However, we do know that online presence today is critically important and if you have a Facebook page, that doesn’t mean you had built your online presence already.

[Read: 10 reasons your Facebook Page does not replace your business website]

Therefore, you will want to have a website that pretty much cost you about $1,000 if you were to hire a designer to do it for you.

And if you were to build one for free using Blogspot or WordPress.com, that will look totally cheap which you would rather not have a website.

So, what should you do?

It’s your day because in this guide, I am going to point to you and guide you from A to Z into building a restaurant website.

Let’s get started with building your own restaurant website

#1 – Get a web hosting

Everything starts with a great web hosting.

There are many web hosting out there and the most recent one that I had been using it for my niche sites is Bluehost.

Over all these years of building websites, I had been running around with good and bad web hosting and I find that Bluehost finds the balance of cheap and good web hosting.

It only cost you $3.49 a month to get started and I highly recommend you to use this web hosting to start off your website.

#2 – Find a suitable WordPress theme

If you had been following my blog, you know that I am a big fan of Genesis Framework from Studiopress.

Recently, I bumped into one of their Cafe Theme and I find this theme extremely suitable to anyone who wants to build a restaurant website.

The sample site itself tells it all and if you are not too sure how easy or difficult to use this theme, I had a quick guide for you here on how to get started with the Genesis Framework.

Genesis Framework from Studiopress had been used by many big blogs and it worth all the money that you had invested into a good WordPress theme.

It is not just the beauty of the theme that I am talking about, but the entire theme is also clean which make your site load faster.

Therefore, once you had this theme installed together with my quick guide, your website should be 70% ready to launch.

#3 – Write a good “about” page

Don’t forget that you need to give your internet visitor a rough idea about your restaurant.

Given the fact that they had never seen and been to your restaurant before, it is good for you to highlight the type of food that you will serve in your restaurant.

It will be also a good thing to highlight your chef if they happen to be really famous.

Last but not least, do include some nicely taken pictures of your restaurant into the about page.

#4 – Publish your location and operation hours

Don’t just stop there.

Once you are done creating your about page, start writing your location and operation hours.

It really sucks when I visit certain restaurant that doesn’t mention when they will open and when they will close.

It sucks even more  to know that the I can’t find the location of the restaurant from the website.

Having both the information about when and how long your restaurant operate is extremely important.

It enables your customer to plan better before and after eating in your restaurant.

5. Setup your contact information

Your contact information is important because certain people will make phone calls before dining in your restaurant.

I myself prefer to make a reservation first to avoid any sort of disappointment.

So, what’s in your contact page?

First, you need to setup a standard web form contact page. You can follow this guide to do it.

That is usually what I recommend to a standard blog but for a restaurant business, you should also include your local telephone number.

In addition to that, you might also want to publish your email address on the contact page.

If you still have some space to spare there, it wouldn’t hurt to put your Facebook page link, Twitter, or any other social media.

6. Publish your menu

I know that certain restaurant doesn’t like to be so transparent, but having your menu up on your restaurant website can give a lot of advantage as well.

If I were to dine into a restaurant, I would like to find out beforehand what they have in their menu.

Not to forget that adding pictures into your menu has a great help.

You can type your menu into WordPress and publish as a page/post or do a scan of your hard copy menu and upload it into your website as an image.

Publishing the price is another thing and if you are really not comfortable doing so, you can choose not to.

7. Tell people about your restaurant website

You should print your website address into your name card, menu or even stick it on every piece of your table.

This can be good to your existing customer because if they happen to have a great dinner at your restaurant, they would tell people about it by referring your website to people.

Apart from that, you should also tell your friends and family about it as the ‘word of mouth’ is also a form of marketing and every marketing is good for business.

8. Start blogging

At this point, you might have already completed your website and since you might be a little more familiar with WordPress now, it wouldn’t hurt to start blogging now.

Blogging brings more internet visitors (leads) to your site which will eventually turn them into your customer.

Writing a great blog content is a form of content marketing which a lot of organizations are using this method to drive traffic to their website.

For a restaurant blog, you can always publish post about food, your chef, health (if you are selling healthy food) and how your customer loves your restaurant.

[Read: What is a blog and what do you know about blogging]

9. Use social media

Social media can be a good place to promote your website for free as well.

All you need is to create a social media account, ask your customer to follow you every on and off and finally share quality content on your social media profile.

For restaurant and food niche, I find Facebook, Pinterest and Instagram can be really useful.

Instagram and Pinterest especially because you might have a lot of photographers background customer visiting your restaurant and blog about food and places.

10. Collect emails

Email is a powerful form of marketing.

Since you have a website now, it is good that you put an email form on your website so that people can subscribe to your mailing list.

Since you are running a restaurant business, you can always give first time customer discount by signing up to your mailing and email them some sort of unique coupon to get that discount.

If you look around this blog, I have a email subscription box at the top right hand side of this blog and also another one at the end of this page.

To do this, it is pretty simple.

First of all, if you are using the themes that I had introduced above, download this plugin and install into your WordPress site.

Secondly, sign up for an email marketing service.

I personally use GetResponse but that is going to cost you some money.

If you are on a tight budget and only send about 1 email a month to your leads, you can use the free email marketing tool, Mailchimp.

Once you have these two stuff, integrate them and start collecting emails.

Conclusion

Have you completed your restaurant website already?

Isn’t it great that building a restaurant website is actually not difficult at all.

If you still haven’t got your site up due to the reason that you do not want to dirty your hands in doing it, I can offer this service to you. Please contact me here.

If you have any comment regarding this guide on how to build a restaurant website, do drop a comment below.

Try Elegant Themes – DIVI 3.0 is the newest theme with latest front end visual builder.

I had also decided that I would like to create a site that is being monetized by Google Adsense program.

As I am still not earning a decent amount from my niche site, I begin to question myself whether does the Google Adsense program really work for publisher in the year 2014 onwards?

It doesn’t seems to be working to me and therefore, I started to look around.

The answer to it is, Yes.

Indeed, Google Adsense still work very well to publisher’s point of view and I am not simply just say based on my feelings.

I love numbers because they can represent as my evident that Google Adsense program still works for publisher like us (bloggers).

Here, I’d like to present to you 10 Google Adsense income reports to motivate you in building a Google Adsense niche site in 2015 (in the order from least to most per month in terms of revenue).

#10 – Harsh Agrawal @ Shout Me Loud

Latest income (per month): $171.96.

Harsh Agrawal is the man behind ShoutMeLoud, a site with hundreds of thousands unique visitors a month.

Even though his main source of income is Affiliate Marketing (and not Google Adsense), but he is still banging $171.96 a month on his niche site.

You can read his latest income report here.

#9 – Larry Deane @ Side Income Blogging

Latest income (per month): $335.83.

Google Adsense is also not Larry’s (the guy behind Side Income blogging) main source of income.

As can be seen from his report, majority part of his revenue comes from the Amazon affiliate program.

