That’s the easy part though.

Once you’ve found that, you hop online and start your blog. If you’re here, you’ve either made the right choice and decided to use WordPress to build your site, or you’re thinking about it. If you’re in the latter group, thinking about becoming a beginner blogger, stop thinking and get started. WordPress is by far the best platform for bloggers with any level of seriousness, and the themes here are solid.

Step two is where the rubber hits the road. The best advice I have for a beginner blogger can really be summed up by telling them to “go nuts”. By that I mean you need to go above and beyond what bloggers you’re going to be competing with will do. If you actually care about what you’re going to be writing about, this isn’t discouraging – it puts fire in your belly.

If you’re like me, the idea of starting a blog bubbled up in my head after being disappointed with existing blogs in my niche, and thinking I could do better. If you can write a decent post, are crazy about what you’re going to be writing about, and are smart about it… you’re right. You probably can.

I’m not talking about warm and fuzzy stuff when I say “do better”. I mean real, tangible, proven things you can do to make your site’s readership grow faster. Most of your opposition wont do much networking, wont work social networks and will have mediocre to bad site designs.

Networking is really important, especially at first. Dig up as many blogs as you can on what you’re writing about and get active in their comments. Don’t be one of those annoying spammers that just leaves a response to display a link to their own site. Leave something interesting and thoughtful, and name drop your site from time to time. If you comment on other peoples’ blogs with any level of frequency, the admins there will probably take notice and check your site out. Those are the sort of early adopting readers that you want the most. They’re into the subject enough to maintain a blog of their own about it, and you might be able to get them to add a link on their sidebar to your site, so their readers might check your site out.

Social networking is a lot like regular networking. You’d be surprised at how many of even the best blogs don’t take advantage of Facebook and Twitter, giving you a edge. Facebook takes a while to build a following, but setting up a fan page, adding a link to your blog’s sidebar (‘above the fold’ and hard to miss), inviting friends who are interested in what you’re blogging about and then sharing links to your posts (with short hand written notes that make it more likely that people will comment or share) really is a snap. Twitter is even easier, and you can make it so your posts are shot out onto your Twitter feed automatically (just make sure your headlines are catchy and make clear what the post is about).

If I could send a message back in time to myself over a year and a half ago, it would mostly be filled with simple tweaks like these, that make it more likely that people who stumble across my site come back for more later.

First impressions are important online – do not settle for a mediocre site theme (other platforms might call themes a skin or template).

Buy a good premium theme (like the killer theme’s we’ve got here), and tweak it a bit to make it your own. The RichWP WordPress Theme Framework makes that sort of thing really easy, even for new bloggers who wouldn’t know CSS, HTML and PHP from Joe Schmoe on the street’s left pinky toe. Past that, it’s all about making it more likely that people who come across your site share what they read with their friends, and/or subscribe to your site through something like RSS, Twitter, Facebook or Email.

I won’t get into how to set those things up right now (don’t worry… WordPress makes it easier than you might think), but the idea is that you need eye catching buttons to those feeds so someone who’s come across your site, and likes what they see, might notice the button and subscribe by email or RSS, follow you on Twitter, or become a fan on Facebook. If they don’t, the vast majority of the time, they’ll never come back. If they do, that one page load just turned into dozens, hundreds or thousands over time.

If you only do some of the above, you’re already ahead of a large majority of bloggers out there. The only two things I regret about with blogging is that I waited until a couple years ago to jump in, and didn’t read enough about about it in the first few months to do things like I talk about here. About a year and a half from when I was a beginner blogger and my site gets tens of thousands of hits a month, I’ve caught the attention of big name people in my niche, interviewed figures I’ve seen on major news networks, and I’m getting paid to write about things I am passionate about on three different sites.

You can do the same thing too – you just have to go that extra mile. You’ve gotta “go nuts”.

There are six tips for creating killer content that people will be glad to read.

