How to Improve Your Blog Right Now

How to Improve Your Blog Right Now

If you’ve been blogging for any length of time and you’re feeling a little stuck, I’ve got you.

Getting stuck on something such as email marketing or affiliate marketing doesn’t mean you’re not cut out for blogging. It just means you need to evaluate what you’re doing and and strategize a new plan.

Let’s talk about how to improve your blog right now.

How to Improve Your Blog Right Now

Evaluate the Quality of the Programs You’re Using

This one is first on my list because without it, the seven points that follow are irrelevant.

The way your blog is set up will determine how successful and profitable it has the capacity to become.

A lot of people become interested in blogging because they think it’s a get rich quick scheme (which I can assure you it’s not).

And it tends to be this group of people who want to blog without making any kind of investment in it.

Blogging is a form of online business.

And any business requires investing up front.

The investment to start a blog isn’t nearly as much as a traditional brick-and-mortar business, but you still need to invest in quality programs and products if you want your blog to be profitable.

When I was ready to build my blog, I took a few courses that taught me everything I needed to know to get going.

I took Launch Your Blog Biz and Pinterest Traffic Avalanche. These are two game-changing courses in the blogging sphere. I still go back and review the content sometimes.

They continuously update the courses to stay current with the ever-fluctuating changes and trends in blogging, and there’s lifetime access to the courses.

If you’re looking for courses that will teach you everything you need to get going with blogging and you’re ready to go all in, I highly recommend those two courses.

**When it comes to blogging programs and products, you get what you pay for (or don’t pay for).**

As an example, a lot of people don’t want to pay for hosting. But with a free hosting provider, you can’t optimize your blog with affiliate marketing or selling your own products.

I use BlueHost and I don’t regret going with them. In two years, I haven’t had any issues. I signed up for the 3-year plan with them which equated to under $3 a month to host my website.

Initially, I was hesitant to commit to any of the paid website hosting platforms and in hindsight I can tell you I wasted too much time making a decision.

If you’re hesitant, just make a decision and go all in. You can always change hosting providers later and most of them have some type of refund policy.

People tend to not want to pay for email marketing, either. But with free providers, such as Mail Chimp, you are not allowed to sell any products or use affiliate marketing.

Your email list is everything when it comes to building trust with your audience and selling products, so you don’t want to skimp out on a great email service provider.

I use ConvertKit and it’s only $29 a month. You can pay month-by-month or pay upfront for the year and get a month free.

The program is very user-friendly and I highly recommend it. I’ve used other email marketing platforms and this is by far my favorite.

If you’re curious to learn more about ConvertKit, read How I Got My First 100 Email Subscribers.

Plug-Ins

Don’t get carried away with plug-ins. They can slow your site down and even bug your site.

I have 15 plug-ins at this point. There are a few I absolutely recommend, like Yoast SEO and Wordfence Security.

In the Launch Your Blog Biz course I took, they give you a list of safe plug-ins that won’t bug your site.

The nice thing is, most of the plug-ins you need are absolutely free.

One plug-in I pay for is Social Warfare, which is the plug-in that allows the social media icon sharing buttons on your blog posts.

Evaluate your plug-ins and decide if they are truly needed. Only use trusted plug-ins that won’t bug your site.

SEO

The best tool for SEO performance is the Yoast SEO plug-in. They have a free and paid version, but you only need the free version.

Basically, it’s a tool that once uploaded, will help you optimize every blog post and page on your site. It uses a traffic light system. It uses green for “good”, yellow for “ok” and red for “needs improvement.” It also gives you recommendations for how you can improve your SEO and it also uses the same traffic light system for readability.

This is one of THE most important plug-ins you absolutely need for your website. And it’s free.

Evaluate Your Social Media Marketing Strategy

Social Media Marketing, specifically Pinterest, is king for bloggers.

I can’t recommend Pinterest Traffic Avalanche enough. This course teaches you how to drive free organic traffic to your blog using Pinterest.

After I took this course, my traffic skyrocketed. I wrote How I Tripled My Blog Traffic in 1 Month about this experience.

Facebook is oversaturated (to say the least) and unless you’re willing to learn and pay for Facebook Ads, you’re not going to get the bulk of your traffic from Facebook.

That’s not to say you shouldn’t create a Facebook business page or not have any presence on there, but if you’re looking for stable, free, organic traffic, your best bet is by far Pinterest.

Pinterest is more of a search engine than a social media platform, and it works similar to Google SEO.

Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram are great to engage with your audience, but bloggers know the real traffic comes from Pinterest.

Especially when you’re just starting out and don’t have the money or expertise for ads.

Improve Your Page Speed

If you go to Google’s PageSpeed Insights, you can type in your URL and check how fast your page loads. It will grade you and let you know how you can speed up your page.

This is important because the longer it takes for a user to load your site, the more likely they are to bounce before even reading your content.

One thing I will say about this site is that its results are inconsistent. You can scan your site one minute and get one score, and get a new score the next minute.

However, the scores are relatively in the same range, so the site is still helpful. It ranks how fast your site loads on both mobile and desktop.

Audit Old Content

If you’ve been blogging for longer than a year, I suggest auditing your old content.

I’ve been blogging for about two years now, and I recently started auditing old posts.

And I couldn’t believe how much my writing skills have changed since then.

Not only that, the style of my posts has evolved and I’ve consumed a lot more products I would recommend to my audience in those old posts.

So, if you want to improve your content optimization, I recommend auditing your old posts.

You don’t need to re-write them entirely, just make sure they’re more consistent with your current style and that the content is updated and helpful to your audience.

Try New Email Opt-Ins

If you have room for improvement on your email opt-in conversion rate, I recommend trying new opt-ins or lead magnets.

A lot of people try one or two opt-ins and get discouraged when the conversion rate is low and barely anyone is signing up for their emails.

Like many aspects of blogging, email marketing is all about trial-and-error. Keep trying new ideas until you find what works.

I made one tiny adjustment to my main opt-in and saw my conversion rate increase.

Again, my preferred email marketing software is ConvertKit.

Set Goals for Your Business

Whether you’re new to blogging or a seasoned vet, you must have goals for your business.

Otherwise, how will you know what you’re trying to accomplish?

Goals help keep you accountable and give you something to work towards.

But they need to be specific, measurable, and relevant.

Read my article How to Set Goals and Achieve Them if you need help with this.

Adjust Your Attitude

Whether your blog succeeds or not is based on you, not the market.

As I mentioned earlier, if you think blogging is a get-rich-quick scheme, you’re bound to fail because you’re not passionate about helping your audience, you just want to make a quick buck.

Successful bloggers are passionate about connecting with their audience and going above and beyond to serve them.

And on another note-if you’re frustrated and stuck on something-you’re bound to have thoughts that “this just isn’t working.”

But the truth is, when something isn’t working, it means you’re not working.

Every time I have a problem, I tell myself “I’m not working.”