Having your own WordPress blog is an exciting thing. It's fun to blog, and it's a great way to turn your passion into profit by simply writing about what you love, and then monetizing your blog.
One of the biggest problems with owning a WordPress blog is that thousands of people start out excited, and ends up quitting. The reason for quitting varies from not knowing what to write about, to not being able to drive high quality traffic to their blog. Unfortunately, these people give up too soon, because if they simply follow a set of guidelines, and improve their WordPress blog with some vital key elements, they would be able to create a profitable blog that drives high quality traffic and makes them money.
So to clear things up a bit, before you quite because you're not getting enough traffic, or you're not making any money with your blog, or maybe you don't know what to write about - follow and implement the key elements I'm about to share with you first. They will help you create a more profitable blog that's sure to drive more traffic, and fill up your bank account faster.
#1: Research, Plan and Execute
The first key element of a successful and profitable WordPress blog is to do proper research, plan out your content and only then start taking action. It's really important to follow the steps in this order if you want to post high quality search-optimized content on your blog.
The very first step is to do some research. Find out what people are talking about in your niche. Open up an excel document, or even a simple notepad file. Copy and paste your ideas here - URLs of competitors talking about different topics in your niche. Headlines about your niche. Any content or information you can find in your niche. Once you have a few ideas, open up a keyword research tool such as Google's Keyword Planner and start researching keywords you can target. Find low-competition keywords with a large amount of monthly searches.
Next up you should start to plan out your own content. You need to give your blog readers high quality and unique content - this is also a MUST when it comes to ranking in search engines. You do NOT want to copy what others have written - you simply need to use that information as research and inspiration, and start planning your own content. Use the ideas you got from competitor sites, as well as the keywords you've collected while doing keyword research, and come up with ideas for new topics you can write about.
For example, if you are targeting the weight loss niche, you might find that a lot of competitor blogs are talking about a new diet pill. Now simply do some keyword research and find a focus keyword to target that revolves around this new diet pill - the keyword might be more generic and not directly targeted at the specific diet pill, or you can choose a keyword that directly targets the diet pill. As an example, let's say the new diet pill's name is "XYZ Diet Pill", you might target a generic keyword "diet pills" or you can target the actual name of the new diet pill "xyz diet pills". You can then use the information you gathered while doing research in order to assist you with writing a new, unique and original article.
Once you have your research done, and you completed the planning phase, you should start taking action. Start writing your articles based on the planning you completed, and then publish the articles to your blog.
#2: On-Page Search Engine Optimization
Search engine optimization is an important element when it comes to ranking your website higher in search engines. Organic search engine traffic is also the best way to drive traffic to your website without having to pay thousands of dollars every month for paid advertising. And the good news is - you can do your search engine optimization yourself, you don't have to pay agencies a lot of money to do this for you. You simply need to schedule some time every day to work on your SEO, and you'll start seeing results sooner than you think.
On-page SEO is a very important key element that helps with your rankings. It's also very important to take good care of your on-page SEO before starting to build backlinks and do off-page SEO for your website.
This process involves doing keyword research, and then optimizing your content to include your focus keywords, and sometimes additional keywords if you have content that's very long (1500+ words). The process is actually quite simple, and will only take a few minutes of your time while you are creating your content.
Important factors to take into consideration when doing your on-page SEO includes choosing a target keyword, and including the keyword in different sections of your content. You should use the target keyword about 4 times per 100 words you write, and you should include the target keyword in the title of your content (as close to the beginning of the titles as possible). Using header tags within your content is also a plus, and you should include your keyword in at least one of your heading tags. Apart from these factors, you should also include your focus keyword one or two times in your introduction paragraph, and at least one time in the last paragraph of your content.
Another factor that helps with on-page SEO is to include images in your content. All your images should have ALT tags. Add your focus keyword into the name and alt tag of your images. This will help your images rank in search engines too.
Running a WordPress blog has it's perks - if you need help optimizing your on-page SEO, simply install the "Yoast SEO" plugin on your WordPress blog and you'll be able to easily optimize your on-page SEO thanks to this free plugin.
#3: Social Share ability
Social media networks are growing stronger and more popular each and every day. This is the exact reason that you need to get on the social media train and make it easy for your blog readers to share the content on your blog.
Adding social share buttons is now vital. Every time someone reads your blog's content, and they like it, they will be tempted to share the content on their social media profiles. This helps you engage with more readers, and expand your reach tremendously.
WordPress has a large variety of social sharing plugins that will enable you to install and add social sharing buttons on your blog without having to code a single line. Some popular plugins that you can install on your WordPress blog include "SumoMe" and "Jetpack". SumoMe is a suite of plugins that will help you optimize and track the statistics of your blog. Jetpack is a suite of enhancements that adds extra vital features to your WordPress blog.
Implementing and Executing
The 3 key elements of a profitable WordPress blog I shared here include vital factors that you need to look at in order to improve your WordPress blog, and make it more profitable. These are not the only factors that determines the success of your blog, but they're a great starting point to optimizing your blog for better success.
Would love to here from you...