Using Keyword Research To Race Your Blog To The Top of Google's SERP

SEO is an ever changing concept.

Today, as far as SEO is concerned, the importance of content has increased and the importance of keywords and other things are tending to decrease.

But even after all those Penguin and Panda updates by Google and after all those improvements in its algorithms, any experienced SEO consultant or blogger would agree that even today the most important factor for SEO is - keyword research.

Keywords are still the most important factor around which the concept is SEO is based.

So if you are not utilizing the real value of 'best' keywords for your articles, you are missing a lot of SEO right from the beginning.

This article is targeted for both beginners as well as intermediates. So first we will look at the meaning of keyword research and the idea behind it. Second, I will give you the chance to peep into my secrets of keyword research that I use to get my blog posts rank high on Google's (and other search engine's too!) search engine results page.

And third ... is a bonus for all of you. At the end of this post, you can get another tutorial which will help you achieve something more out of your SEO efforts.

But don't scroll down to the bonus now! Read this entire post to learn the secrets to get your blog posts on top of the SERPs by utilizing the maximum out of keyword research.

So What is Keyword Research?

I had explained in my previous post that search engines rely on algorithms to determine the key points of your content and to decide the topic about which you have written.

These key points are your keywords.

Now let us see the same thing from a common visitor's point of view.

Suppose someone wants to find a web page about 'Blogging Tips'. So what does he do? He heads towards a search engine and enters those 2 words in the search field. Now all the relevant web pages with the content related to 'blogging tips' will be shown.

So here 'blogging tips' are the key points in the content of those web pages shown in the results page.

So here 'blogging tips' is the keyword!

Now suppose a web page is better optimized for the keyword - 'Blog Tips'. So he would lose rank (and traffic) for the previous keyword. Now what if 'Blog Tips' is a more searched term than 'Blogging Tips'?

The second web page would get more traffic?

But what if there are thousands of top blogs optimized for 'Blog Tips' and they secure the first 2-3 pages in Google? If would be too difficult for you to get ahead of them!

In short there are 2 things that define keyword research - Traffic level and competition level.

What do you want?

The maximum traffic and the least competition, isn't it?

That is what keyword research is all about! Even for the same content, there are different combinations of keyword phrases and all those combinations have different search levels and competition levels.

Keyword research is the art of finding out the keyword phrase related to your content with the maximum traffic potential and the least competition!

What Can You Achieve With These Keywords?

Let us get back to the example of 'blogging tips'.

Someone search for that keyword phrase on a search engine. That person gets to see lakhs of results.

What differentiates the top few with the last few? The top results have the best content full of useful information and... has... proper SEO...when it comes to keyword.

The top sites are said to be ranking high for their desired keyword phrase.

Got it?

So you need to choose the best keyword phrase and optimize your post for it (Remember the maximum traffic and least competition part). The choosing part is known as - keyword research.

How to do this? We will see later on. Before that, let us discuss what one can achieve with keyword research.

You must have got an idea yourself too, isn't it?

If not, think this way - You are writing about suppose 'how to make money', and you know too many people search for it everyday, now what would happen if you get on first page of Google for that keyword phrase? Large traffic isn't it?

So what would you get by mastering over keyword research? High rank on search engines for your targeted keywords, that directly means traffic that can be converted into conversions and sales for you!

No need to explain any further I guess!

Basic Idea Behind Keyword Research And SEO

Below are the things you would be doing with keyword research in order to get high rank in SERPs.

You are going to write a blog post - You research for the best keyword phrase for your content (Maximum traffic and least competition) - You create your useful content according around that keyword phrase - You optimize some special areas with your keyword phrase.

Now let us see how!

How To Do The Research Part In Keyword Research

I have already explained this thing a lot of times in this post that you would be researching for the keyword phrase with the maximum traffic potential and least competition.

Now let us get deep into the method.

There are some free as well as some paid tools that can be used for keyword researching.

The tool that I primarily use is the free tool- Google Adwords Keyword Tool

This tool is easy to use, free and accurate.

Now let us try to find out the best keyword phrase for an example of a blog post about some methods for making money online using blogs.

Follow the screenshot below:

Enter all your keyword thoughts in the given box and make sure to select 'Exact' in the 'Match Types' section on the left side of the page. Hit the search button and you will get the analysis of your chosen keywords as shown in the screenshot.

