb? Thomas Edison just knew how to market it better.
SEO is super vital for blogging success, without it no matter how good your content is, it most likely never be discovered.
Think of SEO as digital marketing, SEO basically boils down to correctly optimizing various key components of SEO, and the more optimized your blog is the more visible your blog will be on search engines, the most important being Google (it is by far the largest).
So to recap, SEO is vital because it is what makes your content visible on search engines and the more work you put into SEO the higher you will rank on search engines. The higher you rank on search engines the more traffic (visitors) your blog will get.
SEO is comprised of 2 very important components, on-page SEO and off-page SEO. these two components are comprised of many components and all these sub-components are very important to optimize if you are going to be successful at SEO and ultimately blogging.
I am going break down all these components so you have a better understanding.
On-Page SEO
On-page SEO is the optimization of all your blog pages and blog posts. On-page ranking factors can have a big impact on your page’s ability to rank on search engines.
On-page SEO is comprised of many components that search engines use to determine where to rank you and these on-page ranking factors can have a big impact on your page’s ability to rank.
The biggest on-page factors that affect search engine rankings are:
Keyword optimization
In order for Google to rank your blog posts it needs to understand what your post is about.
For example, lets say you want to rank your blog post Best Diet To Lose Fat so that people can discover it on Google (when searching that phrase on Google), you are going to have to use that keyword phrase many times throughout your article so that google can understand that the main point of your article is explaining the best diet to lose fat.
The best practice for optimization is for your keyword phrase to make up anywhere between 1-3% of your total content or blog post. Be sure never to go over 3% as Google could penalize you for over-optimization. If you get penalized your blog post or blog in general will be stuck in Google hell until they decide to take the penalty off.
It is also highly recommended you include the keyword phrase you want to rank for in the title of your blog post This is because your post’s title will be included in the URL, which is an important ranking factor for search engines.
Content length
Your content length is a big factor for ranking high on search engines and you should never publish a blog post that is under 750 words.
My recommendation is to only publish articles that are longer than 1000 words. Just remember, the longer your post is the better it will look in the eyes’ of the search engines.
Images
Search engines like posts with images, I recommend at least 2 images in all blog posts.
When you insert images don’t forget to fill out the alt text with the description of the image, that is how search engines know what the image is about.
Content organization
When you are blogging make sure to use the various title tags (h2,h3,h4) throughout your article to organize your content.
Your blog post title will automatically be h1, so make sure to use at least a couple h2 tags for specific subject titles.
Outbound linking
Outbound linking is adding URL links in your blog posts that take you to another web page. There are two different types of outbound links that you should focus on, links to other content within your blog and links to outside sources that you reference.
For every blog article you create you should add at least 1 other link to another one of your blog articles (interlinking) and when you can try to add links to other sources.
Interlinking helps search engine bots discover your new blog posts quicker and also crawl your pages more often.
Guys, for the best blogging experience I recommend hosting with BlueHost (over 2 million websites use BlueHost) then installing WordPress (most popular blogging platform in existence). Once you install WordPress go to plugins and install the plugin called Yoast SEO. Yoast is great for blogging because for all your blog posts it will tell you how well optimized your page is and how to optimize every category I just mentioned.
Off-Page SEO
Off-page SEO is just as vital for ranking on search engines as on-page. Actually there is only 1 main component that comprises all of off-page SEO and its the only thing you should focus on with off-page SEO, it is called obtaining backlinks.
Backlinks
A backlink is when another website places your blog’s URL on their website.
Search engines love backlinks, but here is the thing, they love quality backlinks.
Also, when obtaining backlinks they should be relevant backlinks (websites that have similar content to your blog), as irrelevant backlinks can hurt your rankings and even lead to a Google penalty.
Also there are 2 kinds of backlinks, do-follow backlinks and no-follow backlinks, and you need both kinds so that your backlink profile looks natural to search engines.
Do-follow links
Do-follow backlinks are links that count for ranking purposes, these backlinks tell search engines to count them for ranking purposes.
No-follow links
No-follow links are links that don’t count for ranking purposes, these backlinks tell search engines to not count them for ranking purpose.
For example, comments on other websites and placing your URL in the comment will count as a no-follow link (the vast majority of the time).
How do I obtain backlinks for my blog?
