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Blogging can be great fun and I have written several articles about my experience with writing articles and building websites primarily using WordPress. Sometimes it takes awhile to think about what topic you want to write about and how you will set up the infrastructure for a successful blog. Often, people spend so much time mulling over all of the little technical details that they never actually get their blog running.
Even though I have already written about how to both start and maintain your blog. These are great articles to go through that will address some of the technical aspects before you actually launch your blog. The goal of this article is to provide incentive and motivation to convince you to start your blog as soon as possible. I will provide some reason and explain why you should start your blog today and not wait any longer.
Just like with anything in life, the longer that you wait, the harder it will be to launch your blog. Why? The problem is that while you are trying to figure your blog out, there are a lot of other people who are already in the blogging game and writing articles and surpassing you. If you take too long, more and more people will enter your space and it will be harder to catch up.
This is why waiting too long is such a waste of time and you have to take whatever time you have free and get serious about blogging. There is a lot of work involved in preparing and actually launching. There are a lot of resources along to learn how to get your blog started today, including an article that I wrote that shows you how to get your blog up on WordPress. As a web developer, I know more than you need to know on how to get a blog started. I share with you in that article, the more technical aspects of starting a blog that involves more than just writing.
Since there are already a lot of established blogs out there who have been doing it for years, you have a lot of catching up to do. You also have to be more realistic with your expectations if you wait too long. Yes, there is a lot of traffic to capture out there. However, there is no guarantee that you capture a certain amount of that traffic when you are competing with others.
The longer that you wait to launch, the lower your expectations will be because it is possible that someone will enter your niche and start competing with you. Once people see that your blog is getting attention and traffic, they might try to enter your space. This is why you must start your blog immediately and become well-established and known before competition eats away at your traffic.
Traffic has always been a controversial topic as a measure of a blog’s success. It really depends on how serious you are as a blogger and if you are blogging for fun or money. Too many, traffic is the sole indicator of blog’s success. However, I have written an article that shows you how to adjust your expectations when determining how to measure the success of your blog. Really, this is your blog and you alone can determine what factors determine its success. Yes, traffic is one indicator but do not let that be the sole indicator get you down and you hit traffic slumps.
With more and more people spending time online everyday, eventually every niche will be taken and covered. As soon as new trending niches are discovered, someone will jump on the opportunity and capitalize on it. This is why blogging on brand new niches is tricky because there are always people looking for them and you need to research to see if there is a potential audience.
Some niches are so brand new that it is too early to blog about them because there might not be enough information about them yet. Also, without an actual audience, you will have to build it on your own. This means that instead of relying on search engines for traffic, you will need to use social media and newsletters to push out brand new content to your users.
Once your brand new niche gets discovered, then you might be able to get traffic through search engines. Pioneering a new audience for a new niche can be exciting but without an existing audience, you will have to put in more effort to create one. The good news is that if you are the only one in this niche for the time being, you have a little breathing and wiggle room before someone else enters your space.
Do not take too long to establish yourself because as I have stated earlier, people will enter your space as soon as they see something interesting and lucrative in your brand new niche. This is why waiting is bad, because there are a lot of people out there who are ready right now and will pass you if you do not start your blog today.
SEO is something that you need to start building on your blog at launch. This is not something that you start doing once you have written several articles and then you decide that you want to get organic traffic from the search engines. The time that you wasted writing articles not geared for SEO means that you might have to return to those articles and update them.
SEO does not just happen like that. It takes for the search engines to read your articles and compare them to what is already out there. Google needs time to process and analyze your articles and see where they rank among similar articles. At the beginning, you may be ranked further down the search results pages than you want. The reason why is because your blog articles were published after a lot of other articles and you have written something really great to surpass others.
Writing better articles than everyone else is not an easy endeavor at atll. This is not simply just a matter of being more knowledgeable in a subject than everyone else. This is about using your knowledge in your topic and writing about it in a way that convinces Google that your article is better than others. Depending on your niche, you might have to write a lot more than you expect to beat your competition.
If you need help figuring how long your articles need to be, then I have an article about that. Since Google’s ranking algorithm is so encryptic, there is no magic number of how many articles and how long they need to be to get to page one. Your articles may never reach page one and you need to accept that. Everyone wants to be on the first page of Google. When you have at most ten spots at a time, you have to be really good to claim one of those spots.
If you look at this even further, people want to be on the first spot of page one. Some people think that even page one is not good enough because you might be at the bottom of page one and still not be satisfied with your ranking. Consider that depending on what people search for, there are other elements that get mixed in with those ten potential spots on page one.
You have map results from Google Business Profile, People Also Ask, Knowledge Panels, and Videos that are also sharing space on page one. Let us also not forget Google Ads which also occupies the search results. So you have so many elements on the first page of Google to compete with. This is why page one is so coveted but even then will people even see and click on your link when all of these other things are going on?