Check that 'make money' keyword has a lot of traffic! 33,100 global searches! Nice, isn't it?

Wrong. See that I have encircled the word 'High' which shows that it has a high competition that means a lot of web sites are competing for that keyword phrase. And as I said before, your target must be to find the least competing keyword with the maximum traffic potential.

So moving ahead, see the other two keyword examples, they have medium competition and have some nice search levels. Finding a low competition keyword might be difficult and especially for this example here, I couldn't find any good low competition keyword myself!

Now see that both these phrases have the same meaning and sense, still they differ in traffic levels. The 3rd keyword has a greater search than the 2nd one, with the same competition.

So that means you have got a better phrase to focus on, got it?

Exactly. Keyword research is all about finding the best available phrase for your content.

There is one factor that would help you in finding low competition keyword and that is - Long Tail Keywords.

What exactly are Long Tail Keywords?

Long tail keywords are a combination of a somewhat larger number of words that form a profitable keyword phrase. Check the screenshot below for an example:

See the two keyword phrases in the screenshot. The second one is actually a more targeted one and at the same time has low competition and see the global searches! 14,800!

So it would be easier to rank yourself for the keyword phrase 'How To Make Money On YouTube' rather than just 'How To Make Money' and at the same time, you would get good targeted (that means interested or engaging) traffic who seriously want to make money from YouTube and not by other methods.

That is the meaning and importance of 'long tail keywords'.

In this example, I had used Adwords Keyword Tool for the keyword research work, which is a free tool. Apart from this there are many paid keyword research tools which make your work a lot easier and some of the paid tools have a long list of features that are completely out of scope with Adwords keyword tool.

One such professional keyword research tool is - Market Samurai.

First of all - Have I used it?

Yes.

Just few days back I had started using it's trial version and I am happy with the results. Also there are many features which make me think of buying the full version. But still I use Adwords as the primary tool for my research work.

Second - How is it better than Adwords and should you buy it?

In a lot of ways, Market Samurai is better than Adwords because it has some extra features and it makes your work a lot easier by doing all the finding work itself.

I won't tell you if you should consider purchasing it or not because it depends on your skills and your comfort. There are some people you exceptionally like this tool and there are also some who have a hard time understanding this tool. So you should consider trying out a trial version to test it and if you are happy with its results, then and only then buy the full version.

Now let us get back to keyword research.

Now you know that you have got to work on finding long tail keywords with low competition and high traffic potential. Then you would have to optimize your content according to that keyword phrase.

How?

Let us see.

Optimizing Your Content For Your Desired Keyword Phrase

In my previous post (read here), I had written about what is SEO and how to implement it.

The same points are application here too.

• You need to create a decent keyword density (about 2-3%) along with using the exact keyword phrase 2-3 times in the content. 
• Place your keywords once in the first 100 words and once in the last 100 words.
• Bold, underline and italic your keyword parts once or twice in your content.
• Use your keyword phrase in the title and URL.
• Use your keyword phrase in H1, H2 etc heading tags
• Optimize alt and title tags in images with your keyword

But whatever you do, make sure that you don't overdo it. Because over SEO would be considered spam and the content will lose its importance and value.

Bonus - SEO Checklist

Here is the bonus I had promised to give you!

Its a checklist for not just optimizing your posts, but for publishing a master content. This is the checklist I personally follow and I am sure this would help you if you struggling in terms of SEO.

So go ahead and download this checklist by doing a small favor to me. The favor is of subscribing to my blog's newsletter which would let you get more blogging tips and SEO guides right into your inbox.

A healthy deal, isn't it?

So subscribe now and download the SEO checklist right now!

What did you learn here?

People would say that today the importance of keyword research, those professional keyword tools and even SEO is decreasing. But according to my thinking and my experiments, the whole idea of SEO would never die because however intelligent those search engine robots become, they are still robots and not humans.

So ever after all those algorithm improvements, there would still be the need to optimize web pages for them, to make their work easier and keyword research is the base for SEO, not just the base but also the skill, which once mastered can help you achieve success in the world of search engines.

Keyword research, even though is the most important factor is SEO, still it is something a very new blogger won't be able to understand easily and properly.