However, having $300 over a month on Google Adsense itself worth mentioning here.

You can read his latest income report here.

#8 – Frank Joseph @ Money Home Blog

Latest income (per month): $450.50.

Frank Joseph of Money Home Blog has a simple goal which is to make $2000 a month before the end of 2013.

In this particular income report that I am referring, he earned $450 just on Google Adsense itself.

You can find out more regarding his income report here.

#7 – Donnie Law @ Donnie Law

Latest income (per month): $473.00.

Donnie Law is also another internet marketer who earn most of his income from affiliate marketing.

He and Abby (his wife) are the one behind Just a girl and her blog where they turned this blog into a business.

Donnie earned $473 back in last September 2014 solely from Google Adsense.

Find out more on his income report here.

#6 – Matthew Allen @ Dumb Passive Income

Latest income (per month): $682.00.

The Google Adsense income is about 25% of overall Matthew’s (from Dumb Passive Income) one month income.

You will be surprise to know that on his day time job, he is actually a truck driver and I am still wondering how he ended up in internet marketing with quite a decent income.

You can find out more about his income report here.

#5 – Kenny Leng @ Online Fanatic

Latest income (per month): $1,399.90

Of all the monthly report so far, Kenny Leng of Online Fanatic is the first one that appear in this list which has about 50% of his total revenue is from Google Adsense.

As can be obtained from his report, he high rely on Adsense but started to diversify his income.

Find out more about his income report here.

#4 – Jeff Rose @ Dollars and Roses

Latest income (per month): $1,504.04

Jeff and Mandy Rose are the awesome people behind Dollars and Roses.

In this particular income report, they earned $29, 572.96 where only $1,504.04 belongs to Google Adsense.

Looking at the amount that they earn, it just remind me of Pat Flynn.

To read more on this income report, click here.

#3 – Dinesh @ Daily Blog Money

Latest income (per month): $2,712.73

Dinesh of Daily Blog Money is a big time lover of Google Adsense because 75% of his earning comes from this program.

He’s a part-time blogger (just like me) and during his day time, he is an IT professional (just like me as well).

Find out more about his income report here.

#2 – Dale Patridge @ The Daily Positive

Latest income (per month): $2,880.02

Dale Patridge of The Daily Positive is a ‘work from home’ guy and his total October income alone is already $31,271.12.

Out of that, $2,880.02 are from Google Adsense.

He had a long and interesting income report which you can find it here.

#1 – Pat Flynn @ Smart Passive Income

Latest income (per month): $3,030.48

I’m a big fan of Pat and the reason I started building niche sites is simply because I got motivated by his niche site duel.

When I first get to know about Pat Flynn, he was running the Security Guard HQ niche site and that time it was only getting about $200 from Adsense.

Today, from that niche site alone, it is generating $2,977.26 from Google Adsense alone not including other possible income from that site as well.

Apart from that, it is also amazed to say that he is earning around $70k a month all through working from home.

His income report is also one hell of an interesting one and I highly recommend you to check it out here.

Final Say

In conclusion, you can make money from Google Adsense.

It might not be the best ever method to make money because many claims that Affiliate Marketing is the best out there.

I personally think any method is more or less the same as long as you really focus into it and make a profit out of it.

Google Adsense is able to generate five figures income as well just like Fraser Cain. You can learn more from this podcast.

If you have any fantastic Adsense income report to share, do comment below or send me a tweet @Blogging_Fever.

This is a case study report of how I finally managed to drive 100 visitors (114 to be exact) to my site.

Before this, I was only getting between 2-5 Twitter visitors in a month with 4,000 over followers following me.

It is a shame but I can’t blame anyone because I basically don’t do much with my Twitter account.

Here is the stats from my Analytics if you are interested to take a peek.

What I did previously were:

• Follow other Twitter followers to gain Twitter followers.
• Tweet when I have a new post.

That’s all!

[Read: How to fix these 100 blogging mistakes and build a successful blog]

So, what had changed in the past one month that I had brought in 114 Twitter visitors into my site?

#1 – Find the best time to tweet

Do you know what is the best time for you to send your tweets? Or you just simply just tweet as long as you have  a tweet.

If you tweet during the time that your followers aren’t active, basically you are wasting that tweet.

What you need to do instead is to find the best time for you to tweet.

The question now is, how do you know the best time to tweet?

I use this free tool Followerwonk to check when is the best time my followers are most active.

Below is an example of what you will get.

So, by knowing the period where my followers are most active, I only focus into tweeting during these periods.

Your next question will be what if you are not convenient to tweet during that time?

Easy!

Use Bufferapp or Hootsuite to schedule your tweets during those active periods.

Bufferapp seems like a popular tool today but since I started with Hootsuite all this while, I’m still hanging to it.

Both tools are used by social media experts so they should be good enough for you to schedule your tweets.

[Read: How to start a blog and make money from it]

#2 – Tweet more frequently

Are you sending just 1-2 tweets a day?

If that is good enough, then stick to it.

But if you are not able to perform well on Twitter, why not try what I had done.

During the period where I had a boost in my Twitter traffic, I sent around 8-10 tweets a day during weekdays.

I kind of ignored weekends but weekdays itself already gave me a good boost.

What do I tweet about?

First rule, never tweet to promote your stuff all the way.

My ratio is 20% of my overall tweets are about promoting my stuff while the remaining 80-90% are about tweeting useful stuff.

What are the useful stuff that I am talking about?

I go to big blogs like John Chow, Quicksprout from Neil Patel, Social Triggers from Derek Halpern, Smart Passive Income from Pat Flynn and many more and tweet about their articles.

I consider their articles as useful because they themselves are already a proven successful bloggers or internet marketers and whatever they wrote in their blog sure carries a heavy weight.

You can do the same as well by tweeting articles from big blogs that is within your niche.

So to round up this, while you are scheduling your tweets, ensure that you schedule about 8 – 10 tweets daily.

Use only 1-2 tweet to promote your blog while the rest, tweet about other useful articles.

Make your Twitter account useful to other Twitter followers and they will start following you genuinely.

[Read: 7 blogging lessons I learned from Men’s Health magazine]

#3 – Reply to tweets

When someone mentioned you on Twitter, don’t just let it be.

Part of engagement is to reply to your followers and whenever someone mentioned you on Twitter, reply that tweet.

Ensure that you had already setup email notifications whenever someone mentioned you on Twitter so that you will receive email when someone talks about you on Twitter.

Apart from that, you should also browse your Twitter Timeline once in a while.

If you noticed someone ask about some questions that is related to your niche and you think you have a good answer to that, reply that tweet.

Take note that if you want to become a Twitter power user, you will need to be actively involve in Twitter.

So, always reply to tweets and find opportunity to reply to tweets as well.

[Read: 5 tips to improve CRM via Twitter Social Media]

#4 – Email outreach

During this period, I had sent out over 200 emails to bloggers within my niche.

