Fundamentals for starting a side income blog successfully, include choosing a niche topic you are passionate about and then potentially narrowing it down further and showing expertise in a subniche topic. Topical authority is the term used to encompass this as a search engine optimisation (SEO) strategy.

A successful blog is usually built purely as a niche blog or to accompany a product/s or service-based website and with consistent posting, topical authority can help with its search engine visibility for either type of blog.

As your blog becomes a trusted source, topical authority can help with being cited by AI overviews for related queries or otherwise gaining better visibility on Google and therefore driving more visitors to your site, so is an important blogging SEO consideration.

When starting a side income blog, it’s also important to register or acquire a good domain name, such as an exact match domain (EMD). An EMD is a domain that precisely reflects a query a website is trying to rank for. A good domain has a long-term benefit of driving more people to your site.

Topical Authority for a Niche Blog

As a measure of success for a blog is how much traffic it gets, by directing your passion and expertise towards your subniche, you can gain visitors to your blog organically.

This topical authority can translate into having visitors that become engaged readers, who then also sign up for a newsletter email list, or help follow other monetisation avenues for your blog.

When starting a blog and choosing a sub niche for it, ideally aim for a topic that gives you enough room to grow, but not such a huge undertaking that you can’t cover the topic comprehensively over a long period of time with consistent posting.

Another factor when starting a side income blog is how you create your domain name. A good domain name assists with brand identity, offers a good first impression and has SEO benefits.

I think that makes it such an important long term asset, that when starting a niche blog and wanting to fund a new domain name, you might consider narrowing down a subniche idea to match a domain name that you find available in the domain aftermarket, especially if it’s an EMD and it’s worth considering investing additional funds towards it.

Topical Authority for a Product/s or Service Website with a Blog

A product-based website lets customers purchase tangible or digital products and a service-based website deals with professional services rather than tangible goods.

For a blog accompanying a product or service-based website, it can drive customers and clients into buying product/s or services being offered on the website, by demonstrating knowledge in the product or service’s subject matter.

Such a blog will help to drive conversions on products or generate leads to consultants, contractors, agencies etc by being highly knowledgeable or expert in that subject matter.

A good domain name will have features such as being short, memorable and easy to spell and for a website like this also has long term benefits, especially if it’s an EMD, or otherwise reflects the brand, product/s or services being offered.

Conclusion

When starting a side income blog, rather than covering diverse topics, an important SEO strategy is delving into a sub niche topic and gaining topical authority in that topic. This is a fundamental way to get organic traffic.

Another factor to consider when creating a successful blog is acquiring a good domain name.

The post Topical Authority in Blogging appeared first on Side Income Blogging.

The fundamentals include finding a niche or subniche that you are passionate and have expertise for, a domain that somewhat reflects what your niche is, then you can get hosting, WordPress.org is recommended as a blogging platform and a WordPress theme should then be chosen for the layout of your blog.

There are many reasons to at some stage incorporate infographics in your blog.

Adding an infographic to a blog post can make it more engaging, help simplify complex topics and make your content more easily digestible for viewers.

Furthermore, incorporating infographics to your blog sitewide and especially when utilising a common layout for those infographics, has positive implications such as enhanced consistency across your blog.

Ideally infographics will be created on your blog from launch and it can be easier creating them as a post is being written, rather than editing posts later, but can also be incorporated any time through your blogging journey. Infographics can further add to a good user experience (UX) after doing such things as tweaking your WordPress theme and ensuring your blog articles are appealing.

To create infographics, Canva Sketch to Life or Canva Infographic Creator are two good options through Canva, a web based graphic design platform.

Canva Sketch to Life lets a manually created sketch from hand be then digitised.

Canva Infographic Creator has thousands of templates that can utilise a common theme when making multiple infographics for your blog.

The post How to Create Infographics for Your Blog appeared first on Side Income Blogging.

When spending time making a post and it can benefit from an update, I think it’s likely a good move and a positive return on investment (ROI) to give it an update, as the resources used to make it will be better utilised doing that, rather than creating another post. It also expands on a topic and provides accurate information to your audience, improving your authority on a topic.

