Shikha Mengi
Such an amazing blog post . Thanks for sharing.
trumpetsolution
Great article. I heard that once you publish your post you
cannot improve it's visibility by adding keywords or a keyword title
that people ares searching for. You have to include all of the SEO info
before you publish it to make it effective. Is that true?
imtiazdanny
Thank you for writing this excellent post. You
said, "Never inviting readers to leave comments", well that's a great
point. However, can you tell me, if someone just put an ordinary comment
or spammy comment only to get a back-link, what to do in that case.
Should I delete all those spammy comments?
1. Good image, particularly important if promoting on facebook; 2. Social sharing buttons - of people like your post you want to make it easy for people to share it.
I agree that people should be able to leave comments. It is all about creating conversations.
Richard
buepolka
Very insightful post Neil! Particularly for the newbie
bloggers (like me) who are about to wet their feet in the baby pool of
blogging (before they swim with the sharks). I was quite intrigued by
how links within blog can increase traffic; however, too many links
thrown at you can be overwhelming and make you lose your chain of
thought. I got side-tracked several times while reading this article,
and after I was done with all the links, I realized that I had spent
almost an hour reading this post. On the hind side, I know a ton more
than I knew an hour ago :)!
deemster
I'm working on my very first blogging site. Yes I'm a
beginner but after reading this post, I had an insight what pro did to
become successful. Thank's for this wonderful info's. It helped me a
lot. Goodluck to me! XD
Member
Startersphere
Fantastic post. Totally agree with All-in-One SEO plugin being the most useful plugin.
Alice Wilson
Great article Neil! I had'nt
thought I'd be commenting on your blog yet because your level of
technology is so far above me. See, my level of "newbie"ness is not
toward SEO yet as I am still stuck in preparing to write good content.
But I am so glad you've bridged the gap and I look forward to much more engaging reading/learning.
Alice
Member
eMerchantPay
This will be very useful and we are getting into blogging heavier then ever. Thank you for sharing.
PS. The links to old posts are awesome.
thedan1984
Very straight forward information, good stuff nonetheless.
Klarke
You said All In One SEO is the best wordpress seo plugin
you've used. I gotta ask ..have you tried Wordpress SEO by yoast? It
blows everything else out of the water and is free.
UnderRugSwept
All-in-one SEO pack was my favorite until I tried Yoast! Now I'll never use anything else! I highly recommend it.
neilpatel
That and the Yoast plugin are both great.
Member
content muse
Good stuff, Neil. I especially champion 3. It shows your
community you're passionate, interested, and want to participate.
Also, linking to others opens new doors for readers and exibits your
diligence in keeping a finger on your respective industry's pulse.
Someone recently asked me about blogging, stating he desired to get in
the 'comic book' scene. I suggested finding where that community is,
discovering the major contributors, and start adding.
John Doherty mentions not 'forcing' writing, waiting for natural
inspiration in his recent 3 Tenets personal blog post. I think it's
difficult to balance the anxiety related to wanting to get something
live and feeling like you could have devoted more time...
As far as 11, I get inspired by others rather than intimidated. If
you're passionate about blogging and doing it for genuine reasons,
people are going to notice. Some competitive notions are healthy; keep
doing your thing - the cream eventually rises. I like this Einstein
quote: "You have to learn the rules of the game and then play better
than anyone else."
I really dig the tenacious attitude suggestion. It's a marathon,
right? Some businesses don't take off for years; it's not so
unrealistic for a blog to take adopt a slow burn (especially if it is a
personal blog and not primary mode of income). If you're passionate and
enjoy contributing, don't count yourself out; keep going, little
engine.
I also like Sajeet's
suggestion above re: humor. I think humor is hugely appreciated in
general and someone who impresses with their insight as well as makes
people laugh only enjoys more readership.
joshuah
Great ideas. I try to do a lot of these already but the
best advice for me was #8. I tend to be long-winded and find myself
spilling out large blocks of text with awkwardly long sentences in an
attempt to get across the interesting points I find myself wanting to
get across!
So thanks for the great reminder about the short attention span and
distractions of online and especially mobile use... if you can break
long paragraphs into short ones (and maybe delete a few sentences in the
process), it's a lot easier for someone to figure out where they were
if they have to leave and come back.
