With the internet expanding rapidly across the globe, blogs have evolved into one of the most profitable online business strategies worldwide in recent years.
Internet is flooded with over 600 million blogs in 2022, and this number is increasing drastically. If you're a business or an individual wanting to make passive income, blogging is a pre-requisite thing to do.
So, what is a blog, and how does blogging work? This comprehensive guide will share every nitty-gritty about blogging along with use cases and types of blogs on the internet.
What is a Blog?
A blog, short for weblog, is an online journal that consists of various old and new content. A blog's content may include text, pictures, videos, animated GIFs, and even other hard copy documents.
According to Google Dictionary, a blog is "a regularly updated website or web page, typically one run by an individual or small group, that is written in an informal or conversational style."
Wikipedia defines the blog as, "A blog (a truncation of "weblog") is a discussion or informational website published on the World Wide Web consisting of discrete, often informal diary-style text entries (posts). Posts are typically displayed in reverse chronological order so that the most recent post appears first at the top of the web page."
What is the Purpose of a Blog?
There are numerous reasons to start a weblog, a.k.a blog for personal use, but only a few stand out for business blogging.
You can also start blogging for businesses and projects to boost SERP results and gain visibility.
As a business owner, you have to convince your customers to purchase the products.
As a new company, you rely on blogging to reach out to potential customers and capture their attention. Your website would be unnoticed without blogging, whereas blogging would make you more visible and competitive in the industry.
In a nutshell, the primary goal of a blog is to connect you with the appropriate audience. Another goal is to increase traffic and send qualified leads to your website.
The more frequent and high-quality your blog posts are, the more likely your website will be visible to your target audience.
When your brand is new and relatively unknown, good blogging improves your company's credibility. It is able to maintain both an online presence and a niche authority.
What is a Blog Post?
A blog post is a separate web page on your website that delves into a specific topic out of your multiple blogs.
It can be about starting your own business and providing tips on what to do and not do in terms of marketing and branding.
As with any content you publish on the web, it should have a topic that interests potential customers/readers as well as focuses relevance towards search engines such as Google.
A Brief History of Blogging
Since the mid-1990s, blogs have evolved from journals and online diaries. Internet users at the time had personal web pages where they posted frequent personal updates, such as thoughts and social commentary.
The term “web log” was first used in the late 1990s, and it was later shortened to “weblog,” then “we blog,” and finally just “blog.”
From 1994 to 1995, blogs came as open access diaries in which individuals shared updates about their lives, personal thoughts and facts about events like academic studies, careers, travels, and other topics.
The first official blogging platform Blogger.com was launched in 1999. Google later acquired Blogger in 2003.
In May 2003, WordPress released its blogging platform Wordpress.com. WordPress powers 43% of the internet today.
What is the Difference Between a Blog and a Website?
Many people are still perplexed about the difference between a website and a blog.
Many businesses are incorporating blogs into their websites, further confusing the two.
The main difference between a blog and a website is that a blog is a type of content displayed on web pages of a website.
While the blog may have fresh content regularly, a website gives static information about the company.
Blogs also encourage reader participation. Blog owners regularly add new blog posts to their websites to engage readers.
On the other hand, websites contain static information with text and images.
Another common distinction is that the blog pages have a comments section to encourage users to ask questions and share their thoughts, whereas a web page lacks such a section.
For example, our homepage Scalenut is the web page and 'https://www.scalenut.com/' is a website, whereas the blog page exists inside this website address.
Notice the blog page address- https://www.scalenut.com/blog.
While our website consists of other information and pages such as story, roadmap, contact us pages or working, the blog page helps us share specific information and drive more traffic.
Benefits of Blogging
A blog can help improve your credibility. It is able to maintain both an online presence and a niche authority.
With the right strategy, blogging builds an audience that can lead to a variety of opportunities, including monetization.
Furthermore, blogging is an excellent way to build a personal brand. Indeed, many professionals today have landed jobs due to their blogging efforts.
A blog highlighting your skills and knowledge can help you stand out from the crowd and persuade employers of your legitimacy.
Blogging is an excellent way for a business to increase the online visibility of its website.
According to reports, websites with blogs have 434 percent more indexed pages in search engines. As a result, their chances of ranking on the first page of Search Engine Result Pages (SERPs) and driving organic traffic increase.
Given this, it's easy to see why blog posts are the most popular type of content for increasing brand awareness. The more traffic to your blog, the more likely you will gain new customers.
Here are the reasons why Blogging is lucrative for any business:
1. Get Rankings on Search Engines
A company typically uses a blog to help its website rank higher in search engines. The term may also be called 'SEO Blog' to help with organic traffic.
You can use SEO strategies or sponsored ads to help your company's homepage rank on Google's first page, but blogging is a more effective, long-term option.
2. To Become Industry Expert
A blog will help you become an industry expert. It creates a sense of credibility and authority that can be used to your advantage in the future.
The fact is, people trust experts more than they do generalists, who often write opinions without any real knowledge or credentials behind them.
When people read your blog, they are more likely to remember your company or product. This is because blogs are generally written in an engaging and easily-readable style.
