New to blogging - top tips!

New to blogging - top tips!

I'm new to blogging (it's been 1 week since I started) and have been finding my discovery of blogging fascinating. There are so many things to learn and as a new blogger I keep discovering new tips for how to blog effectively (especially if you want to make money from blogging).

Anyway, I'm a stay at home mum of two and have shared my blogging adventure with other mums on an online forum. There has been quite a lot of interest so I thought why not set up a blog where people new to blogging can share their blogs and where we can all exchange tips for blogging as and when we discover them.

So, join me as we all embark on our blogging journey. I've started blogging for two reasons - to have something else to do apart from dealing with changing nappies, feeding, making silly faces, dealing with tantrums, trying to win an argument with a 2 year old (surprisingly difficult!) AND to make some money on the side (well I've read that's possible with blogs - only time with tell!).

Whatever your motivation and topic may be for your blog I hope you share your discovery of top tips for those new to blogging here!

Search engine listings

Another new blogger asked how people will get to her blog.

My research tells me there are two ways people get to a blog - from search engines and from clicking on a link to the blog (for example from another website). Join forums, contribute and post your link!

Search engines do something called 'crawling' the internet at regular periods, their automatic systems pick up on new pages and list them. This doesn't happen immediately and the time frame for gettig listed varies quite a lot.

You can do things to help such as use appropriate keywords in the relevant parts of your blog (see keywords post in this blog). Also post regularly on your blog as this also helps.

Of course the above is at the most simplest level to help people new to blogging - I will post more detailed information in the future!

Top tips for blogging - importance of keywords

The first top tip I learnt about blogging is the about the use of keywords.

Firstly what are keywords? From my simple understanding these are the words (or phrases) that are used when anyone does a search online for a topic they are interested in.

To get your blog to come up in a search, you must use relevant keywords in various parts of your blog to ensure your blog has a chance of being in the search results.

Using keywords in blog title
When using blogger the first place to make sure you use good keywords is in the main blog title, right at the top of the page.

As an example, I started a blog about dry eyes. At first my blog title was 'The perils of dry eye'. Now how many people are likely to type this as a search phrase - not many I imagine. Even though my title did include dry eye, as a phrase it didn't match possible keywords/phrases that might be used.

My title is now 'Dry Eye - Symptoms and Treatment' all of which are more likely to be used.

Using keywords in blog
Keywords must also be used throughout the blog, so at the beginning of posts and at the end of the posts and throughout the paragraphs. This is a good opportunity to use several different keywords relevant to your post.

Using my blog example above, I could use other keywords/phrases such as 'dry eye drops', 'dry itchy eyes', 'contact lenses for dry eyes'.

Using keywords in meta tags
This is another part of the blog keywords can be used in. But to explain this I would have to explain meta tags first - more on these in another post!

Keywords tools
Google has a great keyword generating tool to help: Google Keywords