Linwright
My favorite: #11. NO matter what industry you're in,
there is always a 'trending' topic, you just need to know how to find
it. I've been doing content marketing for quite some time now, and have
worked in many industries, and every industry has it's niche where you
can find out what the trending topics are within that niche. Another
great way to write what the people want is to review your analytics and
take a look at when topics that are bringing people to the website. Find
some keywords that are generating traffic on a topic that you have yet
to dive head first into, then expand on that topic as best you can.
Works every time!
tonygreene11
Thanks for the concrete ideas and techniques to use for
keeping a high level of visibility. Although I'm not a user of the All
In One product, thanks for clarifying the use of the descriptions for
snippet previews.
Shawn McConnell
I'm glad I took the time to come over from twitter to read
the entire post. It was a combination of a pat on the back (for doing
the right things) and a kick in the ass to keep going!
Bloggers need to leverage the anchor text they have control over and linking to old posts is the best way.
ItsMattMalone
This was one of your better posts Neil, I really like the links you provided here - great resources.
Mitch Monsen
Goodness Neil, everywhere I look I see your name. Great work again; solid advice here.
Hopefully I can now write some blog posts that don't die right out of the gate. :P
vforvinnie
I particularly like the idea about linking to old posts.
It's a good way to keep the flow of link juice going, but more
importantly it lets the search engines (and your readers) know that your
old content is still important. If an article from 12 months ago is
still relevant, but you never mention it again or send it a link, how
will your readers know?
Plus a fresh link with some anchor text variation can help that old article rank a little better.
I think formatting is also overlooked on too many blogs. Making the
paragraphs shorter, and breaking things up with bullets, lists, images
and videos all make content flow better.
neilpatel
For every post I write on my personal blog, I make sure I
link to AT LEAST one older post. If you constantly do that, you won't
have to worry about it.
cmdenny
Good blog post.
Agree that title writting is one of the most important things.
I also think it really helps to be passionate about your subject, as
you have to keep it up. The "two years to take off" timeframe can't be
sustained for most people (myself included) without a real passion.
That said my SEO blog only tends to get updated once a fortnight, and
I know I should be aiming for 3 times a week. There aren't enough hours
in the day!
neilpatel
Passion is very important. Not just with blogging, but
with everything in life. If you don't love what you are doing, you are
going to get burned out. Plus you won't put in the time and effort into
it if you aren't passionate about it.
Savannah02
I found this article very useful. Thanks for the
comprehensive and detailed information and print screen images you have
included here.
kapshaltist
Those were great tips. I'll try to implement all
Khalid Irfan
Great post Neil, you have covered almost everything in
this post. Great source of guide line for bloggers to run their blogging
show.
neilpatel
Thanks! Problogger and Copyblogger are two other great blogs to check out that break down the art/science of blogging.
Member
algogmbh_petra
Kudos to you for another great post. I admit I was
delighted after seeing that there is a new entry here from you at SEOmoz
- which are all the time very useful!
MoosaHemani
Very Interesting post Neil! And I must agree to Rand’s tweet that
says ‘may be his best Moz Post, yet!’ This is a complete pack of
information that is very much essential for bloggers. I Quit! Is the point I really like about the post.
One have to consider that blogging is a hard work and it needs lot of
ideas, time, efforts and research. Many bloggers give up (nine months is
a safe number) within few months, I believe in blogging seminars and
conferences this should be imposed that building readers for a blog is
creating a community that obviously will take time.
neilpatel
Blogging is tough. When you look at a lot of the popular
blogs like SEOmoz (more than a blog these days), they didn't start off
with millions of visitors. They had to produce a lot of great content
and participate in the community before they took off. People tend to
forget that.
Michael Janik
Thank you - you opend my eyes. I will use my windows
calendar to remind me every month on the 15th and 30th to post a new
article in my 2 blogs and I will not ignore it.
neilpatel
Consistency is really important. John Chow, who makes a
living from blogging always talks about how consistency is the most
important element of growing your readership.
diyawards
Come on, success belongs to the persevering
James Norquay - Australian
Great post niel, some good best practices for blogging.
Another thing with the Facebook titles and descriptions you can add in
Facebook MEta OG data.
I saw a great example recently of the Target Research article where
one site broke the story yet another site picked up the story and used a
better title, the site with the more effective title had around 500k
shares.
neilpatel
This happens a lot with the big news sites. In many cases
sites like Business Insider can take your content and get more social
love because they are better at coming up with attractive titles.
Member
fpatrick
Hi Neil,
great post and good tips. I'll try to remember them next time.
