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How to Design a Blog – Tips For Starting a Successful Blog in 2020

When I started my first blog, I didn’t know a thing about how to design a blog or get traffic. In fact, I didn’t know anything about blogging. I started off with one goal - to build a great blog and start writing blog posts that will get me least 10,000 visitors per month, preferably in less than 6 months.

But I had no clue how to go about doing it. At that time, getting even a 1,00o visitors looked like a tall mountain to climb. If you are a new blogger who has just set up a blog, you will know what I’m talking about. I had to go through a lot of failure to learn how to design my blog the right way – to start a successful blog that would get a lot of visitors every month and help me make a solid passive income.

I will be honest with you. It was not easy. It’s not easy even today. But it isn’t impossible either. To design a grow successful blog, there are specific actions that you will need to take consistently.

Key Steps In Designing a Blog

Research your blog niche thoroughly

Understand you blog audience

Plan your blog content and publication schedule carefully

Write some GREAT original blog posts

Promote your blog every way you can

Build relationships with other bloggers in your niche

And, the toughest part - keep doing all of this consistently – year after year

Did I just manage to scare the blog out of you? I hope not.

If you are still reading this, you have passed the 1st part of the bloggers’ test. There is hope for you as a blogger. Heck! You might even become a successful, full time blogger.

The image a lot of new wannabe bloggers have about blogging is this – a carefree blogger lounging in a beach chair, churning out money-making posts while sipping cocktails and throwing a Frisbee for a golden retriever to chase, without missing a beat – or making a typo.

Now, that may be a cool picture for your vision board. But the reality is a little different, my friend!

Before you can get anywhere close to living your dream life (if it matches the picture above), I really must pull your pretty little head out of the clouds a little, to address the initial hustle part that blogging gurus (conveniently) fail to mention.

I don’t mean to scare you away. If you stick with me, you will start seeing amazing results (refer the picture above). You can thank me later!

So, where were we? You need information on how to design a blog and how to get tons of traffic, right?

When I started blogging, I used to read every article I could get my hands on - looking for tips for starting a successful blog. I made a lot of mistakes and lost a lot of money. After a lot of trial and error, I finally managed to refine my blogging strategy into a few actionable steps that actually got me results.

Designing Your Blog - What To Expect

I am going to show you those steps here. If you follow them and improvise as you go, you will start seeing results quickly. You may have to put on hold, your plans to work from a beach, for a bit. But this is the best way for you to design and grow your blog quickly into a long-term business.

So, here’s what you need to do to design your blog in 2020 in such a way as to get maximum traffic, quickly.

I want to mention here that I won’t be explaining the technical part of creating a blog here. If you need help in getting started – from selecting your platform to picking you domain, getting hosting, installing WordPress and a suitable theme, you can check out my step by step guide here.

Step 1 In Designing Your Blog - Audience Research

“I can’t write without a reader. It’s precisely like a kiss—you can’t do it alone.”

― John Cheever

If you want to really succeed as a blogger, before you do anything else, you need to identify your readers and understand their needs and problems. Only then you can help them by creating high quality content to address their needs.

This is the most important step in designing your blog. So, I will break it down into smaller sections, and take you step-by-step, so that you get it right. Do this wrong, and you can kiss your blogging dreams goodbye.

1. Define your audience

If you already have a blog, you probably have done this exercise already. But here’s the question. Have you done it correctly?

Most new blog owners, when they start creating their blogs, seem to think that doing a basic niche research is good enough to ensure success.

Some don’t even bother to try to understand the profile of their future readers before churning out blog post after blog post, hoping that somewhere, someone will hopefully read, like and share what they write.

You can avoid a lot of future heartburn if you take a little time to create a target reader profile initially. That way, you will have a clear idea as to who can benefit from your blog content.

Even if you have no idea about how you are going to create content for your blog or how you are going to drive traffic to your blog, it doesn’t matter at this stage. Just focus on understanding your audience – their likes and dislikes, the problems they are facing (for which, hopefully, you can provide a solution) and their aspirations – and you will do just fine.

Try to be as specific as possible. For example, your ideal reader could be a ‘35-year-old housewife who is trying to raise her young kids, while trying to build a passive income through online opportunities’.

By now, you’re probably wondering – “How on earth can I do all that profiling? I have no clue where to start!”

