39 Blogging Tips That’ll Help You Get Traffic and Make Money 

Building a successful blogging business is one of the toughest things you'll ever do. But if you stay persistent and follow the best practices, you will get there.

The 39 blogging tips we've shared below will help you get an edge over other blogs.

This guide is broken down into 4 levels: beginners, writing, traffic, and monetization.

Here's what you'll learn:

Level 1: Blogging Tips for Beginners

If you're a newbie blogger that just created a new blog, pay close attention to these blogging tips for beginners. They will help you jumpstart your journey and be on your way to blogging success.

1. Pick a Niche You Know (But Also Make Sure It's Profitable)

One of the most helpful blogging tips for beginners is to choose a blogging niche that is the right fit for you.

Most expert bloggers and content website builders will recommend you to find a niche you're interested in. That doesn't mean you should choose your absolute passion. Although, that would help you a lot in the long run.

Picking a niche that you like will help you stay motivated longer. You will find writing content a little more enjoyable.

Whereas, choosing a niche you know nothing about—perhaps you chose it because you saw a surefire path to making money.

Choosing a niche you're passionate about will also help you become an expert faster. That means people will trust your content.

Being an expert about a particular topic also has other benefits. For example, you can create comprehensive courses and sell them for major profits. You can also get featured on the biggest sites in your niche—perhaps through an interview or a guest post.

Picking a niche you like is just better.

2. Choose a Blog Name That is Brandable and Memorable

Coming up with a great blog name is key.

Back in the day, your blog name—or your domain name, rather—played a big role in SEO. You could get a domain name that exactly matches a high-volume search term and it would help you boost your rankings. HowToLoseWeight.com, for instance.

Nowadays, you don't need exact match domains. People tend to go the brandable and memorable route since domain names don't play a big part in SEO rankings.

One of the most common methods to finding a blog name that is brand-worthy is by adding a word that is closely related to your niche with a noun, power word, or a mascot-type character.

Here are a few examples:

• Nutrition Champion
• Home Office Panda
• Poker Junkies

You can even use alliterations to make your blog name sound catchy and even more memorable. Here are a few examples for that:

• Nutrition Nation
• Home Office Hero
• Poker Power

There's also another way where you don't need to use super obvious keywords or terms related to your niche.

For example, if you're in the poker niche, you could use something related to playing cards. Perhaps something like Pocket Jacks or Big Stack Poker.

You will also need to make sure your domain name is available. Use a domain registrar like Namecheap.

I'd also recommend you aim for a .com extension. It's the most memorable.

3. WordPress is the Best Blogging Platform for Creating High-Quality Websites

WordPress.org is a content management system (CMS). A CMS is a software that helps users create and manage website content without technical knowledge. A CMS like WordPress makes that easy.

WordPress is the most popular blogging platform. It powers more than 43% of all websites on the internet—including ours and all the sites we create.

One of the best things about creating a WordPress blog is that it comes with many extensions and addons that are created by third-party companies and developers.

There are over 55,000+ plugins in the WordPress directory—even more with private companies. Moreover, the WordPress theme directory has over 9,000 free themes—and hundreds more with third-party developers.

With addons like that, you could truly build a unique website.

WordPress also gives you control over your website. That means you would be able to add and edit your code—if that's what you desire.

The software is free. That's one of the reasons why WordPress is the best blogging platform. All you would need is a web host and a domain name.

4. Understand That Successful Blogging is a Long Game

Building a successful blog will take time. Especially if you're going to be blogging on a budget.

Blogging requires a lot of content. Content creation takes a lot of time—especially if you're going to be writing blog posts without any help.

Think about it:

To start seeing a good amount of organic traffic from SEO, you would need about 100 blog posts that are indexed and ranked in Google.

If you're blog post writing skills aren't great, it could take you a week to create a single article—that would include research and writing. This would be true for beginner bloggers.

So that would add up to 10 blog posts in 2 months. If you have goals to start generating revenue in your first 6-12 months, this would be a problem.

With that said, you would start to get better and better at writing content. By months 3 and 4 it may start to take you a day or two to create blog posts. By month 6 you could be writing multiple blog articles a day.

Ranking your content high on Google also takes a long time. There's this concept in the SEO community called the Google Sandbox.

When a site is in the sandbox it generally means it's a new site that Google doesn't fully trust. It can take months to start seeing results from Google. But when you do, you'll see a giant uptick in your traffic analytics!

5. Nothing Will Happen if You Don't Do Anything

Content creation is of utmost importance. One of the most common blogging mistakes is when a successful blogger writes a dozen or so blog posts and waits for Google to rank them.

They check their keyword rankings every day hoping to see their blog post comes up on page one. They waste all this time when all the while their competitors are crushing out dozens of blog posts every month.

Don't let this be you. Don't waste time on unimportant tasks when you're just starting out.

If you don't have at least 50 blog posts, most other tasks should be dealt with later.

I know that might sound a little reckless, but writing blog content is the most important task. So after you finish reading this, start writing on your own blog.

6. Blog Content Must Be Helpful and Relevant

The content you create on your site must be focused on a certain type of people. You have to choose blog topics your target audience searches for.

