mitrobe5 THINGS I WISH I KNEW BEFORE GOING INTO BLOGGING – ZIGIHOW.COM.NG
I ventured into blogging November 11th 2017. Back then I was a novice, I knew absolutely nothing about SEO and techniques to rank my blog. All I knew about then was to write and Publish an article nothing more. As it’s always said. Experience is the best teacher.
As time goes, I began to learn new things about blogging. New techniques to rank my blog and also build a healthy SEO. In this article I’m going to state out 5 things I wish I knew before going into blogging.
At first when I started blogging, all I knew about was to write contents and hit the publish button, then wait for Google to do the rest. But I was wrong, I never knew that works has to be done on a blog to enable it index and rank on search engine pages such as Google and Bing, and Yandex.
Well, I wasn’t well enlightened then, that’s why I had to write this article to enlightened new bloggers on things you should know before going into blogging.
Without wasting much of your time let’s go straight to business.
5 Things I Wish I Knew Before Going Into Blogging.
1 I Wish I Knew About Backlinks
I just wished I knew about creating backlinks when I started blogging. Honestly speaking it was just last year (2018) I knew what backlinks is all about and how it could rank a site and make it more authoritative.
What Is a Backlink?
Backlink is a link a website gets from another website. When your article links or blog url is placed on another blog or when a blog links to your blog that is called a backlink.
The more you gain backlinks. The more your site gains authority and the more your domain authority (DA) increases. And the higher your domain authority increases the faster your articles gets indexed quickly on search engines. Especially Google’s first page.
Backlinks boosts your blog’s domain authority, making your blog authoritative on it’s niche. You can check your blog’s domain authority here.
To gain quality backlinks, It’s very important you gain links from sites that has higher domain authority than yours. When you gain a backlink from a higher authoritative site. Google passes it’s authority to your site. This is called “Juice link”.
As visitors visits your site through the backlink, your site gains authority from the authoritative site. Thereby increasing your domain authority (DA), as a result of this your site will rank higher and your articles indexed faster on search engines.
I just wished I knew about this all along.
How Can I Gain Backlinks For My Blog?
Quality and reputable backlinks are not really easy to gain, but with hardwork and consistency, you’ll surely get them. But I’m going to teach you some simple techniques on how to gain backlinks for your blog.
1. Write quality and well detailed Contents.
This is very important. A well written, quality and detailed contents will automatically fetch you backlinks. This is one of the simple method to gain backlinks.
Now you may be curious to know how writting quality contents can fetch you backlinks. Don’t worry, I’ll explain.
When you write quality articles, this will attract other bloggers to quote your articles on their blog. Some will link back to your blog for more references.
Some may even republish your content on their blog which is related to their niche with references to the original author (which is you) by dropping the source link below the article or using words like “This article was originally written and published on Zigihow.com.ng”.
So, one of the simplest, easiest and stress free way to gain backlinks is ensure you write quality and helpful contents with a well detailed guide.
2. Guest Posting.
This is another method to gain quality backlinks. Guest posting is a process whereby you write an article on other people’s blog with your links attached. This article must be related to the niche.
One good thing about guest posting is, the blog owner will usually allow 1-2 links back to your site within the post. With this links inserted in the post, you’ve automatically gained backlinks.
One big challenge with guest posting is finding sites to guest post for. But there are sites that accepts guest posts.
This sites has a page calling for contributors like “Write for us” the also have “contribution” page, all you have to do is search on Google for blogs related to your niche which accepts guest posts. Read their terms and conditions before guest posting to increase your chances of acceptance.
3. Blog Commenting.
This is another stress free technique of getting reputable Do-follow backlink.
Search on Google for blogs related to your niche using your Keyword.
Then read the article well, Commend and appreciate the author, tell him or her how incredibly his/her article is. Then drop your link related to the article you just read.
Example: if the article you read is on how to train a dog. After commending and appreciating the author on his wonderful content. You can drop your article link related to dogs if you have any.
Avoid dropping irrelevant links in Comment sections. The blog owner will never approve your comment.
4. Submitting Your Blog Posts To Forums.
Posting your blog articles on forums like Nairaland and Reddit will go a long way to fetch quality backlinks and massive traffic to your site.
After writting your article, you can republish some of them on forum websites like the one meantioned above with your article links attached. This will draw traffics to your site and with quality backlinks.
If you don’t like the idea of republishing your blog articles. You can write sweet and short description about your article then Publish on the forum website, with your article link attached with the phrase “Read More”.
You can also start relevant threads in forums and link to your blog posts. You can read my techniques on how I drive traffic and gained backlinks from Nairaland and Quora.
5. Use Question & Answer Websites
Question & answer websites such as Quora is a very good place to draw massive traffic and gain reputable backlinks from.
To draw traffics and gain backlinks to your blog from Qoura you have to answer questions related to your niche while you drop your article link related to the question you answered.