In particular, I asked them to checkout two of my posts below:

• How to fix these 100 blogging mistakes and build a successful blog
• How to start a blog and make money from it

Here is one of the sample of email template that I had sent out to them:

And to show the effectiveness of doing email outreach, here are some of the replies that I got:

Apart from quality backlinks, I received tweets as well.

Out of 200 emails that I sent out, about 10% responded positively to my email and they either share on Social Media or put up my article on their blogs.

Hence, email outreach is not just effective to build Twitter traffic but it also helps you gain SEO backlinks.

Since we are focusing very much into Twitter, I will not talk too much on the SEO benefits that you can possibly gain from this kind of outreach.

Here’s how I did my email outreach:

1. Get a list of bloggers or webmasters that I think will love my content. Target to get a list of 100-200.
2. Keep them in a spreadsheet and remember to have a column for their contact form page or email address. This will speed up your email outreach process.
3. Write an email template. If you want, you can have more templates for A/B testing purposes. In my previous campaign, I had 3 templates.
4. Keep your email short and straight to the point. Busy people will not spend time reading your long emails.
5. Personalize your email and send to your list.
6. I usually start off with 50 bloggers first and see what’s their feedback. The reason I have 3 email templates is because after each feedback, I modify my email template and send a different version to the rest.
7. Follow up with them if they don’t respond. Apart from emailing, you can also try to reach them on Social Media.

Email outreach is one of the most successful strategy I personally think whether it is to improve Social Media presence, drive blog traffic or SEO.

It is like a foundation to internet marketing but people normally ignored this.

I’d like you to try this out and tell me what’s your result.

[Read: 6 elements that drive your blog to a high bounce rate]

Conclusion

So, it is not really difficult to drive traffic from Twitter.

All you need to do is to be an active Twitter user.

I had tried that for a month and I find great result with it.

Why not give yourself a try to improve any Social Media platform performance that you are good at and tell me what’s your result and how you did it below.

So, here are the details to it.

There are couple of online entrepreneurs who are very successful where they know from the start that they need to create a product and sell on the internet.

So, that is just one way to make money from the internet because if you are not so creative and innovative in building your own products, you can still make money from the internet.

Making money from your blog is not just about selling product.

It is about selling and you can sell basically anything from product, knowledge, and even advertising space.

Here are couple of ways that you can make money from your blog today.

Hint: The top 3 methods are the ones that I had been practising all these while. Hence I have extra tips for you there.

1. Google Adsense

Google Adsense is one of the most famous and easiest way for you to make money on the internet.

All you need is traffic and correct ad-placement and you should bang some income easily by having your visitors clicking on your Google Ads.

However, if you are long in the internet marketing field, you will realize that Google Adsense is not the most profitable way and not many people find that as their main source of internet income.

The reasons are:

1. The pay is low.
2. You need really lots and lots of traffic.
3. Google has strict policy and a lot of people had their Adsense account banned before they even get their first $100.

However, since it is easy to setup, many bloggers including myself are still benefiting from Google Adsense.

Tip:

Only try Google Adsense on a niche site.

Once you have your niche site, try positioning your ads in different position to get the best CTR (or most click).

You can also test with left side bar vs right side bar.

Benchmark with 100 visitors will do and if each 100 visitors doesn’t give you even a single click, give up and move on to another way to make money.

I still have plenty of it below.

2. Direct Advertising

Direct advertising by selling ad-space of your site is one way to make money as well.

Like Google Adsense, you need to have lots of traffic in order to earn a good income.

The pros of direct advertising over Google Adsense is you will get your payment whether your visitors click on the ads or not.

On the other hands, the cons is you need to find advertisers and you need to price them carefully so that you don’t price them lower than what you should earn from the Adsense program.

Tip:

For an easy start, you can submit your site to BuySellAds. This site already has a list of advertisers and all you need as a publisher is to list your site there.

Advertiser will go to you automatically but you will have to share 25% of your earning to BuySellAds.

Hence, if you do not want to lose this 25%, you can manage your own ads and find your own advertisers.

That works as well but it will take more time and effort.

3. Affiliate Marketing

One of the best way to make money from the internet I believe is the Affiliate Marketing where this monetization method requires great skill and trust.

First, you need to show that you are really the domain expertise of the niche that you are writing.

Second, you need to gain trust from your readers so that they can trust the product that you are promoting to them.

Once you have these two skills, all you need after that is to get more traffic to sell more.

This method is so profitable where some affiliate marketing program can let you earn up to 70% commission.

If you are interested to try this method out, you can get yourself started at Clickbank, ShareASale, and/or Avangate.

Tip:

Start off with building a good connection with your readers.

Create an email list and send useful content to them regularly.

Once you had built the trust with them, it is easier for you to sell them things.

4. Selling eBooks

Publishing books and sell is something you can do easily today with much lesser start up cost.

In the old days, you need to write a really good book and find the right people who really likes your idea that can eventually publish your book.

In the modern days, you just need a laptop and write your own eBook. Once you had your eBook completely written, start selling in Amazon or some affiliate networking sites like Clickbank.

You can also start a blog which publish relevant contents of your eBook and sell your eBook there.

5. Paid Membership

Paid Membership is just like the scenario of subscribing for a magazine where you pay for an amount money every month just to have that issue of magazine landed in your home.

Instead of that, you get your subscribers to pay you an amount of money via Paypal or credit card every period of time where you will then consistently deliver valuable contents to their email or on a website that is protected by certain authentication.

This method of monetization requires you to consistently produce great contents because if you stop publishing new and useful content, your subscribers will begin to unsubscribe and leave.

So, if you are planning to run a paid membership site, be sure you have sufficient contents to publish over a couple of months at least.

6. Selling Services

If you are good at something, never do it for free! – Joker (Heath Ledger)

Why?

Because you can always sell that on the internet.

For instance, if you are good at English writing, offer your writing service to people who want to have an article or eBook written.

If you are good at WordPress, offer your WordPress skill to people who want to start a blog.

So, if you think you are really good at something, why not try to sell your them?

7. Flipping Websites

Flipping websites is like property investment in your real life.

All you need to do is to buy a cheap website with contents and improve it to become something really professional.

You might also want to change the contents and create some landing pages in it.

Once you are done with that, sell it out at higher price and get paid.

You can always start from Flippa where this website has plenty of cheap websites and you can use back Flippa to sell your improved website.

Apart from flipping websites, you can also find good domain name and sell it at Flippa as well.

And Finally

Now that you know that there are many ways for you to make money on the internet, you have a lower risk of starting an internet business today.

So, if you are really into starting an internet business, get yourself a web hosting now and let your business roll!

If you have any questions about any of the monetization strategy above, do drop us a comment below.

I’m saying this is because I had gone through all the tough part, which is trial and error and because of that, now I know the easy way to really start a blog and make money from it.

Who should read this guide?

