The Complete To-Do List for Bloggers

Without a shadow of a doubt, one of the most important tasks for any blogger is the creation of quality content. Quality content remains priority number 1, numero uno!

But here’s the thing about blogging: there’s a lot more involved in blogging than just creating quality content! Yes, content creation is priority-one, it is by far the biggest responsibility of any blogger. And quality content is the hallmark of a good blog, what will eventually make or break it. However the simple fact is that it doesn’t stop there, and there’s a whole lot more involved in creating and having a successful blog!

So what is that makes a blog successful? What is it that defines a successful blog? What do you need to do, apart from creating excellent content in order to ensure that your blog stand out?

Create Quality Content

Let’s start off with the basics: Creating quality content remains your priority, and should be your primary focus as well. Your content is the single-biggest reason why people come to your blog, and in order to be able to get direct and organic traffic to your blog on a continuous basis, you need to be able to produce and put up content that is: (a) valuable, (b) of extremely high-quality, (c) well-researched, (d) well-thought-out, (e) informational, (f) relevant to your niche, and (g) unique.

Marketing your Posts

The thing about content is that it creating quality content (as defined using the parameters listed above) is only half the story. The other half entails actually getting the word out, and marketing the content! What you’re looking for is organic (search engine traffic), traffic from campaigns (such as email subscription), traffic from backlinks, and of course, direct traffic. Getting traffic from different sources involves marketing your posts, creating backlinks on different sources, working on increasing your exposure as well as building your authority. This will be an essential part of your ‘to-do’ list!

Working on Blog Design

One of the things that you’ll need to look at from time to time, is how you can improve and enhance the design of your blog, and tweak some of its design elements in order to improve things. Most bloggers, from what I’ve seen, get a basic design up when they create a new blog, and continue to tweak certain elements of the blog and improve certain design-related elements – without making any big changes too frequently. Try finding a good theme or design layout for your blog, and stick with it. It doesn’t need to be flashy; in fact, minimalist is often the best way to go! As a photography enthusiast, I often frequent the popular website Ken Rockwell, and this website is the best-possible example of what a good ‘minimalist’ website looks like!

Establish a Strong Social Media Profile

When you’re not working on writing posts or producing excellent content for your blog, you should consider establishing a strong social media presence for yourself, or strengthening your social media authority. Social networking websites such as Facebook, Twitter, Google Plus, Pinterest and LinkedIn, to name a few, are proven to bring massive amounts of traffic to blogs and websites, and especially targeted traffic. Social media provides you with a fantastic opportunity to build backlinks to your blog, and it can be very productive if you can harness the power of this platform!

Update and Republish Old Posts with New Info

Look at some of your old posts from time to time. See if some of them can be updated or not. Chances are that new information can probably be added to the old post, and you could probably add that update and republish that post. Or perhaps you could build upon that post by writing a ‘Part II’ for it. Or maybe you did an old post that suddenly became relevant again (such as a Christmas post, for instance) which could be republished for your new viewers and readers.

Improve your SEO

Search Engine Optimization – the practice of optimizing your blog/website for search engines such as Google – is an essential part of any blogger’s responsibilities. If you want more exposure, more traffic, more sales, better revenues, better visibility and a better blog, you need to invest time to learn SEO, implement some of the SEO best-practices to your blog, and strengthen certain elements of your blog on a continuous basis. Spend time to learn about what SEO is (if you don’t already know), how SEO affects blogs and websites, and look at some of the ‘SEO-best-practices’ which you could implement on your blog.

Guest Blogging

Have you looked at guest blogging opportunities in your niche? If you haven’t not only should you do so, but you should also schedule your time and set aside a certain amount of your blogging time for writing featured/guest posts on other authority and high-PR blogs. Personally, I’m a big proponent of guest blogging, and I’ve spoken about some of its advantages on numerous occasions on this blog. Guest blogging on authority blogs provides you with exposure, high-PR backlinks, and helps build your authority in your niche, to name just a few of its benefits.

Tips and Tricks for Writing Excellent Blog Headlines

According to certain statistics, it is said that as many as 5 times people read your headlines, as compared to your content or anything else on your page!

But even if the authenticity of that claim is arguable, it is still a well-known and a well-established fact that perhaps the first thing a potential visitor looks at, when he or she stumbles upon an article, a post or a page on your website or blog, or finds your website on Google, is your headline.

Another stat also speak about the average time it takes for a first-time visitor to decide whether or not to stay on your website, or close the page/go back to the search results – which is said to be not more than a few seconds.

All of which essentially boils down to this: your headline is THE most important thing to your website/blog, and it is what will ultimately convince potential readers, customers or clients to click on your link, stay on your website and buy from you.

Your headline will determine whether a visitor comes to your website or not.

Here are some tips and tricks for writing excellent blog headlines for your blog:

1. Your headlines should be to-the-point and precise. They should immediately tell a potential visitor what your article is about, and should accurately reflect upon the content, the subject-matter and everything about the article itself. It should not undersell or oversell the article, or inaccurately describe the contents of the article.

2. Headlines should be short. Stating the obvious here, but headlines need to be short – ideally not longer than 60 characters. Think of writing headlines as writing a Twitter Tweet: keep it short, and precise, so that readers quickly get an idea of what the article is all about, and are not forced to read through a whole paragraph of text in order to know what the article’s about.

3. Headlines should work on attracting potential readers to your blog. Headlines should immediately grab the attention of a reader, and should actually make him/her want to click the link and read your post/go on your blog. There are tons of articles on the internet on writing attractive headlines, as a quick Google Search will reveal.  

4. Try writing headlines as one of the last things that you do, before hitting the publish button. Write headlines after you’re done with writing the article. Often times, it makes it easier to write short, precise and accurate headlines after you’re done with the writing part!

5. Numbered headlines are known to be much more attractive, and grab the reader’s attention immediately. For instance a post such as ‘5 Ways to Get More Traffic on Your Blog Instantly’ communicates the benefit of the post to the reader immediately, and tells him or her the benefit that they will get by clicking the link or going into the post.

6. Look at how some of the other people in your niche craft their headlines. Don’t blatantly copy their headlines or their styles, but try getting an idea of how they do it, and see how you can apply some of those best practices with headlines on your own blog.

7. Be direct and straightforward with your headlines; don’t beat around the bush. Headlines should not be obscure, unclear, vague, or ambiguous. They should be direct and straightforward – ‘right in your face’ – so that your points comes across as effectively as possible.

8. Be sure to include your keywords in any and all headlines that you write. This means adding a single relevant keyword in your headline, which is relevant to the article or the page, as well as relevant to the blog. Doing so allows search engines to properly index your article, and provides human readers a clue on what the article is really about.

What are some of your tips for writing effective headlines for blogs and websites? How do you craft titles and headlines for your blog? What are some of the best practices for writing blog headlines? Leave me your comments in the comments section below!