3. Convert Visitors Into Leads
You can only get so much traffic through your company website's homepage or About Us page.
Those pages are important for leads who are already interested in your items, but they rarely draw top-of-the-funnel traffic. That's when your blog enters the picture.
Even before your website visitors are ready to buy from you, your blog may be a general resource for them.
Thus, merely launching a webpage with all the features won't help you much. You will need to share your knowledge and reflect on the use of your product in solving problems.
This way, you can increase your conversion rates.
4. Create an Online Community of Like-minded Audience
You could start a blog to interact with an online community of readers who share your interests. For example, you can establish a food blog and invite readers to contribute their recipes.
You can write something or share a DIY craft and ask your audience to share their methods or hacks.
How To Blog in Easy Steps?
So, how do you start your blog?
Obviously, you have a domain name and a website, but what if you want to add a blog page? Here are the tips to start your blog step by step.
1. Know Your Target Audience
It's critical to consider your target audience while starting your own blog. For whom are you making this blog? Who do you want to read your blog postings?
Before you begin, think about the niche you'll be writing about, as well as the topics you'll cover and why.
Creating a buyer persona for your organization is akin to brainstorming your target audience. This will also give you an idea of the type of content you want to create.
If you own a website or have been in the industry for long, you might better understand the buyer persona and what problems you want to solve.
2. Generate Content Ideas Using the Market Segment
Content creation is a time-consuming process. Make sure your content is interesting to your readers and, presumably, helpful to your SEO campaign.
You'll want to produce high-quality, consistent content regularly once you've established a blog.
The best way is to consider what your competitors are doing to get ideas for content. Pay attention to the content gap in their content.
Notice what content format do they use the most. Is it a text, a video, resources, or infographics?
You should also conduct SEO research to ensure that users are searching for and interested in the topic you want to write about.
You can use tools like “Scalenut, SEMRush, Buzzsumo or Answer the Public” to conduct the research and get a hunch about the content.
3. Find the Appropriate Blogging Platform
You'll almost certainly need a blogging platform to host your blog. A CMS platform is the best blogging platform (Content Management System).
A content management system (CMS) is a tool that allows you to create, manage, and publish content on your website.
Once you've decided to establish a blog, check if your current Content Management System (CMS) can host one. If not, you'll need to look into CMS solutions that might work with your site or find a new CMS to migrate your site to.
In our opinion, WordPress is the best type of CMS that is easy to use and offers amazing functionalities with tons of plugins.
4. Create a Blog Strategy and Editorial Calendar
Creating a blog isn't enough. You need a solid blog strategy to boost your effectiveness. Thus, the blog strategy should answer questions like:
- Who is your target audience?
- What type of content will you produce?
- What is the best time to post?
- Where will you promote your content?
After you have created the blog strategy, make sure to create a content calendar for your writers and editors.
A content calendar keeps track of upcoming posts, ensuring that writers fulfill deadlines and that you have enough content ideas for the time being.
5. Find the Blog Structure
When producing your blog entries, it's crucial to think about the article structure.
Are you, for example, utilizing subheads to break up the text and make it easier to read?
Do you include bullet points and photos in your post to make scanning easier?
Here are the common features blogs typically include:
- Header with menu or navigation bar.
- Main content area.
- Sidebar with recent posts and social profile share.
- Footer with relevant page links that are static.
6. Don't Forget SEO
SEO (Search Engine Optimization) makes your blog content more visible to search engines like Google, Yahoo and Bing. This will help you get a higher traffic ranking on these influential sites.
The practice of optimizing a blog's content, site architecture, and HTML code for search engines is referred to as blog SEO. On-page optimization, adding plugins, boosting website loading speed, and internal linking are common chores related to blog SEO.
There are a few practices to help your site gain more traffic, such as:
- Use keywords in your title, content and meta description.
- Put your blog in a subfolder.
- Use keywords in URLs.
- Create internal links between relevant posts.
- Make sure to create a no-index category and tag pages.
- Remember to create a blog sitemap for search robots to crawl easily.
- Optimize your posts for featured snippets.
- Publish pillar content to gain more links.
7. Use a Variety of Blog Post Styles
Everyone who reads your blogs, especially consumers, should find them fascinating. You should employ a range of blog post styles for people who are active readers and ambassadors of your site so that it does not become stale.
Use how-to blogs, list-based posts, or thought leadership in your content.
8. Repurpose Old Content
Consistently producing blog content can be difficult. However, you don't have to start writing a blog post from scratch.
You can update old blog posts to refresh and make them updated over time. You can also reuse other content, such as a YouTube video or a podcast, and turn it into a blog post.
9. Perform a Competitive Analysis
Conduct a competitive analysis of your top blog competitors to understand your target audience better. This will assist you in identifying trends and content gaps in your market, and providing you with ideas for articles and ways to promote your blog.
A competitive analysis will assist you in developing and iterating your own blog strategy.
You can use tools like “Scalenut, Ahrefs or SEMRush” to conduct a competitive analysis. For instance, Scalenut will help you identify the top-ranking pages for your main keyword and analyze the content and the key terms to help with rankings.