If you are one of the beginners and did not get the points here, then don't worry. Day by day you would get to learn everything from your experiences in this blogging world. And do remember that you can comment your questions and doubts anytime!

For experts who read this post to get something unique out of it, let me know in the comments if I did a satisfactory job or not.

Finally I would like to ask you a question - What do you think about keyword research and how important is it according to you?

Do comment and share your thoughts!

Image courtesy of Kromkrathhog/FreeDigitalPhotos.net

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Question By Every Beginner - What is SEO and How To Do It?

If you are one of those regular visitors at this blog who are learning the basics of blogging through my "How To Start A Blog" section, you would have learned the basics of writing and gathering traffic by now.

So now is the best time to start learning about the basics of SEO too.

Now the first question in every beginner's mind is - What is SEO?

Then there are the questions like - What is its importance and how to perform SEO?

Before diving deep into the sea called SEO, let us have a look at the follow infographic to understand the meaning of SEO.

What is SEO?

This infographic would have already made the concept clear.

Now let us try to understand SEO with the help of an example.

Suppose you search Google for the term 'What is SEO'.You would get many lakhs of websites in the results. All the results are distributed in thousands of results pages.

So how do you think Google distributes all these websites? I mean how do you think that Google ranks all these websites and blogs for your search term?

Alphabetically??

Not at all!

Google (and other search engines too) ranks all those results in the decreasing order of their quality, importance and value decided by them. Now you might be aware that search engines are not handled solely by humans! They mostly rely on robots (or you can say bots, they are like super computers) to determine the quality of a web content and to rank it for all those millions of search queries among those millions of other websites.

So how do they do it?

As shown in the infographic, robots use certain set of algorithms to determine the relevancy and quality of a web content.

For major search engines like Google, Yahoo, Bing, etc. these algorithms count to thousands or maybe lakhs!

And SEO is the art to optimize your blog and blog posts according to those algorithms.

So in simple terms -

SEO is the art to create such a web content that convinces the search engine robots that your content is good in terms of quality as well as relevancy.

Importance of SEO

I think there isn't any further need to explain the importance of SEO to you, is it?

With proper SEO you can get your blog to rank high for the targeted search queries (keyword is a more proper term for this) and can get a lot of traffic.

Common Practices in SEO

As mentioned earlier SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization and is based on optimizing you content for search engines.

So to understand what you really need to do for SEO, you must understand what a search engine robot can understand. The more easily and the better those robots can understand your content, the better is your SEO.

So let us understand the basic funda behind the working of robots and understand the common practices related to it.

The last point that I have mentioned here is the most important one. So make sure that you don't skip through these points!

1. Robots understand a content by its keyword density.

Check again - I said 'understand' and not 'rank' or 'evaluate'

You know what? I think those robots don't understand the meaning of any word. They can't understand what I say, they can read my words but can't understand the meaning of any single word.

The above statement may be wrong but try to assume that it is true. This will help you in understanding my point.

Robots scan through the whole content and decide the topic by those keywords in your article which are repeated most frequently. Now it is obvious that if you are writing about 'SEO' then the words like 'SEO' and 'search engines' will be used more frequently. So by determining the density of some set of words among the whole content, those search engine robots determine the real topic discussed in an article.

So how to apply SEO here?

Yes you got it right!

Maintain a good keyword density.

You need not to worry much about it because if you have been writing naturally and are focused on the real topic then the keyword density would be managed on its own.

2. Robots respect authority sites

Just like humans, these robots also respect high authority people and their sites.

That is why even for the most simple to the most complex search queries, you see sites like Wikipedia on the top.

Focus on building a good authority, respectful blog. Do not indulge in spamming activities or go on distributing copyright protected stuff.

Focus on building good quality backlinks only (don't know what are backlinks? Read the next point!), work on increasing your domain authority and Page rank (no, I am not talking in any alien language, domain authority and Page rank are two of the many systems used for ranking a blog's authority.)

3. Robots know that if more people link to you, you are better!

Now let us talk about links.

Whenever some other site links to your site, it creates a good impression in the minds of search engine bots. So more the sites link to you, more is your reputation and more is your optimization.

But sadly, today most of the bloggers won't link to you without any reason :(

So you have to build backlinks to your site yourself!

Guest authoring and blog commenting are the two best ways to build backlinks to a blog according to me. There is another method of reciprocal link exchange but it has been dying and can be dangerous to practice now.

