Blogging Not Blagging: Patience is Key for Beginners!

Many people start blogs and many people fail at it. The most common reason for failure is a lack of patience. If a blogger isn’t getting results right away, he might give up on the project completely. Perhaps if he intends to continue, he will resort to buying links or traffic and using other Black Hat techniques.

Let’s establish a very important fact right away. If you attempt to use Black Hat techniques in order to speed up the progress of your blog, it will backfire. Google, as well as other search engines, are way too smart for these types of amateur games, and they will be onto you in an instant. Instead of taking that risk, stick with your game plan. It might take some time for Google to recognize your blog and begin indexing pages and ranking keywords, but once that starts happening, you’re on your way to success.

You might be wondering how long it takes to establish some momentum on search engines. A lot will depend on what you’re writing about and how competitive your niche is. The quality of your writing is important, as are the keywords that you use in your written content.

When you’re researching keywords, be sure to avoid targeting one and two-word keywords. You won’t be able to compete with the big players. Instead, target long-tail keywords that are three to seven-word phrases. These keywords aren’t searched for as often, and you can rank for them with ease. Some people prefer not to target keywords at all and simply write naturally. In their opinion, the keywords will show up anyway. Either way is acceptable but the key is to continue to add content. Linking might be important, but content is still king. Everything begins with content. For instance, you can’t get high-impact sites linking to your blog if you don’t haven any content. Try to add one article to your blog per day.

When you’re adding content to your blog, try to avoid being subjective. If everyone was stating their opinion on a certain issue, then everyone would be a successful blogger. If you truly want to be successful, then you need to put in the hard work, which means doing your research. For example, if you own a poker blog, your readers will be more interested in a poker room review for a new casino in Atlantic City than how you would play Ace-King prior to the flop. Most importantly, Google values factual information much higher than opinions.

Grammar is also important. If you’re not a grammatical guru, then consider hiring a writer. There are many content writing sites out there that can help you in this area. If you don’t want to pay these small fees, then you will have to take a writing course. In the long run, it will pay off.

In order to determine what content is getting the best results, be sure to use Google Analytics. Without it, you will be lost. When you use GA, you can see what pages are being visited the most often, how long visitors stay on that page and how often people leave the site from that page. This is valuable information. Of course, you should write more content related to any topics on already successful pages.

In regards to monetizing your blog, you will have numerous options. Just be sure not to jump into this arena too fast. Most people like to use AdSense. This makes sense considering all you need to do to make money is add content to your blog. However, this is a long process and most people give up too early. Not only that, but only certain niches pay well. Furthermore, you will need several sites if you really want to make money. Another option is to sell products through a site like Clickbank. For a small fee, they will service all payments using PayPal or credit cards. They will also allow you to put up one ad promoting a product or service from your site. This ad is for affiliates, who will then market your product or service for you as long as they get a cut of the profits. If you’re simply looking to increase traffic to your blog or website to increase its value, then you can eventually put your blog up for sale on Flippa, which is a site for flipping blogs and websites. These are only a few examples of how to monetize your blog. There are many more options available.

All that said, you shouldn’t even think about monetizing your site until you have established a readership. In order to increase your odds of success, always reply to any visitor inquiries, and do your best to communicate with them in a friendly manner. Many people forget that sales is more about building relationships than anything else. Also try to throw in somewhat controversial content on your site once in a while. More comments increases the popularity of any blog or website. Don’t get frustrated if you don’t see comments right away, though. This is an extremely long process. As long as you keep writing, it will eventually happen.

The bottom line here is to continue to provide quality content that your readers will find valuable. If you do that on a consistent basis, then your blog will rise in value on its own. From there, everything will take care of itself.