Now that you know some of the things involved with the SEO side of starting and running a blog, the long that you wait the harder it will be to get ranked on Google.
This has been a recurring theme when I talk about getting people to start their blogging journey today. We all know something special that in some cases is unique to us only. The more unique and personal your subject is, the stronger your niche is. This is not always the case because our profession and hobbies are often common enough to where other people do them also.
So it can be tough to break into a common field that has been done already. However, you do not know how well you will perform unless you try it. Who knows, you might possess some knowledge that no one else has. If you do and you share it on your blog, then you might perform well on the rankings. Again, you have to make that attempt and let Google place you where you belong.
People spend a lot of time wondering and worrying about if their blog is going to fail or succeed. You really cannot get into all of the mental mind games with being preoccupied with that. Just blog and see how it goes. Successful just try things, see how they work out and adjust as needed. They do not sit around all day and worry about failure. Failure is a part of success so you need to embrace it and tackle it head on.
Sharing your knowledge is a way of paying it forward to society. How you go to where you are today is the result of spending years of your life learning and experiencing whatever you are writing about. You reached this point in your life because it involved a lot of people who helped you along the way. When you share your knowledge and your blog, you are helping other people learn something just like how you learned something from others.
So you are just helping society just like how it helps you. When you understand how your contribution can benefit society through disseminating your knowledge, you will feel good because you will earn respect as an authority figure in your field.
Establishing yourself as a respected authority figure is something in SEO called EAT. EAT is an acronym which stands for Expertise, Authority and Trustworthiness. Basically, these three attributes are used to determine how knowledgeable you are in your subject and how respected and valued your knowledge is.
You will need to write several articles showcasing your knowledge in order to build your EAT. This takes time and will show depending on how well people perceive your articles and if you gain backlinks. As long as you keep writing articles that provide value to your readers, your EAT will increase and make your blog more valuable to Google.
Your blog starts off small and will spend a great deal of time just trying to find itself on the Web. Since Google ranking fluctuates several times a day, there is no definite time that it takes until you hit a respectable ranking on the search results. This really depends on how much time you are willing to put into your writing and how well you can write about a wide variety of topics in your subject.
If your blog happens to make it in the future, there are a few things that you can do with it. You can use your blog as a way to break into new opportunities.
You can try running ads and doing affiliate marketing but this requires getting a lot of traffic. Since things are always changing on the Web, I like to check to see what the latest updates are for making money this way. For starters, take a look at this section on making money blogging in my article about comparing blogging for fun versus money. Something that I like to do is just touch upon a subject and then let you do more research on your own.
The reason why is because the Web has so many moving pieces, it becomes tough to keep up with. What is relevant today, may not be tomorrow. So constantly reading up on change and updates is vital to staying current. This is why there are so many articles out there on so many different subjects. Some articles contain information that stays relevant forever. We call this evergreen content. Other articles become obsolete once something new comes along.
That is the way of life and the Web, there is always something new going on.
If you ever thought about getting into consulting, you can use your blog as a way to promote yourself and your knowledge. You can introduce yourself to someone and then just send them a link to your blog. People can read what you wrote and see if you are someone they need some help from.
The great thing about the Web is that your blog is up all of the time. It never closes like a real business, so people are able to read your stuff and learn about you, whenever they want.
Blogs are a great addition to your resume because you could never fit all of your articles on your resume. Your blog becomes an extension of your resume where people can learn more about you and your knowledge. Thinking of your blog as just another portfolio.
Are you ready to blog today? I have written many articles about blogging and have peppered and sprinkled several of my articles throughout this one. Before you do, make sure that you also check out some common blogging mistakes that people make when blogging. There is a lot of technical stuff that goes into blogging, so make sure that you read up on as much as you can before you actually start.
Blogging is a great way to build someone that can have a lot of potential in the future. Do not wait too long because so many established people have already marked their territory and you are just not trying to get a sliver of that pie. With competition growing everyday, you really need to hustle before your niche becomes oversaturated
The sooner that you start, the sooner that you can start to build your SEO and get your articles on Google. Since things take as long as Google determines, the earlier you get your articles published, the more time Google has to get your articles out there. Google dictates which of your articles make it to their search engine and where they rank. So understand that because you can do things to make your articles optimized for Google, but you can only control so much.
Sharing your knowledge with the world is a great feeling. People helped you get to where you are today and now you have the chance to do the same for others. If you spend enough time and seriously blog, you can become an expert in your field who is respected and authoritative. In SEO, it is called EAT (Expertise, Authority, and Trustworthiness). If you have a good amount of valuable and in-demand knowledge, you can get some really good EAT on your blog and in return receive traffic.
Your blog might turn in something potentially big in the future. When that happens, you can monetize with ads and affiliate marketing. You can get into consulting or use your blog as an extension of your resume.
With all of the benefits of blogging, you should get it up as soon as possible. Once your blog is ready, launch it today!
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