I’ve boosted my Blogging Stats, here’s how.

I’ve been blogging for almost three months now…

Okay, I’ve blogged in the past as a hobby and I’ve worked for a magazine writing articles, but THIS blog, I’ve had for just under three months.

During this time, I’ve been on a total learning journey. I’ve been blessed with an opportunity in life as now the type of work I’m trained in has just about stopped.

I was a chef, although I’ve had a lot of other jobs, chef-ing was what I had the most experience in….

NEVER did I think it would be the type of job that work would be hard to come by. I guess that’s why I enjoyed it so much. There were always opportunities wherever I went.

Now that I can’t do that, I’ve been forced to slow down a bit and stop working. For the first time I’m a stay at home mum. To be honest now that I’ve tried it I’m not sure I want to leave!

That’s when I sat down and re- assessed my skill set and what I enjoyed and it struck me like a bolt out of the blue. Blogging!

It was something I really enjoyed in the past and I could still be a stay at home mum. It was perfect…

So a little under three months ago, I started this blog, Starting Today, with the intention to turn it into a source of work.

I’ve put every last bit of spare energy I have (and funds) into it, around looking after my two year toddler and teenage son, obviously.

So here’s 10 things I’ve learnt about blogging in the past three months that have really helped to push my stats.

10 tips to Boost Those Stats

Content with a Niche

Make sure your content is on point. Find your niche and stick to it. Having a niche will help you gain a following quickly. Don’t make your niche to narrow. You want something you could write about all day long or eventually you’ll run out of things to write about.

Don’t be afraid to talk about yourself, being personal is a way to connect with your followers and show them that you want to connect with them.

If your blog is all about facts, obviously posting a personal post about your life might not fit but you can always include a couple of ‘about me’ pages.

Equally don’t make every post about yourself. After a while it just gets boring. Don’t be afraid to mix up your posts and show people your writing skills.

For example, I like to post photography, factual posts, personal diary posts, creative poetry ones and some on self help…. What I’ve realised is that I’ve confused my audience.

My niche is now about factual tips. It fits my personality. Generally, I could talk about myself and express my creativity all day so I don’t think I’ll run out of things to say but that’s not a niche. Choose a Niche and stick to it.

Finally, make sure your spelling, grammar and writing is on point. The way you structure content is so important.

Note: Your not writing a book so make sure you leave breaks in your text. You want something that is easy to read. Just like this…

Headlines are important

If your headline doesn’t hook people, people aren’t going to click on it and read what you have to say. There are free online headline raters you can use to rate your headline.

They rate your readability, your SEO and sentiment.

You’ll get an average score but depending on what kind of post you’re writing one might be more important. For example if I was writing a diary post, I’d want a high sentiment rate.

Always try a few options to get the best SEO result and don’t forget that meta description for google search or google will lift a random piece of text from your writing and it might not make sense.

Build up social media platforms, one at a time…

When I started this blog I underestimated how important social media platforms were and when I realised the thought of having to suddenly build up lots of social media platforms up at once was a little daunting.

So I decided to do one at a time. First I went for Twitter, then Instagram and now I’ve started a Facebook page.

I’m still very much building up a social media presence on each one, but doing one at a time has definitely allowed me to learn as much as I can about one platform before moving onto the next.

Follow my facebook page @startingtodayblog

Pinterest is especially helpful in driving traffic to your site. Any social media is going to help boost your traffic so if you find one platform difficult, keep trying. One day it could be the biggest source of traffic to your site.

What I didn’t realise when I started this blog was that I was going to spend four times as much time on social media as I was blogging. Every blog post needs to be promoted.

Find Free courses

There is so much free information out there you guys, I have found so many free courses out there on blogging.

I would say that if you’re hungry to learn and you enjoy learning about blogging then it’s the right path for you.

Any course that I’ve found that has really helped me or that has given me inspiration I’ve been sharing here on this blog with you guys.

I’ve been completely honest and open about the fact that I’m growing this blog day by day. So I’ve your interested in how I’ve done it, make sure you stick around and have a look at my previous posts.

The point is that there is so much free information out there. You don’t need to pay, you just need to research and find out what works for you.

Pin at the best time and schedule posts

When it comes to Pinterest you can use apps like Tailwind to monitor your Pinterest account. It monitors when the best time to pin is. It will look at when the majority of your followers are online and post to get the best results.

You can also create all your pins for one day (up to 30 pins per day) at once and then it will send them out at the best times when your followers are online. This frees up more spare time so you can concentrate on other social media platforms.

It’s also a good idea to create some blog posts in advance and schedule them to go out on certain days. This allows your posting to stay consistent. There have been a couple of weeks where I didn’t do this and my stats dropped, a lot….

It just means you can plan a day or two off and not have to pay the price.

Set weekly goals

It’s going to give you something to focus on and it just makes things more manageable.

Don’t set targets that are unachievable. Set goals that are going to help you progress. For example one of my weekly targets are to beat last weeks page views.

Sometimes I achieve it, sometimes I don’t. The point is that weekly page views are more manageable than monthly ones but it all contributes to the same goal.

Research marketing strategies

Identify all the revenue streams that are out there whether it’s affiliate marketing, freelance writing, advertising etc,

Find out what’s going to work for you. Research your options.

Blogging alone doesn’t make money. It’s what you do with it that’s going to get you an income so make a decision and stick to it and work on it every, single, day.

Invest in advertising and social media managers

I advertise pins on Pinterest with the Pinterest business account. Pins that do well give me an insight into what people want to see. For example, anything on Instagram is super popular.

I also promote posts on Instagram, you need a business account for this.

It doesn’t guarantee that people are going to like it, so it’s not really cheating. I’ve paid £6 to promote one post and had 202 likes. I’ve paid £10 for another and only had 60 likes.

If you have a post that you think is going to do well promote it. It simply puts your post in front of a bigger audience. If you want your blog to do well you have to invest in it.

Make sure the things you advertise are going to help your blog. You don’t want to waste money but don’t worry if you don’t get it exactly right at the beginning, that’s all part of learning.

It’s just going to help you keep your costs down if you invest in the right things.

Social media managers are also a time saving and help aid for social media. Things such as Hashtag Expert, Tailwind or Twiends.

If you’ve got the cash theses things are going to help you out and save you time so you can focus on your blog content.

Quantity helps boost your SEO performance, but make sure it’s quality you’re posting …

Somewhere around the 55- 70 blog post mark is a sweet spot. Once you’ve reached this spot, google is going to deem your blog as legit which in turn is going to boost your SEO’s. 120 is another milestone and 200 also…

Just make sure what you’re posting is quality. That means non grainy images, thought out graphics and good writing. That’s what is going to get people to come back to your sight…

Use an image compressor

Slow websites suck. The more images you add the slower your sight is going to be.

Use an image compressor to keep the image quality and compress the image so you can optimise your users experience.

… These are my top tips so far. Have anything else you’d like to add? What’s your top tip, comment in the box below.

Soph.