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10 Ways to be a Better WordPress Blogger
Looking to enhance your website with blogs? Blogs are a great way to improve your online presence and increase website clicks. Here are some helpful strategies for keeping your content calendar full.
1. Keep your site beautiful and user-friendly
Aside from it being beautiful and responsive, above all, it needs to be user-friendly.
Choose the WordPress theme that fits your needs.
Focus on the foundation of your blog first. Choosing an excellent WordPress theme has numerous benefits, especially with a premium theme, aside from just looking pretty. Advantages include quality, uniqueness, functionality, security, automated updates, and support.
There is also a giant number of options to choose from when you are looking for a theme, which means you can find just about any type of layout your heart desires. Here is a list of FREE themes to get you started.
Design the ultimate user experience
Above all, focusing on user experience will help your blog skyrocket. Easy-to-read fonts and sizes, optimal whitespace, appropriate imagery, and slick navigation will leave readers happy and not frustrated when using your site.
Break up your text with beautiful images
No one wants to read a giant block of tests – how boring, right? Skip the encyclopedia look by breaking up your content with images and callouts. This helps your posts become more readable and also decreases viewers’ bounce rate. Try experimenting with infographics, charts, and good old photos.
2. Find your niche
Defining your niche with your blog is a way to differentiate yourself from competitors and narrow your blog’s focus. By really zoning in on what your expertise is, you’ll be one of the go-to thought leaders in your chosen industry.
Not sure what your niche is yet? Try choosing three words you want your blog to resemble or three subjects you want your blog to focus on. Remember these keywords when planning your content so you can maintain a consistent brand within your niche. It can be tempting to write an interesting article outside these boundaries, but it’s important to keep it consistent, so viewers know exactly what you’re all about when they check out your site.
3. Find your brand and your voice
To create incredible content, first, you need to nail down your personality and style within your work. Your brand that you want people to trust. This can (and should) shine through your writing, your imagery, the site colors… everything! When you make your content your own, it will feel authentic and your audience will be willing to buy into your message. Blog topics can be hard to think of, especially if you try to force them before a deadline. To help the ideas flow effortlessly, try keeping a notebook on hand to write them down. This way, when you dream up a rockstar idea in the middle of the night or find some inspiration on your morning commute, your light bulb idea won’t be forgotten.
4. Keep your content calendar consistent
Posting regularly is extremely important to build your credibility. The frequency of your posts matters and random posting can seriously damage your blog traffic. While in a perfect world, you would be able to publish a blog post every day, time and resources don’t always allow for that. And that’s ok! Instead of having a sporadic blog schedule, it’s better to post less and be consistent so your readers know what to expect. This also helps prevent dry spells, which can hurt both your traffic and trust of readers.
We suggest creating a pattern with your blog and consistently posting content on certain days. To help you stay organized, you should start a content calendar.
5. Show us your dates
If you have chosen to not show your dates on your posts, you may want to rethink this. Even when you think the content is not time-driven, there could be one small fact within the post that is outdated and would lead the reader to the wrong information. This is especially true with any posts written about technology. Also, consider the dates when updating your posts. There are pros and cons to how this is done.
6. Keep your WordPress site safe and speedy
This tip will mostly prevent any headaches you may encounter in the future by getting into good site maintenance habits. Comb through your WordPress site and delete outdated or unused plugins and themes. Having outdated plugins can pose as security threats and can ultimately slow down your site’s speed. In addition, tidy up existing files. Delete unused or duplicate images, backups, and posts. You can also check and fix dead links with Google Webmaster Tools.
Have a clean and clear call to action
What’s the goal of your blog? Are you trying to collect email address? Increase sales? Get readers to comment and engage with your content? Whatever it is you’re actually trying to get people to do, that’s your CTA. And it should be on every. single. article you publish! By excelling with amazing content that keeps your readers wanting more, you’ll inspire them to act. They’ll want more of your content (or your emails or your products) and poof! You’ll have more conversions in no time!
8. Craft content for search engines and humans
Noticing a theme? CONTENT IS SO IMPORTANT, you guys.
Once you’ve got your style down, it’s time to be strategic with your content. When writing, keep it simple! While SEO is important to think about, try to forget about Google when you’re drafting content. Write for your audience first, in a way you’d want to read yourself. Focusing on interest storylines and natural writing styles (instead of clunky, robotic keyword dumping) will, in turn, help your search ranking because your content is actually valuable to readers within the industry.
With that in mind, there are certain best practices to follow to help you climb the search ranks. After you have a topic picked out, research keywords you want to target for each post. To find the right keywords, just think about what the main idea is; the thing you’re actually talking about.
9. Build Meaningful Relationship
This should go for not only your fan base, but also other bloggers. Building a community of supporters, even in the same industry, will only strengthen your blog’s brand. Engaging on other blogs and social platforms is a great practice to get into. Furthermore, when you listen to the struggles that your peers and clients face, it will help you ensure that you’re posting content they’re actually interested in. You understand their pain points and topics they’d love for someone to expand on for them. Try jotting down questions you get asked routinely, and correlate a pattern of the type of content that you should work into your blog topics.
10. Pick a super amazing hosting company
One of the most important things you can do to grow your blog is to move your site to a managed WordPress host, like Charley Grey. We treat every site individually and go to great lengths to ensure that each and every site we host is secure, fast, and always up-to-date.
A strong and recognizable brand can help a business be more successful, which is why creating an effective brand identity is so important. Let us know how we here at Charley Grey can help.