It suggests the word count range and the readability that most top pages use. By using Ahrefs, you can find the sites that your competitors are getting links from.
10. Promote on Social Media
You can promote your blog posts via Twitter, Instagram, YouTube, Facebook, and LinkedIn or Reddit/Tumblr.
To achieve this goal, you need content that people want to share at the moment.
To produce great content, you also need to have a good understanding of your target audience.
You can use tools like “Google Trends or SocialBakers” to get an idea about what is popular on social media at the moment and then create blog posts that reflect those trends.
Make sure to keep track of social media posts and the engagement on the type of content. Focus on earning followers and more engagement on social media to boost organic traffic and leads.
Types of Blogs
Let's get started with the five most popular types of blogs and their examples now that we've covered the steps of blogging. Your blogs can be classified into multiple categories.
1. Personal Blog
This type of blogging site focuses on the author rather than the audience. Journal entries or write-ups about the author’s life, interests, or hobbies can be used in personal blogs.
A personal blog focuses on a single topic. Here, a blogger can address a wide range of topics as long as they are relevant to the writer's interests.
2. Niche Blog
A niche blog focuses on a certain set of themes, usually related to the blogger's interests, skills, and knowledge.
For example, if you're a voracious reader, your blog may focus solely on book-related topics.
The blogger's preferences determine the niche's scope. In niche blogging, writers can further specialize by focusing on just one or two categories.
Some popular niche blogs are:
- Fashion Blogs: This blog talks about the latest fashion trends, clothing and styles for men and women.
- Travel blog: This blog type covers guides on travel, trips and destination guides.
- Health blogs: It covers listicles of workouts, nutrient-rich meals, and instructions on how to take care of your mental health are all common types of articles in this area.
- Food blogs: Food blogs cover recipes, kitchen equipment and reviews.
- Author Blog: Author blogs usually focus on the writer's thoughts, ideas, and experiences. They may also include journal-like entries about writing processes, research processes and book reviews.
- Finance blog: Finance blogs cover money management, ranging from budgeting tips to side income ideas.
3. Company or Business Blog
Any company website with a blog area qualifies as this type of blog.
The main goal is to draw in the target market by publishing content relevant to their problems or interests. Some businesses also utilize blogs to keep their customers informed about changes within their company.
For example, EngageBay uses its blog section to show the uses of all its marketing software and tools in the business.
4. Affiliate Blog
Affiliate marketing is the process of promoting a third party's products and services on a platform.
In affiliate marketing, the blogger may include a unique link to the company’s pricing or products on their blog page.
Once the customers purchase using the link, the owner will receive a commission out of it.
Product reviews, buyer guides, and “best-of” listicles are all common topics of an affiliate blog.
5. Reverse Blog
In a reverse blog, the guest authors contribute to the blog rather than the blog's owner.
The main responsibility of the blog owner is to moderate and edit incoming entries.
This blog form is popular among freelance writers since it allows them to expand their network and exposure. Some blogs pay a fixed price for each piece an author writes.
How do Bloggers get Paid?
The amount of money a blogger can make depends on the monetization method. The following are the different monetization methods:
- Affiliate marketing: Amazon, GoDaddy and every other provider offers affiliates some commission to promote their products.
- Ad displays: Businesses interested in advertising on the blogger's blog will be contacted. They can either use an ad network like Google Ads or go directly to the companies.
- Sponsored content: They'll form a partnership with a company that's relevant to their target market.
- Sell your own products or services: Most bloggers start this way. They'll create a landing page or an ecommerce store, and then list their products or services on it.
Blog traffic is another aspect that influences a blogger's earnings.
Blogs with traffic and visitors have an easier time cooperating with brands and generating income from their followers.
FAQs
Q. Who is a blogger?
Ans: A blogger is an individual who posts content on a blog or website in the form of text and images. A blogger usually writes about topics relevant to them and their readers.
Q. Why is Blog SEO important?
Ans: A Blog SEO is a process of improving a blog's Search Engine Optimization (SEO), so it appears higher in search results when people type keywords into Google or Yahoo!
Q. Do bloggers get paid?
Ans: Yes, they do get paid, and a lot of bloggers make great money doing this. However, keep in mind that it is not an easy thing to start with either.
Q. What are the best tools for creating amazing blog content?
Ans: Some of our best recommendations for content creation are Scalenut, SurferSEO and Jarvis. Scalenut AI assistant offers a text editor and writing automation tool for creating content that is relevant to your audience.
Q. Can you copyright a blog?
Ans: Any original content, including images you've generated yourself and blogs you've authored, is protected by copyright. Unfortunately, this protection does not include the appearance of your site or, in some cases, your domain name.
Conclusion
Bloggers have a huge impact on millions of people worldwide, and it is very easy to make money from this activity. The best way to make it popular is by writing articles and posting them consistently.
If you want to start a blog, make sure you choose the correct platform and construct a user-friendly website. Those interested in personal weblog websites or business blogging will also benefit from some content-related specialty, strong content writing abilities, and SEO understanding.
You can kickstart your blog from any reliable hosting and pick Scalenut for competitor analysis, content creation and better visibility.
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