Don’t worry. I will take you through the exact steps you need to follow, to create profiles like a professional. But before that, there is one more thing you need to do.

2. Find Out Where Your Potential Readers Hang Out

Before you can even think of attracting your target visitors to your blog, you have to figure out where to find them.

There are different ways to do it. If yours is a local business - like an offline product or service – you may have to meet people directly, to effectively connect with your target audience. You could go to local meetings or conventions that your potential clients frequent.

Another way – for both online and offline niches - is to find the most popular blogs in your niche. All you have to do is, type “top blogs” on Google.

Once you get the search results, start keeping track of these blogs – preferably on a spreadsheet. That way, it’s easy to update your list with all important details you find in the future.

This spreadsheet will play a very important role later in driving targeted traffic to your website and also in building backlinks. So, do this exercise as thoroughly as possible. Create one column to track if the blog allows comments, and another column to track if it allows guest posts. Now you have a powerful tracker to help with build your blog traffic and do off-page SEO like building backlinks for your site.

To check if your target blogs allow guest posts, simply type “ guest post” on Google.

Time To Dive Deeper

Now it’s time to go deeper with your audience research. Check each blog individually. What you are looking for are signs of activity or traffic. Look for things like the number of comments, how recent they are, frequency of comments, social shares etc. on each blog post.

Start adding the best blogs in your niche - that fit your criteria - to your list. These should ideally be blogs that your target readers visit frequently. Your goal is to get these people to visit your site.

Once you have around 50 blogs identified, look for forums relating to your niche. Repeat the process you followed earlier. Simply type “ forum” on Google.

Once you have your search results, create a separate section (for Forums) on your spreadsheet. Like you did earlier, go through the top forums and look at the number of active members and check the level of activity – like the frequency of posts, popularity of posts and comments etc.

Once you have a general idea about what your ideal readers look like (psychologically and behaviorally - not physically 😊), where they hang out etc., it’s time to move to the next step and create your reader persona.

3. Create Your Ideal Reader Persona

This is a very important step. Do it well and you will be able to create powerful, magnetic content that pull visitors to your blog.

What you’re going to do now, is to create an imaginary reader persona – based on the audience you defined in the last step - so that you can customize your blog posts to meet that person’s needs.

Now, why exactly would you want to do that?

Have you ever noticed how some ads seem to reflect the exact same emotions you feel in certain situations? They not only seem to be able to read your feelings, but also create certain emotional responses in you - like happiness, patriotism, nostalgia - each time you watch them.

Top ad creators know the exact words to use to trigger these emotions in their audience. They are able to do this because they thoroughly research their audience first and then create an imaginary persona. If you want to create content that helps somebody, you need to understand them first - who they are, what they do, and the problems that they are struggling with.

The Tools and Resources for Audience Research

Here are some methods you can use to research your target audience:

Tools like SEMrush can provide really valuable information to help you. I use it a lot for my audience research. Another great site is Alexa.

You can also check out forums (online or offline) where your target audience hangs out. For example, Warrior Forum is a good place to study people interested in Online Marketing. Similarly, if your niche is Personal Development, you could check out Uncommon Forum.

Another cool method you can use is to post surveys using online tools like Survey Monkey.

You can get a lot of great information by posting polls on Social Media groups, where your target audience hangs out. Link these polls to giveaways or competitions and you can get some great results quickly. There is a tool that I us. It’s called PerkZilla. You can check it out here. Another such tool is AdPow.

Irrespective of the method you use, your goal should be to understand your target audience really well. Try to get an idea of their demographic details like age, gender, hobbies, profession, values, beliefs, main concerns, aspirations etc.

Once you have completed the exercise, the next step is to give your reader persona a name. This will help in making the exercise more realistic and effective.

Try to be as detailed and specific as possible. For example, when you pick an age for your reader persona, pick one number - say for example ‘32 years’, rather than a range like ‘25-35 years old.’

Your aim is to have one specific person – rather than a group - in mind when you write your blog posts. That way, your content will better resonate with the visitors to your blog.

Start Building Your Audience

Now that you know what your ideal reader looks like, let’s look at how we can get them to visit your blog. Even though your end goal is to generate a lot of traffic to your blog, it’s better to start by focusing on a few loyal followers or fans to begin with.