New information, statistics and data can be the things you target to change when updating content, but I think simply updating the quality of posts in general where possible is also important.

Evergreen content is content that remains accurate long after its publication but still has SEO benefits when updated with new information, images and links.

I think content that you’ve spent a long-time making appealing and is somewhat perfected, can be at a “pinnacle” and so is not easy to make better without restructuring it and so is not a good ROI to update and your time is better spent focussing on areas of your blog that need improvement, but if a possible improvement is noticed, it’s a good idea to update this type of content.

The post Benefits to Updating Blog Content appeared first on Side Income Blogging.

Introduction

Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) considerations are important when starting a side income blog and blogging SEO considerations can be broken down into off page, on page and technical SEO, but it’s also important to look at the big picture to be successful blogging, including creating high quality content. A measure of success in blogging can be measured by traffic, including organic traffic.

Off page SEO includes strategies that occur outside of your blog. An example is backlinks from other sites, with the number of backlinks your blog has and their quality, being a ranking factor for appearing on search engines.

On page SEO focuses on strategies within your web pages, such as trying to identify topics and keywords that have potential to be searched for and delving into creating solutions for those topics through posts.

Technical SEO for your blog includes altering the infrastructure and backend of your blog, to be more search engine friendly. An example of this is working on how to make your blog load faster.

Organic traffic is important and as organic search account for roughly 53% of traffic, it is statistically the dominant source of web traffic, making SEO considerations all the more relevant.

It’s important to remember that search engines, such as Google, have huge resources at their disposal, so they are ahead of the game at finding good quality content. This means focusing on creating high quality content for your blog, rather than chasing SEO all the time, is naturally a good idea.

Some other things to consider when starting a blog is choosing a niche or subniche that you are passionate about and have expertise for, as well as registering or acquiring a good domain name.

Off page SEO

Google rewards backlinks from high quality websites. For an ethical method to gain backlinks from other sites, try to give those sites a reason to link to your content.

Repurposing blog content for social media platforms and engaging on those platforms by sharing and commenting will help you to reach more of your audience and has an SEO advantage.

On page SEO

Focusing on long tail keywords involves making topics or articles on your blog around search phrases that are less common, usually with 3 or more words, rather than short search keywords. Short keyword combinations are usually harder to rank on search engines, as they have more competition.

When writing content, structure posts with easy to read paragraphs and use only one h1 heading per post, which will be your post title.

Your post title will form your URL slug. Creating a short and descriptive title that reflects what your content is about will provide a URL slug that helps your users to have a better user experience (UX) and also help search engines understand your content.

Internal links are links from posts and pages from your site to other posts and pages within that same site and are similar to backlinks in that search engines crawl those links to understand websites.

Use meta titles and meta descriptions. Using a plugin like Yoast, you can create meta titles and descriptions, which will help attract users to your posts that are listed on search engines, by providing context for them.

Optimize for featured snippets where you can. This is done using structured data markup, which can be a complex topic, but helps search engines further understand your content. See here for more information on structured data markup.

On page image SEO includes making descriptive file names and alt text that help users and search engines understand images.

Technical SEO

Site speed is an SEO factor that also contributes to UX. You can check how fast your sites loads, using Google PageSpeed Insights.

When starting a blog, it’s a good idea to submit sitemaps regularly to Google after making new articles until your site gains authority and is automatically crawled more often.

Technical image SEO includes using proper file formats and image file sizes and using WebP or AVIF wher possible, for compressing images without noticeable quality loss.

Another factor that contributes to technical SEO is making sure your site is mobile responsive. High quality WordPress themes will usually do this automatically and theme page builders for WordPress, such as Beaver Builder, include responsiveness out of the box.

Using HTTPS provides trust for your visitors as the data transferred from them to your website will be secure.

Other SEO Terms for Blogging

Topical Authority – When starting a side income blog, focusing on delving into a topic that has been narrowed down to a subniche that you are passionate about and have expertise for, as an SEO strategy.

