7 Things I Wish I Knew When I First Started Blogging
lessons I have learned in my 5 years of journey.
I started blogging as a side hustle to make more money and sponsor my own food while studying in college. I was shy to ask my father to give me money every week. This isn’t easy to make money while living in a developing country where the average wage per day is $8. Yes, you heard it right. You, after spending 8 hours in an odd job, make $8 and some people might be happy. This shows how happiness is inclusive of how much money you have.
I was in college and I started my own blog on a free blog spot, why I opted for a free blog? I have shared this story in one of Medium story, you can read it on the link given below.
After 5 years, I wish there was someone who could think of me these 7 things.
These are the 7 things I have learned about blogging. These are the things I wish someone told me before.
1. Your website/blog loading speed is the most important thing.
The most important thing you need on your blog to check whether your loading page loading speed under 1 second. Amazon lost millions of dollars in 2015 when Google rolled out a broad core update. Not every user when click on your link from Google, choose to wait for the 5 seconds to let the site load. You have done all the hard work and now, you lost a customer that may be very valuable for your business.
When I started blogging, I was curious about ranking my article. Google has the biggest share in the search engine market. So, any intelligent blogger will definitely try to target getting traffic from the search engine.
Google has over 200 factors for ranking a blog post.
There is a website that helps you check your Blog post loading time, it is called “GTmetrix”
You have also the option of comparing your site with the site of your competitor. If you have any project or want to outrank your competitor blog post from a search engine, after a great content, reducing your page load time should be your second strategy.
2. Don’t publish until your article has more than 3000 words.
According to AHREF, long-form content is defined as an article that has more than 2,000 words. Google doesn’t confirm that article length matters in ranking but there are numerous studies about “Long content outrank articles of less than 1000 words”
Neil Patel, for example, publishes the content of not less than 4,000 words. On his blog, he never publishes a single article that is less than 4,000 words.
Some readers may ask this question.
No one reads long form articles.
Do you know, YouTube changed their ranking factor when they realized that “People stick with longer videos for a long time”
At the beginning of my Blogging career, publishing a 500 word was enough for you, but I realized this later that if you want to get a special treatment from Google, Publish long-form.
Now, I am planning to write more and publish longer content. My ranking is improving so as to traffic from the search engine.
3. Email is the most powerful tool you have.
Email is a more personalized way to reach your target audience. If you are reading this then you might be interested in Blogging. Email marketing is the best way to reach someone and asked them about things he/she might be interested in.
When I starting blogging, the reader visits my blog, find a solution to one of their problem and they disappear.
There was no growth pattern.
I lost a List of Millions of emails, a Million personalized audience.
When you lost something, you feel hearted. You feel lost, I am feeling the same way.
I have a list of 10,000 emails, so I send a very attractive email to all those 10k people and let them know about a new blog post in my blog. They thank me for that.
Gosh, I lost a great opportunity.
4. Turn off the commenting feature on your blog.
Honestly speaking, it is a good option but while spending a year, I recognize that most of the comments are from the people who just want to spam.
We already studied the loading speed factor on ranking on the Search engine. Turning on the comments is also will increase your page load speed.
It is one of the useless options on a blog unless and until you really want to have a conversation with people who interested to know the opinions of people you are Targeting.
5. Buy a theme suitable for the type of Monetization you are using on your blog.
Yes, this is a big factor.
There is a specific theme for every kind of monetization you are using.
My mistake was using a theme optimized for affiliate marketing by using Google AdSense as a monetization method.
If you want to make money from your blog through AdSense then go for themes that are very simplistic design.
If you want to start affiliate marketing Blogging, then go for themes that are fast loading, have great header and align center with great UX and UI.
6. Don’t add links of the blog that are a new or and low authority.
Man, I give a do-follow link to any blog. Giving a do-follow link to a blog that is new and has very low domain quality is making your site look spammy and you also have to face problems with ranking on Google search.
There are some sites who even banned you if you give links to low domain authority sites, one recent example is Hubpages.
I did this mistake, so I share this with you guys so that you prepare better.
7. Not every plugin is good to use.
Yes, not every Plugin that automates your day-to-day functions or repetitive process is going to help you.
Some plug-in occupies large memory of your page. This hurt your search engine rankings. Even adding codes can hurt your Search engine optimization tactics.
I installed every other plugin that I find something useful about. But, I never recognize this thing. I never recognize that adding a Plugin means adding more code to the site, you worry about these things unless and until your site is hosted in Amazon Web Services.