There is a reason for this. If you are just starting out, you need a lot feedback and support to help your blog grow. You will make mistakes. The only way you will be able to correct your mistakes and improve your blog is with the help of honest feedback from your readers.

Engaged readers or followers will give you feedback about the quality of your content. They will tell you when your posts resonate with them. They will also let you know when they don’t like your content. More importantly, they are also more likely to buy a product or service you promote through your blog. In short, they will play a vital role in the growth of your blog.

You can also use the feedback you receive to improve your reader persona, and ultimately, the quality of you content. Do this consistently and you’ll start seeing a rapid growth in your blog traffic.

First, you need some content on your blog - the type of content, that will not only help bring in tons of traffic to your blog, but also help build your brand as an expert in your chosen niche. In the next section, you will learn how to create the right type of content that will help you achieve your traffic goals.

But before you start, I suggest you check out some these blog posts. They will show you how to create powerful content using laser-focused keywords. Doing that will help establish you as an authority figure in your niche. It will, in future, also help you make a lot of money from your blog.

Pick The Right Blog Niche That Will Help You Make A Lot Of Money

Do Keyword Research Like A Pro To Drive Huge Organic Traffic

Write Blog Posts That Will Turn Your Visitors Into Loyal Followers

Monetize Your Blog Posts With Affiliate Programs That Will Pay You 1000s of Dollars In Commission

If you’re ready, let’s move on to the next step, shall we?

Step 2 In Creating Your Blog – Content Strategy

“Our job is not to create content. Our job is to change the world of the people who consume it.”

– Andrea Fryrear

Create The Right Type Of Content

As a new blogger, you’ll probably have limited resources at your disposal. If time and money are limited, it’s important to choose the right content strategy.

Don’t create a lot of content in the beginning and then wonder why no one’s coming to your blog to read your posts. The “If you build it, they will come” era of blogs is over. Now you have to promote your blog heavily to make it successful.

To begin with, you may not have the time to promote your blog as much as you want to. You will be spending all your time trying to get your blog off the ground and also creating some high-quality content.

So, what can you do now?

There is a smart strategy that will help you create content AND promote it at the same time. You can even get some SEO done while you are at it – all in one smart stroke!

Start by creating just 5 high quality blog posts. The reason I don’t suggest writing a lot of blog posts in the initial stages is, since your blog is new, and you don’t have any visitors, there is no point spending all your time writing posts that no one’s reading.

Since you’re going to start with a just few articles, it’s important to pick the right type of post that will help you build your traffic quickly. Focus on writing blog posts that will get you high quality backlinks and help you build relationships with top influencers in your niche.

The first type I would recommend is what is known as a Roundup post.

Roundup Posts

I’m sure you can guess what a Roundup post is. You simply round up content from different sources and create unique content with it. These types of posts are excellent for building backlinks, improving your SEO and for generating tons of traffic through social media shares.

The most effective way of doing this is to identify top bloggers and influencers in your niche and then ask them a question. For example, “What is the one most important thing that helped you become successful in your area?” This is, in a way similar to the strategy of interviewing experts on YouTube to get traffic to your channel.

Once you receive replies from the experts, you essentially consolidate their advice or opinions in the form of an article.

Creating content this way is quite easy because most of the points come from the experts and all you have to do is to put it all together and maybe format it into a blog post.

The best thing about these posts is that many of the authors themselves will take an interest in promoting your blog post. Like I said earlier, it is a great way to get loads of blog traffic and some high value back links from their sites.

Another type of blog post that can bring in some quick wins is known as an Ego Bait Post. Let’s take a look at what that is.

Ego Bait Posts

In this type, you create a writeup on how an influencer or a high-profile blogger changed your life or solved a big issue. The idea is to make the expert look good and describe (in a sort of case study fashion) how valuable their influence was in your success. It is essentially a form of free unsolicited testimonial for the expert, packaged as a blog post.

Once you publish the post, the next step is to contact them and share your post with them. If they like your blog post, they may promote it themselves or maybe even link to it. For them, it is free publicity. For you, it can mean a huge increase in your blog traffic and some high-quality backlinks. Win-win!

Step 3 – Promoting Your Blogs & Building Backlinks

“Content builds relationships. Relationships are built on trust. Trust drives revenue.” - Andrew Davis

Guest-posting

Since we are talking about quickly building your traffic, and starting to make a passive income, I suggest that you use Guest Blogging as your core traffic and backlinking strategy.

