It’s been over two years now since I started blogging and I have published over 700 blog posts on my blog – Netmediablog. I started this blog sometime around December 2011 with an idea to provide useful and resourceful information regarding technology to people.
I want to use my blog to help people, solve their technical issues through my blog posts, inform them of latest technological happenings around the world and share useful information ranging from Social media to internet tips, mobile technology to games, how-to topics and other technology aspects in general.
I won’t tell you it’s been easy getting to where I am now; in fact it’s been challenging and enjoyable. I have learnt a lot getting this far and from my experience I want to share the lessons I’ve learnt publishing over 700 posts on Netmediablog.
Netmediablog started as a challenge to myself to build a blog that can easily be identified for its usefulness to its users and most importantly as an authority in the Technology Niche both within Nigeria and outside Nigeria.
So from the onset I knew I had to work very hard to make Netmediablog succeed, so I started off steaming with ideas and today Netmediablog can boast of a PR3 ranking, over 700 blog posts and over 100k monthly visitors and a lot more.
While it may be easy to publish 700 blog posts on some niches, it is not that easy doing same in a technology niche. It requires extensive researches, practice and several trials to be able to do that. You don’t just publish what you have never tried; you need to be sure before you can publish it for people to try. You also need to be updated with the latest happenings around the world when it comes to technology.
Now here are some of the lessons I’ve learnt publishing over 700 posts on Netmediablog. I hope you find them useful and informative so as to be able to learn from them to better your blog.
1. Content Quality: One of the most important lessons i’ve learnt publishing over 700 blog posts on my blog is NEVER TO COMPROMISE CONTENT QUALITY! Your blog posts will last as long as your blog lives. Your blog design can change, a lot of other things about your blog can change from time to time but one thing that will remain constant is your content.
Ensure to maintain a high quality standard for your blog posts, don’t publish low quality contents just because you must publish regularly. I’ll rather not publish a post than to publish a poor quality article on my blog. I have learnt that good contents remain evergreen and stand the taste of time.
Your audience will judge your blog from your content quality. This will determine if they will come back of leave forever. Now that Google Hummingbird update is in full swing, ensure to publish only contents that solve people’s problems and let your content flow naturally. Learn to write for humans and optimize for search engines.
2. Interlinking your posts with right anchor texts can improve SEO: I have learnt that interlinking your blog posts with the right anchor texts can greatly improve your search engine ranking. This will tell search engines what the linked page is all about and will help rank it properly.
In an article I published on this blog titled “How Anchor Text can improve your blog’s SEO”, I explained how using the right anchor text can improve your blog SEO. Check it out…
3. Update old articles: It is always a good practice to review and update old blog posts. Add new information and give it a face lift. While it’s true that some posts are evergreen, you can improve both your user experience and search engine ranking by updating your old blog posts from time to time.
When I don’t have anything to do on my blog, I take some time to update my old blog posts, that way the publication date changes and it attracts some search engine favors.
Must Read: How Content Freshness can improve SERP
4. Promote consistently: You should promote your blog posts consistently. Always share and contribute meaningfully through different channels such as social media, forums, blog commenting, content curation and syndication, proper optimization of your blog posts etc.
No matter how good you are at writing you need good promotion strategy to drive quality traffic to your blog. Don’t let your old blog posts rot in the inner pages of your blog, promote your blog posts always, link to your old posts on new ones and that way people can visit and read such posts.
5. Create cornerstone contents: In “Improving search engine ranking with Cornerstone Content” I explained what cornerstone content is all about and how you can create cornerstone content from similar posts.
Cornerstone content will greatly improve your site’s search engine ranking. Gather all the posts you published under related keywords in one post or better yet create a page for it just as I did with “The Ultimate Guide To Blogging: How to Start Your Own Blog”.
6. Create Series: Learn to create series from time to time to discuss extensively on any chosen topics. Creating series will help you establish your authority in your niche. Creating series will help you create more blog posts, create detailed and resourceful posts that can help your audience.
In “Beginner’s Guide to Blogging: Monetization – Episode 5”, you can see how I compiled a 5 part series on Beginner’s guide to blogging explaining “How to build a blog” in episode 1, “Content Creation” in episode 2, “Search engine optimization” in episode 3 and “Web Promotion” in episode 4.
7. Vary your content types: One of the lessons I’ve learnt publishing over 700 posts on Netmediablog is to vary content types. You don’t just have to publish text posts; you can also publishing video posts, Infographics, slideshows, podcasts etc.
Varying your content types will also improve your search engine ranking as different content types perform differently on search engines. You can also use a combination of different content types in one blog post to give such a post a big boast and chance to perform very well on search engines.
You should use images, videos, Infographics, slides and social media embedded posts etc in your blog posts. This will greatly improve the quality of your blog posts and also give your readers a good view, understanding and illustration.
More people tend to engage and respond to visual contents, so if you want your blog posts to perform well, then add visual contents to it. Use wide or tall images in your blog posts as studies have shown that such image sizes result in high engagements.
8. Find your best posts and create similar posts: The last lesson I’ve learnt publishing over 700 posts on Netmediablog is to find your best performing posts and creating similar posts. When I noticed that some posts were performing very well on my blog, I created similar posts and over time I noticed the similar posts I created was also performing well so I continued doing this and since then my traffic and engagement have long improved.
Conclusion:
In my over 2 years of blogging I have learnt so much than I did in my 4 years in the university. Blogging has really improved me and I enjoy blogging because it helps me express myself and also help others. These two are actually my main reasons of blogging; the money is good as well I won’t deny that.