I am only going to go over this topic briefly, if you want to learn more about backlinks check out my detailed post: Backlinks – The Number 1 SEO Factor
There is so much to talk about when it comes to backlinks in general that it would take me another 10000 words to explain it all, however subscribe to the blog and stay tuned! I am going to create lots of content explaining this topic in detail in the near future. Think of this post as an intro to backlinks.
So there are two methods that you can use to gather backlinks and power your blog to the first page of Google (as well as other search engines).
Purchase backlinks
I am not going to lie, when I first started blogging this is the route I took and it is what I recommend in the beginning because obtaining links naturally take a ridiculous amount of time and effort.
You will need to use your precious time and effort creating kick ass blog posts and content.
Conventional advice will tell you not to purchase backlinks because search engines will penalize if they find out. This is true, however that is why you have to purchase only high quality links.
High Quality backlinks are expensive but they are necessary if you want to take your blog to the top.
Look to spend anywhere from $30 – $100 for one 60+ DA (domain authority) backlink.
Backlink providers like The HOTH and Links Management are great for backlinks.
I don’t have any worries about buying spammy links that can get me penalized because I ask sellers to send me the backlinks that they are going to use and I research each link thoroughly to make sure it is a high quality link.
I go over how to investigate a backlink to see if it’s a quality link here.
PS – Click here to check out our new service Backlink King if you are interested in buying very high quality backlinks for an amazing rate of less than $2 per backlink.
Obtaining backlinks naturally
Conventional advice recommends bloggers obtain links naturally, don’t listen to their bullshit advice. They are purchasing links while they tell you this so that you wont compete with them and ruin their rankings.
There is nothing wrong with obtaining backlinks naturally but it is ridiculously time consuming. You have to find websites in a similar niche as your blog or blog post, then reach out to the website owner and ask if you can write a guest post for their website in return for a link back to your website. Then you have to create a post, and depending if it is good enough for him or her they will accept it.
Haha if you decide to listen to this conventional advice go ahead and try to naturally build backlinks while I am busy creating kick ass content for my blog.
Note:
You don’t have to purchase backlinks for the rest of your life, after 3 to 5 months of purchasing backlinks your blog will have a high domain authority and you will rank high for many keywords and articles.
Once that happens your blog will be pretty popular and you will obtain backlinks naturally and automatically as readers will share and link back to your blog articles.
Recap
To recap, in order to optimize your blog for success you need to focus on the content quality of your blog and SEO.
Quality content will keep readers coming back. Your content should inspire people, it should have readers thinking damn that was a good fucking article, I’m going to subscribe.
SEO is vital for readers to find your blog articles on search engines such as Google. SEO determines your ranking on search engines.
There are two components of SEO that you need to focus on, on-page SEO and off-page SEO.
The components that comprise on-page SEO are keyword optimization, content length, content organization, adding images, and interlinking.
For off-page SEO you should focus on obtaining do-follow and no-follow backlinks. The best way to obtain backlinks is by buying backlinks on Fiverr.com. Make sure to thoroughly research every backlink to make sure they are high quality because spammy links can lead to a penalty from search engines.
Friends, it is not as hard as it seems. In just 4 months I have monetized my blog and am making a decent income from my blog. Blogging is the best business on earth, so I recommend everyone start a blog.
You can start your blog by registering with Bluehost for hosting (the best hosting in existence), click here and sign up through this link and pay $3.95 a month instead of $7.99, and you will also get to choose your domain name (website) for free.
Affiliate Disclosure: Bluehost compensates me when you purchase through my link, so my services are free of charge to you! In fact, if you have any trouble at all setting up a blog with this tutorial click here and we will set it up for you!
Once you are registered with Bluehost you have to install WordPress which is the best blogging platform in existence (every pro blogger uses WordPress). There will be a step-by-step guide on how to do this on your BlueHost home page. It is very simple and shouldn’t take more than 5 minutes.
Once you have WordPress set up, go to plugins and install the Yoast SEO plugin. This free plugin is great for optimizing your on-page SEO. It will tell you how well optimized your blog posts are and how to further optimize them.
Once you having your WordPress site ready to go you are ready to create a kick ass blog and business, put the work in and make it happen!
Are you ready to leave the rat race behind and live a life of freedom or do you want to be a corporate drone for the rest of your life?
The choice is yours,
-Jack Freeman
Guys and gals, if you don’t want the headache of setting up a blog we got you covered. We will set up your blog for you for 100% free of charge so that you are ready to go! Just click here.
Aaron Vick says
A truly great blog, love the information you provided on startup success factors!