Like every blogger, one has to share some useful knowledge in blogging and giving some blog tips to the readers. The reason is simple: To gain more visitors! Almost everyone is curious and exciting on any topic related to blogging nowadays. This will the super long post as I will cover pretty much everything and you may skip some parts if you find it boring.
Chapter 1: Blog on your expert field and do some research.
Based on my terrible experience, you must write the things that you are interested or expert in. If not, you will just ended up losing the interest and motivation to go on and you and your blog will just going nowhere. I’m not going to talk much on personal things but I believe most of the bloggers’ motivation come from the number of readership, feedback/comments, Fame and money.
If a person is highly motivated by money until building a lot of automated blog or being copycat, he/she is just a spammer.
After having a topic to focus and write, you need to do some keywords research. There are so many keywords research tools and I found that making good use of Google Adwords: Keyword Tool is more than enough. Other tools that seems so promising are actually more suitable for mass advertising proposes like publishing advertisement in Google, Yahoo and other major search engine and portals, those tools then will help you save a lot of time in comparing and adjusting the budget and do traffic estimation which I’m not intended to talk about it in this post.
So, lets say if your blog is more on “search engine optimization” which basically not geographically limited and written in English, you can set the “Results are tailored to English and All countries and territories” in Gogole Keywords Tool. Put in some keywords related to your topic or interest that you can think of and the tool will generate a list of similar keywords which people normally query in google.
Theoretically, you should aim for the keywords with most Search Volume. However due to competitiveness, you should look for keywords that are less traffic and best describe your topic i.e. selecting a niche of the niche. Now you’re ready to pick a good name for your domain.
Chapter 2: Select a Blog Domain.
If you have noticed, many domain names are full of keywords inside but this is not neccassry as it may give you a boost on SEO in the initial but eventually having a unique name that will create a “brand” for the blog and your identidy is far more crucial in long-term. The logic is simple: People use “Fedex” but not “Federal Express”; people use “Google” but not “Search”.
If you’re already kinda of famous already, using your own name or your works is essential to build up your name too. Examples: www.thelongtail.com (Book’s Name) and www.kennysia.com (Real Name).
There are .com .name .com.my .org, and I found that .com is still the best for blogging unless you’re targeting on specific country’s readership. For example, Google will prioritize your website weight for .com.my domain when the people is search from www.google.com.my. You can see this after you have subscribe to Google Webmaster Tools.
I would not suggest you to use free domain or sub domain like .co.cc and xxx.blogspot.com. If you’re using blogspot, you’re encourage to use your own domain in blogspot platform. Having an own primary domain may make you start slow at first but eventually it will save you a lot of time and trouble in long term. First, domain name is an asset which will increase in value over the time (depends on your blog quality). Secondly, you will gain your own control to do more things like Affiliate link cloaking and add one more subdomain for picture gallery for example.
Chapter 3: Select Blogging platform.
I’m not going to advice you to use blogger.com if you have the little budget. Even you do not have the money to pay for hosting, you shouldn’t giving up to have your own domain. Having a domain is fun to some extend and I pretty sure you can at least covers back the domain charge of USD 7.96 a year. (Use GoDaddy Coupon Code, google it and you will find plenty of it.)
However, some professionals will go for blog networks which probably a blog with sub domain. However, this kind of blog network normally is highly targeted on certain niche and visitors by grouping up all professionals in that niche. For example,
If you’re curious, this is the list of some famous blog platform available for free or charge. As you can see, Mylifebbs.com is powered by WordPress.org and Kennysia.com is using MovableType. Other Stand alone blog platforms that many use include PMachine, Greymatter, B2Evolution, TextPattern and Expression Engine.
The main difference between these platforms are Hosted Blog Platforms and Stand Alone Blog Platforms.
(Sub chapter will be added in)
Chapter 4: Adding useful plugins and widget.
Adding useful plugins or widgets will help you better interact with your readers. Below are some of the plugins that I found quite useful and being widely used in large blogs.
To Be Con’t…