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10 Blogging Tips for Beginners in 2023

Blogging is one of the best ways to grow your online presence. While many are under the impression that blogging is dead, it’s not. The term “blogging” itself has been trending down, but the term “content marketing,” which blogging falls under, has been steadily increasing in popularity due to its effectiveness and the ever-growing move towards digital marketing.

What is blogging?

Blogging is publishing posts on the blog section of your website. It’s an effective form of content marketing primarily aimed at increasing traffic to your website from various sources, including social media and organic traffic from search engines. 

Why is blogging important? 

Blogging helps improve your SEO, form a connection with your target audience, increase brand awareness as well as your overall online visibility. 

These blogging tips will help you create and sustain a blog that grows and helps you achieve your marketing goals. 

Here are 10 blogging tips for beginners.

1. Start with keyword research 

One of the best ways to grow your blog is to focus on organic traffic from search engines such as Google. If you can create content that answers popular questions, then you can compound this over time and generate a lot of traffic. Posting blogs that rank consistently on Google all starts with performing keyword research.

Keyword research involves identifying keywords, how often they’re searched for, how competitive they are, and what type of content people are searching for. You then write blog posts that are ideal for the search intent behind these keywords.

You can use a number of keyword research tools for content ideation, including Ahrefs, Semrush, Moz, Google Keyword Planner, and more. 

2. Map out your content plan

Writing your first blog post can be a bit overwhelming. It can be difficult to know where to start, and what you’re going to do after it’s published. A better strategy is to plan ahead. Start mapping out a content list to publish.

You should start thinking about how your blog posts are all going to relate to one another. For example, this post is about blogging tips, but we’ve also written about blogging tools, why blogging is important, whether blogging is dead, and other related topics. Then, we interlink everything to provide users with more value.

If you’re writing blog posts about CBD, think about what your users would also be looking for, such as “how to take CBD,” “benefits of CBD,” CBD vs THC.”Once you have done that, start to map out your content so that you know exactly what you’re going to be writing about in advance. This helps to write better individual pieces of blog content as you can organize everything so it all works together. Start with broad general topics, and then divide those broad topics into more specific ones.

3. Figure out how you’ll distribute your content

While writing SEO-friendly blog content is a great strategy, it’s going to take time for you to start ranking on Google and increasing organic traffic. For quicker results and increased reach, think about how you’re going to distribute your blog content.

Are you going to regularly share your content on social media? If so, which social media platform(s) and why? For example, B2B is best for LinkedIn, while recipes will perform better on Pinterest. 

While you’ll learn things along the way, it’s important to have a rough idea of how you’re going to distribute your content to grow faster. Doing so effectively all starts with studying and understanding your audience. By knowing your audience, you’ll know where they hang out online and what’s important to them. This way, you’ll know exactly how to effectively distribute content to appear in front of their news feeds on a daily basis.

4. Optimize for on-page SEO

On-page SEO refers to factors “on your page” that help both search engines and humans find your content. If you’re aiming to rank high in Google for a number of keywords, then it’s important to optimize your content. 

This blog post checklist will ensure you’re optimizing your content:

  • Write for search intent
  • Keep your blog posts loading quickly
  • Optimize image file size and type
  • Optimize image SEO (alt tags, filename, title) 
  • Write great meta titles (50 to 60 characters, ideally with your focus keyword and a secondary keyword)
  • Write a compelling meta description (80 to 160 characters with a focus or secondary keyword if it makes sense to include it) 
  • Add internal links for user experience (with varied anchor text) 
  • Choose one focus keyword for your page and a few secondary ones
  • Use a logical order of HTML headings (H1, H2, H3s) 
  • Use keywords in your HTML headings if it makes sense to 
  • Use a short and descriptive URL (often your focus keyword works well) 
  • Add authoritative links to external sites to improve user experience

5. Know your audience 

Understanding your audience is very important. Without knowing exactly who you’re targeting, it’s difficult to create the most compelling and useful content possible. The more compelling and useful your content is, the more engagement you’re going to get from the right people, which means growth.

One of the best ways to understand who you’re targeting is to examine the service or product you’re selling. What problems is that product or service solving? Who would benefit from it the most? Once you understand this, you can look at all of the common questions people would have about that related topic.