That means if you're in the video game niche, you will have to create content that gamers would find helpful. This could be video game walkthroughs, accessory reviews, and gaming news.

If you publish a guide about cooking your favourite ramen recipe on your gaming blog, no one will read it. Google likely wouldn't even index it since topic relevancy is a big deal for SEO.

So make sure your content strategy only include blog topics your readers are actually searching for.

7. Blog Design Doesn't Need to be Complicated

One of the most common mistakes new bloggers make is spending way too much time on their blog design. It's not as important as you'd think.

Of course, you'll need good blog design. But you don't need to spend hours and hours every day adding cool features and changing your logo or colour palette.

When you're starting out, all you need is a simple blog layout that's lightweight so your site can load fast. You could even leave it black and white, if you want. Most people don't care as long as the content is helpful.

So don't waste time tweaking every little design feature on your site. You might end up slowing it down, which would be bad for SEO and user experience.

8. Google is Your Best Friend

Google will be the main source of free organic search traffic. If you create a ton of helpful content your readers search for, you could generate hundreds of thousands website visitors every month. Search engine optimization will play a big part on your own blog.

Google isn't just a search engine, however. Google is a tech company that offers many free tools that are especially helpful for new bloggers, entrepreneurs, and SEOs. All you need is a free Google account to access these.

One of the most helpful tools is Google Analytics. This is a tool that tracks your website traffic.

You should connect Google Analytics to your site from the get-go. It's super easy. All you need to do is to copy and paste a snippet of code onto your website.

Another essential tool is Google Search Console. This one allows you to track and manage your search presence. You'll be able to see data like your keywords, clicks, average ranking, and more.

Other helpful resources they offer are Google Trends, Google Docs, Google Spreadsheets, and Google Alerts.

9. Utilize Tools to Help You Save Time and Scale Your Blog

One of the best blogging tips you can learn is to use tools to help you grow your blog. While you can see results with the bare minimum, certain tools will save you so much time and help you reach your goals faster.

Project management tools like Trello and Asana will help you track your tasks and optimize your workflow so that you can increase productivity.

Keyword research and SEO tools like Ahrefs and Ubersuggest will help you find topics your audience is searching for in Google. This will help you by creating relevant content that drives organic search traffic.

Social media marketing tools like Hootsuite and Buffer will help you save time by scheduling your posts across multiple social network accounts.

And writing tools like Grammarly and Hemingway will help you start writing content that is easy to read and correct spelling and grammar errors with a click of button.

We have an epic post where we share 50 of the best blogging tools.

10. Consider Building a Team of Writers (or Hiring a Virtual Assistant)

Building a successful blog comes with many responsibilities—research topics, writing articles, managing your social media presence, etc. With so much to do, it can be difficult to keep up with everything. That's why it's important to consider hiring writers to help you with content creation or a virtual assistant to help you with other important tasks.

Hiring writers can help you keep up with your blogging schedule, as you'll have someone to help you write articles and keep your blog updated. Not only will you have more time to focus on other tasks, but you'll also benefit from the fresh perspective that new writers can bring to your blog.

Whether you need someone to write a few articles a week or help you with more substantial content, hiring writers can help you achieve your goals.

A virtual assistant, on the other hand, can help you with a wide range of tasks that go beyond writing, such as managing your social media accounts, responding to emails, or conducting keyword/topical research.

Virtual assistants are highly skilled and can help you save time and increase your productivity. With a virtual assistant, you can delegate tasks that you don't enjoy or don't have the time for, allowing you to focus on the things that you're good at and enjoy.

Level 2: Blogging Tips for Writing Blog Posts Your Readers Will Love

It doesn't matter if you haven't written your first blog post. These blogging tips will help you write content that looks like it was created by a successful blogger!

11. Writing for Internet Users is Different Than Writing for Newspapers

Writing for the web is much different than writing a newspaper article or an essay.

Internet users don't actually articles word for word. In fact, you've probably skimmed passed this sentences by now.

That's how people view articles on the web. They skim through the subheadings and scan the article for the most important parts so that they get their answers faster.

That's why you shouldn't write blog posts like you're writing an essay for your 12th grade paper. People on the web will just click off your site if they see large blocks of text.

When was the last time you read an entire article online? When was the last time you read a 100-word paragraph?

Best practices for writing articles online include:

• Short paragraphs and sentences - I typically write one or two sentences before I hit ENTER to start a new paragraph.
• Subheadings - these will break up your article into subsections, which will make your content much easier to scan.
• Use images - this will break up your article even more. Images such as screenshots are also much more helpful than trying to write what you're explaining.

12. Blog Post Titles are Important for SEO and Getting Clicks

Blog post titles play a major role in SEO rankings. Google tends to rank your article for search terms that appear on your title. If you don't put your target keywords in your headline, you may not see any results from Google.

Your blog post headlines are also what users see first. Headlines are what attract your readers and how you entice them to click.

If your blog post titles don't grab your reader's attention, they will end up scrolling down and find something else. This is true for both on social media and on the search engine results page.

13. Proofreading and Editing Before Publishing is a Key Step

Proofreading and editing are crucial steps in the writing process and are essential for producing high-quality content that is helpful for your readers.