Domain Authority – A ranking metric from 0 – 100 developed by a software company Moz as an indicator to predict how well a website will rank on search engines results pages (SERP’s).

Conclusion

Off page SEO, on page SEO and technical SEO all work together to improve how your website performs on search engines, but it’s also important to work on naturally creating high quality content for your blog.

The post Blogging SEO Considerations appeared first on Side Income Blogging.

When starting a side income blog, there are some tips to take into account to make your blog posts more appealing, but it’s a good idea to make sure the foundations for your blog have been set up first.

To set your blog up, you will first need to register or acquire a domain name, get webhosting and then WordPress is recommended, which can be downloaded from WordPress.org and installed on your webhost.

As the WordPress installation comes with starter themes, you will now already be ready to start blogging, however it’s a good idea to work on creating a unique layout for your blog, through getting a WordPress theme.

The optimal way to create a WordPress theme is to code it from scratch, but that has a very steep learning curve, as HTML, CSS, PHP and JavaScript knowledge are required.

You can purchase or find a free or paid theme. Your WordPress installation comes with access to many free themes under Appearance > Themes > Add Theme, or paid themes can be purchased from theme marketplaces.

Another option is using a theme page builder, such as Beaver Builder, which will allow you to build a fully responsive WordPress theme using a drag-and-drop visual interface.

Some tips to make creating content more appealing:

• Refine your content to your niche or subniche topic and keep your readers in mind. Doing this will also help you to gain authority on your given niche.
• Think of your whole blog when creating content and keep it structured.
• Add your opinion but keep your content factual.
• Make use of media, including infographics and YouTube videos where possible. Infographics translate information from your text into digestible visual aids, improving user experience (UX) and strengthens brand identity. YouTube videos expand your reach to people watching videos and improve user engagement.
• Try to create good titles and expand your article on them. A good title is important as it will form your URL-slug. Your URL-slug is the part of your URL that reflects your post. Doing this also has search engine optimisation (SEO) implications.
• Use paragraphs and short sentences, rather than big blocks of text. This will help your articles to be scannable and more easily digestible.
• Rather than repeating words, try to use synonyms to keep your users engaged.
• Utilise internal linking and external links to help improve UX and for SEO benefits.

The post How to Create More Appealing Blog Articles appeared first on Side Income Blogging.

Repurposing blog content involves reworking content you have created on your blog into a different angle or changing it into other forms, such as infographics/video/podcasts etc and then posting it onto social media platforms, such as Facebook and Twitter, usually in a shorter form than the original, as well as to online communities and on your blog.

As it takes less effort in general to update a post, rather than create a new one, it makes sense to repurpose blog content to gain more views on more platforms, while using less effort.

An example of repurposing blog content is transforming blog posts that you have created into a video and then adding those videos to your posts. The benefits for this would include more visually appealing articles, gaining a wider reach than your typical text reading audience and for enhanced consistency across your blog.

Another example of repurposing blog content is compiling an eBook from blog posts. This can be done by selecting posts that are relevant, trying to bridge gaps while adding content to your eBook, to create a consistently written extensive resource, as an eBook, created for your audience, which you can then link to through your blog.

Another example is creating visual content from a post, by transforming a data intensive post into an infographic that can then be shared on platforms such as Pinterest.

The post How to Repurpose Blog Content appeared first on Side Income Blogging.

Search engines are capable of crawling and searching websites, but an important step when starting a side income blog, is submitting XML sitemaps to search engines for search engine optimisation (SEO) purposes.

Sitemaps structure pages and posts from within a website in an organised hierarchy and can be created in XML or HTML.

XML Sitemaps

An XML sitemap can be submitted to search engines to show the structure of your blog.

When starting a side income blog, it’s a good idea to submit sitemaps to Google when you make posts to get them indexed quicker and as a way to promote your blog.

As your site gains authority, sitemaps can be submitted less often or after major updates, as the crawling algorithm from search engines will become more apparent for your site.

To submit a sitemap to Google you can use a plugin such as Yoast SEO. Yoast SEO has a feature to create an XML sitemap.