The first step is to look for popular blogs in your niche that have a huge audience. This is your target audience and your job is to try to persuade at least a part of this reader base to visit your blog. You will do this by writing guest posts for popular websites.

The way to approach this is to find a topic that is likely to interest a specific set of readers on a popular site. You then create an article that will interest your target audience.

As much as possible, stay away from general topics. Write on specific topics with a certain reader in mind. You want to come across as an expert in a certain area and provide specific actionable information.

Each guest post will act as a conduit to create a flow of visitors from a popular site to your blog. Do this consistently and you will soon start seeing a large number of highly targeted visitors coming to your blog on a regular basis.

Step 4 – Scaling Up

Once you reach a stage where you are getting a lot of readers to read your content, it’s time to scale up your traffic. Start creating great content on a regular basis.

You have put in a lot of work to reach this stage. You know exactly what your audience needs help with. You have also started getting some high-quality, targeted traffic through your guest posts.

Don’t lose focus now. If you slip up now, your visitors will start abandoning you. What you want to do is to convert your visitors to loyal followers and subscribers. You need to have an effective content strategy and schedule to do that.

Create A Content Calendar

To create high quality content on a regular basis, you need to have a plan. It’s time you took the guesswork out and planned like a professional.

You have a general idea about the topics you are going to write about. Now you need to get into the specifics of your future blog posts.

Do a thorough keyword research on your topic and identify your focus keywords or key phrases for each blog post. These are the words or phrases that people type into Google to search for solutions to their problems.

You want to pick keywords that people are actually searching for, and not words that you think people might be interested in. It’s important to know the difference.

Keywords help Google to suggest your website to the searcher when they need help with something. Create good content with the right keyword and you will get a lot of organic search traffic from Google for free.

You can read about a powerful way to do keyword research here. It’s super simple and will help you master traffic generation.

You can learn about the method in this article.

There are some great tools that you can use to identify powerful, traffic getting keywords. Here are the ones I use mostly

Keyword Research Tools (Free):

Google Keyword Planner

Google’s very own keyword research tool – part od it’s Google adwords account. Very powerful and easy to use. But if you want more specific suggestion on which keyword or keyphrase to target, then I suggest, you use a paid tool. I have mentioned a couple of ones that I use regularly below.

Uber Suggest

Ubersuggest is a cool free tool. It can give you helpful suggestions on better keywords to use for your blog post.

Powerful Keyword Research Tools (Paid):

SEMrush

SEMrush is the best Keyword Research and SEO tool available in the market today. It’s a paid tool and comes with a 7-Day Free Trial. You can check it out here.

Market Samurai

Market Samurai is another tool that does all the analysis with just one click. It’s a desktop software and comes in Free and Paid versions. You can check out the Free Version here.

Ahref

Ahref is another popular online tool that helps you with your complete SEO needs. You can check out its pricing here.

There are simple ways to identify related keywords that you can target. You can get related keywords easily in 3 ways:

Google suggests related searches in the search box as you type. Note these down.

Right below the first result, you will see a number of questions that people commonly ask relating to your keyword.

At the bottom of the first page of results, you will find a list of related key phrases or searches

Coming back to designing your blog, earlier I mentioned looking at 2 specific types of content to generate traffic during the initial stages.

Now, it’s time to look beyond those specific types of posts. Now it’s time to write blog posts for your loyal visitors. The only way to retain your blog visitors and grow your blog traffic, is to keep creating high quality content that they will enjoy reading and sharing with their friends.

You need to decide how often you want to post and what you will be writing about. You can create a simple calendar using a spreadsheet or you can use an online tool like Coschedule for planning your content.

A good content calendar will help you plan out content well in advance. Plan your calendar based on feedback from your loyal readers and also the keyword research you did earlier.

Conclusion and The Next Steps

Growing a successful blog takes both time and effort. It’s not easy. But you can design a successful blog by adopting the right strategy and tactics.

Now that you have a good idea as to how to design a blog and grow your blog traffic, the next step is to use the right monetization strategy to start making money from your blog. You can learn about some of the Top Paying Affiliate Programs here. Good luck with building your blog.

Please feel free to contact me if you have any questions or comments.

https://sajithtm.com/2019/12/07/how-to-design-a-blog-in-2020/

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