• Grab Your Reader’s Attention – Why do you read newspaper headlines? Because they grab your attention, right? Well, the same goes for your website visitors. Before they read the content, you have to make them want to read it. Think about your article. Then create a title that is impossible for visitors to ignore.
• Keep it Short – Short content, except when providing a tutorial, is key. Short paragraphs and short sentences are important. People become overwhelmed when they see a lengthy paragraph. Keep the paragraphs and sentences short, and you’ll keep the reader’s attention.
• Keep it Organized – Organization is another huge key to killer website content. Using bullet points and subheadings let your reader know where you are going. Bullet points and subheadings also direct readers to the meat and potatoes of your content.
• Keep it Useful – If a visitor takes time to read your content, they want to get something out of it. Offer them tips. Offer them advice. Tell them about a new piece of information about your industry. Giving them useful information is going to show the visitor that you care about them, thus increasing your repeat visitor ratio.
• Keep it Simple – Unless it’s essential to your industry, stay away from the words that your visitors aren’t going to know. This is going to make them feel dumb. It may also make them feel like you are trying to hide something. Use simple terms to explain what you mean. If you need to use terms that visitors may not know, take the time to explain what it is that you mean.
• Keep it Current – Visitors don’t want to read summer content in the fall. As the seasons change, bring your content up to date as well. In just about every industry you will find opportunities to update your content. Keeping content current shows your visitors that you are thinking about what they need. It also shows them that you are there and that you aren’t a phantom haunting the Internet.
• Keep it Readable – Look at your text. What is the font size? Who are your clients? Is it readable for your average visitor? One thing that a lot of webmasters don’t think about is their font size and color. For example, if your clients and readers are mostly older people, you may have to make the font larger. You can also provide the option on the website to change the font size. If the font’s too small, visitors won’t read it.

When you are creating content for your site, look at it from your visitor’s perspective. Is this giving them useful information? Is it short and readable? Does it use terms that are easy to understand? Is it well organized? Is it up to date? Did you answer yes to all of these questions? Then you have some great content that your visitors will love and will come back to read again and again.

So what is content marketing and why is it so important?

First, let’s look at the meaning of content marketing. Content marketing is marketing to your target audience without trying to sell them your product or services.

But wait. Isn’t selling products and services what marketing is all about?

Perhaps a better way to put it would be that you are selling yourself. You are selling the knowledge that you have. You are getting your customer to trust you and communicate with you. But you aren’t giving your audience a hard sell. You aren’t saying to them, “Buy my products. They are the best on the Internet.”

So, you aren’t selling your products and services with content marketing. If you aren’t trying to sell your products and services to your customers, how does content marketing help your business?

Let’s take a look at an example. There are two car websites on the Internet that are selling used cars.

Website A offers the following:

• Large inventory of cars
• Search by state and city
• Live chat with customer service
• Great website navigation

Website B offers the following:

• Large inventory of cars
• Search by state and city
• Live chat with customer service
• Great website navigation
• Articles about things like:
• Choosing the right car seat
• Driving in hazardous weather
• What car has the best gas mileage
• How to change a flat tire

What site do you think more customers are going to be interested in? Both of the sites offer the same basics. But site b offers articles about things that visitors would like to know. The site knows that not every person who goes on it is going to buy a car. But they are offering information that they know visitors want to know on their site. This is good customer service.

Content marketing is sometimes done on the website, but it’s often done on other sites as well (guest writing, interviews, etc.). It’s a great way to establish yourself as an expert in your field. A website developer who is looking to expand his customer base might write articles such as:

• Choosing the right color scheme for your website
• How to make your website more user-friendly
• Setting up your website guestbook

There are plenty of great sites on the Internet where you can place content in order to establish your knowledge. Most sites offer a resource box where you can place your bio and more information about your company.

One of the biggest things that content marketing offers to you is your customer’s trust. The customer knows that you are going to try and sell something to him or her. But a business owner who provides free information that they can use before
even trying to sell is more likely to get their business.