Another option to create XML sitemaps is using a website such as XML-sitemaps. It lets you create a sitemap, that you can download and upload it to your webhost. Your XML sitemap can then be submitted to Google, through Google Search Console, or to Bing, through Sitemap Tools.

HTML Sitemaps

HTML sitemaps can be used to provide a list of website pages and posts on your blog, helping users navigate your website easier.

HTML sitemaps can be created using a plugin such as Simple Sitemap.

The post How to Utilise Sitemaps for Your Blog appeared first on Side Income Blogging.

Internal links and backlinks are similar in that they are both beneficial for Search Engine Optimisation (SEO), as search engines crawl both, but are different in that backlinks are from external or different websites, whereas internal links are from within the same website.

It’s recommended to use a few internal links for each article you make on your blog. Utilising internal linking can improve the quality of your blog, including a good User Experience (UX) and can also help with SEO.

Internal links are important for SEO because search engines not only follow backlinks to your site but also follow and understand from internal links within.

When starting a side income blog, keeping in mind your target audience and structuring content for them will also not only help with the quality of your blog content as you create it, but will help you keep on track with effective internal linking. Structuring content as early as possible in the lifecycle of your blog will also play a role in creating good internal linking.

Some ways to create good structure for your blog:

• Plan ahead early in your posting journey with your target audience in mind.
• When creating posts, aim for them to have a logical flow of information.
• Organise posts with informative and catchy headings and relevant content. Use subheadings and introductions where necessary.
• Consider using a Table of Contents (TOC) plugin, such as Easy Table of Contents.
• Break text up into short paragraphs and sentences, use bullet points and visuals.

The post Utilising Internal Linking for Your Blog appeared first on Side Income Blogging.

Introduction

When starting a side income blog and choosing a blogging platform, there are a few leading options.

A self-hosted WordPress site, also often referred to as a WordPress.org site, is a free and open-source content management system (CMS). About 45% of websites on the internet use WordPress.org and it is recommended. While the software is free, it requires purchasing a domain name and hosting.

Another option is using a WordPress.com site, which uses a modified version of the WordPress.org CMS and is free to use when using a WordPress.com subdomain.

Another free option is Blogger. Your blog will be built on a blogspot.com subdomain, or it can be used with your own domain name.

Another popular option for bloggers is Ghost, a CMS platform somewhat specialised for blogging and as such is very fast.

Some other options include Joomla and Drupal and Wix.

Self-hosted WordPress Site (WordPress.org)

WordPress is a CMS that can be downloaded for free from WordPress.org and to get it up and running, you will need to register a domain name or use an aftermarket one, as well as purchase webhosting that you will upload the WordPress files to.

When acquiring a good domain name, it’s a good idea to find a short and memorable one that aligns to your blog’s niche and there are many benefits to having a good domain, such as it being memorable and giving a good first impression. You can register a domain through a registrar such as Namecheap or buy it in the domain aftermarket, for example at Namecheap’s marketplace.

A webhost plan can also be found at Namecheap starting at about $2 per month. It will be used to host your website files so that your site can be retrieved through your domain name.

Once you’ve started to get familiar and have setup WordPress, as it is a CMS, creating content will come intuitively. An important next step after uploading WordPress files is to create an appealing layout for your site, somewhat dictated by the WordPress theme you use.

A theme can be coded from scratch, a theme with customisable options can be downloaded from a WordPress developer and then customised, or alternatively a theme can be created with a page builder plugin such as Beaver Builder.

While it may take some time, I recommend finding a theme created by a developer that has features that align to your blog’s needs, either free or paid. As such a large majority of websites on the internet use WordPress.org, there is great supply and demand for such themes being developed and many available to choose from if you do due research.

The WordPress.org platform is also frequently updated, ensuring the CMS is kept up to date.

WordPress.com

For a budget friendly option when starting a side income blog, WordPress.com can be used. It uses a modified version of the WordPress.org CMS and your blog will be hosted for free on a WordPress.com subdomain, unless you want to use your own domain name, which can be done when using their paid plan.

