I think the goal of every blogger is to make your blog amazing. But HOW? We all want to know how to create a great blog and how to make your blog popular. But with every blogger on the planet going for the same goal, it’s a tricky path. BUT – some of these investments will make YOUR blog stand out amidst a sea of other bloggers in your niche.
Some of these blog investments are directly related to the function and performance of your website, while some of them are more geared to help you promote your site on social media. Both are critical to make your blog amazing because they will give your good visibility and also help you build a strong audience that will help you make money from your site or get your message out to more people.
Make Your Blog Amazing Tip #1 – Do your SEO Correctly Right from the Start
I can’t tell you how many bloggers I’ve seen get this wrong. If you don’t get your SEO set up correctly right from your first post, you.will.regret.it! I promise you will. If you have good SEO, you will draw traffic from Google and other search engines. But if you ignore good SEO practices, you will only be getting traffic from social media and when things go south on your favorite platform (and they always DO!), then your traffic will drop like a rock!
Don’t feel bad. I had to learn this lesson the hard way too. I did a so-so job on my SEO when I started this blog, so I am having to go back and re-work every one of my nearly 100 posts to fix up my SEO.
What tools do I use to do that? Several of them. I use Co-Schedule’s Headline Analyzer to start with. That helps me pick headlines and keywords that will fit with my existing content and rank well. Then I use Neil Patel’s Ubersuggest to plan out at least 3-4 high-ranking keywords that I will sprinkle throughout the post.
I also use Rank Math rather than Yoast to keep track of how I’m doing on my SEO. Why? Yoast only has red, yellow and green lights to tell you how you are doing. Rank Math gives me a numeric score to see when I make even the slightest improvement. Right now, it is 82 out of 100, but I will get it up into the 90’s before I publish.
Make Your Blog Amazing Tip #2 – Get a Great Host who will HELP YOU
Again, I’ve learned the hard way about a good host vs. a bad host. My first web designer set me up with some random web host that was TERRIBLE. They weren’t helpful, they were very expensive, and they didn’t offer good backups or free SSL. But like a dummy, I stuck with them for 3 years before I switched to Siteground and I’ve been with them for 3 years on multiple sites. My sites never go down that I’ve noticed and they send me a weekly report of my virus scans – all clean so far.
I’m hard to impress, but I’ve been super impressed with their services, their pricing, and their customer service. I can usually reach a live person who is friendly and extremely helpful in 2-5 minutes. That is worth it to me because sometimes I BREAK stuff on my site and they usually can get it fixed in like 15 minutes. My other host – maybe a day. Or two…. Siteground for the WIN and if you’ll use my link, I’ll set up a Zoom call to show you how to use your WordPress site.
Make Your Blog Amazing Tip #3 – Get a Decent Email/Newsletter Service
I’m very proud of the fact that I am really regular about sending out my newsletters. I’ve sent them out to my subscribers every week for about 4 or 5 years. But I haven’t stuck with just one provider. I’ve used Active Campaign, MailChimp, and MailerLite. I also needed to use Aweber for a client – ugh. Hated that one.
The winner? MailerLite – hands down! It’s not only one of the most affordable, (free up to 1,000 subscribers and just $10 up to 2,000) but it’s also the most feature rich and easiest to use. If you sign up using my link, I’ll be happy to set up a free Zoom call to show you around MailerLite and show you some of the things you can do with it.
I think this is definitely one of the blog tasks that new bloggers struggle with the most. If you decide you need help getting your newsletter or popups set up, just leave me a comment and I’m happy to help.
Make Your Blog Amazing Tip #4 – Invest in Canva Pro
Making graphics is such an essential part of blogging. There is hardly a day that goes by that I don’t have to make pins, Facebook images, graphics for newsletters, and Instagram. I also make pin images for clients sometimes, so I’m not exaggerating that I’ve got more than 600 images in my Canva Pro account. There are several different programs you can use, but I think Canva is the most versatile and easiest to use.
And Canva Pro offers you thousands of free images and premium templates, graphics, etc. I don’t remember if it’s $12.95 a month or $14.95, but it is one expense I don’t even think twice about! Canva Pro for the win!
Let me clarify what the difference is between Canva Free and Canva Pro. With Pro, you get the following very helpful features:
- Brand kit where you can store your custom colors, load you preferred fonts, and have your own logos pre-loaded. Saves tons of time
- Magic resize to change your designs from Facebook sizes to Pinterest sizes or Instagram sizes. Helpful to repurpose your designs for different platforms.