Customer’s thought after a hard sell – They don’t care about me. All they want is my money.

Customer’s thought after content marketing – Wow, this person knows what they are talking about. They are giving me information for free. They must really care about my needs. I bet they are a great person to deal with.

The other great thing about content marketing is that it will help bring an influx of visitors to your website. They keywords placed in the content will bring people to the content. But the content itself, words read by visitors, is what will be the true attraction. When a visitor reads a great piece of content, he or she will more than likely share it. This means more people who are impressed by your content marketing. This also means more people who will visit your website and potentially become customers.

So, what is content marketing? Yes, it’s a soft sell to customers. But it’s also something that no business should be without.

45-Minute Intervals

Right now, there is a kitchen timer ticking next to me while I write this post. I find it to be a good helper. Let me tell you why. I set the timer to 45 minutes, and when it starts peeping, I probably will have the first draft of this post ready. The rule is to focus solely on one task within the 45 minutes. During this time, I won’t allow myself to get distracted. This is how you write an article fast.

Do the 45-minute periods sound familiar? Remember your school days? Your classes were probably divided into 45-minute intervals—45 minutes for English, 45 minutes for math, 45 minutes for geography, and so on. It would not have made sense for your school to pack a little bit of each within a 5-hour nonstop learning session.

If you have to accomplish bigger tasks, chunk them into 45-minute intervals and take a 5 to 15 minute break in between. This doesn’t only work for writing. Design, program, or edit videos in a 45-minute session, then take a quick break and start round two. You will be surprised at how much you can get done.

The First Draft

As mentioned above, my intention is to get the first draft of this article written within the 45 minutes. I don’t want to edit it or smooth out the edges while I am working on it. I just write down whatever flows out of my mind. I don’t even mind the spelling mistakes; my word processor underlines misspelled words with an attention-grabbing red line anyway. Let it do it, take care of it later. Do you think you will get more text on your page if you don‘t care about polishing it at the same time? I bet you will.

Keep a List of Content Ideas

Sitting down to write anything is pretty much impossible if you have no clue what to write about. If you start a new website, it is fairly easy. You need to get all the text for your “about” page, contact page, product pages, etc., done. Create a list of ideas and check off every piece you finish. The check marks will give you a feeling of accomplishment and motivate you further.

If you are blogging regularly or are getting paid to write articles online, things get a bit more complicated. Good ideas usually don’t come to you when you decide to sit down and blog a bit.

I use Evernote to organize my ideas. I have a folder for new functions for my WordPress Themes, another folder for new business ideas and a folder full of article ideas to write about here on RichWP. When I want to write a new article, I simply read through the ideas and pick one. It has happened to me more than once that while I am going through this list of ideas, a couple of new ones spring up in my head. Don’t you think that this little tip will help you get over blank page syndrome?

My clock is now down to 24 minute, and I’ll call it done. I will use the rest of the time to edit this article before sending it off to proofreading.

Thanks for reading. I am sure you developed some of your own strategies to feel good at the end of the day. In the comments, let me and your fellow readers know how you get your pages filled and your articles written.

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Well, did you notice what I just did? I praised myself without overdoing it. I proved how important it was for me to write rich content with the touch of amusement. Balance is the word!

Explain thoroughly everything that your visitor might want to know about you and your company and do it in an entertaining way. Keep it real and be authentic. The purpose of your “About Page” is to built trust and rapport as well as authority and expertise and make it stick.

The following steps will help you write your About Me page without any hassles:

• The Objective: Explain the objective and purpose of your website. Are you showcasing your latest products or informing about climate change? Give your readers a quick elevator pitch. You are still reading this article, so I think I did a great job in explaining the purpose/goal/objective of this article in the first lines.
• Niche / Industry: Give a short description of your niche or industry. Be concise.
• The Author: All set? Now throw light on the mastermind behind all the information. Be frank and be original.
• The Contact Information: You should have a separate contact page but it is recommended to mention your contact info here in your “About Page” as well or at least link to your contact page.