If the readers find your answer very interesting they will click on your link to your blog to read more. This will gain you alot of traffics. You will also get lots of upvotes which will convert your links to backlinks. You can read how to drive massive traffic from quora to your blog.
6. Be Friends With Bloggers In Your Niche
As a blogger, you have to be friendly and jovial. Find other bloggers in the same niche or industry with you.
Propose for link exchange related to their blog contents. You guys can exchange links on your blogs for more users experience and more referencing. This will benefit the two parties. And with this method, you have gain a backlink for your blog. More collaboration with bloggers related to your link will fetch you more backlinks.
Other Ways To Gain Backlinks Are:
7.Submit your blog to .edu and .gov forums and blogs, Google so much loves backlinks from this sites and regards them as authority.
8. Make use of Facebook groups.
9. Create a Wikipedia Page For Yourself and include your link in the resource section.
10. Write a review article comparing various companies products and which is the best, the best company will most likely link to it.
One important fact that you need to keep in mind about backlink SEO is that it is not the number of backlinks which matters, but rather the quality of backlinks. Ensure to gain backlinks from high authoritative site with Domain authority about 60-80.
Note. Backlinks is important for increasing your domain authority, but I must warn you. You have to be very careful from where you get your backlinks from.
Ensure to get your backlinks from relevant and related sites (sites related to your niche only)
Don’t buy bulk backlinks. This method is called Black Hat and its against search engines rules. Buying bulk backlinks from sellers especially on Fiverr can land you in trouble Google will surely penalize you.
What is Black Hat SEO?
Black hat SEO is a practice against search engine guidelines, used to get a site ranking higher in search results. These unethical tactics don’t solve for the searcher and often end in a penalty from search engines. Black hat techniques include keyword stuffing and cloaking.
Keyword stuffing: This is the act of filling your content with irrelevant keywords in an attempt to manipulate search engines and rank higher. Adding multiple Keywords where they have no value and creating bad users experience.
Try to avoid this act, let your Keywords flow in your contents naturally. Avoid filling your contents or articles with multiple Keywords.
Cloaking: This is the act of Presenting search engines with one set of content and site visitors with another.
Example: A user searches for “Top 10 must friendly dogs” and when he clicks on the search engine result, he sees “Dogs & their bad habits”. Which is entirely different from the title. This could get your blog blacklisted by search engines. Avoid this act at all cost.
Be honest and create Web pages that visitors want and expect to see based on the description on the search engine results page.
Other Things You Should Know About Backlinks.
There are two types of backlinks with are:
Do-Follow Backlink
No-Follow Backlink
No-Follow Link: This is a backlink that passes no juice link or authority
When a website links to another website. This is because the link has a no-follow tag, that link does not pass link juice. No-follow links are not useful concerning the ranking of a page as they do not contribute anything. In general, a webmaster uses the no-follow tag when he is linking out to an unreliable or irrelevant site.
Do-Follow Link: This is the type of backlinks every blogger is craving for. Do- follow links passes link juice. by default, all the links that you add to a blog post are do-follow links and these pass link juice.
When a website links to another website by default the link is a Do-follow link and passes link juice and authority.
2 I Wish I Knew About Proper Keyword Inserting Techniques.
In SEO, proper Keywords Inserting is very important and useful for fast article indexing on search engines.
I which I knew about Keyword Inserting techniques when I start blogging.
Like I said all I knew was to write and Publish contents without any content SEO techniques applied.
What Is Keyword Inserting Techniques?
This is a process of inserting your article Keywords which you want to rank for in the most important places, for faster article indexing on search engines.
How do I go about this?
- Ensure your Keyword is in your URL
- While writting your article, ensure to insert your Keyword (which you want to rank for) in the first paragraph of your article.
- Insert your Keywords (which you want to rank for) in the body of your article. Note: Don’t add too much Keywords as Google will penalize you. Keep it natural and moderate.
- Add your Keywords in your subheadings
- Insert your Keywords are in your Image title and Alt images. This is very important for indexing and ranking. Avoid Keyword stuffing.
- Ensure you insert your Keyword in your description box. This is very important because the articles in the description box appears on the Search Engine Results page right underneath the page title. So inserting your Keyword in your description box helps search engines bots to index your article in no distant time.
3 I Wish I Knew About Keyword Research.
Keyword research is a very fundamental aspect SEO. As a new blogger or someone who is new to blogging. You have to make Proper Keyword research before writing your articles in order to get them indexed on search engines.
If you’re blog is new or ain’t popular with low domain authority all you have to do is use less competitive Keywords which you can easily rank for. This was something I never knew when I was new to blogging.
For example. If you run a Tech blog. Don’t go for Keywords like “SEO Tips“, “SEO Guide“, etc, trust me this Keywords highly competitive in the industry and as a new blog, if you’re using these competitive Keywords then you’re actually wasting your time.