Blogger

A free option is Blogger, which offers users a free blogspot.com subdomain but also has the option to be used with a registered or acquired domain name.

Blogger is easy to set up and beginner friendly and using it with a paid domain is a step up to using a subdomain, however due to its limited design options, its banner and as it is a closed platform created by Google, lacking options like using plugins, it’s limiting nature can impact your blog’s progress.

Ghost

Ghost is a CMS that is specifically designed for blogging or publishing and is well known for being modern and fast.

While WordPress.org was designed to create more general-purpose CMS websites, one of the reasons it’s recommended to spend your time learning it is due to its popularity, even if as a beginner it involves a steep learning curve.

Conclusion

While around 45% of websites on the internet using the wordpress.org, it is the recommended platform when starting a side income blog. However, other platforms than the WordPress.org CMS that can be used include WordPress.com, Blogger and Ghost.

There are also many other options that haven’t been covered in detail here, including the Joomla and Drupal CMS that are free to download but require hosting and a registered or acquired domain name and another option is also Wix, a website building platform that offers a free plan that must be upgraded to a paid plan for it to work with your own domain name.

The post Benefits of a Self-Hosted WordPress Site appeared first on Side Income Blogging.

When starting a side income blog, a WordPress self-hosted site or otherwise called a WordPress.org site, is the recommended blogging platform to use.

These guidelines for securing your WordPress blog will help protect your site from being maliciously attacked and give you peace of mind that your blog is secure.

Secure Access

When using Two-factor authentication (2FA) in WordPress, it means two forms of identification need to be used to gain access to your admin area. Wordfence is a comprehensive security plugin for WordPress that is a recommended plugin to install for security and has an option to enable 2FA. It also includes features such as a firewall and malware scanner that can be used.

A plugin such as Limit Login Attempts Reloaded can be used to limit login attempts and help stop brute force attacks, where multiple attempts to maliciously gain access are carried out.

It’s a good idea to use a strong password that’s long and complicated, that can’t be guessed.

Help deter bots from automatically attempting to gain access to your admin area through your default login page. Usually that page would be located at yoursite.com/wp-admin, but using a plugin like WPS Hide Login, you can change from the default to something like yoursite.com/login-to-wp

Use the Official WordPress Plugin Repository

Be careful when using WordPress plugins, by using the official WordPress Plugin Repository and ensure plugins have a good user rating when searching for them. The official repository can also be accessed through the WordPress admin area by clicking Plugins, then Add New Plugin.

Keep Updated

PHP, WordPress, themes, as well as plugins, should be kept updated.

As a security measure, PHP and WordPress core should be updated. This is due to PHP always evolving and security features improving and as there are more than 80 million WordPress websites, there is also a lot of hacking attempts for WordPress sites.

PHP and WordPress vulnerabilities can be patched with updates and themes and plugins can also be patched as vulnerabilities are found.

Maintain Backups

Regularly backing up your website files and database is very important in case your blog is lost, due to human error, being hacked or otherwise deleted and you need to retrieve a recent version of it.

To manually backup your WordPress site, first login to your webhost and then go to cPanel and use the Backup Wizard.

To back up your WordPress site using a plugin, UpdraftPlus can be used to backup, restore and migrate WordPress sites.

SSL and HTTPS

A Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) certificate can be installed and activated through your webhost under your plan and then redirect users to HTTPS rather than HTTP in your browser.

SSL is important because it establishes an encryption to data between your website and the visitor and digitally signs it.

HTTPS appears as part of URLs on your website when it is secured with SSL., changing your site from http://yoursite.com to https://yoursite.com. It is especially important when sharing personal or financial information, such as collecting payments from customers. It’s also important for blogs, as it is also a recognised standard and will protect user activity.

Practice Being Safe Online

For security in general, an antivirus can be used and it’s important to take care not to engage with unsolicited emails, messages and links and practise not giving personal or sensitive information to sites that could be malicious or are not secure.

The post How to Make Your Blog Secure appeared first on Side Income Blogging.