Member
Vinnie
Excellent tips and guide for blogging which gave me
renewed impetus to overhaul mine. I enjoyed reading it this morning,
thanks.
tom altman
Thanks for reminding me how important all of these are - great post.
TommyGriffith
Love the reminder on linking to old posts - I always
forget to reiterate to visitors that I've already covered a particular
topic. Repurposing old, good posts increases time on site and
engagement. Nice work!
WebstratsOz
Yeah mate thats a spot on article. Glad to put some ticks
next to my blog posts. or most of them.... But an excellent reminder
so thanks.
Zigazag
Thanks for a great post and a really useful lists of
reminders. Check lists of all the things a blogger should do, prior to
clicking "Publish" are always sooo welcome. I particularly related to
the importance of using 'short paragraphs and simple words', because
it's all too easy to drift into purple prose and long personal
narratives. Easy reading is hard writing. Linking to old posts is also a
great tip. I've been using a Wordpress plugin ... nRelate Related
Content ... which works well for me. Can anyone suggest a good Twitter
Feed plugin to use on Wordpress? I'm struggling.
stretch marks
My focus is about plagiarism.
If you want to opdate your post and add an article from article
network, please aware and check it out with copyspace. Are Your articles
pass the filtering system from plagiarism?
thanks
clasificados
How about ading a Youtube Video if you can, so that you get more personable
jasikamarshel
Here you shared 12 things I totally agreed,If getting best
result from blog then write best things what is about blog and
Publishing your post in blog less than 15 days or month. Write small but
useful thing . Also try to less or never appriciate blog .
rolandlatzel
Great Article, thanks for sharing! I think as well that
regularity and perhaps even a editor's calendar (if you are more than
one editor for a blog) are a must-have for a successful blog.
SEOPeak
Thanks for expanding my knowledge about blogging! Good job!
yaababy
Hi Neil, your points are all really helpful but I'm
wondering is it intentional that the links in your post all take you off
your blog or is it accidental? I find it very easy to get absorbed in
another blog when I follow a link that takes me to it and may not come
back to the origial blog.
Also I had followed a ref in Seth G's blog here and saved the page to
read when I was less busy, this took me 3 days and when I tried to
comment I find that the registeration process required me to go into my
email to wait for the activation link, once I read my emails in the
morning I try not to get sucked into going in again till in the evening
as it's again very easy to get sucked into doing unplanned for things.
So my point is would making commenting easier not be a good thing for a
blog.
PS I am not trying to teach you how to suck eggs :-)
StockTipsInvestment
Very interesting article. It can be taken as
a checklist to do. I have started
my blogrecently www.stocktipsinvestment.blogspot.com. I'm in
the process include tools that allow me to increase traffic
to my blog. I see there are some issues that I have toincorporate.
The SEO Rapper
Great post...
It's the being consistent part I have a problem with and yes...All in one SEO is an awesome plugin.
Member
Ewan Kennedy
Hi Neil,
Some really good tips/reminders.
I think I just made mistake number 1. I think I always make mistake number 8! Ho hum.
If you forget to fill out your page title just give up!
But you don't have to fill out all these seo details or use any Seo plugins if your theme already includes them.
If you include compelling content in your first 2-3 lines and a
compelling title then why do you need to also fill in seo titles and
meta descriptions?
JakeSEO
Maye it's just me and I am reading some of this post
wrong. You say never link out to old posts or other blogs then you go
right into saying why it is good. I stopped reading after that point
because you where saying to not do one thing then telling me why it's
good? Guess I'm just a bit confused. Also isn't linking out to other
resourses and blog good for your SEO vale?
KeriMorgret
Hi Jake,
I think you're just reading it wrong. The title is things that will
kill your blog post, so each of the points is something to NOT do, then
Neil goes and explains what you should do.
Member
Naghirniac
Very good post! Thank you for the infos
JohnRampton
Crafty little write up, very basic things to remember but
very needed. When blogging it's always important to consider your
readers as well. Whats you take on pushing your posts through social
media?
Manojpallai
Neil, it's really informative...helpful about my blogging. Thanks a lot.
Arif-I
An awesome read and useful post. Looks like you haven't
forgot to do the things that are liveblood of a blog :p. Though most of
the points are common sense but its clearly a guideline to move one step
ahead with a blog.
davidwees
It seems to me that if you are going to define "a
successful" blog post you should talk first about what it means to have a
successful post. Many of your observations are based on the number of
page views of a post, and do not relate at all to the deeper issue of a
blog as a tool to promote conversation.