For example, at Writing Studio, we provide a blog writing service. We know from experience that people looking for such a service are marketing directors and business owners. Now, we can start to think about what a marketing director might be searching for on Google that’s related to blogging. One example is blogging tips (this article) as they want to make sure they’re doing things right. Doing the same thing will help you find blog topics that resonate with your audience.

6. Copy the competition

While it can be discouraging to know that hundreds of competing websites out there rank higher than you, get more traffic, etc., this is actually a blessing in disguise. Since your industry has so many successful blogs out there, you can draw from plenty of information.

While you obviously shouldn’t directly copy the competition, you can take advantage of finding out what’s worked for them and what’s failed. For example, if you find a closely competing website, you can use a tool such as Ahrefs Site Explorer to find which blog posts are performing best in search results, and then you can create your own more compelling versions of these posts.

You can also see which of your competitors’ posts didn’t perform well for them, and consider why and whether it’s worth your time targeting the same topics. Your competition will give you the quickest shortcut to understanding what works well for your niche.

There’s nothing more useful than studying your competition. Get to know who they are and what makes them unique. Through studying them, you can determine your own unique selling point that differentiates your blog.

7. Use the right tools

There are a number of great blogging tools out there that can help you write better blog posts, faster. But it’s also important not to get too many! Just focus on the ones that help each primary area of blogging, such as content creation, blog SEO optimization, and content distribution.

We’ve discussed some great blogging tools before that you can read about.

Some of our favorites include:

8. Establish clear blog KPIs

KPIs are “key performance indicators” that define if you’re succeeding in your blogging efforts. They’re important because they give you something tangible to measure your progress.

Blog KPIs include, but are not limited to:

  • Overall traffic
  • Traffic sources
  • Top viewed posts
  • Dwell time
  • Bounce rates
  • Social shares
  • Email subscribers

Try to establish regular goals (e.g., “Month 1 Blog KPIs”). Make them reasonable and attainable, and then once the month has passed, try to understand why you did or didn’t achieve your blog KPIs and what you can do differently next month to increase your chances of achieving them. This is something most bloggers never do, and it gives you a huge advantage over your competitors.

9. Be consistent and patient

Consistency and patience are underrated tools for success in blogging. Establishing a significant presence online in your industry with a blog takes time, but much less time if you focus on a very specific niche—hint: do this! 

You have to stick with it to see results that pay off. If you’re expecting results in a few months, then don’t bother. Blogging shouldn’t be what you rely on to increase your revenue and fuel your business if you don’t have any other means of bringing in revenue. It should act as a supplement to your business that grows with time and develops into something you can continue to reinvest in from the ROI it provides.

Be patient, continue to optimize what’s working, and fail quickly. With time and consistency if you continue to focus on targeting the right keywords and providing the most valuable content possible in a specific niche, then you will gain authority and develop an audience that wants to read your content. Just don’t quit if you haven’t seen a return on your investment within a few months.

10. Write great content

While it’s all good and well to research keywords, make your website pretty, and promote it, writing great content is the bread and butter of effective blogging. Great content matters because it’s what represents your brand, and it’s what determines the quality of your content in the eyes of Google and your target audience.

Here are some content writing tips:

  • Use simple language
  • Write concise content
  • Make your content actionable 
  • Write a compelling headline
  • Write a great introduction
  • Write 100% original content
  • Create an outline before you write
  • Focus on the reader (less “is” more “yous”)
  • Edit and proofread before publishing 

Overall, writing great content comes down to giving readers what they want in the most accessible and engaging way. Always consider how you can make what you’re writing easier to understand and digest. Ensure you’re providing people with the info they want. This gets easier over time as you receive feedback on your content from both people and search engines. 

The bottom line

Blogging is one of the best ways to grow your online visibility. To succeed, you should be posting valuable content on a regular basis that targets specific keywords of your target audience.

With time and consistency, this will start to snowball and turn into a consistent stream of traffic and revenue for your business. Remember to focus on the reader and write content people are actually searching for, and over time, your website’s blog will become a powerful sales engine.

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