This guide is specifically written for people who want to start their own blog where:

• they have completely nothing to start with.
• they don’t know where to start.
• they don’t possess any technical knowledge on web design or web programming.
• they don’t want to engage any web designer or developer and want to do everything by themselves for the start.
• they want to start a blog and make money from it.

If you fall into any of the categories above, continue to read on.

What you will learn here?

Basically, you will learn how to start a blog completely from scratch and make money from it.

Below are the topics that we are going to go through in detail:

• Selecting your niche
• Selecting your blogging platform
• Choosing your Domain Name and Web Hosting
• Installing WordPress and a theme
• Setting up the blog
• Generating & capturing your blog traffic
• Make money from your blog

Alright, let’s get started.

Selecting your niche

Blogging is a form of tool where you can showcase your expertise in the area or niche that you are really good and passionate at.

There are two-ways for you to find the niche that you want to blog about:

#1. Selecting only the super profitable niche

If you are an expert already in internet marketing, you know that niche like insurance, mortgage, loans and attorney are quite profitable where advertisers in those niche are willing to pay a lot of money.

However if you don’t really have good interest in such topic, it will be difficult for you to generate content for your blog and eventually will just stop blogging about it.

I personally rate this method of finding your niche as a HIGH RISK method and you should not attempt this if you are new to blogging.

Why?

My personal experience tells me that where I used to manage a cloud storage blog and it failed to generate sufficient content and even if I know what topic to write about, I still need hours of research into that topic before writing simply because I am not the expert in that area.

Hence, if you are new to blogging, use the method below to select your niche.

#2. Selecting among the niche that you are interested and good at

First, take a piece of paper and a pen and list down the things that you are either interested or good at.

Once you have the list already, try to list down at least 5-10 headlines that you want to write about.

There should be one niche where you can easily list down the headlines and I strongly suggest that you choose that.

Back to me, my list at that time was only two items which are football and IT Security.

My first personal blog is a IT security blog and one of the reason I started that niche is because I myself work as a security engineer in IT.

Since my full time job is the niche that I am blogging about, I can easily list out the blogging topic by just reflecting what I had doing throughout my full time job.

On the other hand on the football niche, I couldn’t even generate 5 headlines from that niche.

Therefore, I had chosen the IT security to start my first blog and I find this method of selecting a niche is quite effective.

Selecting your blogging platform

Today, you can blog for FREE on blogging platform like Blogspot, Tumblr, WordPress.com and etc.

In fact, these blogging platform existed since long time ago and they are nothing new today.

What’s wrong with them?

#1. Lack of control

When I first started my security blog, I wanted to further enhance my theme.

It was so frustrating at that time when I can’t modify my header and modifying the presentation of my content is another pain in the ass.

My experience tells me that modifying things in these platform is either you can’t do it at all or it takes you the hell of your time to do some simple editing.

#2. It is not easy to migrate

You probably have this mindset of:

Let’s start with free and once we make some money, we go for a better option

I had done that and it was not fun.

At that time, I only have 30 blog post to migrate from Blogspot to WordPress and it is already killing my time even though the self-hosted WordPress provides me a plugin to migrate over from Blogspot to WordPress because:

• Images are not migrated over. They are still hosted on Blogspot and I have to download 30 over images from Blogspot and upload into my self-hosted WordPress and finally link them manually. That took me couple of hours.
• Internal linking still pointing to Blogspot posts. I have to manually review post by post and re-link them manually to my self-hosted WordPress. It took me a couple of hours as well to re-link all my contents.

Which blogging platform to blog instead?

I might had accidentally leaked out the preferred blogging platform which is the self-hosted WordPress where you buy your own web hosting and domain name and install the open source WordPress into it.

The key benefit of having a self-hosted WordPress is you get a total control of your blogging platform up to the source code level (although most people don’t need it).

Apart from that, WordPress has tons of themes for you to choose and this ensures that your blog is not the same as any other blog out there.

You don’t have to rush and download it now because I will show you how you can install WordPress into your web hosting without the hassle of downloading and uploading the blogging platform.

So, read on.

Choosing your Domain Name and Web Hosting

A domain name is important because it represents the name of your blog or business.

You need to choose your domain name carefully because it will affect the rest of the life of your blog.

It should have the criteria below:

• It should not be too long.
• It should be a .com domain name only
• It should be brandable and not stuffed with keywords

You can read the details on how to choose a good domain name here.

Once you know the domain name that you want to use, let’s move on to web hosting.

There are plenty of web hosting out there ranged from super cheap to super expensive.

The web hosting that I would recommend for personal web hosting is the Hostgator Web Hosting where the price of this hosting is as low as $3.96 a month and you get:

• Unlimited disk space
• Unlimited bandwidth
• 1-click script install
• 24×7 support via chat/email
• 45 days money back guarantee

If you are going for other web hosting company, do ensure that they provide more or less the features above.

Installing WordPress and a theme

As been said, WordPress is the blogging platform that you should be using to build your blog.

You don’t have to go into the hassle of downloading and uploading here.

With the 1-click script install from Hostgator, you can install WordPress in just minutes.

I had written a step-by-step guide on how to install WordPress in just minutes (with screenshot) here.

As for the theme, you can choose from the list of free WordPress themes here.

If you want a high quality and professional looking one, try the Genesis Framework of Studiopress themes.

All my blogs run on Studiopress themes and the reason being so is because they don’t limit me with the number of sites that I can install.

On top of that, they also don’t limit with the duration of the license as well.

This means that you can re-use the themes as many times as you want and for as long as you want.

For more information, you can check out my review on this theme here.

Since I’m a big fan of this WordPress theme, I had written a quick guide on how to get started with this theme.

Setting up the blog

Once you had installed WordPress, it is not the end yet.

It is like just install a fresh Windows Operating System into your computer where it is usable but not entirely yet until you have all your software and apps in place.

Same goes to WordPress but the challenge is, what are the things that you need to configure and install further?

Especially when you are new, you totally have no clue what you need to do next.

I’m aware of that because I was once a newbie and this is one of the common problems newbie has with WordPress.

As a result, I compiled a list of things that you need to configure on your WordPress blog and put them into this step by step guide on how to setup your WordPress blog.

In that post, you will learn how to:

• Setup Google Analytics to measure your blog traffic.
• Setup permalinks.
• Create sitemap.
• Secure your blog.
• Protect from spammers.
• Speed up your blog.
• and other basic configurations.

Generating & capturing your blog traffic

Generating traffic through blog commenting

For a new blog, it is difficult to rank well on search engine and get traffic from there.

Hence, the best way for you to get traffic is through referral link and one of the easiest way to build such referral link is to comment on other people’s blog.

Here is how you do it:

1. Go to the search engine and search for all the blogs that has the same niche as yours. Submit these list of sites to Feedly and categorize them under one category.
2. Check this category as frequent as possible. I usually do it on a daily basis but you can do it more often.
3. Once there is a new post, click on it and read the post.
4. Drop a comment there on what you think of the post and remember to put your URL into the ‘website’ section of the form.

