The best blog sites in the world generate an income of between $15,000 and $30,000 a day.
Huffington Post, which is considered the best blog site in the world, was only started in May 2005.
So what would you say if I told you that you can also create a blog site that rocks, and generates a high income?
If you do it right.
And that’s what this post is about. Giving you what you need to start a blog site from scratch, and then focusing on generating traffic and in time, becoming a blog other’s speak about. Just like Huffington Post.
The Power of Content
Before we get to the steps, though, there is one thing you need to understand, because your success as a blogger depends on it…
So let’s return to Huffington Post. Their main source of income is through Pay Per Click. But how do they generate enough traffic to make such a substantial income?
Through blog content.
Now granted, you won’t be able to publish the roughly 5500 blog posts that Huffington Post churns out every week, but if you steadily plod along, following the steps I will outline, in time there’s nothing that can stop you.
Whatever your blogging goal is, you need website traffic generation to make it a reality.
It doesn’t matter what your online goal is, it all comes down to how many people land on your blog site.
Now, there are four ways people land on your website:
- Through paid traffic.
- By promoting your URL, offline.
- By promoting your URL online.
- Through the search engine results page.
Your focus needs to be on point number 4, because it’s the only way you’ll get enough people on your blog site in order to achieve your goals without having to actually pay for it.
Before we move on…don’t think that if you “build it, they will come”. That’s just not true about the blogging sphere.
It takes consistent hard work to earn the status of a “best blog site”.
Step 1: Research your target audience persona
It’s probably this step that is single-handedly the most neglected area when it comes to blogging success, and it’s also the step that can be considered the cornerstone of how well your website does.
There is so much information on the Internet – in fact, in 2015, 2 million blog posts were being published every day – that if you want to stand out, your content really needs to speak to your readers.
Getting this step right means that you:
- Attract the right people to your blog.
- Choose the right website design for greater impact.
- Provide content that is helpful to those who visit your site.
- Have higher conversions if you’re selling something.
Step 2: Decide on your main keywords
Keywords make up a large part of search engine optimization because search engines rely on them (together with some other elements) to know what your blog is all about. This is important because they want to match user’s searches to the right content.
At the most basic level, the formula to use with keywords is:
High search volume + low competition
There needs to be enough people searching for solutions using the keywords, and there should not be a lot of competition.
Another aspect of keywords is intention. In other words, when a user searches for a product, for instance, at which stage of the buying cycle is he? If his search is, “buy tennis shoes”, he is ready to make a purchase online, but if his search is, “best tennis shoes”, he is most likely trying to find out which tennis shoes would be best for him, which means he is not ready to actually buy them yet.
Backlinko offers a comprehensive guide on how to do keyword research, so I am not going to repeat the information here.
Step 3: Select a domain name
The domain name is where your blog lives; it’s the URL of your website. You must register your own domain. Well-known domain names are google.com and facebook.com.
Domain names which contain one of your top five keywords should do very well in search results.
For example, if one of your main keyword phrases are, “weight loss exercises,” a domain name of “weightlossexercises.com” would be excellent.
But if you already have an offline business with a name, you’ll need to use that name or the closest variation to it that is available, unless you have a good reason to avoid it.
The easiest way to register a domain name is with a website host, which brings me to my next step, but before we go there, get more domain name tips from Moz.
Step 4: Select a website host
A website host connects your website to the Internet. When choosing a host, consider these aspects:
- Understand your long-term plan, because this should determine your hosting needs. For instance, if you plan to start a few websites, which host would be the best option in terms of cost?
- What support do you need? For instance, GoDaddy only offers telephonic support and no email support. What are their hours of support? If you’re in another country, and need help, does the host have the functionality?
- What kind of space do you need for what you want to do? Can the host accommodate that?
- How much do they charge?
- How many email addresses can you get? Is this number enough?
But what’s most important is speed and uptime.
Do a search to find out what others are saying about the various hosts. This will give you a great idea of which one to choose.
Step 5: Choose your blogging platform
A blogging platform is a content management system; it’s software you use to publish content on the Internet. Some types of blogging platforms are:
- WordPress
- Tumblr
- Blogger
Since WordPress is so largely favored by most bloggers, and because it offers so much functionality and worldwide support, I would also recommend it.
Step 6: Install WordPress from the Cpanel in your hosting account
All reputable and big hosts will have “wizards” to help you through this step. It’s quick and easy because the host makes it easy. When it’s done, you’ll get login details for your blog, so that you can start setting it up.
This should consist of an admin URL and password. Store it in a safe place.
Step 7: Configure your blog settings and appearance
Log in to your brand new blog where you will see your default dashboard, which lists:
Posts, where you’ll add a new blog post or edit an existing one.
Media is the library that keeps images, videos, and audio files when you upload them to the site.
Pages are where you will create and edit new permanent pages like “About Us”, “Services” or “Contact Us”.
Comments is where you’ll manage any comments made by readers.
Appearance is how you can change the appearance of your blog. You do this by installing a theme of your choice – you can either use a free theme or a premium one, but the most important aspect is to make sure the theme is SEO-friendly. This is a huge part of making your blog site a traffic generating machine.
Plugins is the area to install and manage plugins. Plugins add extra functionality to WordPress websites.
Settings is where you’ll set your blog site’s title and tagline and other important information.
You may need some help to set everything up and this beginner’s WordPress configuration guide by ShoutMeLoud, with screenshots, will guide you through it nicely.
Step 8: Add an SEO plugin
I’m assuming you’re no SEO pro, which is the status of most of us, so you may need a little guidance with on-page SEO, so an SEO plugin like Yoast will be beneficial. Head on over to “plugins” in your dashboard, and install an SEO plugin.
An SEO plugin should help with:
- Submitting an XML sitemap to search engines.
- This notifies search engines of your existence so that they can start adding your content to their indexes.
- This is important because if search engines don’t index your blog site and it’s content, you won’t get any traffic from search results.
- Guides you with on-page SEO. For instance, with Yoast SEO plugin, for each blog post you create, it helps you with:
- · Search engine snippet preview
- · Focus keyword
- · SEO title
- · Meta description
A screenshot of Yoast’s SEO plugin
Step 8: Add SEO-optimized content to your blog
In steps 1 and 2, we covered the importance of target audience and keyword research. If you’ve followed the steps laid out in this post, your blog site should have the right technical SEO foundation, which is essential to maximize the amount of traffic that search engines send your way.
With the technical SEO aspect taken care of, you now need to focus on building something that can in time, be called one of the best blog sites in the world…
Taking a blog site to world class levels is all about content. And adding it in a way that helps search engines find and index it so that they send the right traffic to your site.
The formula for success with content is this:
Publish value-add, original, fresh content often, that is written for the right target audience, using the right keywords. Click To TweetWithout this step, your website will get no traffic.
No traffic = failure to achieve your blogging goals.
Summing up
Achieving best blog site status is all about providing value-add, search engine optimized content to the right group of people.
What you need to achieve for this is:
- Understanding who you’re writing for.
- Adding content to your blog that contains the right keywords.
- Setting up your blog correctly and configuring your WordPress settings and appearance so that it is search engine friendly.
- Adding regular, fresh SEO optimized content to your blog site.
[IMPORTANT NOTE from Gail Gardner, Founder of GrowMap.com (this blog). Once you do what this writer has recommended, you also have to learn to monetize your site. Simply having content and traffic will generate no income. You have to sell products or advertising or use affiliate links or have some other method of monetization to actually make money. While I do know bloggers who generate 640,000 page views a month organically, most sites use a combination of organic and paid traffic. Mom blogs primarily monetize by publishing paid, no-followed sponsored posts.]