Proofreading helps identify and correct grammatical errors, spelling mistakes, and typos, making your articles easier to read and understand.

A well-written, error-free blog article conveys professionalism and builds trust with your readers. It will also help you avoid embarrassing mistakes which would damage your credibility.

Editing helps to tighten your writing, clarify your message, and improve the overall structure and flow of your articles. It could even help you think of something new that would add more value to your blog post.

Some writers proofread and edit their content right after they write their last paragraph. I usually do, too.

But I would also recommend you go through your article one last time when you get up the next day. This will give you a clear mind and a new perspective on your content. Perhaps you'll think of something new to add or see something that could be written in a better way.

14. Images are Crucial for Creating Great Blog Posts

Blog post images are essential to creating high-value content. They are the next best thing to video content.

Screenshots are one of the most commonly used images in articles. They help illustrate your points and helps your readers understand what you're teaching them, especially for guides and tutorials.

I'd recommend ShareX for Windows users and Skitch for Mac.

Another commonly used type of multimedia are charts and graphs. If you do a case study or conduct original research, charts and graphs will help your readers understand your data and findings.

My favourite tool for creating custom graphics and images is Canva.

There's also sites like Unsplash and Pixabay if you're interested in using free stock photography on your blog.

15. Find Topics People are Searching For

One of the worst mistakes you could ever make is to blindly write about whatever blog topics that come to mind without doing any research. Even if the topics are actively being entered into the search engines.

Keyword research—or topical research—is one of the most crucial steps for SEO.

It doesn't have to be difficult, either. You can start by using Google search.

If you enter a keyword into Google you'll see a section that says People Also Ask. This is a goldmine of questions users have entered into Google.

Every time you click on one of these more and more will load. However, they will start to overlap each other. So make sure to enter a different search term when you want to find more.

Another tactic for finding keywords with Google is to use the autocomplete feature. This also shows you search terms people have entered into Google.

You can do this by typing your keyword and adding a letter at the end or beginning. This will open up a list of search term suggestions based on other people's searches.

It'll look like this:

You can do this with every letter of the alphabet. You could even go a step further and use multiple letters or even words.

Another search technique is to use the * feature. This will bring up even more search terms.

Here's how I used it with our "puppy training" example:

You can get creative with this and find hundreds of ideas for blog posts.

Another way to find keywords is to search Quora's indexed pages. Quora is the largest site where people go to ask and answer questions. It's a QnA community where they talk about nearly every topic known to man.

To find great ideas for content, go to Google and enter site:quora.com. This will show you Quora's indexed pages. To find relevant pages, add a keyword to your search.

Our "puppy training" example brought up about 289,000 results.

You can go through these results to find great ideas for articles.

There are many other keyword research methods out there. Some require special tools such as Ahrefs, SE Ranking, Ubersuggest, and SEM Rush. I'd recommend any of them. They'll give you good results.

Level 3: Blogging Tips That Will Open the Traffic Floodgates

16. Create an Editorial Calendar to Enhance Your Content Creation Process

An editorial calendar will help you plan, organize, and manage your entire blog content creation process.

Without content, your blog won't see the results you're looking for.

A content calendar will ensure that you'll publish blog posts consistently.

Additionally, it can help you save time. Especially if you spend a day or and afternoon planning your content strategy. This way you would have blog post ideas ready for you on a specific day instead of having to start fresh without knowing what you're going to be writing about.

Create an editorial calendar to streamline your content creation process.

17. Use Different Tactics to Write Blog Posts Faster

Content creation is one of the most important tasks for blogging. You must write tons and tons of blog posts to build a successful blogging career.

According to the latest blogging statistics, there are more than 7 million blog posts that are being published on a daily basis.

So if you think about it, there is a lot of value in writing content faster. The more you publish blog posts, the better chance you'll have at generating traffic and revenue.

There are a few writing techniques and tactics that'll help you write blog posts quicker than usual.

The first one you have to learn is to start your writing process with an article outline. That means you will have to create a structure before you write your opening line.

A blog post outline is comprised of h2 and h3 subheadings—even h4 subheadings if you're writing a giant masterpiece.

The best way to create your outline is by seeing what your competitors are doing. After all, if they're on the top search results they must be doing something right. You can create something even better.

I'd recommend you check out the top 3-5 results and combine their subheadings for your outline.

Once you're finished, you might have an outline that looks like this:

Now it's just a matter of filling in those subheadings with actual written content.

Another blogging tip for writing faster is to use AI (artificial intelligence).

I am a big fan of ChatGPT and Jasper. There are a few others I'm playing with, but these are the two I recommend at this moment.

ChatGPT is the most popular right now. It has gone completely viral.

Basically, it works by typing in a prompt and the AI will output content.

You could even ask ChatGPT to write you an entire blog post and it'll output something that's almost worthy to be published.

You have to be careful, though, with AI. It's very possible that Google frowns upon AI-generated content. If they detect your content is all AI, your site could get flagged.

I'd strongly recommend you use ChatGPT like a writing partner.

While some of the content it outputs will be publish-worthy, always proofread it and make edits where it needs changing to make it your own.

