Blogging Tutorial for Everyone

Blogging Tutorial

You may have heard blogging tips like "write about your passions" or "write about what you feel." Well, if these are the only two things you are doing, your chances of creating a successful blog are slim. The truth is that even if people are interested in what you are writing, it is impossible for them to visit your site if they cannot find you. So today, I'm going to cover some important blogging tips that have helped us consistently get traffic to our blog. 

Stay tuned. [music] What about bloggers? Now, while there is nothing wrong with blogging about your passions, creating a successful blog is beyond you. You must be a decent average writer, understand the technical elements of blogging, and the social strategies that can help you take your blog from nothing to something. 

So instead of giving him a popcorn bowl full of random blogging tips, let's break it up into three buckets to help him get more traction. And the first tip that falls into this bucket is to focus on a specific part of your niche. For example, even if you could post two posts a day for an entire year on subtopics like grilling food, smoothies, vegetarian diets, slow cooker recipes, nutrition, and more, it would be hard to compete with larger sites or those that only focus on one of those topics. 

So in my opinion it is better to focus on being a master of one than an expert in all trades. So focus on becoming the place people go to find smoothie recipes. Become the place people go for grilling techniques. The second tip is to create referral content from Chatsworth. Referencing requires attribution. 

And attribution in the blogging world equals links. Links from other websites are important because they are used by search engines like Google to help decide which pages should rank high in search engines. Now, how do you create content that is worth mentioning? I have three nuggets of wisdom for you. 

The first way is to create unique and interesting content for your industry. For example, we ran an experiment where we sent over $ 50,000 worth of podcast ads. And as far as we know, no one had written this type of post. And this resulted in around 140 unique websites linking to this page in a short amount of time. Another way to get people to refer to your posts is to include statistics. 

They are literally link magnets. Now, we have access to a large amount of data because we integrate it into our SEO toolkit. But you don't need anything fancy like this to use this tip. For example, a good part of the Backlinko links come from statistics. 

And they often refer to their own personal results, like increasing their organic traffic by 111%. And driving conversions by 785%. Nerdwallet has almost 29,000 backlinks due to the mention of a statistic. Naturally, as people blog, they want to provide supportive resources to back up their claims. Make sure yours is in the mix. 

This means that it is a point of influence for those who are willing to make the effort. Within our posts, we often add custom images, be it graphics from our data studies or illustrations that help better explain concepts. They not only create a better experience for readers, but they also generate links. As you can see here, we have around 820 links pointing to JPG images on our site. And then another 1,600 links to PNG images. They just want the information.

Use short paragraphs instead of big walls of text. Short paragraphs help readers move through your article in small, easy steps. Then break up the long sentences because they are hard to follow. Break up these sentences by looking for places where you used words like "and", "because" and "that." Then use multimedia in your posts. So whether it's videos, images, or GIFs, they can often help illustrate your points more clearly than words. Finally, write in a conversational tone. The easiest way to check is to read the copy aloud. 

If it looks like you are talking to a friend, you are on the right track. But if it looks like you are competing in a national debate, try again. The next tip is to write clickable headlines that aren't clickbait. The only thing that separates your website from a user is a click. You don't get clicks and you don't get traffic. 

Now since most people will find your web pages through search or social media, you want to create a headline that accurately represents your article without sounding boring. For example, an article titled: "The 15 Best Headphones" gets the message across. But it is boring. Something like "15 best high-end headphones under $ 100" is more click-worthy because a) it tells the reader that the headphones are high-quality and b) high-end headphones usually cost much more than $ 100. 

The next tip is to write introductions using the application formula. The headline's job is to get the reader to click on the page. Then your introduction should hook them, so they read the rest of the post. So to do that, we use the APP formula, which means "align, present and test". First, you must align with the reader's problem. You then present your post as the solution to that problem.

 And then you end up with some proof of why they should trust you. Here is an example from our blog. In the first sentence, we line up with the reader saying, "Are you looking to grow your YouTube channel and attract more views?" Here we present our solution by saying that "the trick is to target search-demanding topics." Finally, we end it with a test showing you that we have grown our YouTube channel from 10,000 to over 200,000 monthly views in about a year.

Keep your introductions short, punctual, and focus on addressing why the reader is on that page in the first place. The last writing tip I have for you is to create feedback loops. Your first draft should never be your last. At Ahrefs, we are known to go through a fairly rigorous editing process. The writer usually begins with an outline. Once approved, they write their first "final draft." And without a doubt, they should think it's pretty good. 