4. Robots can't see images :(

This is true.

Robots can't actually see images and so they can't understand any content that is hidden in a image.

That directly means that robots can't use images to judge or grade your content :( They can't even see the lovely infographic used in this post!

But there is one HTML tag specially designed for bots - the 'alt' tag.

This alt tag is used to describe the image to a robot...usually in less than 5 words. But use of this alt tag can be very beneficial in terms of optimizing your images.

5. You have to explain everything to the bots

Just like images, search engines can't understand the real value of many other things like your links and sometimes the basic description of your articles, etc.

So you need to explain everything to these robots in short, to make their work easy and to improve your optimization.

Use of title tags in links and images are preferred. Use of meta tags are still important even though they are losing their popularity and importance. Title tags are used to describe your links as well as images. Meta tags are also HTML tags used to describe your blog or blog posts to these robots.

6. The king of all SEO - Keyword Research

Keyword research is actually a very advanced form of SEO, the most skill consuming, the skill which we normally get to understand and learn after having some experience with blogging, but at the same time is the most important skill.

Once you understand the real value and magic of keyword research, you will be using it before writing any blog post without any hesitation and with real pleasure.

For now all this may seem confusing and time consuming.

Once you get familiar with the basic SEO skills, try to focus on learning about keyword research.

Can't wait? I can understand... Here is an in-depth article about using keyword research and getting ranked high on Google's results.

Basics of SEO - Summary

Let us have a quick look at what we discussed here:

Your blog - your sample post - want traffic from search engines - Optimize your post for search engines - keyword research, keyword density, optimizing images, etc - Getting high rank on Google - Enjoying the traffic

This was the answer to one of the most important questions by every beginner - What is SEO?

Did you get to learn something from this post? Did you get confused anywhere? Do comment and share your views!

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3 Step Ladder To Publicize Your Blog And Drive Traffic To It

Have you just started a new blog by any chance? Then you would be struggling to get your blog noticed, right?

I have said this fact earlier too and I will repeat it here that just creating a brand new blog doesn't mean that strangers will start stumbling on your blog!

Unless you show your new blog to the world and promote it the proper way, you won't be getting any eyeballs focused on your blog, no matter how unique and creative it is.

I bet if you are struggling to get a few daily visitors to your new blog, it is solely because you didn't pay attention to publicizing your blog. You are not aware of its importance and you don't work on a blog promotion strategy- a proper strategy to be more precise.

What Is The Need To Promote My Blog? I Will Get Traffic From Google, Right?

No...

Getting traffic to your blog from search engines is something that takes a long time. And a really really long time sometimes. To get traffic from search engines, you need to rank high on them, and this requires at least some intermediate skills.

So don't expect Google to flood your site right from the first week of starting your blog.

If you are building a blog from scratch, it would take at least a month or so for your blog to get indexed in popular search engines like Google and after that, some day you would start getting a few visitors to your blog from them.

And slowly and steady you would start getting lots of visitors from search engines. But never from the first day itself!

So what should I do to drive lots of traffic to my blog?

You need to plan an effective blogging strategy which starts right from publicizing your blog.

Here I will discuss my 3 step ladder that I used with this blog to drive traffic to it.

The first step to this ladder is...

Step 1: Spreading The Word About Your Blog

If you have just started a new blog, chances are that nobody would be aware of its existence. And as I said before, you CAN'T rely on search engines to bring the first few visitors to your blog.

The first step to driving lots of traffic is to bring small traffic. And you will be getting this first traffic from your online as well as offline friends.

So the first step to drive traffic to your blog would be to publicize it. You must spread the word about your new blog to your online as well as offline friends.

Share about your latest blog on your social networks with your online friends and tell them to have a look at it. It would be better if you share about your new blog with some of your friends who are already bloggers and who would like to connect to your blog.

My case - I have a few blogger friends at Facebook and Google+, so when I started this blog, I requested them to have a look at it. Some of them liked my blog especially and now they are my regular readers. And at the same time I am their regular reader too!

I got about 10-50 of my first few daily visitors in this way.

Pro tip - Connect to other bloggers of the same niche on social networking sites specially Facebook and Google+. You can share about your new blog there and get your first few visitors easily. Just by sharing your latest blog posts, you can get little to much traffic to your blog right from the first day depending on your social presence.

