In reality, if you plan your business blog, and the plan is not that great, it’s better than not having a plan at all when you first start out. You should at least be commended for your efforts if you try to plan for it in some way. If you want your blog to succeed, you need to learn about foundational planning. Most people are unaware that this even needs to be done. There’s not enough room in this article to go over all the benefits from doing this. It’s in your best interest to learn even more strategies, even after you have figured these out.
Create a Blog Structure
First of all, your blog structure needs to be complete before you ever begin blogging. The first thing you need to do is determine the overall main topical theme for the blog. When choosing a theme, you should look at your most important keyword phrase for your niche when choosing one. Creating your blog structure begins with this starting point – the topical theme. From that, when you do your keyword research, all of your less important keywords will be based on the primary site phrase. Creating your blog will be based around this primary theme, and the theme will create the structure for the overall blog itself. This makes everything cohesive, which will help your blog be very effective, especially when it is structured properly.
Now that we’ve been post-Penguin, Google update, for a little while, webmasters have been very cautious about SEO. Google doesn’t want to see an over-optimized blog because it will think it is designed to be that way. There are many SEO plugins out there for you to use, so when developing your SEO strategy, you may have to use them.
On-page SEO
Google has done quite a job in scaring people, making them even afraid to use SEO plugins to improve their rankings. Unlike the real advertising world, Google seems to like confusing businesses of every size in regard to what proper online marketing is about. You simply need to improve your on page SEO, get ranked in the search engines, and focus on the larger picture.
People often build blogs, sometimes quite elaborately, before they ever think of monetizing what they have built. This is a cautious approach that many people use and is not the way you want to do this. Regardless of what type of blog you are making, monetizing your blog is something that should be a primary focus.
The content that you place on your website needs to be geared toward what you are selling on the site itself. There’s no problem with having multiple methods for monetization such as contextual ads plus other affiliate offers – or your own product. Your blog is actually scored by Google for over monetization, so keep that in mind when placing your ads. Cluttering your site with ads is something you simply don’t want to do because the user will probably not be happy.
A very important aspect of setting up a blog is to have a topical structure in place before you go live. In terms of content, this is what will structure whatever you post for people to see. This needs to be properly structured, and it’s important in regard to user experience.