If you check your stats, you will see that the “About Page” is one of the most visited pages of your website. A well written “About Page” turns a new reader into a returning reader and a potential customer into a buying customer. Get started and make yourself shine. Write a first draft and ask friends and family what they think about it. Take the feedback and improve your “most important” page of your whole website.

But it doesn’t stop here. Technology is evolving as fast as design trends change. I am a firm believer that we should specialize as late as possible, if at all. Even if at certain times it seems that we are not able to keep up with all new developments, we should always give our best. In the end, the one with the broadest knowledge base also has the widest perspective, can pull the right strings, and leads.

It boils down to getting fast results. Only results count. We can talk a lot, but without backing up our words they are not worth that much.

There is no need to understand everything down to the smallest detail. Get a working knowledge and move on. Use black boxes whenever possible. Understand what output you get from a certain input. When asked, describe instead of explain.

Input » Black Box » Output
Your Ideas » RichWP FrameWork » Your WordPress based Site

Get fast results designing sites for yourself and your customers. In the end, you’re measured by what you’ve accomplished – not what you’ve been dreaming about.

Those early birds usually have amassed a lot of general knowledge about your market and what is needed in your market.

Listen to them carefully. Let their requests and complaints guide you. Build a relationship with them and improve your products accordingly. Start listening, solve their problems, and serve their needs.

These early birds will talk about your endeavours and more importantly about the customer service you provide. Good customer service is the best marketing tool. Good customer service involves relationship building.

If you do this, you will be feeling the pulse of your market and accelerating the development of your business. As such, you have the potential to strike it big.

They tell you to go for the niches. If this is such a sound strategy, why aren’t they implementing this strategy themselves? Why are they selling “internet marketing” and “get rich quick” products in a highly competitive market instead of developing niches like they advise?

So, what area offers more possibilities to make money? Where is more value being created? In highly competitive markets where people are quite willing to spend their money or in little niches and upstart markets with no competitors?

Can carving out and dominating an underserved niche truly work? Yes, it has been done before, but creating a market from scratch is an uphill battle; it takes a lot of time and is therefore a gamble that has unidentifiable variables.

Obviously, possible profit lies where the money is and where people spend their money, i.e., in competitive markets. If a market contains a lot of competition, you can be sure that this market is hot; thus, money can be made.

On the Internet, the playing field is levelled. Shift your mindset; go into those markets and make better products than everybody else. Make products that provide value. Take action, and get a start.

Dealing with all the technical concepts of SEO isn’t necessary. I will show what shortcuts to take and how to wrap your mind around complicated, technical SEO issues and theories. Before I teach you my “simple” approach to this subject, let me sum up what the key elements of SEO are and from where SEO has evolved.

A Brief History of SEO

In the early days of search engines, webmasters quickly discovered that it was key to get listed as high and as often as possible within the search engine results, to drive a meaningful amount of traffic to their websites. In the early days it was enough to put a handful of keywords and a nice description into the meta-tags of an html document, and you got a listing. Soon, other elements like page title and the usage of keywords within a page’s content (keyword-density) were taken into consideration to deliver more accurate results. It got fancier and more sophisticated but people always figured out how to cheat the system and manipulate the search results by tweaking those so-called on-page factors. Then Google came around and added a bunch of off-page factors to its search algorithm. The way Google engineers tried to rank the most relevant pages was by first counting incoming links to your websites.

The more people that link to your site or to an article of yours, the more important and relevant it must be (social proof). Manipulating the number of incoming links from relevant outside pages isn’t as easy as stuffing a bunch of keywords into your own texts. Besides that, if other sites are referring back to your writings, it is probably safe to assume that you deliver a certain amount of value.