I had been generating early traffic to my blog through blog commenting all these while and it is quite effective.

You can read the details here.

Generating traffic through social media

Social media takes time as well but definitely not as long as SEO.

What you need in Social Media is to get a lot of followers and you will be able to promote your blog to them.

Therefore, the first achievement you need to do is to gain followers.

Here are the things that get you started with Social Media:

1. Pick 1-2 social media platform that your niche is performing well at. If you are really new to this, you can start with just one platform first.
2. Start following the people who are in the same niche as you.
3. You will be able to get some followers following you back.
4. While you are following these people, you should also share things on your Social Media profile. Things that you share should be 80% of other people’s content and 20% your own blog content. This is to ensure that you do not over promote your blog.
5. Engage and reply any messages if there is anyone talking about you on that Social Media platform.

Generating traffic through SEO

Getting traffic from search engine takes a lot of time and effort because to get into the first page of Google is tough enough and in order for you to maximize the traffic you could get, it will be best that you rank at least 3rd place from the top.

But the return  of this toughness is that you will get a consistent and targeted traffic especially when you target long tail keywords to rank on.

How do you get traffic from SEO?

Here are the things that you can start with:

1. Write a good content. It should not be just a great one where anywhere else can be found. You need to write an extremely unique and fantastic content that after people reading it, they want to share out to their readers or they wanted to link to you.
2. Ensure your on-page SEO is ready. Follow these 10 tips to prepare yourself.
3. Build backlinks. Avoid black hat SEO and grey hat SEO. they will only give you temporary happiness. Only perform white hat SEO and here is one great article that you must read to learn how to build links the white hat way.

Capture your traffic

Web traffic comes into your web page, read the content and leave your site after that.

It is very normal and because of that, you should capture the contacts of those visitors so that you can get them to visit your blog in the future.

How do you do that?

Easy. Just create an email list and start getting email address of your visitors into the list.

You can use tools like GetResponse auto responder to save and send email to the email list.

On top of that, you should also place a lot of opt-in form around the web pages so that you visitors can clearly see that.

By capturing their email address, you can always send them private email and blog update.

This also means that your visitors are no longer your come-and-go visitors.

And Finally, make money from your blog

Once you have a blog with great contents and traffic, it is time to make money then.

There are lots of ways for you to make money today on your blog and I’m going to reveal them on my next post.

Subscribe to my newsletter below so that you don’t miss it.

Conclusion

Now you know that creating a blog is not a difficult task.

Generating traffic can be one hell of a problem but as long as you consistently create valuable contents, traffic will come in together with your marketing and promotion.

As been said, my next post will be on make money from your blog.

Do subscribe to my newsletter so that you will be notified.

In today’s marketing, people talk about content marketing and one of the best place to implement content marketing is to have your very own blog.

However, such powerful tool can be totally useless if you do not know how to make full use of it.

Blogging seems to be something really easy to start, but not that easy to master.

As a result, today I’d like to present to you these 100 blogging mistakes that you should fix which will eventually gives you a successful blog.

Here you go.

HINT: Do grab a cup of coffee before you start as this gonna take some time to finish.

#1 – You don’t start with an introduction

A common mistake when someone writes a list post is they start straight away with the points.

Just because that you are going to read something in a point form (and expecting your readers to know that it is going to be a point form already), you don’t have to start in that way.

Even before you do any heavy exercise, you always start with a warm up.

Therefore, don’t forget to start with an Introduction.

FIX: Write an introduction!

#2 – Your writing is lack of research

You can’t just hop into your writing area and start writing blindly.

Whatever that you want to write, you need to research and ensure that your post is fruitful enough to impress your readers.

If you are going to write a guide, it has to be a detailed guide.

If you are going to write a resource article, it has to have all the resources in.

FIX:

Before begin writing, do some research and write down all the points that you want to mention in your article.

Reference those sites if necessary.

#3 – You are being too complex

Back in the high school, it is always a plus point that you can demonstrate complexity because it shows how intelligent you are.

But in the blogging world, this is not the case because the simpler you are, the wider your audience is.

If you had been writing super high tech articles just for intelligence like Albert Einstein to read, you probably ended up Zero visitors.

FIX:

Simplify your sentence.

Never ever use jargon and always use simple and plain language.

#4 – You write too much about yourself

Your readers are not interested with what you do or eat daily and where you go.

Unless you are Justin Bieber, you are free to blog that.

But if you are a blogger in a specific niche, stick to your topic.

FIX:

If you really need to blog about yourself, ask yourself first.

Will your blog post about yourself helps your readers about the niche that you are blogging in?

#5 – You try to publish on a daily basis

Setting a schedule to yourself to publish a blog post on a daily basis will only stress you out.

Remember that in today’s content marketing, it is quality that matters and not quantity.

Even if you have 100 low quality posts makes nothing to 10 high quality posts.

FIX:

Set a reasonable publishing schedule.

Even if it is once a month, that is fine but you need to ensure that it is the best ever article of the whole month.

#6 – You are not publishing consistently

Google loves fresh contents.

In fact, it is not just Google but your readers love fresh contents as well.

If you stop publishing new contents, the chances are your readers might just think that you had already stopped blogging and will unsubscribe from your blog.

FIX: Same as above, set a reasonable publishing schedule and stick to it.

#7 – You are writing for SEO

Your readers are not search engine. They are humans.

And on top of that, search engine no longer read articles like before.

All those tricks like keyword stuffing don’t work anymore in today’s SEO.

As a result, there is really no point writing for SEO anymore.

Human don’t understand and search engine don’t buy you writing.

FIX:

Throw away all you know about keyword density and SEO writing and start to write as you speak.

They don’t matter anymore.

This will not only enable you to write like a human, but also bring out your personality.

#8 – You count your words too much

Blogging is not a competition to compete who write the longest article.

You might had stumble upon articles that said long articles perform better in SEO which I strongly agree is true but not all the time.

Short post can do a good search ranking as well and I experience that first hand before.

Thus, don’t stress yourself too much in your word count.

FIX:

Stop counting your words. It is a complete waste of time.

Do your word count only when you had completed writing your article. Counting words when you are writing reduced your productivity.

#9 – You don’t simplify your writing

If you can’t explain it simply, you don’t understand it well enough.

– Albert Einstein

And, if you can’t explain it simple enough, your readers will not be able to understand you.

So, if yo can’t write your article in a simple manner, it is because you don’t have the knowledge to write that and it will result your readers not be able to comprehend your content.

FIX:

Go back to point #2 and do your research.

Once you really understand that topic, explain in your own words in simple language.

#10 – You don’t have a conclusion

I see some list posts basically just end once they reach the last point.

This is not a good practice.

A proper article should start with an introduction, contents and end with a conclusion.

The reason being is because it makes your article scannable right from the start without reading the actual contents.