The other AI writing tool is Jasper. This one is much more geared to content creation.

You could pair Jasper with ChatGPT. Perhaps you can get Jasper to rewrite what ChatGPT gives you—or vice versa.

18. Scale Your SEO Ranking with Topical Authority

Topical authority is one of the most talked about concepts in SEO. Experts say that topical authority is essential for ranking high in the search engines. Especially if you want to compete for highly competitive search terms.

Basically, to achieve topical authority, your site must cover a topic extremely thoroughly. That means you would have to publish a number of blog posts around a broad topic to be able to compete for the big keywords.

For example, if you want to rank for SEO tools, you may have to write content about:

• SEO tools on a budget
• SEO tools for agencies
• best SEO tools
• SEO tools benefits

You might even go deeper and target topics like "what is SEO" and "SEO for beginners".

19. Earn Google's Trust by Practicing E-E-A-T

E-E-A-T is an acronym coined by Google in their quality search guidelines. Google's E-E-A-T is essentially how they rate a website or a web page's content to determine how trustworthy it is.

E-E-A-T is a huge ranking factor.

The acronym stands for:

• E - Experience - do you have first-hand or life experience on the topics you cover?
• E - Expertise - do you know the necessary skill or knowledge on the topics you cover?
• A - Authoritativeness - are you a go-to source on the topics you cover?
• T - Trustworthiness - is your content known for being accurate and reliable?

This sounds like a lot to do, but SEO experts like Kyle Roof have studied Google E-E-A-T and shares his knowledge for everyone to see.

In a recent interview on the Niche Pursuits podcast, Kyle Roof shares many practical tips that revolve around proving you're a real person and your website is actually operated and maintained by a real person.

Some of the most important points Kyle shares are:

• Get a business license
• Display a business address and phone number
• Create an About Us page
• Create a Contact Us page
• Create an Author page
• Create an Author box for each post
• Create an XML and HTML sitemap
• Target keywords and topics that are in your tier - meaning lower competition topics if you're just starting out
• Topical authority - cover topics thoroughly (with multiple blog posts)

There are other SEO experts that offer other E-E-A-T advice.

Other E-E-A-T best practices include:

• Build high-quality backlinks
• Write quality SEO articles

20. Build Links, Get Traffic, and Make New Connections with Blogger Outreach

Blogger outreach—or simply just outreach—is when you make an effort to achieve some goal by reaching out to influencers and experts in your industry. This usually starts by sending them cold emails.

Cold emailing, however, is tough to get results with. Most entrepreneurs and influencers tend to sniff out spammy outreach emails and delete them from their inbox without evening opening them up.

That’s why it’s best to use pre-outreach tactics that’ll give you a better chance at reaching your goals—whether that’s building links, getting social media shares, or simply building relationships.

For pre-outreach to work, you’ll have to offer value to your prospects and target experts.

One of the best ways to do this is to link to them within your content and shoot them a quick email that introduces yourself and lets them know you’ve given them a backlink.

Another quick and easy method you can try is sharing their content and mentioning or tagging them. This will make it easier to remember you when it’s time to send your first outreach emails.

You could also take it a step further and implement one of their teachings. This would require you to see actual results from their methods. If done right, you’ll surely gain their attention. Perhaps even be a subject of a case study that would benefit you highly.

When it’s time to send outreach emails, you should implement the best practices:

Don’t look like you’re using templates - spammy outreach templates are a big turn-off.

Look for a personal connection - perhaps they share that they love a certain sport. You can use this to your advantage.

• Research your targets - actually get to know them. Read their about pages and social media profiles.
• Be personal but professional - look for something in the middle.

21. Get In Front of Other Audiences Through Guest Posting

Guest blogging is a great way to gain SEO authority by building links and increasing your visibility by getting in front of other people’s blogs and audiences. Generally, it’s a great way to build your own reputation.

Finding high-quality guest blogging opportunities is tough. Most blogs with high traffic and authority do not actively promote that they accept guest posts. So you won’t find them by searching for keywords like “travel blog guest post”.

That’s not to say that these opportunities aren’t important, but they’re mostly mid-tier.

I’m not saying you shouldn’t go for these because you absolutely should. In fact, mid-tier guest post opportunities will likely make up the bulk of your guest blogging strategy.

You won’t have trouble finding these. You can find them by:

• Searching Google by using your keyword + guest post, write for us, or become a guest contributor.
• Looking through lists other sites have published (search your keyword + guest post opportunities).
• Browse Twitter by searching for guest post + your keyword.

Securing guest posts on sites that accept them is pretty straightforward. If they don’t show you how to pitch your ideas to them—probably on a “write for us” page—they will likely have an application for you to fill out.

Getting your guest post idea accepted is just a matter of understanding what topics they publish. So make sure you do a little research on their content beforehand.

Also, make sure they haven’t published any content that’s exactly what you’re pitching. Unless you provide a unique take on the topic.

You can find out what the site has posted by using this Google search operator: “site:theirdomain.com + your idea”.

But how do I get on bigger sites, you ask?

As stated earlier, larger sites tend to not accept guest posts. However, you may find one or two authority sites that have a “write for us” page. But they’re not in every niche.

