Part of the guide: Blog Traffic
10. Always Show Your Best Stuff
First impressions are important you know?
You can’t make all your blog posts exceedingly better than the rest. Nor can you constantly pump out pillar worthy content. So it’s ok to have some “not your best stuff” kind of posts on your blog.
However, when a visitor lands on one of them; you should make it your sole mission to show them your best stuff. Meaning send them to your pillar content, send them to other relevant, but superior blog posts.
There are plenty of free WordPress plugins that display “relevant posts” etc, but the ultimate strategy is to link to your “pillar content” via the sidebar.
11. Use Different Content Formats
Variety is an important thing in blogging. Nobody likes reading the same shit over and over again. And even if it’s not the same shit, it’s still the same shit. Understand?
You see… If all of your blog posts are basic text paragraphs, they’re all the same with different context. So instead of being another “text blogger” mix it up. Publish videos, text, graphic posts, audio and interactive blog posts.
You can publish interviews, reviews, talk shows, you name it. It’s vital to have a USP (unique selling point). Something that your blog and only your blog is known for. That’s why you can’t be too random. Choose your content mix, create a structure, posting frequency and stick to it.
12. Write For People, Not The Search Engines
This is a mistake I made when I started blogging. I wrote for the search engines, not for people. By writing for the search engines, I mean writing highly optimized blog posts i.e. keyword stuffing.
Putting keywords in the title, description and plastering dozens of them throughout my content making it look unnatural. You can optimize your content all day long; just as long it looks natural.
So instead of writing highly optimized crap that “might” potentially rank higher in the search engines, write for your audience. Write interesting, fun, exciting and pillar worthy content that people love to share – SEO comes second. Content is king if you really want to set your blog up for success.
13. Ask Your Readers
Getting feedback is a critical part of blogging and everything else in life. What you think is “good” doesn’t matter. If you think your blog looks better one way, and your readers think otherwise; go with your readers opinions.
Don’t always trust your instincts. At the end of the day only your audience’s opinion matters. Put their happiness ahead of yours. Run Polls asking them what they do or don’t like about your blog. Or what they’d most like to see next.
14. Make Time For Your Blog
If you’re going to setup a bad ass blog, you better make time for it! Time is the biggest blog killer. People setup blogs without committing to them.
So if you’re going to setup a blog for success; put aside 2 hours per week at the very least.
15. Minimalize
You know what I do when I stroll into a restaurant and see 50 different items on the menu? I walk out!
So stop putting shit in your sidebar! I mean it…
Stuffing your sidebar full of ads, social icons, images, links and other clutter ruin’s conversions. The more clutter you have, the less likely a visitor will take an action at all.
You were never meant to do this alone
Reading this changes nothing. Doing it with people who show up changes everything. That is the whole difference between the people who transform and the people who keep starting over.
Start free →For example, if you had one clear affiliate banner promoting a single digital product – visitors would know where to click. It’s obvious. However if visitors had the option of 6 different banners, they wouldn’t know which to choose and the chances are they’d exit without clicking on any of them. Minimalize as much as possible.
16. Build A Community
Already touched on this a lot, the community is everything. A blog community is essentially a group of loyal subscribers who like, read and share everything you publish.
You can build a community by asking visitors to opt-in to your list, subscribe to your RSS feed or follow you on a social network. All you have to do is capture visitors and put them somewhere they’ll hear about your new stuff. It’s that simple.
17. USP (Unique Selling Point)
If you want to setup your blog for immense success, it needs a unique selling point. It needs to be unique in some special way. Find your blog’s USP and promote it.
18. Be Consistent
Lastly, be consistent and never give up. Even if you’re not seeing a profit or strong reaction in the first 6 months; just know that you’re building a powerful asset and launch platform.
I actually started 3 blogs that I gave up on before this one. I started them all, began posting daily, then every other day, then weekly, then monthly and now they’re non existent. If I would have kept posting at my 1/day interval – I would probably have had 3 of the biggest blogs in their niches by now. All of course making me a small fortune.
So be consistent, remember your goal and keep these 18 principles in mind.
In Prosperity,
David Wood
P.S. Leave me your thoughts, comments and questions below. Also opt-in to the email list on the right for more cool blogging tips, tricks and secrets.
Comments
Joseph Medina, June 28, 2012, 13:45
Hi David! I just finished reading your article “18 Ways To Setup Your Blog For Immense Success” and it really helped me realize a few things I didn’t even notice when blogging. Anyhow, thanks a lot for such a great free information you provide! I’m seriously thinking about joining one of your business training programs as soon as humanly possible. Greetings from San Diego, CA area!
davidmwood, June 28, 2012, 14:00
Cool Joseph… You know what to do.
Emily Johnson, June 29, 2012, 10:15
Great tips! I especially like the advice on using different content formats. It keeps things interesting for both the writer and the readers.
Michael Brown, June 29, 2012, 12:30
Consistency really is key. I’ve seen the results firsthand. Thanks for the motivation, David!
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Sorry if this is basic, but tip 14 says two hours a week ‘at the very least’ — the very least for what, to exist, or to actually grow into something?
Bonnie, worth separating what the post is actually claiming across three tips: 1) two hours/week is presented as the floor to have a blog at all, 2) tip 15’s minimalism only matters once you have traffic to convert, 3) tip 16’s community only compounds once 9 and 12 are already working. So two hours a week gets you a blog that exists, not one that grows — the growth tips assume you’ve already cleared that first bar. The gap I noticed is the post never says how long clearing that bar usually takes.
Every industry has this exact confession dressed up as motivation — ‘I quit three times before this one worked, imagine if I hadn’t.’ Heard the same speech in three different direct sales companies across thirty years, always from someone who happened to be the one it worked out for. Doesn’t make the underlying point about consistency wrong. Just means survivors telling you consistency was the variable tend to forget how many people were also consistent and it still didn’t take.
Gus’s point is the mechanism problem exactly — one uncontrolled sample retold as a law. The failure rate among equally consistent bloggers never gets measured because most of them just vanish.
Tip 15 is the one piece of advice here I’d actually stand behind without reservation. When I was building my team, every pitch I over-complicated with options and comparisons converted worse than the version with one clear next step. It’s not really a blogging-specific insight, it’s just what happens whenever you hand someone a decision instead of a direction. The rest of this post I’d take with more caution, but that one holds up.
Samir, ‘converted worse’ by what range though? A single clear CTA outperforming a comparison table is well established, but the size of the effect varies a lot by traffic source and price point — cold traffic tends to show a bigger lift from simplification than warm traffic that already trusts you, sometimes a large gap, sometimes barely measurable. Worth being specific about which situation you were actually in, because ‘it converted worse’ without a number is exactly the kind of claim this post makes constantly, and you’re generally better than that. Even a rough range — twenty percent, two times, whatever it actually was — would tell the rest of us something we could use.