[Don't Miss: I Have Just Started A New Blog - Now What To Do?]

Step 2: Social Publicity - Forcing The Same Visitors To Come Again!

Now that 100s of people know about your blog, you would like them to visit again and again and again. Right? 

You want them to become your regular readers, right? 

To make your first time visitors come again and again, you need to build a strong social presence. You need to inform your friends and other first time visitors whenever something new gets published at your blog.

You can’t actually force your first timers to come back again but you can give them a solid reason to. 

When I started getting some few visitors daily, I started focusing on giving them a reason to come again and a medium to connect to my blog.

That is how I got a few regular readers.

I made a Facebook and Google+ page for my blog and also started sharing my latest posts on twitter. As a result, those people who were interested in my blog’s content connected themselves to the social pages of my blog and then they would receive a notification whenever I posted something new at my blog. 

One more method other than social networks is the use of email subcribtions. 

I use feedburner to manage my email subscribers. They get an email delivered to their inbox about the latest updates of my blog. 

Slowly and steadily, I was able to publicize my blog to a good extend and establish a small readership of 200-250 daily visitors.

Pro tip – Build and manage a Facebook,Google+, Twitter and Pinterest page for your blog. Also build an email list. Give your first visitors a medium and a reason to stay connected to your blog. 

Step 3: Search Engine Publicity - Bringing new visitors from Search Engines… Time To Learn About SEO

After you start getting some daily visitors which mainly consist of your online friends and other bloggers, now is the time to start bringing some more traffic full of new visitors from… none other than… search engines! 

Search engines like Google, Bing, Yahoo and many others can prove to be a major source of traffic for any growing blog.

But getting traffic from search engines is not that easy.. Remember, I would never say it is difficult either!

You might know that those search engines are not handled solely by humans. Because with millions and millions of sites all over the internet, it is just impossible! So the major work of managing all those sites are done by bots (robots or you can say super computers). 

They visit your site automatically, regularly and during each visit, they scan your content and decide whether it is good and informative or not. Not only content, but they also scan through your site’s design and layout to determine the quality of your website. 

Now it might be easy to impress a human visitor with your good writing skills and important information, but to impress a search engine bot… you need to optimize your blog for them. 

And this is what SEO – Search Engine Optimization is all about. 

If you don’t have any idea about SEO and how to practice it, then don’t worry.

Read this article which is all about the basics of SEO: What is SEO?

Pro tip – You can also read some e-books about ‘SEO and how to practice it’ to increase your knowledge of SEO. 

Here comes the top of this ladder!

Now these 3 steps continue forever like an infinite loop.

How?

You get new visitors from search engines, you make them stay, you publicize your blog better, more visitors, again you make them stay connected...and so on.

Summary 

Let us have a quick look at what we discussed here. 

Here is the 3 step ladder that I used to publicize my blog and to drive traffic to it. 

I told about my blog to my friends and other bloggers – I made social profiles and an email list so that those friends stay connected – I used search engines to drive more traffic in the form of interested people to my blog and expand my blog’s readership. 

How do you publicize your blog and drive traffic to it? 

Which kind of strategy are you using to expand your blog’s readership? Any ladder similar to mine? 

Do comment and share with us!

Image courtesy of FreeDigitalPhotos.net

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The Top Secret Recipe To Blog Like A Pro

Want to know how to become a professional blogger?

Want to know the secret recipe used by all those pro-bloggers?

OK then... I will tell you the top secret recipe to blog like a pro!

Shhh.... But remember! Don't share this secret with anyone else! OK? Especially not on Facebook, twitter or Google+ ?!? OK?

Are you ready? Then let us start mixing the ingredients!

Write Like A Magnet

What attracts iron pieces from far away? Magnet.

What attracts lots of readers to your blog posts? A blogger's magnetic writing!

Whether your latest blog post gets hit or flop, viral or unnoticed, it all depends on your writing skills. And why do I use the word magnet with writing skills? Because I have always said that 'people don't prefer reading an encyclopedia'. If your blog post doesn't have the power to attract a stranger and to get involved, then your blog would lose most of the potential visitors.

The first step to writing attractive magnetic blog posts is 'writing magnetic headlines'. Use attracting phrases, surprising negations or even place a question in the title.