See it as a scientific paper. The more your work is mentioned and recognized within the scientific community, the more your reputation in your field of expertise grows. Sure, spam site owners got out and built link-farms to manipulate those off-page factors, but Google got pretty good and fast at penalizing sites that use those so-called “black-hat” SEO techniques. What I will show you next is considered “white-hat” search engine optimization and is done completely without any “grey-” or “black-hat” manipulation techniques.

Starting out

Let’s just use a career as a scientist in a field of your choice as a framework to explain how easily SEO can be done, even if the algorithms the search engines use get more and more complicated.

You have just graduated from University with honors and you are considering taking on a career in the world of science. Not many of your colleagues outside of your own university know you yet, but you are highly motivated to get your research for your PhD started. You had a proper education and have built the foundation of your future success in your field of choice.

Translated into the world of a blogger, you know what you are writing about and are ready to put forth the effort and do whatever it takes to be successful. Set your mind on your goals. Nothing is more important. It won’t be an easy ride to the top. The competition in the blogging world is stiff and plenty. You will fall. Everybody falls. Your future success is determined by how often and how fast you get up on your feet again to continue your journey.

Keyword Research

When you just get started in science and you want to tackle the “Great Theorie of Life the Universe and Everything” right from the start, you will probably get burned and marked as a fantast and dreamer. What you want to do is to find that niche that is in great demand, but where not a lot has been published yet. This goes for every paper, for every report, and for every post and article.

At university when you had a project, you probably asked your professor about how to get started and found the first topic on which to base your paper. As a blogger, your professor most certainly will be Google. You have already chosen what your blog will be about, so let’s do some research to find out what your first post should cover.

Head over to Google and type in your blog’s main topic. For the sake of the example above, let’s start with the search term “geography” (without the quotes). If you search for that term you get 173,000,000 results. If you write an article and try to get good rankings for the keyword “geography” you probably won’t be very successful. It is too broad. Let us go deeper.

Let us do a search for the term “physical geography” (this time using the quotes). OK, we were able to cut down the results to 3,250,000. This is still way too broad. We have to go even deeper.

I am interested in deserts and I am fascinated by Death Valley. Let’s try to search for “physical geography” “death valley” (to filter out irrelevant results, use the quotes as stated). Now we are dealing with 12,200 results. That is way better. Now turn to the Google Keyword Tool to find out if there actually is a demand for that subject.

Are people searching for this topic? What are they actually typing into the search box to find what they are looking for? On the left you find a box that lets you choose how you want to generate keyword ideas. Let us use the “Descriptive words or phrases” search first.

Type “physical geography” into the first line and “death valley” (both without the quotes) into the second line and hit the “Get Keyword ideas” button. Have a look at the “Global Monthly Search Volume.” Don’t take the numbers too seriously, but they still give you a rough idea about what people are searching for.

Now take “death valley landforms,” for instance, and perform a normal Google search for it. Google shows you 16,300 results. Have a look at the results; do they match that exact key phrase you are looking for? Go through the results, and check how relevant they are. If you would be interested in finding out everything about the landforms in Death Valley, would you be satisfied with the results Google has provided you? You know that people are actually searching for this keyword and you are confident that you can provide more relevant information for people searching for “death valley landforms.” You probably have a winner here. Congratulations, you have found a keyword or key phrase on which to base your first article.

If you find a site with valuable and useful content in it, try to generate keyword ideas by letting the Keyword Tool to analyze the website’s content.

There is currently no rule about the exact numbers you should consider. What you are looking for is basically a niche with not too much competition which is in demand. Saying that the 12,200 results I mentioned in the example above is the number to go for is nonsense. Get a feel for the number of keywords and key phrases in your niche. And use them as a rough guideline to write several posts for your blog, which will provide you with a long-term flow of interested readers to your blog.