So if you are a blogger hoping to grow your blog and succeed, I advise you learn from my experience and the tips I have shared in this post will definitely improve your blog if well implemented. If you have any questions or anything to add to this topic, please I will love to hear from you. Use the comment section below to share your views.
No doubt , that this post was worth Reading
Thanks for Writing :)
Hello Nwosu,
I find this article particularly interesting as I have learned over the years to learn from people’s experiences and not necessarily having the self-experience, unless it’s a good one :). Like I always say, learning from instructions saves time and produces better results than learning from experience which may require one to give up entirely without a strong desire to continue.
2-years being a successful blogger is no child’s play and I really must say I have high regards for you. The bar you set for yourself is incredible and the willingness to choose high quality content delivery over anything really shows you earned all the aforementioned stats in the article. Constantly pushing great articles requires a great deal of research and unlike other niche like entertainment (no-offense), it could become so boring at times, coupled with the anxiety that comes from publishing guides that may not work for some persons.
Your conclusion really got me and I suddenly became emotional. Indeed, learning from blogging is all great and can’t be compared to whatever goes on in the four-walls of our Universities, considering how so flat the standard has fallen. You have survived 2-years. Surely, this won’t be the last, many more to come and above all, more accompanying success stories.
Have a great day.
Best Regards,
Nosa
Thanks Nosa for such a wonderful contribution and yes 2 years is a long time in blogging especially when the expectation is so high that no compromise is welcomed in both content quality and relationship with the audience. It is wonderful to see you here and i pray your blog will also grow as mine so others can as well learn from you some day.
Congrats Nwosu! You’ve accomplished so much in your 2 years, always innovating, creating good, helpful content. I’ve learned a great deal from you my friend. Now you’ve inspired me to write how my 3100 blog posts have taught me some great lessons over the past 4 years ;)
Keep up the great work, and thanks for sharing your talents with us!
First of all a big congrats on hitting the 700 mark of blog posts; it’s a big count and your two years consistency is another proof that you are at the threshold of pro blogger status. This will happen as soon as you make your full time living from it. My best wishes are for you and do pray for my success.
hi nwosu, i think this post is one of the 14th quality content that touches the way i reason regarding blogging. technology mostly base on case studies try and confirm before hiting the publish tab. but not all techbloggers know this. Replace broken Screen on Blackberry.
This is amazing brother! 700 articles is not easy to come by. This must have been through very tough work. Congratulations!
Ryan you inspired me a lot as a blogger and pal. I learnt so much from you and i hope to continue learning from you. Your content creation skill inspired and encouraged me a lot. Thanks indeed.
Thanks Muba for your awesome contribution and i hope to keep growing both in quality and engagement.
It was indeed but i am grateful to God and all of you to get to where i am today and i hope to keep growing.
Like seriously, I never knew your blog was just slightly over two years. I actually thought it was more, considering the level of engagement and heights it has attained so far. I kinda envy our consistent you post on your blog even in terms of quality. Big ups buddy.
Congratulations Nwosu, 700 blog posts I cannot even begin to imagine how I could ever write so many WOWSY!
I have taken a whole page of notes from your article, I think I will push for 100 posts not to sure about 700 HEHE
Awesome Job. Thanks for sharing.. Chery :))
Thanks Samuel for your awesome contribution.
Sure Chery you surely can. Its about setting goals both short term and long term and seeing that you meet them.
Hi Nwosu,
This is wonderful indeed – congratulations :)
What can I say! I’ve just been blogging for a little over 3 years and have just celebrated my 200 posts, so writing 700 within such a short time means you are a seasoned blogger already – awesome indeed!
I agree with all your points, the best being to provide and write ONLY quality content, and posts that help your readers because the way they’d come back for more. I have yet to try my hand on working on old posts, or perhaps being a writer, I prefer churning out new posts each time, but that’s a good idea.
Also, perhaps building relationships with fellow blogger and it’s importance is another additional point to your list. It’s something I’ve learnt in my blogging journey and it’s worked wonders for my blog for sure. :)
Thanks for sharing, and wishing you many years of continued success with hundreds of more posts. Happy weekend :)
Thanks Harleena for dropping by and leaving such a wonderful comment, am pleased to see you around here again. I will definitely work on building more relationships with other bloggers like you.
Hi Nwosu,
After reading your post I now think that there is a lot of work for me today, I have my old posts left as its from long time and not being updated which I need to visit and re promote as I am only promoting the new posts that I publish. Thank you so much for sharing your experience and your tips. Wish you all the success.
Hi Nwosu,
I think you are right about not being easy doing a technology blog. I agree that we can’t just writeour opinions and thoughts. We have to do a lot of research first and go through many steps testing things out.
I find it interesting that you talked about anchor texts. I am going to have to jump over to that post and see what you wrote about.
I could continue because I agree with many things you talk about. I especially agree about the series. Sometimes I have read posts that have been so long that it seems overwhelming to me, even though I may be following and understanding what the author is saying. It just seems like the post goes on and on. So, I believe in breaking posts in to smaller pieces and to then creating a series. I think it is good to have “take a break” stages and a series enables us to do this.
I have just started thinking about your point 38: creating similar posts. Good idea. I need to give that more thought and figure out how to apply that. Thank you.
Congratulations. I hope if I continue and really stay on task, I can also say I have done 700 some day and have good traffic.
Barb
I read this on kingged.com
Thanks Brady for coming back. I am glad you found this post resourceful, i hope to keep sharing my experience and hope some people can learn from it. Do have a splendid week and welcome to the new month.