The first sites to look for are sites that have authors that aren’t the owners or editors. If a site has multiple writers, it could mean that they’d be open to publish your guest article.

Finding these takes some digging around. You can start by visiting the big websites you already know and look at their blog page. If you see multiple writers there’s a chance they’re open to publishing guest posts.

You can also find them by searching for your topics and keywords in Google.

Another method is to use competitor analysis tools like Ahrefs, SEMrush, and SE Ranking. We use Ubersuggest here so that’s what we show you in the example (they all generally work the same).

To get started, you’ll enter a competitor’s URL into your tool of choice. The feature you need is backlink analysis. This will bring up a website’s backlink profile.

You must dig through your competitor’s backlinks. You will actually have to visit the URLs. If you find that the article was written by your competitor, MONEY! You add that to your list of prospects.

Now, pitching your article ideas can be tough. Most editors won’t even open your emails or consider you.

That’s why you should:

• Find the perfect guest article ideas.
• Don’t sound like you’re using a generic email outreach template.
• Don’t call the editor/owner “sir or madam “. You actually need to learn who you’re pitching to.
• Show them your best content.
• Show them that you’ve written for other high-end websites.

Last piece of advice:

Use a tool like BuzzStream to find influencers in your industry. They will almost always have a content site with high authority.

22. Increase Your SEO Authority by Building Good Backlinks

Building quality backlinks is a big part of any SEO strategy. While they aren’t 100% necessary, backlinks will boost your SEO rankings and authority. Perhaps, even get you quicker results.

One of the most common methods for link building is through guest posting. Obviously, we just talked about that in #21.

Generally, obtaining links through guest blogging will look something like this:

• Find opportunities
• Come up with a great guest post idea
• Pitch them your amazing idea
• Write a banger of an article

Before that, however, you’ll have to find out that they allow guest authors to include dofollow links to their own sites. You can usually find this on their guest blogging guidelines.

Another way to build links is with broken link building. This is where you find a broken link on someone’s site and let them know, while offering your own content as a replacement.

You can find broken link opportunities with a tool like Ahref’s free link checker. All you need to do is enter a URL of a site you want a link from and the tool will find broken links if there are any.

If you find a broken link where you have the perfect replacement then it’s time to send them an email.

If you don’t have a piece of content that would be a good replacement then you have a chance to create it—if it’s relevant to your content strategy.

Another link building strategy is through competitor analysis. This is when you use a tool like Ahrefs or Ubersuggest to see where your competitor is getting their backlinks. This data is so valuable as you can try to replicate them.

For any link building tactic to work, however, you will need high-quality content. No one will ever link to an article that is low to mid tier.

23. Internal Links Are Just as Important as External Links (if not more!)

Building backlinks is one of the best ways to improve your SEO rankings. Everyone knows that in the blogging and online marketing community.

Something people tend to overlook is their internal link structure.

Interlinking your content is a crucial part of SEO. Internal links spread SEO authority (or link juice) to all your content.

Internal links will help tell search engines what your pages are about. But also, it shows search engines which pages on your site are most important.

One of the best ways to improve your interlinking structure is to create topic silos. This is where you write blog posts around similar topics and have links to each other.

Content silos typically start with a broad topic and have subtopics below it—with each page linking back to the big topic page.

Another way to build your internal links is to go through the content you've already published. This can be tedious so it would help if you assigned this task to a virtual assistant or team member.

You can also use a tool like Link Whisper.

Link Whisper is a WordPress plugin that will analyze your pages and will give you suggestions on which pages should link to one another.

There's a free version that you can try!

24. Analyze Your Competitors to Find Great Opportunities

Competitor analysis is one of the best growth hacking strategies for improving your backlink profile, increasing your search rankings, and finding proven content ideas.

Analyzing your competitors' websites sounds like something you would hire an agency to do for you. But tools like Ahrefs and SE Ranking will make the entire process very easy.

Here's an example using Ubersuggest:

We're going to analyze ryrob.com. It's a site about blogging tips and making money online. We cover a lot of the same topics, so it's a great example.

Ubersuggest has a feature where you can look at a website's best pages based on metrics like estimated traffic, search volume, and search position.

When you enter ryrob.com into the tool it'll show you its best pages.

Some keywords are hyper variations that are considered as one keyword. These would be keywords with typos or ones that miss a certain word as shown in the screenshot above.

A keyword Ubersuggest found that ryrob.com gets a ton of traffic from is "blogging definitions" where it ranks at the top.

If you didn't have a page that targets this keyword, it would be perfect to add it to your content calendar.

You can also get a clearer view at a site's top pages based on estimated traffic. This feature will show you the pages' titles, backlinks, and social media engagement.

Data like this have so much value.

One of the best ways to use this data is by picking one of your competitor's pages, create content that is better, and reach out to the sites that links to those pages.

Most competitor analysis tools will show you exactly where they get their backlinks from!

25. Make Sure You Understand Search Intent Before Targeting Keywords

Keyword search intent is a crucial factor for SEO rankings. If you target a keyword and your content doesn't match the search intent, there's no way your page would rank at the top.