A SEO Plugin

I promised you that you won’t have to deal with too many technical issues. Here is one exception, but I am sure most of you are able to install a PlugIn on the WordPress system. There are a number of good SEO solutions for WordPress out there. I currently use the All in One SEO Pack. Get it installed. You will be able to use a page title that actually differs from your post title and it lets you fill out the classical meta-tags like “keywords” and “description.” The way I think about it is that those three elements (page title, meta-keywords, meta-description) should form a closed unit. Another important element to consider is the permalink of your post. If you have not already set up the permalinks for your blog, do it now. Keep it simple. The simpler your permalink structure, the better it is.

If you have done your keyword research for an article, use those keywords and -phrases in your page title and permalink and build them into the meta description. That the keyword or key phrase should also be the only keyword in the meta-keyword section is a no-brainer. While the page title and permalink is still a relevant on-site SEO element, we don’t have to argue about the direct relevance of meta-tags on search results. They are meaningless to non-existent, but there is a twist.

Advertise Your Articles and Posts

Since the page title and meta-description is often used by search engines to actually present your site in their results, you should look at them and use them as a direct advertising message to hunt for potential readers. They are nothing less than a text-ad and should be chosen carefully. For other businesses I do a lot of AdWords. Those are the little ads that Google shows above and on the right site of the organic search result. Making small changes in the titles of those ads or just by twisting the two lines of text, the effectiveness of an ad can increase or decrease dramatically. The same goes for the page title and meta-description and even for your permalink, which is similar to the display URL of a Google ad. I told you, SEO isn’t just a technical field anymore. Your page title and your site description should be written to attract humans, not machines like search engine spiders and robots.

Don’t promise what you can’t keep, but write a nice appealing ad for your great and valuable articles and blog posts and you will become successful. Remember: Content is King.

Example

Imagine you would like see the following results appearing for the search term “death valley landforms”:

Death Valley Landforms
In-depth explanations of the variety of the landforms in Death Valley, Nevada.
Death Valley landforms and other Death Valley curiosities explained.
www.landformsandgeography.com/death-valley-landforms

or

Geological Landform Interpretation, Death Valley June 18th, 1999
Free Online Library: Geology Facts of Death Valley National Park: Landforms…
Geologic History, Maps and Guides, 5th ed. (Brief Article, Book Review) …
www.freenononsensearticles.com/DV-a0142887019.php?id=63729…

If you would have clicked on result no. 1, welcome to my world. Have a look at how Google highlights the actual search term within the results.

Direct Marketing Simulator

If you want to get fancy, run some Google ads to find the perfect title for your post by split testing different alternatives. Check if you can figure out a way to structure the description by playing around with the two lines of text. AdWords doesn’t allow you to have enough characters to test a whole 160 character meta-description, but you will get a feeling for what your audience is responding to. Play around a bit with cheap non-commercial keywords and send the traffic directly to your post until you get a feeling for what people are actually clicking on.

Again, the key is to look at the page title, the meta-description and the permalink as marketing material. It is a text-ad for your site or article.

A warning: If you have no former experience with AdWords and you have no idea about what you are doing, educate yourself first. Otherwise, you could waste a lot of money. A good resource for that is Perry Marshall’s “Definitive Guide to Google AdWords.” Get the basics down and start experimenting.

For keywords and key phrases with no or little commercial interest, you can probably drive traffic for as little as 4 to 8 cents per click/visitor. How would you like to pay only about $5 dollars a day for 100 interested and highly targeted visitors? Could that build the momentum you desperately need in the beginning? Could some of them be converted into long-term returning readers and RSS subscribers?

Building Reputation

Like a scientist who is striving for his career, you have written a couple of well researched and valuable articles. By doing this on a regular basis, you are slowly building a presence in your field of expertise and people start noticing your work and referring others to your articles. You are on your way to building a reputation for what you are doing. The further down this road you travel, the higher up you get in the ranks.

By having focused on building a great foundation, you will now be able to broaden your view and put the pieces together. You have served a lot of little niches and now you will be in a position to take all those isolated theories and conclusions and challenge the established theories to leave your mark.