FIX: Write a concluding conclusion.

#11 – You write for the wrong audience

Don’t bring the wrong audience to your blog.

If you are a web designer blogger, you can’t go around health blogs or forums to promote your web design contents.

Even if they are interested, that will probably be 10-20% of your contents.

Hence, if you try to promote your service or products to these un-targeted audience, your conversion will fail miserably.

FIX: Find the right audience. Know where the people within your niche usually hang out and promote your contents there.

#12 – You don’t care about your topic anymore

Sometimes, bloggers go crazy and start publishing articles that has nothing to do with their niche on their blog.

I personally had done it myself as well and it is not fun.

When you don’t care about your topic anymore, you might had upset some of your readers on the content that you are publishing and they might just unsubscribe from you.

FIX: Don’t write something that is not related to your nice. If you really want to write that, start a new blog.

#13 – Your niche is too narrow

If you had planned for a too narrow niche, it is very easy for you to stop generating new contents as there are not much things for you to write anymore.

When you are in such situation, there is a high chance that you will stop blogging consistently and will eventually cause your blog to fall.

It is highly advisable (or mandatory) to focus in a niche on your blog but you should not narrow it into a very narrow manner.

FIX: Have a broad niche. If you want to have a super narrow niche, ensure that you have sufficient content to produce.

#14 – You are editing  your post every minute

One of method to write fast is to stop editing your post as you write.

The lesser you use the backspace, the faster you write.

Editing your post every minute does not help because eventually at the end, you still need to proof read and edit it.

So, why not wait until you complete the article then only start editing your post.

FIX: Stop editing as you write. Make a habit to only edit at the end once your writing is complete.

#15 – You don’t have your personality

You don’t have your own voice or opinion.

What you write all the while is only what people say or what people quoted.

This makes your contents are easily available on the internet and doesn’t make you stand out.

In order to really stand out in front of all the common bloggers blogging common stuff, you need to include your own voice.

FIX: Write things like your personal experience and case study and try to view things from a very fresh (first time) point of view and blog it out.

#16 – You write badly

You don’t proof read your own article before publishing it.

Your poor grammar, jargon, poorly structured sentence make your reader annoy about your article, unsubscribe from you and leave your site.

Even if you are trying to present the most innovative invention from you doesn’t work as long as you keep writing poorly.

FIX: You don’t need to have a super good English. Always read what you write. Install the Jetpack plugin and use the Proofread Writing feature to auto correct your mistakes.

#17 – You don’t respond to comments

Your readers left a comment to you because they love what you write.

If you simply don’t respond to them, means you don’t appreciate them as your reader.

Even if you had grown to a very high traffic blog, you should never fail to respond to comment.

FIX: Reply to every comments. A good example is Neil Patel from Quicksprout who attended almost all the comments within the first 24-48 hours when his article is published.

#18 – Your are just too boring

This point relates back to point #15 a little.

If you simply just present your writing in a very normal or ordinary manner, it is very easy for your audience to get bored with you.

Boring audience will leave your site easily even if you wrote an extremely good content.

FIX: Add some fun stuff like jokes to your articles, include image or use infographic.

#19 – Your headline is not attractive

If your headline is just like another headline from another article, no open is going to read your article.

They will have the thought of “Hey, I read this before” and no one likes to read the same content over and over again even if it is from a different author.

So, write an attractive headline whenever you publish an article.

FIX: It is difficult to write a good headline but not anymore for me ever since I know this headline writing formula from Copyblogger.

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#20 – You don’t ‘ call to action’

Call to action is a method to call your readers to perform some action.

Marketers normally use this method to increase their conversion rate using phrase like “Buy this now” and etc.

However, this doesn’t mean that it is not going to be useful for bloggers.

You can make use of ‘call to action’ for scenario like asking your readers to leave comment after your post, to subscribe to your mailing list, tweet your article, pin your image and etc.

Take a look at Derek Halpern’s blog at Social Triggers. At the end of every video or blog post, he will ask his readers to leave a comment and he usually generate lots of comments.

FIX: Don’t be afraid to ask for anything. Try to practice at the end of every post, ask your readers to do something. It can be leaving a comment, tweet, Facebook like or Pinning your images.

#21 – You don’t have a publishing schedule

You simply just publish your blog post blindly.

Once you publish a post, you don’t know what else to write and publish.

Overall you don’t have a content publishing plan.

Having a publishing plan is a great help because when you want to start writing, you can just look at the schedule and you know what to write.

One way to manage your publishing schedule is to make use the Editorial Calendar plugin.

FIX: Allocate time to plan for your content. Darren Rowse of Problogger has some great tips in generating content in his 31 Days to Build a Better Blog book.

#22 – You write in long paragraph

It is not wrong that you write in long paragraph but this is not essay in high school anymore.

Short paragraph works better in blogging.

It is easier to scan and it makes your blog post neat and tidy.

FIX: Start breaking into paragraph after 2-3 sentence.

#23 – You are not writing list posts

There are quite a lot of arguments out there that list post is not a good type of post because it usually demonstrates low quality as it is easy to write.

That’s what they claim but data shows that list post is the second most shared article type after infographic.

And in fact, this post that you are reading is a list post and I hope it goes viral.

FIX: What are you waiting for? Start a list post now but hey, don’t make these 10 mistakes if you want your list post to do well.

#24 – You are not writing how to posts as well

How to article probably don’t perform so well from the data given above.

However, do note that a how to article is the kind of article that people will pay attention to every detail that you write.

This is because a how to article provides a detailed guide on how to do something and even though it is not the most shared, but probably the most bookmarked article.

Writing a how to article also shows that you are really good in the domain that you are dominating.

FIX: Write a definitive & complete tutorial on something that you are really good at. Find out as well how to write a good how to article from my eBook.

#25 – You are not moderating comments

It can be annoying at times when you receive tons of comments which are all human spam and robot spam.

Sometimes, you can’t even tell if that comment is genuine posted by real human.

For me, I implemented a strict comment policy and I only let comments that are really related to my article, with proper image and proper name.

Comments that don’t come with the above criteria will be rejected immediately.

FIX: Read my comment moderation framework.

#26 – You give up learning

You can’t know everything and in the knowledge world, there is no such thing that you had already knew everything.

There is always something to learn in your nice and the moment you stop learning things, that is the point you stop getting new ideas for your blog post.

FIX: Don’t give up learning. Start following blogs within your niche and learn from your competitors.

#27 – Your content is not scannable

Blog readers like me who has a lot of articles to read everyday will first scan an article to see if it is worth reading.

If your content is not scannable, not only me, but many people out there as well will not be reading your full content.

FIX: Start with a good introduction, end with a conclusion that wraps up everything and finally break long paragraph into short paragraph.

#28 – You don’t format your post

You simply publish your blog post without caring how it looks.

You don’t bold, italicize or underline your content.