Eg- If a blog post is about some tips to make your blog post go viral, you can give it a title - 'How To Make Your Blog Post Go Gangnam Style'! This is what I did in one of my blog posts and this attracted a lot of people to my post.

After magnetic headlines, the second most crucial thing is the beginning of your blog post.

In the very first paragraph of your blog post, you must make your concept clear. Convince your audience that whatever they had been searching for, is available on this very page. That is because you have very less time to convince your new visitors that your blog is different than other article directories and that it really has something worth reading.

In another approach, you can make things so mysterious that your visitors are forced to stick to your blog post, to find the answers.

But whatever you do, don't let the first paragraph make your whole post go unclear.

Sprinkle Your Posts All Over The Field (Internet)

If a farmer sprinkles seeds only on one square feet area of his farm, how many plants would he be able to grow?

Same is the case with your blog! If you don't share your blog posts all over the internet, you will miss many potential visitors.

Have a profile of your blog ready on all major social networks with a strong followers base and regularly share updates from your blog on these networks. Some of the most important social networks and bookmarking sites for a blogger are Facebook, Twitter, Google+, LinkedIn, StumbleUpon, Reddit, Bloggers.com and Digg.

Maybe I missed some names. Do remind me in the comments, please, OK?

Social networks play a large role in popularizing your blog. So start wasting some time on social networks too from now on ;)

Don't Be The Mr.Lonely

Admit it. Blogging is like building a community. You can't live here while keeping yourself isolated from the rest of the bloggers.

Don't ever think that all you need to bring traffic to your blog is Google search! And don't even think that successful blogging is all about traffic and money, OK?

What is the use of lots of search engine traffic if no other blogger even knows your name? Wouldn't you like to become the gurus for those beginners out there? Wouldn't you like to get yourself recognized as 'The owner of so-and-so blog'?

My dear friend, blogging is about building an online reputation, learning something and teaching something. Do interact with other bloggers out there. You would get to learn a lot from them.

Comment on other blogs that you like to read. Tell them that you like their blog. This will encourage others to have a look at your blog too. And who knows, maybe you can get many followers too in a similar way!

Don't Try To Build Another Wikipedia

I am a fan of Wikipedia myself, but please! If you make your blog very very serious, using ultra sophisticated words and dictionary references all over...then you are probably building a 'website' not a 'blog'.

It is the interaction and the human touch that separates a blog from a website.

And the most important part of interaction is the 'comment section'.

It is suggested that a very new blog with little traffic must not place a comments box so that its few visitors don't get to see a '0 comments' status, because this '0 comments' status sets a low impression about the blog and even if the visitor was interested in subscribing to the blog, he may refrain from it. But I won't recommend any blog which has started to get some regular visitors to avoid using a comment section at their blogs.

That is because comments build a lot of interaction in a blog. Through your comments section, you can get to know about the feelings of your visitors, you will understand whether you are doing a great job or not. Sometimes when you make mistakes, your readers will try to correct them using comments.

In any condition, the comment section is a MUST have for any blog.

Next is the human touch.

If you are reading this post carefully, you would have noticed that I use the words 'I' and 'You' to talk with you. Right?

Because such a language creates a sense of interaction and gives a human touch to your blog.

You can feel this too, right? I, Mahaveer Verma, am talking to you!

This is what creates a lot of interaction and adds much feelings to your blog. Otherwise what would be the difference between your blog and Wikipedia?

Blogging In The Frontend, SEO In The Backend

SEO is just too important to be neglected when it comes to blogging like a pro. But don't let SEO ruin your reader's mood and interest.

Whetever SEO you want to perform, just do it in the backend and don't disturb your readers.

Because any pro-blogger would say - 'Reader first, search engine second'.

Don't let any of your SEO methods make your readers remain unsatisfied with your writing. Proper SEO involves decent keyword density, proper anchor text, heading tags and all that. But remember that your readers won't like to read the same keyword phrase again and again everywhere sometimes even without any meaning.

And then, what is the use of lots of search engine traffic if people just come and then run away from your blog?

Less but targeted, interested and loyal readers are better than lots of people who come to your blog by mistake.

So whenever you work on your blog, remember to give preference to your readers in the frontend and restrict SEO to the backend.

I Know You Have Some Pro-Blogging Tips Too, Right?

