Every website should have a blog – how it works

The success of a blog starts before you have published your first post. With millions of blogs (really!!) being posted on a daily basis, to make money with a blog not only takes creative thinking and content-producing skills, but there are a myriad of proven practices to be kept in mind.

Even if you only wish to share ideas or keep your corporate blog updated and fresh, the big daddy of successful Google practises, Search Engine Optimisation (SEO), needs to be part of the process. Get this right and everything else falls into place and your ranking on search engines would grow with leaps and bounds.

Before you even start your blog, get to know SEO principles, understand your market and set well-defined goals. Make sure you have properly dissected Google SERP (A search engine results page, the page you see after entering a query into Google, Yahoo or any other search engine.) Write your blog post taking into consideration optimisation techniques and keywords. 

Many bloggers fail to reach their audience because they did not use SEO to find out what the market is looking for and how to properly promote it. It will take a little longer than just putting together content, but following a formal procedure would ensure you reach your target market and provide a sought-after service. And as stated before, it does become easier the more often it is used.

So, what is your goal? What do you wish to achieve?

If you wish to blog for an income, there are three ways to consider – AdSense, direct advertising or affiliate marketing. Internal links taking the reader to other sites, lend credibility to your post and getting readers to subscribe to a blog or newsletter provide you with a reader market.

Reviewing products and providing readers with the option to share their opinions, create an online community of well-informed readers sharing the same interests. Regularly remind your readers that you are still out there and if you are an expert on a specific issue, let it be known. You may not be the only blogger dealing with a certain subject and if other bloggers notice you, it can be highly beneficial to both.

eCommerce blogs

If you blog for an eCommerce website selling articles online, it can boost sales in a variety of ways, but it should be robust and active. Once again, offer free subscription to share special deals and this way, add more to your email list.

All websites benefit from blogs and if you are tasked with blogging for a corporate website, you have a wonderful tool for sharing news about the company, its members and its services, strategy and vision.

Lastly, you should be able to set up criteria for measuring the success of your blog and this can be done by using Google analytics, SEMRUSH.*