The best way to get your article indexed on Google and other search engines is go for less competitive Keywords. And that is where long tail Keyword comes in.
What Is Long Tail Keyword.
Long-tail Keywords are Keywords with longer phrase but inline and targeted to what the audeince are searching for.
Instead of using competitive Keywords like “SEO Tips“.
Use less competitive Keywords like “SEO Tips To Get Your Articles Indexed On Search Engines“. Or “Killer SEO Tips For High Domain Ranking”
Long tail Keywords are less competitive yet very targeted to what audeince are searching for. Since I started using long-tail Keywords I see my article ranking on Search Engines.
What’s the need for competing with high authoritative sites with high domain authority when you know your blog is new to the industry?.
Using high competitive Keywords is as good as not writing an article at all. Because you may not likely not see your article on search results.
You can check the competitiveness of your Keywords before using them. Infact I’ll advise you first choose a Keyword, check it’s competitiveness before writting an article about it.
To check your Keyword competitiveness, I use a tool called Ubersuggest. A wonderful tool that shows you how competitive a Keyword is, with the score of 1-100. The higher the number, the higher the competitiveness.
You can also use Smallseotools to check your Keyword competitiveness.
How Do I Check My Keyword competitiveness Using These Tools?.
Simply click Ubersuggest or Smallseotools. (Ubersuggest is my favourite). Enter your desired Keywords and check it’s competitiveness.
I normally go for long-tail Keywords with around 4-5 competitiveness. This way my articles will get Indexed and rank on search engines.
4 I Wish I Knew About Inserting Internal Links.
Have you ever visited Wikipedia page? And see how they use internal links into their articles? Well if you ask me what internal link inserting is. You’ve got your definition.
But to explain more. Internal Link are those links that links from one page to another on the same domain, for references and more user experience.
How Important Is Internal Link?
Ever since I knew about internal links my daily page views have never remained the same.
- Internal links will increase your daily page views making a single user visit upto 10-20 pages on your blog. I call it the trapping Technique.
- Internal links will decrease your bounce rates. What is bounce rate? bounce rate is the percentage of visitors to a particular website who navigate away from the site after viewing only one page. You can read how to reduce your bounce rate.
- Internal Link will increase your total sessions.
- Internal links passes page authority from pages with high authority to pages with low authority on your blog. Making them index on search engines too.
If you’re a regular Zigihow reader, you’ll notice I link my related contents together for more references. A good example for this is an article I wrote about Google AdSense challenges and how to fix them.
Linking your articles with related ones will go along way to keep your audiences stay longer on your blog. And avoid high bounce rates. Ever since I started linking my related articles together, my daily page views and sessions increased massively.
Linking your related articles together will prevent your audeince from leaving your blog after reading just one page. They will definitely see related article links which might surely be of their interest. And they will click on the link to read more. This way you’ll get a single user or visitor to read upto 10-20 related pages, thereby massively increasing your daily page views.
5 I Wish I Knew About Rank Math SEO Plugin.
Rank Math is a powerful lightweight SEO plugin for WordPress. Although when I started my blogging journey, rank math hasn’t been launched then. But I just wished I knew about it even before I started using Yoast SEO Plugin.
No disrespect Yoast is a very good and powerful SEO plugin. But when rank math was launched, I noticed that it came with eye popping features. I decided to try it out and guess what? It was just what I have been waiting for. The best feature about rank math is the ability to optimize your post with five Keywords. Isn’t that amazing?.
Rank math SEO Plugin allows you to optimize your post with five different Keywords. That means you’re post will rank with five different Keywords. Unlike Yoast that allows only one Keyword and two Keywords when you upgrade to premium.
See the features below which are exclusive to Rank Math SEO plugin .
- Setup Wizard (Easy to follow)
- Google Schema Markup aka Rich Snippets Integrated
- Optimize Upto 5 Keywords
- Google Search Console Integration
- Google Keyword Ranking
- Optimal Settings Pre-Selected
- Internal Linking Suggestions
- Local Business SEO
- LSI Keyword Tool Integrated
- Add Overlay Icons On Social Images
- Advanced SEO Analysis Tool
- Role Manager
- Deep Content Analysis Tests
- Smart Redirection Manager
- Module Based System
- 40 Detailed SEO Tests
- SEO Optimized Breadcrumbs
- 404 Monitor
- And only 30k Lines of Code compared to over 50k in other plugins
If I can use a premium features for free, then why shouldn’t I switch from Yoast to rank math?. Read more on all you need to know about rank math and how to set it up on your blog.
In Conclusion.
Having read this this article, I’m sure you’ve learnt something new. I was never enlightened about SEO when I newly ventured into blogging but I’m very much grateful to God. Today I can proudly say I now know 30% of SEO tips. Note: I’m not a professional, I’m just a simple guy who wants to help.
So, if you’re new to blogging or your blog is new to the industry. Apply all the SEO tips meantioned in this article, and watch your blog grow massively.
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