- Unlimited folders to store your designs. I use this a TON because I have hundreds of designs for all my different clients as well as my own platforms.
- Access to thousands of free photos, templates, and graphics that aren’t available to free users.
Make Your Blog Amazing Tip #5 – Get a Decent Pinterest Strategy
I make my living from Pinterest so I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention Pinterest. I know Instagram is the “sexy” option, but Pinterest is the workhorse option when it comes to driving traffic to your site. Even if this season when Pinterest is driving everybody up.the.wall with their algorithm changes and various shenanigans, it still is the best way to boost your traffic.
I’ve got 3 different options to help you with your Pinterest strategy. If you need a little bit of help, you’ll want to look into my Pinterest Strategy Planner. If you are really struggling with your Pinterest account, you’ll want to look into getting a Pinterest Strategy Review. It’s essentially private coaching for your Pinterest account because I set up a Zoom call to give you a bunch of different suggestions on ways to improve your Pinterest strategy.
I’m also a Pinterest VA (virtual assistant) so I do monthly pinning for a variety of clients, mostly bloggers. I’m not the budget option, nor the most expensive, but I’ve got more than 8 years of experience. Check out my Hire Me page for more info.
Make Your Blog Amazing Tip #6 – Security is Critical
As I’ve said, I work with lots of bloggers on their sites. Every single one of them has been making some major mistakes with their security. They use their kid’s names or their pets names for passwords, or they have a really obvious user name (like their name or their Email), or they don’t have a security plugin on their site at all. I had one client who had over 80,000 spam comments on her site – Google notices things like that and marks your site for spam because of it. It took me forever to clear them all out.
Security is no joke. I see hacker attempts on my site just about every day. I had one guy who was trying to crack my site 3-4 times a day for MONTHS. These people have nothing better to do than site around all day trying to take over people’s sites for their own purposes.
Check out my helpful post about WordPress security.
A combination of the free plugins Akismet, Updraft, and WordFence is the minimum I recommend, but there’s a lot more you can do. Akismet blocks spam comments, Updraft does a site backup every day and WordFence is a firewall to keep the hackers out. My favorite WordFence feature is that I get an Email every time someone logs into my site. I haven’t found another plugin that does that.
Make Your Blog Amazing Tip #7 – Legal Pages – No one likes getting sued
Owning a website can set you up as a target for legal action. I know several people who’ve been sued over using images they pulled off Google, or from some free photo website. They’ve also been sued for copyright infringement and other things. It’s just not worth it. You are required by law to have certain privacy policies and terms on your site.
This is another critical issue that many beginning bloggers overlook, but it is SO important. You do NOT want to get sued by someone just because you didn’t spend a little time getting your proper disclosures set up.
Yes, there are free ones out there, but you get what you pay for. Are you going to trust some freebie policy when you are facing a lawsuit? Not worth it in my opinion. The pages I recommend are airtight, easy to use, and they are written by a lawyer who specializes in the tricky area of Internet law. Legal pages by Amira Law. If you purchase them using my link, I’ll be happy to set them up on your site for you.
Bonus Upgrade
Surprise! The bonus upgrade is ME. Honestly, sometimes the best thing you can do is to reach out for some help, especially if you are someone who struggles with the technical side of things. I’ve been blogging for a long, long time, and I’ve picked up a lot of different skills here and there. And I’m a bit of an adventurer, so I tend to want to explore new things and learn the most I can about a topic. I’ve always been like that. In my working days, I was always the one to find out all the hidden features of Excel and other programs and then showed them to all my co-workers – AND my bosses!
So I’ve got lots of different things I can help you with. Pinterest is always at the top of my list, but I can also build simple websites, do WordPress fixes, set up your WordPress security (I’m a maniac for security!), set up your newsletter service and automations, and I also do coaching for people starting a blog or getting their feet wet in social media. Check out my HIRE ME page for more info or just leave me a comment and I’ll get back to you.
Here are some other posts you might enjoy:
5 Ways to Speed Write your Blog Posts
5 Ways to Repurpose Your Blog Content for More Traffic
Blogging Platforms – Squarespace vs Wix vs WordPress
Always such helpful information Adrian!
Looking forward to your help in sorting my blog once my site is redone 🙂
You betcha! We’ll get ‘er up and running soon with ALL the bells and whistles.