By that, I mean that you could write a bigger article for, let’s say, “The Physical Geography of Death Valley.” This article will include pieces and references to and from your post about “Death Valley landforms” as well as about “Death Valley climate”, the “rock formations,” the “fluvial erosions,” etc. I think you get the idea.

Google thinks about this in a similar way. They call it “aging.” It is basically nothing more than reputation building. As a young hotshot you will have to start small and you may get good rankings in some niches. If more and more sites which are relevant to the topic of your blog are linking to your work, your reputation will grow. For websites, like in the world of science, you can only reach a higher rank on the social ladder over time. You have to be consistent in what you are doing and build your reputation in a natural way (i.e., no link farms; there is no cheating).

If you are an aging, senior professor with a long list of significant publications in reputable magazines, you are on top of your career. People know you; you are the expert everybody is referring to. In other words, you are successful and where you want to be.

What the Future Holds

The algorithms of the major search engines develop and change over time and we will certainly see them refining their methods to calculate and present us with more targeted information.

Other services, systems and applications can also give indications about how valuable the content you are providing is to other people, and help to determine your rank on a virtual social ladder. Factors like the number of your RSS subscribers or how often your name, your website or some of your blog posts are mentioned in social networks and accessible communications systems or how often they are appearing in social bookmark applications will certainly be taken into consideration in the near future, too. Search engines serve people, so it will only be a matter of time until they use some of those factors.

Google Analytics is a widely used service that provides Google with further statistics and data about how visitors of a website deal with the information provided. Feedburner, probably the most popular RSS delivering service, is now owned by Google and lets them track exactly how often your subscribers are clicking on what article. The famous Google Reader generates usable statistics, too. All this data is already or will be used in the future. Maybe only a handful of people outside of Google know exactly how the latest algorithms work. The one and only way to stay on top of that complicated technical evolution is simply to provide valuable content and to put that valuable content into the hands of as many people as possible.

Be Aware

As you can see, it is easy to demystify SEO. All the Hokus Pokus and VooVoo about SEO is just hot air. If a company offers to optimize your site and promises you Top-10 Rankings if you give them only $500, run as fast as possible. Don’t take people serious who say that SEO is technical and complicated and that you will never get high rankings and a lot of traffic until you buy their crappy eBooks about exploiting niche profits to become a millionaire within 24 hours. Do not get scammed. Smart people deliver value. There is no substitute or short-cut to blogging success. You have to give in order to receive.

Get Started

Now, get started! Research keywords and niches for your topic. Download the SEO plugin I mentioned above. Write “advertising” (title, description, permalink) for your existing articles and write valuable, timeless content to build a strong foundation for your future blogging success. It takes time, but it is well worth it. The sooner you start to deliver real value, the faster you will reach your goals. You will dominate your field only by taking consistent action. You should start now!

Cheat Sheet:

• Content is King – you have to deliver value or you will crash and burn.
• Slowly build your reputation from niche articles to broader issues.
• Page Titles: Use Capitals – Have a look at your local newspaper or famous Hollywood movie titles to see how they use capitals to display importance in their titles. Use it to your advantage.
• Write for humans, not for machines. Write your article or posts first without even thinking about the usage of your main keywords or key phrases. You can insert them after you have finished putting your most valuable ideas on the screen. Don not over-do it by ripping your masterpiece apart. It must sound natural.
• Try to match the page- and the article title as well as the permalink as close as possible to the keywords or -phrase you are optimizing for. For example, the page title for the key phrase “death valley landforms” should be “Death Valley Landforms” and the permalink should be “death-valley-landforms.” The actual post title could be “Landforms of Death Valley.”
• Keyword Research: External Google Keyword Tool or Wordtracker – Remember to go for niches, especially in the beginning – High demand/Low Competition
• SEO PlugIn: All in One SEO Pack
• Start using paid search to gain an in-depth inside look about what people are searching for. Drive cheap traffic to your non-commercial topic posts to build momentum. Convert those visitors into long-term readers and RSS subscribers.