There are 4 types of search intent you have to be aware of:

• Informational - user is looking for answers/information
• Commercial - user is interested in products/services
• Transactional - user is ready to buy something
• Navigational - user is trying to find a page on a certain website

For content blogs and websites, most keywords and topics you target will fall under the informational search intent. This will be for your everyday content such as how to posts, ultimate guides, tutorials, list posts, and others that are information-based.

Your blog content will also consist of commercial content—especially if you want to monetize your blog with affiliate marketing. This type of content is product reviews, best product lists, and any others that are based on promoting products.

Transactional keywords are ones blogs tend to stay away from. Users with transactional intent tend to have their credit cards out. They'll search for something like "buy iphone 14 case online" or "windshield repair quote". The search results for these types of keywords are usually sales pages.

Navigational keywords are also ones content blogs stay away from. These keywords look like "facebook login" or "amazon whiteboards". When a user searches for things like this it means they already know where they want to go. Perhaps they're just lazy to enter the URL.

26. Scale Your Content Creation for BIG Results

Content is your blog’s main attraction. It’s why people will visit your site.

In theory, the more content you publish on your blog the more traffic you will generate.

Building a successful blog without writing hundreds of blog posts is possible. However, that approach would take a lethal amount of link building.

Why? It’s simple. If you want to rank in the top 3 results for ultra high volume search terms, you’re going to need many backlinks from high authority sites.

However, getting backlinks from large sites is extremely difficult. That's why businesses hire SEO agencies to improve their rankings.

If you scale your content, however, you can potentially drive hundreds of thousands of visitors without actively building links.

If you think that you absolutely have to do link building, think again. There are many cases where blogs and content sites have generated tons of traffic and revenue without building links.

Morten Storgaard of Passive Income Geek talks about how quality (and quantity) content is much more important than building links.

The team at Income School are other experts that have proved that content is much more important than backlinks.

Why is this, you ask?

Topical authority.

We touched on this a few minutes ago. Topical authority is when Google sees your site as an authority on a topic—which would lead to increased search traffic.

With that said, you can't just blindly create content about random shit. You have to publish relevant articles.

The best way to achieve topical authority is by creating topic clusters or silos. This is when you pick a broad topic and write a bunch of articles about subtopics.

For example, if you want to rank for SEO strategy, your topic cluster might look like this:

• SEO strategy
• link building techniques
• on page optimization
• competitor analysis
• SEO for beginners
• SEO tips
• SEO copywriting

27. Publishing Original Data and Research is a Surefire Method to Generate Traffic and Links

One of the best growth hacking strategies is to publish original data and research on your blog. This data or research can be something like a case study or statistics.

Content writers tend to link to this type of content a lot as it adds a ton of value to an article.

A real-life example of original research attracting tons of backlinks is Orbit Media's annual blogger survey where they get hundreds of successful bloggers to answer a set of questions and they publish the stats.

If you pop their article in a competitor analysis tool you'll find that the page has received more than 11,000 backlinks.

That's crazy.

You can create these types of articles in any niche. People love to feature data that was gathered by real people.

28. PageSpeed is Crucial for Search Rankings AND User Experience

PageSpeed is the amount of time your site takes to load a page. It plays a part on a couple of things.

First of, user experience. If a page takes more than a few seconds to load, people tend to get turned off by that and leave. 1 in 4 website visitors will leave if a page takes more than 4 seconds to load.

There are a lot of interesting page speed statistics. For example, the average loading time for pages in Google's top 10 results is 1.65 seconds.

So it's best to optimize your website's loading speed for better user experience and SEO.

The essential best practices for keeping your loading times low include:

• Choosing a reliable web hosting company
• Enabling caching on your site
• Utilizing a CDN
• Optimizing your images - use a compression tool

Another part to this is mobile responsiveness. That means your site must look great on all screen sizes and devices.

If you have a WordPress blog or website, this will be easy. Your theme is likely already mobile-friendly—most are.

29. Building a Following on Social Media Can Be a Great Source of Traffic

Social media marketing can be great for your blog. Especially if you're in a niche where your target audience hangs out on Twitter and in Facebook groups, for instance.

Not everyone will find social media useful for generating traffic.

Pinterest, for example, is great for niches like cooking, fashion, DIY, home decor. Perhaps it has do with the userbase being mostly women.

If you're a serious blogger that wants to get into social media, here are essential steps you'll have to take:

• Find where your target audience hangs out.
• Pick the right social media platform - you don't need all of them.
• Create awesome social media posts with great visuals.
• Engage with your followers (when you get them) - reply to comments, thank them for sharing, ask them questions, etc.
• Get influencers to share your content - people with large followings can help you gain followers and drive more traffic.

30. Your Content Can Perform Great in a Different Format

Repurposing your best and old blog posts can drive a ton of traffic.

One of the best ways to do this is to turn your blog post into video content and post it on YouTube.

When you search for almost any keyword on Google, you'll notice that YouTube videos tend to come up a lot. So by embedding your video into your blog post, you could gain higher rankings.

Another thing you can do is YouTube Shorts or TikTok. With minute-long video being as popular as it is now, this can be a goldmine for traffic. You could turn a blog post into several short videos and generate thousands of views.

