If you missed my AMA (Ask Me Anything) last week, plenty of blogger questions were asked and I answered them all. So if you’ve ever wondered what the best SEO tool is for your blog or how to grow your traffic, then keep reading because I answer these questions and give the best tips for bloggers.
Tips for Bloggers
Q. What are the best plugins to use for SEO purposes and does installing many plugins affect the loading time of the website?
A. I’ve heard that installing too many plugins can affect the load time of the website, which is why I try not to use many. For SEO, I use the plugin WordPress SEO by Yoast. When I took a course in SEO this was a recommended plugin.
Q. How should someone who lacks computer and web design skills, go about designing a creative blog site?
A. If you use WordPress, there’s hundreds of designs for blogs. You don’t need to have any skills to set them up. There’s also YouTube tutorials and courses are also offered to improve skills.
Q. How much time should one invest into building traffic, promotion, marketing and SEO?
A. When one starts a business/blog, it is crucial to spend time on it. Everyone starts out the same spending hours building traffic, marketing etc…When I decided to make my blog into a business, I was spending at least 4-5 hours 4 nights a week.
Everyone is different and times vary for everyone, and yes there will be times where you will be working long hours, but do know that there are tools that can help you cut some hours, that way you are not spending so much time on SEO and marketing.
For example, instead of trying to make your posts SEO friendly manually, there are great plugins on WordPress that will help you with SEO, without spending so much time on it. As for marketing and getting traffic, pinterest has been a good source of traffic. All I do is create the pins, schedule it using Tailwind and the next day I start seeing a lot of traffic coming from Pinterest.
I wouldn’t spend too much time when it comes to SEO and traffic, but rather on writing wonderful content and engagement. (Engagement is key to growth!)
Q. What are some of the features, widgets, tools one can use to enhance the look and functionality of their blog?
A. It depends on what you are looking for. To help make things simpler for me, I use Jet Pack on WordPress to keep track of my stats. For email subscribers, I have used both an Email Newsletter Plugin and MailChimp Plugin. I also use a Slider Plugin to enhance the look of my blog with wonderful photos and posts. I am huge on using the Instagram widget because I feel that this needs to be included so that my readers can find me on social media. Let’s not forget about adding facebook and twitter, I use SumoMe to add a section of my facebook and twitter.
Q. What advice do you have for someone who wants to start their own travel blog?
A. Be passionate about it, that’s my advice. If you start a travel blog for the sole purpose of making money and you have no passion, the readers will know. You can see a difference between those who are passionate and those who are not. So if you are starting a travel blog, make sure it’s something you are passionate about.
Those were some of the questions I got during the AMA and hopfully these tips will help any bloggers reading.
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