Yes, I know there are lots of other things one should consider to blog like a pro. And I know that you have something running in your mind now!

Stop thinking and start commenting now! Let me know what you think about this post and also about the top secret recipe!

And once again... Shhh.... Don't share it with anyone else ;)

Image courtesy of depositphotos, Stuart Miles and stockimages from Freedigitalphotos.net

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I Have Just Started My First Blog - Now What To Do?

This article is a part of "How To Start A Blog" series.

Have you just started you first ever blog?

Then you might be confused on what to do next. Right?

Credit: digitalart/FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Speaking theoretically, a blog is made of blog posts. So the first and foremost thing would be to start writing some blog posts for your first blog.

But blogging is not just about writing blog posts. There are many other things you will run into in your blogging life. You will get to learn about most of those extra things steadily as you gain some experience with your blog.

Here, we will discuss about them in short. Because according to me, you should at least have an idea about the things you would be learning with your blog.

So let us have a quick look at a to-do list after starting your first blog.

1. Write Content

Content, i.e. blog posts are the main ingredients of a blog. It has the same importance in a blog as water has in our body.

Credit: Suat Eman/FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Writing blog posts regularly is very crucial for the success of a blog. 

It is not at all necessary to write content everyday, but writing content on a regular basis is a must. You can plan to write any number of posts from 1 blog post per week to 14 per week, anything which is convenient to you. It also depends on the type of blog. For example a news blog needs to be updated daily and even hourly sometimes, because you have to cover each and every latest news at your blog to stay in the competition, whereas a blog about computer tutorials can be updated 2-5 times a week and can get a great feedback.

So start planning on a content schedule and try to work with it.

[Don't miss: The Top Secret Recipe To Blog Like A Pro]

2. Enjoy The Traffic Stats

Once you start working on your blog and attract a few people to it, you will get curious about knowing the number of visitors to your blog, the number of page-views,etc.

Some of the blogging platforms have their own stats system for this. But here, I would like to mention the name of the most preferred, easy to use and completely free stats system used by almost every blogger - Google Analytics.

Google Analytics is a powerful yet easy to use stats system. And the best thing is that it is completely free to use. All you need is an Analytics account and your blog. Setting up Google Analytics requires you to place a piece of code into your blog's source code. This process is very easy in case of WordPress and Blogger.

Google Analytics lets you not only view the number of visitors or pageviews, but it has a vast tracking system that lets you find out the visitor's country, the OS, language, average time spent on the site, the visitors flow and many more things.

Other than that, Google Analytics also let you analyse the source of traffic to your blog like search engines and direct visits. Analytics helps you in finding out the keywords that bring traffic to your blog through search engines.

Because of its powerful features at no cost, I recommend every blogger to install Google Analytics at their blogs for a better stats system.

3. Socialize Your Blog

Let me tell you one major source of traffic for pro-blogs.

It is - Social Media

Credit: Kromkrathog/FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Social Networks play a very important role in popularizing your blog. Because if you have just started a new blog from scratch, you can't expect strangers to jump into your blog from nowhere!

When you create your first ever blog, social networks are the best and foremost source to bring the first few visitors to it. You can share your blog posts with your online friends and get some feedback from them.

When talking about pro-blogs, they have a large number of followers on social networks. Just when they share their posts on their networks, their followers just flow into their blogs. Establishing a large number of followers will take a lot of time, but you can start from today itself.

Create a Facebook Fan Page, a twitter account and other social profiles for your blog and start gathering some followers for your blogs.

Be sure to regularly update your social profiles with the latest updates of your blog.

4. Gather Some Loyal Readers

As I said earlier, if you have just started your first blog from scratch, then you can't expect people to jump into your blog from nowhere.

Then how to get your first visitors?

I had mentioned the role of social media in the previous point. Other than your online friends, you can give a call to your offline friends and family members to have a look at your site.

You can also start building an email list for your blog subscribers. 

What's this? 

An email list would contain the email addresses of people who are interested in receiving regular updates of your blog via email. Using such a list, you can inform your subscribers whenever you publish something new at your blog.

There are many third party tools that make this task easier for you like Feedburner and AWeber. Out of these two, Feedburner is a free tool wherever AWeber is a paid service. AWeber is a more professional tool in many ways wherever Feedburner is basic yet sufficient enough tool for managing email subscription.