Another content format that's popular is podcasts. If you don't want to show your face in a video, this could be for you.

Other formats for content repurposing include:

• Infographics
• Social media posts
• Slideshare
• eBooks

31. Keep Your Content Fresh and Up-to-Date

This is one of the simpler yet most important blogging tips for content creators of all levels.

Keeping your existing content up-to-date is paramount to providing the most helpful resources for your readers.

Giving your readers false or outdated information would make you look bad. You would lose trustworthiness. People wouldn't want to come back to your site.

Also, if you take a look at the SERPs for any keyword, you'll find that almost every result will have a recent date—at the very least it'll be dated the current year.

It may not necessarily be a huge ranking factor, but when I see a date that's not the current year I tend to not click that result thinking the information may not be as fresh as others.

I'd recommend going over your existing content every few months to make sure anything isn't outdated.

Level 4: Blogging Tips That Will Turn Your Blog Into a Money Making Machine

32. Display Ads + Hella Content = Your Money Machine

One of the best ways to make money blogging is with display ads. This is where you join an advertising network that works with brands and companies that pay people to put ads on their sites.

Ad revenue for bloggers can be very lucrative. There are many blogs out there that generate 5—even 6—figures from display ads.

The amount you actually generate depends on a couple factors.

Number one, what is your “earnings per thousand views”?

With display ads, there’s a metric that measures how much you’ll make with a thousand views (many refer to it as EPMV). The higher this number is, the more revenue you’ll obviously generate.

EPMVs can vary with every niche and sub niche. A niche with many users that are interested in buying, for instance, might get higher EPMVs.

Why, you ask? Brands and companies will pay more for advertising on sites that have viewers that are looking for products.

Whereas, sites that attract viewers that are solely looking for information may get lower EPMVs as they may not be at the buying stage yet.

The other factor that’ll determine how much you’ll earn with display ads is your traffic. More specifically, how much traffic are you getting on a monthly basis?

If it isn’t obvious, the more traffic you get, the more revenue you’ll earn.

Let’s say you are getting an EPMV of $20. If you’re generating 10,000 monthly visitors, you’d be earning $200 per month. That’s not bad. But not great either.

If you’re getting 100,000 visitors every month, however, that’s $2000 per month. Which is good, but could be better.

A number to strive for to generate a “full-time income” would be $4000 per month. You can eat and pay them bills with $4K.

To generate $4000 a month with just ads and a $20 EPMV, you’d need 200,000 monthly visitors.

That’s a lot of work. But if you can aim to drive 1000 monthly views per article, you can get there with 200 blog posts—which is very doable.

33. Affiliate Marketing is a Key Monetization Method

Affiliate marketing is a very lucrative method to making money on your blog.

Affiliate marketing is when you promote other people’s products in exchange for a percentage of each sale.

The amount you make with affiliate marketing depends on two key factors: the affiliate commission rate and your conversion rate (how well you sell).

Let’s say you’re promoting a product that costs $50. The affiliate program pays a 10% commission on all their products. That’s a $5 commission for each product you sell.

If you are getting 1000 views per month on the article that promotes that product and you’re converting 10% of them to buy, that’s 100 sales per month.

100 sales with a $5 commission equals to $500 per month.

If you can scale that to 5000 visitors with a 10% conversion rate, that’s 500 sales per month. That equals to $2500.

All products and affiliate programs will vary pricing and commission rates.

If you promote a subscription service where customers pay $50 every month and the company pays a 30% commission rate, that’s $15 per sale per month.

Very lucrative!

You can promote your affiliate products by publishing affiliate content such as:

• Product reviews
• Product comparisons
• Product roundups and best-of lists
• Product tutorials

Seeing results with affiliate marketing is much tougher than writing a simple review with your affiliate link sprinkled in there.

Google has recently launched algorithm updates that target affiliate content and product reviews.

After these updates, it’s become best practice that affiliate content should only be a smaller percentage of your overall content. Experts recommend around an 80/20 ratio where you should only publish commercial content 20% of the time—80% informational content.

It’s also recommended that you should have real-life experience with the products you’re reviewing. Writing product reviews based on other people’s research don’t perform as well in the SERPs—if at all.

34. Create Product Reviews That Will Rank and Bank

Product reviews are key to your affiliate marketing strategy. They're one of the best ways to promote your affiliate link as reviews are great at generating organic traffic from search engines.

If you want your product reviews to make money, you will need to:

• Rank them high in Google
• Optimize them for conversions

Ranking your reviews high in Google is almost like with any article you want to rank. Look at how other bloggers and affiliate marketers write their review and optimize it for on-page SEO.

The best way to write content that will rank is by using SurferSEO. It's what we use. In fact, I'm writing currently writing this sentence with SurferSEO's content editor.

The tool will show you how to write your blog post based on your competitors' content—the pages on the top search results. It'll provide you with a score out of 100 and suggestions on how to improve it.

The other key component to writing reviews that will rank is to actually have first-hand experience of the product you're reviewing.

Back in the day, as recently as last year actually, you can write reviews based on other people's experiences and see decent results. But Google's Product Review Update has changed affiliate marketing.