FIX: Bold, italicize and underline whenever necessary (not your keywords). Ensure as well your font size is big enough and your links are colored differently from your ordinary text.

#29 – You don’t make use of headers

In HTML, they have H1, H2, H3 and etc for you to make use of when you need to do sub heading.

When you write your post, plan for sub heading as well because that helps your readers to scan your content.

FIX: Start using headers tag. Break your articles into sub section and put a sub heading into each.

#30 – You don’t use images

Using images can increase social sharing.

On top of that, by SEO optimized your image, you probably get a chance to receive traffic from search engine.

Using images can on your blog post can help your post in many ways so start using images for your post.

FIX: Include at least one image into every blog post. You can get free image from sites like Free Images and Flickr.

#31 – You don’t have an About page

Do you know that, the about page is one of the most viewed page in most blogs?

And the best part is, it is also the page where people put a lot of opt-in box to gain email subscribers since that page is one of the most visited page.

If you are not, that’s because you don’t have an about page or you have a poorly written about page.

FIX: Here is the formula for your About page. Who are you? Where you from? What you do? And finally, call to action to follow you on Social Media or subscription box.

#32 – You don’t show yourself

No matter how ugly or handsome you are, your audience wants to know how you look like.

They don’t want to know how good-looking you are but by showing your face, it shows people that this blog is maintained and written by human.

This should come together with your About page above.

FIX: Pick your best photo of yourself and attach one now. Or take a selfie if you don’t have.

#33 – You don’t have a landing page

Landing page is the kind of page where you get all the distractions like sidebar, advertisements and unnecessary navigation link away and let your reader only focus into one single thing.

If you sell a product, you should have a landing page that only talks about your product.

If you are not selling anything, then you should also have a landing page that collect email subscribers.

Hence, whether you are selling or not, landing page is a must.

FIX: Start building a landing page now. I use the landing page template from Studiopress theme although it is not the best out there.

#34 – You flood your blog with advertisements

Making money from blogging is definitely an end result from most bloggers.

By far, advertisement is one of the easiest way to monetize a blog.

However, even though it is easy to implement, it doesn’t mean you have to over do it.

Some can advertise in the way that I can’t even read the article.

FIX: You can advertise but limit to only one ads per scroll of a web page. This means that as you begin to scroll the page vertically and the existing ads begin to move away from the screen, start filling with the next one if needed.

#35 – You don’t have a domain name

When you use third-party blogging platform like Blogspot, WordPress and etc, you can use their domain name for FREE.

But that is not the best idea. Why?

You don’t get to control it and you don’t own it.

One day those blogging platform take your blog down and you are left with nothing after that.

You can’t migrate and the things that you can do are either to beg them to give you your domain name back or start a new one.

FIX: For about $10 a year, you can get a domain name for yourself. Find a good one and get yourself a domain name.

#36 – You don’t structure your URL properly

Remember that we talk about SEO optimized URL back in our On-Page SEO post.

This is a crucial setup where most WordPress blogger simply just don’t realize that their URL is not SEO optimized.

FIX: Setup your permalinks now.

#37 – You don’t have a logo

Still using the default Text Logo?

C’mon, you need a logo design.

Even your blog is not some big business, you need a unique logo to really stand out.

FIX: Get a designer to design your logo now. You can find sites like 99 Designs, Design Crowd or 48 Hours Logo to get your logo ready.

#38 – You don’t have favicon

Favicon is something some webmaster will forget when setting up a blog.

What is a favicon?

This is a favicon

FIX: Ask your designer to design to design one for you as well or use your logo as the favicon.

#39 – You are not using the correct font size

Font size is important because it affects your reader’s user experience.

First, ensure that your font size is not too small and remember to not over-do the size as well when you enlarge.

FIX: Font size from 12-16 should do it. Fix it now.

#40 – You are not using the correct line height

Don’t keep all your sentences close to each other.

Give some space so that your reader can separate out the lines and  read each word & letter clearly.

FIX: There is no magic number here but the direction here is to ensure the lines are properly spaced out.

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#41 – You are not giving your readers a chance to subscribe

What?

You don’t collect email subscribers?

There is a saying:

The money is in the list

As far as I know, there isn’t one successful marketer that don’t use email marketing. Probably there are few but I’m safe to say at least 90% are successful because of a good email campaign.

You know the benefit of your email list?

The key benefit is you are not affected with any of the search engine algorithm because anyhow, you can always reach your readers to read your articles.

On top of that, when you send an email, you make it very personal to your readers and that actually creates a strong relationship between you and your readers.

FIX: Get an autoresponder now and start collecting emails. Follow these tips from Social Triggers in placing your opt-in forms.

#42 – You are not enabling your social buttons

Imagine this.

Your reader stumble upon one of your best writing and would love to let his/her friends know about it because it is extremely helpful.

He/She probably has like tens of thousands of Twitter followers, Facebook friends and Google+ connections.

But due to the reason that when he/she tries to share it right from your blog post which you don’t have the feature to let him do so, he/she gave up.

You probably drive 5% of his followers traffic and that’s like at least 500 views but you really screw it up because you don’t have anything for him to start with.

So, don’t make this mistake

FIX:

Install a social plugin to your blog.

Follow this guide if you need one.

#43 -You messed up your blog’s colour theme

Can’t comment any further if your site is made up of all the colours like the above.

Regardless of how good your content is, the colour theme above definitely drive me away from your site!

FIX:

If you are poor in matching colours like me, pick a good theme and stick to the colour theme.

Otherwise, match your colour properly.

#44 – You have cluttered designs

Sometimes, small business tend to cram all their services into a single page.

For instance, they will sell web hosting, content writing, SEO, CRM software and etc in a single page.

So, what should the visitor do? Nothing!

Because that is crazy and you give the visitor so much option that they don’t know where to go anymore.

Selling more doesn’t give you any plus point. I’m sure you heard of this saying, “Less is More”.

FIX:

Have one single page for one purpose.

Never ask for more than one thing in one page.

But you can ask for the same thing twice or more in a single page.

#45 – You blog on the wrong platform

I first started blogging on the Blogspot platform.

Apart from that, I have friends who wrote their own web application using HTML, PHP and CSS to blog.

All of us suck big time when we gain more blogging experience and start to demand for more.

The lessons I learned from blogging on the wrong platform are:

• Migration will be painful.
• SEO Optimization will be tough.
• Lack of control if it is hosted by 3rd party.

FIX:

Download and install WordPress into your web hosting.

WordPress is one of the most popular blogging platform used by most of the top internet marketers today.

#46 – You don’t host your own blog

Two things will happen if you don’t host your own blog.

First, you don’t get full control of it.

Second, if the person who host your blog decided to terminate you or terminate themselves, there goes your blog.

Backing up doesn’t make any sense at that time because if they are completely shut down, you can’t restore your content into the platform that don’t exists anymore.

FIX:

Get your own web hosting.

Backup your contents locally into your computer or cloud as well instead of just to your web hosting.