Then someone else from our team will review your post, question any complaints, suggest different formats, or whatever. Anything goes at this point. This usually ends with a document that is completely highlighted in yellow with suggestions. The writer then makes the necessary changes and will review them one last time before publishing. 

This feedback loop helps us to always do our best in every post we publish. Now if you don't have a team to work with, it's worth connecting with other bloggers in your space who want to become better writers as well. But don't just say, "Hey, can you edit my posts? I'll edit yours too." This type of process can arise through relationships, which I will expand on later.

For now, let's move on to the more technical aspects of blogging. The first tip is very important and is to write about topics that people are searching for, more commonly known as keyword research. And if you want a piece of that traffic, you must use the keywords that people are searching for. Fortunately, search engines like Google give you clues through features like Autosuggest. 

Just type in a topic you want to write about and you will see some other closely related terms. There are other freemium tools like Reply to Public where you can find keywords asked as questions. Now the problem with these tools is that you can't see the keyword metrics, which means you don't really know how much traffic you can get. 

To find this information, you'd have to use premium tools like Ahrefs Keyword Explorer, where you can basically generate lists of keyword ideas, view important metrics like search volume and keyword difficulty, and decide if it's worth it. they are worth looking for on their site. We have a full tutorial on how to do keyword research so I'll link to it for you. 

Another strategy worth doing is covering your competitors' best topics. And by "best", I mean the pages that send them constant traffic every month. To find your competitor's popular pages, simply enter their domain into a tool like Ahrefs' Site Explorer. So if you were in the grooming niche, you would definitely consider going after these topics as they account for about 45% of the organic traffic of the entire website.

 Also, they all seem quite relevant to me. Which brings us to our last technical tip and is to do some basic on-page SEO. On-page SEO refers to the practice of optimizing web pages to help them rank higher in search engines.
So without overcomplicating things, you should include your main keyword in your title and URL, and be sure to cover the sub-points of your main topic. For example, if you're talking about how to make the perfect cup of coffee, you should probably talk about things like finding the correct roasting methods, water temperature, grinding, and brewing. All of these would be relevant, if not crucial, to really cover the topic in its entirety. 

We have a full step-by-step tutorial on how to do on-page SEO for blogging, so I highly recommend watching it and mastering this process. And now we are in our final category, which is socializing. And I don't mean which social media should I use. So the first tip is to connect with other blogs that you admire in your space. 

Smart bloggers come together to forge relationships with each other. And this is often why it seems like all the big players in your industry are friends. They started early and grew up together. Now, not everyone will want to be friends. But chances are high that people in your industry want to connect. They just don't know you exist. At least at this point. 

So to get started, think of 5-10 people you admire in your space. They can be people who publish blogs and newsletters you are subscribed to or people you follow on social media. Write their names on a piece of paper and write down something that you really admire about their work. Now, go ahead and email them for the purpose of simply connecting. Don't ask them to share your content, review it, link with you, or ask for any kind of favor. 

Just send a simple, genuine email like ... "Hey [name], I just wanted to say that I really admire [whatever you do]. Thank you for [whatever you admire]. Regards, [your name]". I sent a similar email to the Ahrefs CMO in 2017, and about a year later, we ended up working together and became good friends. Nothing was made here, it just happened organically. 

Have you ever had one of those moments where you're trying to remember where you were and that you had that awesome recipe, or tutorial, or whatever? Well, if you had joined that email list, you would know. Without any kind of email subscription form, you prevent your readers from getting future content or product updates. Building an email list also acts as a good way to permanently get traffic to the new posts you publish. 

And since subscribers are warmer visitors than cold traffic, some of them may share it on social media or even link to you if they have their own blog. So, in short, start building a list from day one. Finally is to promote your content in online communities. Now, this is a bit of a touchy subject because you don't want to spam Facebook or Reddit groups with things that people are going to get mad about. 

Instead, spend your time integrating into these communities. Become a recognizable name and face. And when you see a need, share content that can help solve the problems of other members of the group. If you succeed, you can get thousands of visitors. Failure to do so may cause you to be excluded from those communities. 

So share links in moderation and spend most of your time meeting with like-minded bloggers to build mutually beneficial relationships. Now, I wonder if you have any blogging tips that I missed. Let me know in the comments and if you liked this video, be sure to like, share, and subscribe for more actionable marketing tutorials. And I've linked a bunch of videos in the overview that will expand on some of the tips I've mentioned, so check them out. See you in the next tutorial.