Today, it's best practice to get your hands on the products.

If you think about it, it's obvious. Having first-hand experience of a product will help you write reviews that are 100x better.

35. "Best Product" Lists are Highly Competitive But Convert Like Crazy

The most common article for affiliate marketers is the "best products" list (example: 10 best VPNs). For good reason, too. This type of content is highly searched for in Google AND the traffic converts like crazy because they're almost ready to buy.

However, these articles aren't always best to go after. Large affiliate sites with more authoritativeness than you are typically the ones you see rank for these search terms.

That's why you might want to hold off on going after these keywords when you're at the beginning stage of your blogging journey. It's actually best to build up your authority first.

But when you're ready to compete with the big boys, let me tell you...

You will see massive results with this type of affiliate content.

36. Get Good at Using CTAs

A CTA is a call to action. It's what you use when you want your reader to do something. This could be to join your mailing list or to share your blog post across your social media channels.

But the main CTAs you'll have on your blog will focus on promoting your affiliate link.

If you can get good at creating these, you can boost your affiliate income.

One of the best CTAs is the affiliate box. It's where you create a content box that gives your readers an overview of a product.

These affiliate boxes or product displays typically have:

• An image of the product.
• A small but informative paragraph.
• A features/benefits section OR a pros and cons section.
• A star rating.
• A button with your affiliate link.
• (Optional) A link to your product review.

If you use a page builder like Elementor or Thrive Architect, creating these affiliate product displays will be easy.

We use Thrive Architect and they provide several templates for these.

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Other ways to use CTAs include:

• Popups
• Sidebar sections
• End of your blog posts

37. Look for Different Ways to Promote Your Affiliate Products

The most common ways to promote your affiliate products are through product reviews, comparisons, and "best" lists.

If you want to scale your affiliate income you will have to find other ways. Especially when you're starting out since it'll be tough to compete in Google.

One of the best ways to promote your affiliate links is to tie in the product into an informational post.

For example, if you're promoting a nail trimmer for dogs, you can write an article about how to trim a dog's nails. There would many opportunities to include your affiliate links in an article like that.

Other ways to promote your affiliate products include:

• Product tutorials.
• Resources page or tools of the trade.
• Send it to your email subscribers.
• Show how the product has helped you on social media.

38. Sell Your Knowledge with Online Courses

Creating and selling an online course is one of the best ways to make money online. Especially for bloggers as you can use your blog and content to generate leads.

Creating online courses is very easy in 2023. There are many platforms that let you build and sell courses. The most popular being Udemy, Thinkific, and Teachable.

Finding an idea to sell is the tough part.

Typically, you start by building an audience. Most online course creators do this by starting an email list (more on this in a minute).

The idea is:

• Build a mailing list (the more the merrier).
• Find out their needs.
• Presell your course idea (do not create a course yet).
• If people are buying your idea, create the course.

Why do I have to presell, you ask?

Not all online course ideas will sell. Especially with the audience you’ve built.

If you create a course and only two people are buying it, you would be wasting time and money.

39. Build a Mailing List of Trusting Subscribers

There are many advantages to having an email list.

If you got hit with a major Google update, for example, and lost all your traffic, you would still have people to make money from.

If you have an affiliate product to promote, your email subscribers are perfect to make money from.

If you want to create your own product or service, your email subscribers are perfect to get ideas from.

Now, building your list is going to be tough. There’s way more to list building than “subscribe to my mailing list”. People tend to need a reason to give you their email addresses. An incentive.

The best way blogs and content sites build email lists is with lead magnets.

A lead magnet is something a visitor receives after they’ve subscribed to a mailing list. This could be:

• An eBook
• A checklist
• A coupon code
• A digital guide
• A workbook
• A mini course
• A swipe file
• A content library

Basically, anything that a visitor can download.

To start collecting emails, you will need a lead generation tool. There are many out there—free and paid.

You can find many free list building tools on the WordPress plug-in page. Some of the most popular are:

• Newsletter
• MailPoet
• Icegram Express
• MailOptin
• MailMunch
• OptiMonk

These plugins are great. Some also have paid versions and features for managing and nurturing your list.

Obviously, with a premium list building tool, you’ll get more features, more templates, and a better UI.

There are many paid tools for email list building. I’d recommend:

• Thrive Leads
• OptinMonster (also has a free version on WordPress)
• Leadpages
• ConvertPro
• Bloom by Elegant Themes

Most tools don’t have the ability to send email campaigns. You’ll need an email marketing tool for that.

Some offer a free version for users with small email lists. These tools include:

• Mailchimp 
• MailerLite
• ConverKit (my tool of choice!)

Other paid email marketing tools are:

• Aweber
• GetReponse
• HubSpot
• Campaign Monitor
• Active Campaign

Conclusion

The 39 blogging tips we shared in this post will help you build a successful content website that will generate tons of traffic and revenue. 

However, if you don't take action, you won't see the results you're dreaming of.

You must stay motivated to be consistent. You must be persistent if the self-doubt or burnout starts to roll in.

If you stay patient and write tons of helpful content, you will get rewarded!

Is there a question that we didn't answer for you about blogging? Let us know in the comments below!