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What to do Before You Start to Write in Your Blog

Blog Traffic – 1

Blog Traffic is a critical part of blogging. In a earlier post, “Sail the 7 Cs of Blogging”, I gave an overview of seven different aspects of blogging.

Here I’m going to focus in on the last one – driving traffic to your blog.

I’m starting at the back because I feel that this CRITICAL step is often overlooked. (We all tend to skimp on the “last” step in order to mark a project as DONE.)

Creating blog traffic has four distinct phases –

things you do before you write a post,
things you do while you are writing a post
things you do after you write a post and
following up on your efforts.

This post is part 1 of 4 on blog traffic and covers the first phase.

Caveat – there are lots of opinions and lots of research on this topic. I’m giving you the best that I know. Parts of it will probably be out of date before it is even published.

Note: My mission is to help Network Marketers who are struggling to move online, especially those buried by overwhelm. You will find information that will HELP you find leads and access to the finest mentoring system on the Internet today (Ann Sieg’s Renegade Team and Inner Circle). You will learn how to avoid the bright shiny things, effectively use blogging, Facebook and LinkedIn, A free 30 minute coaching call is yours for the asking. Take action today! When you are ready Join the Team

BEFORE YOU START TO WRITE – BLOG TRAFFIC PHASE 1

As described in the 7 C’s document, there are LOTS of things you should do before you start to post (pick a niche, find a starving crowd, and so on), however here I’m going to focus on things that will affect traffic. Note that this post is not ONLY about SEO or how the search engines see your blog. How people react to your blog also affects traffic. If they come once and really hate the look and feel, they probably won’t come back. See Blog Home Page Checklist for a checklist for your home page. The checklist covers look and feel and other things like having the right legal disclaimers on your pages.

One Time Tasks

Register Your Blog – Register your blog on sites like:

Install Two Plugins– there are two plugins I think you should have, one for the computers
and one is partly for the people.
- All-In-One-SEO – This plugin is for bother the search bots and your readers. It has fields for a Blog Title, a Blog Description and Keywords. The Title and the Keywords fields are used by the search engines when they rate your post. They should be keyword rich. The Description field is ignored by the search engines, but it is still very important. When you do a Google search, you will see titles and about 160 characters of description.
  This 160 characters is from the Description field (if you have one). People will usually scan these and pick the one that most seems to meet their needs, even if it is not the number one ranked item. You can see that you can definitely affect you traffic if your description focuses on the problem your blog post addresses.
- SEOPressor (or one of the similar plugins) – This plugin will grade your post every time
  you SAVE DRAFT. It tells you exactly what to do to improve your score.

CHOOSE 4 to 7 CATEGORIES (and 4 to 7 keywords for each one)

This involves some serious keyword research related to your niche and the need you are
trying to help people with. Most of your posts should fit into one of these preexisting
category/keywords slots.

TRACKING YOUR VISITS AND YOUR KEYWORD RANKING

Before or after you write a post you should be tracking your blog traffic. Google Analytics and
the JetPack plugin give you this data.

ATTACH TO BLOG TO ALL YOUR SOCIAL PROFILES

You want to be seen when people Google for your name. One way to do this is to have at least a profile on all the major social media platforms. Be sure that there is a link to your blog in each of your profiles

YOUR EMAIL SIGNATUREYou put your email signature in many places (emails, forums, etc.) Be sure to include a link to your blog.

THINGS TO DO BEFORE YOU WRITE A POST

Some of the tasks here are obvious – like selecting the key word you will target, doing any necessary research on your topic and creating a general outline. Finding at least one legal image for your post is not so obvious. It is well established that your get higher Google Ranking if your have an image with the keywords in the ALT Tag. It is also established that people will look at pictures first (and read the caption – so fill in the caption).

Now you are ready to write your posts. Tomorrow I will cover the things you need to do to connect with your audience and how it affects blog traffic while you are writing your posts.

THAT CONCLUDES Blog Traffic Phase 1

Until next time, you have a Great Day!

↓ ↓ If this post gave you some ideas – Go ahead & comment below. ↓ ↓

Hale Pringle Ed. D.

Hale Pringle – Hale Yes!

Skype hale.pringle

Email: HaleYes@HalePringle.com

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P.S. If you are working to move your business online and it all seems overwhelming, I can help! Take a look at http://HalePringle.com, or sign up for the free coaching call. You can email me or give me a Skype call. I’ll give you the benefit of my years of experience and many thousands of dollars in training and searching the rabbit hole called Internet Marketing and Network Marketing. I can help you with Lead Generation, the feeling of overwhelm, blogging, and even career change. Add that to the finest mentoring on the Internet (Ann Sieg’s Team and Inner Circle) and you have a Winner!