These tools let you create an opt-in form using which your regular readers can subcribe to your blog's email updates easily with the help of just an email id.

Create useful, interesting and unique content, share it with the world and let your readership expand.

5. Learn Something About SEO

The first question in your mind would be - What the hell is SEO?

Well, let me explain this with an example.

Suppose you have created a site on technology news. Now today you have written a post on 'ABC Mobile' getting launched at so-and-so price. Now if someone searches Google for 'ABC Mobile launch' he would get crores of results.

So what is the possibility that the person will see your site in the result page and visit your site?

This depends on two things - Content and SEO. And actually SEO depends on content a lot.

Now getting back to SEO, SEO is the method or you can say the practise that improves your performance in Google and other search engine results. SEO helps your site get on the top pages of a SERP (Search Engine Result Page)... SEO means Search Engine Optimization...

The full form of SEO itself explains a lot. Isn't it?

Here is an article that will help you understand the meaning of SEO better: What is SEO

So how is SEO performed or done?

You will have to wait a bit. Why? Because if you have just created a blog, you won't be able to understand any term related to SEO. Then why did I mention the word here? So that you bookmark the name for future. After getting some experience in blogging, you would be able to understand SEO and then, it would be the right time to start learning about SEO.

So when to start learning and practicing SEO?

That depends on your learning capacity and the amount of experience gained in the blogosphere. You can start reading SEO guides from the very first day or can start learning the basics after a month or so.

It totally depends on you.

How important is SEO?

Very important.

SEO plays a supporting role to your content. It is SEO + Content that improves your site's performance in search engines and helps you bring traffic to your blog, whereas it is Content + SEO that helps you build a strong readership at your blog.

6. Also Learn Something About These Things...

Apart from writing content and SEO, there are a lot of things you would run into in your blogging life. Whenever you get some extra time for researching about blogging, have a look at these concepts too-

• Dofollow and Nofollow
• Index, Follow and other Robot things
• Alexa Ranking
• Google PageRank (PR)
• Moz Rank
• Domain/Page authority
• Backlinks
• Guest Posting
• Author Rank

I know all these things may be completely new for you, but one day you will have the knowledge of all this. And I assure you that all these things are not as complex as they may seem. It is just a matter of time to understand all these things.

Set Your Goals And Get Started!

So are you ready to start off your blogging life?

Are you determined?

Then go set your own goals and start working hard to achieve them! In this world of blogging, there is nothing so easy, but at the same time, there is nothing so difficult.

Credit: bplanet/FreeDigitalPhotos.net

With some smart working and great determination, you can achieve great heights with your blogs.

So get started now!

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How To Setup A WordPress Blog In 5 Minutes

WordPress.org is one of the most famous self hosted blogging platforms. To start a WordPress blog, you require 2 things - a domain and a web hosting account.

In the earlier articles of our "How To Start A Blog" series, we had discussed about registering a domain name and also about 3 of the best web hosting providers for a WordPress blog.

In this tutorial, we will take Hostgator as an example, and install a WordPress blog with a hostgator account.

Hostgator allows you to install WordPress by three methods:

1. Manual
2. Fantastico
3. Quick Install

Out of these, Fantastico is the easiest method to install WordPress.

Login to your Hostgator web panel. Under services/software, click on Fantastico.

From the left sidebar, select WordPress under the 'Blogs' category. Then select 'New Installation'.

Now select the domain you want to use with your WordPress blog. You can choose either to install WordPress on root directory eg- www.bloggingpanorama.com or to install WordPress on sub directory eg- www.bloggingpanorama.com/blog

Check every detail and then press 'Install WordPress'.

On the next screen, you will be shown your database details. Note it down somewhere and click 'Finish Installation'.

Thats it!

Now you would get the confirmation about the newly installed WordPress blog.

Congrats on Starting Your Blog!

credit- sporttaekwondo.org

The first part of our "How To Start a Blog" series ends here..

By now, you are ready to start your blog. But what to do after starting a blog? Be sure to read this post about a 'to-do list' after starting a blog.

And there will be many more articles to guide you on starting a successful blog.

So stay connected with us... You can also subscribe to our email newsletter to get updates on the latest posts published here.

Any doubts?

If you face any problems installing WordPress then do comment and let me know.

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