How would you define a blog that promote conversation or shallow metrics?
Nice work... I really impressed with your blog..I recently activate your blog.This is useful to me thank you
Is that true?
Thank you for writing this excellent post. You said, "Never inviting readers to leave comments", well that's a great point. However, can you tell me, if someone just put an ordinary comment or spammy comment only to get a back-link, what to do in that case. Should I delete all those spammy comments?
The couple points I would add are:
1. Good image, particularly important if promoting on facebook;
2. Social sharing buttons - of people like your post you want to make it easy for people to share it.
I agree that people should be able to leave comments. It is all about creating conversations.
Richard
Great article Neil! I had'nt thought I'd be commenting on your blog yet because your level of technology is so far above me. See, my level of "newbie"ness is not toward SEO yet as I am still stuck in preparing to write good content.
But I am so glad you've bridged the gap and I look forward to much more engaging reading/learning.
Alice
PS. The links to old posts are awesome.
John Doherty mentions not 'forcing' writing, waiting for natural inspiration in his recent 3 Tenets personal blog post. I think it's difficult to balance the anxiety related to wanting to get something live and feeling like you could have devoted more time...
As far as 11, I get inspired by others rather than intimidated. If you're passionate about blogging and doing it for genuine reasons, people are going to notice. Some competitive notions are healthy; keep doing your thing - the cream eventually rises. I like this Einstein quote: "You have to learn the rules of the game and then play better than anyone else."
I really dig the tenacious attitude suggestion. It's a marathon, right? Some businesses don't take off for years; it's not so unrealistic for a blog to take adopt a slow burn (especially if it is a personal blog and not primary mode of income). If you're passionate and enjoy contributing, don't count yourself out; keep going, little engine.
I also like Sajeet's suggestion above re: humor. I think humor is hugely appreciated in general and someone who impresses with their insight as well as makes people laugh only enjoys more readership.
So thanks for the great reminder about the short attention span and distractions of online and especially mobile use... if you can break long paragraphs into short ones (and maybe delete a few sentences in the process), it's a lot easier for someone to figure out where they were if they have to leave and come back.
Bloggers need to leverage the anchor text they have control over and linking to old posts is the best way.
Hopefully I can now write some blog posts that don't die right out of the gate. :P
Plus a fresh link with some anchor text variation can help that old article rank a little better.
I think formatting is also overlooked on too many blogs. Making the paragraphs shorter, and breaking things up with bullets, lists, images and videos all make content flow better.
Agree that title writting is one of the most important things.
I also think it really helps to be passionate about your subject, as you have to keep it up. The "two years to take off" timeframe can't be sustained for most people (myself included) without a real passion.
That said my SEO blog only tends to get updated once a fortnight, and I know I should be aiming for 3 times a week. There aren't enough hours in the day!
I Quit! Is the point I really like about the post. One have to consider that blogging is a hard work and it needs lot of ideas, time, efforts and research. Many bloggers give up (nine months is a safe number) within few months, I believe in blogging seminars and conferences this should be imposed that building readers for a blog is creating a community that obviously will take time.
I saw a great example recently of the Target Research article where one site broke the story yet another site picked up the story and used a better title, the site with the more effective title had around 500k shares.
great post and good tips. I'll try to remember them next time.
If you want to opdate your post and add an article from article network, please aware and check it out with copyspace. Are Your articles pass the filtering system from plagiarism?
thanks
Also I had followed a ref in Seth G's blog here and saved the page to read when I was less busy, this took me 3 days and when I tried to comment I find that the registeration process required me to go into my email to wait for the activation link, once I read my emails in the morning I try not to get sucked into going in again till in the evening as it's again very easy to get sucked into doing unplanned for things. So my point is would making commenting easier not be a good thing for a blog.
PS I am not trying to teach you how to suck eggs :-)
It's the being consistent part I have a problem with and yes...All in one SEO is an awesome plugin.
Some really good tips/reminders.
I think I just made mistake number 1. I think I always make mistake number 8! Ho hum.
If you forget to fill out your page title just give up!
But you don't have to fill out all these seo details or use any Seo plugins if your theme already includes them.
If you include compelling content in your first 2-3 lines and a compelling title then why do you need to also fill in seo titles and meta descriptions?
I think you're just reading it wrong. The title is things that will kill your blog post, so each of the points is something to NOT do, then Neil goes and explains what you should do.
How would you define a blog that promote conversation or shallow metrics?