This will ensure that you can always restore your contents whenever you need it.

#47 – You over host your blog

I’m not trying to be your money manager here but you should not pay for what you don’t use.

If you just need 10 GB of storage space, then don’t pay anymore extra for 50GB or unlimited.

In this internet marketing field, you have more place that you can invest apart from a bigger web hosting space.

FIX:

Always start by purchasing the most basic package.

Until you had maximize or about to maximize the given usage, then plan for an upgrade.

#48 – You are hosting on a cheap web hosting

Cheap web hosting mostly fall into one or more of the below categories:

• Slow
• Inconsistent
• Unreliable
• Poor support
• Often give technical issue to you

At the end of the day, you spend your time fixing their problems rather than focusing into what you are really good at such as updating your blog.

So, why not get a reliable web hosting and sort all these problems out once and for all.

FIX:

Use the web hosting that top internet marketers are using such as Bluehost, Hostgator, Liquid Web, InMotion and etc.

On the side note, if you ever want to host on Hostgator, do check these reviews out first.

#49 – You don’t backup your blog

Many bloggers simply just don’t backup their blog.

There are two backups that should always be done.

1. Backup on your web hosting. This can be automated by most web hosting.
2. Backup locally on your computer or to your cloud hosting. This might need some manual job.

Backing up your blog is not a big job and it is a life saver when you really need that.

FIX:

Go to your web hosting and run a backup now.

Schedule a routine backup on a daily/weekly basis.

Download that backup file into your computer.

Set a repeating reminder on your calendar to download this backup file weekly/monthly.

#50 – You ignored updates

Whenever there is an update from your blog or WordPress plugin, there could be two possibilities:

1. A new feature
2. A vulnerability to fix.

If you are ignoring the update because of point #1, that is still fine because you might not need that.

But if it is because of point #2, then your blog might be at security risk.

You can’t ignore a security update because there is a reason why there is a patch for it.

Some security risks can harm your blog in the way that you cannot imagine such as completely remove all your contents away from your blog.

In fact, you should not even check whether it is a feature or security fix update because whenever there is an update, you should just update everything.

FIX:

Go to Dashboard -> Updates on your WordPress Admin area. 

Select all the possible update that you have and click on Update.

#51 – You have too many categories

The point of having categories is for you to be able to categorize things in an organized manner.

If you create a new category every time you publish a post, this is not categorizing things.

This makes your readers difficult to find related content on your blog.

FIX:

Plan your blog well by creating a maximum of 5-6 categories.

Stick to it and only create new one if necessary.

#52 – You don’t care about your site speed

Do you know that 40% of your visitors will leave your website if it takes more than 3 seconds to load?

Don’t believe me, check this infographic out from KissMetrics.

A slow site means poor user experience and poor user experience leads to bad SEO.

This does not mean you need to load blazing fast but the important thing is, you can’t be that slow.

Visitors normally don’t have much patient when it comes to waiting.

FIX:

First, ensure your web hosting has no issue with site speed by subscribing to a reliable one like I mentioned in point #48.

Second, install cache plugin to speed up your WordPress site.

You can further speed up by using CSS Sprites.

#53 – You use cheap or free bad theme

I’m not saying that you have to pay for a Premium theme but there are lots of faulty themes out there which are free or some even you have to pay.

A good WordPress theme surely doesn’t come cheap but if you see it in long-term, it is always good to have one.

One thing about cheap or free theme is they don’t provide regular updates to support the latest version of WordPress where WordPress is a platform that consistently upgrading from time to time.

On the other hand, a good WordPress theme can give a better site loading speed.

FIX:

Use only the default WordPress theme. It might provide less feature but at least I am sure it is a theme that works.

Once you have the budget to upgrade, go for the Genesis Framework from Studiopress.

#54 – You don’t have a contact form

Don’t make it so difficult for your visitors to contact you.

Put up a form, let your visitors to fill up, and be notified via email.

Who knows they might just be contacting you for a sale or advertisement opportunity.

FIX:

Put up a contact form.

Avoid using complicated Captcha to ensure they don’t get annoyed trying to reach you.

#55 – You don’t use web traffic Analytics

Do you have any idea how many visitors visited your page daily?

No?

That is because you don’t have any analytics installed.

If you don’t track your traffic performance, then how you know that you are doing well or not?

Furthermore, one of the most popular analytics, the Google Analytics is free to use.

FIX: Sign up and setup your Google Analytics now.

#56 – Your blog tagline is ‘Just another blog’

The tagline above is the default WordPress tagline.

If you have this tagline, this means that you still have not configured your blog yet.

This is so embarrassing.

FIX: Go to Settings -> General, look for the Tagline field and change it.

#57 – You are still keeping the sample page

It is not a crime to show your readers the default sample page but is it useful?

Or it just shows that you are clumsy enough to forgot to remove that.

Since it is not useful, why keep it?

FIX: Go to Post -> All Post, look for your very first post and Trash it.

#58 – You are not storing your images locally

Have you been to sites where you see the phrase “Image is not available”?

That’s very common in the old days because web master tends to host their images externally to some image hosting company.

Storage is cheap today and most web hosting even provide you unlimited storage for a very low price.

So, why not host your own image to prevent yourself from losing the image?

FIX: Upload all your externally hosted images into your WordPress media.

#59 – You are not optimizing your images

A very big size image can harm your site speed if you are not needed to display such image quality.

This is because your site will take longer to load due to the file size is bigger.

As a result, if you don’t need the image to be this detail, scale it down to a smaller file size.

FIX: Install WP Smush.it plugin to optimize your image.

#60 – You are ignoring the security of your blog

WordPress might have constant upgrade to patch all their security flaws but some of it, are not part of their responsibilities.

Things like limiting number of login attempts, IP filtering and etc, they are value added feature which WordPress don’t provide by default.

Adding these features will enhance your security and this is how you do it easily.

FIX: Install iThemes Security plugin to enforce a stronger security of your blog.

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#61 – You are using the default username and password

If you are still using the default user ‘Administrator’ or ‘Admin’, then there is no need to hack your username anymore because they only left your password to crack.

In security best practice, it is always good to avoid such username and use something unique instead.

A username does not need to be complicated like a password but it has to be unique.

As for password, you really need a strong one with:

• Upper case and lower case
• Alphanumeric
• At least 11 characters long
• Mixture of symbols

FIX: Start with creating a new username and set a strong password for it. Delete the ‘Administrator’ or ‘Admin’ user account if possible.

#62 – Your blog is not mobile responsive

Do you have problem reading your own blog on a mobile phone?

Don’t blame the size of your mobile if you can’t.

Blame you for not making your blog responsive enough.

On top of that, mobile users tend to be more on weekends compared to weekdays.

Therefore, having a mobile responsive site is a necessity today.

FIX: Get a mobile responsive WordPress theme. Studiopress a bunch of them for you to choose.

#63 – You kept refreshing your web page statistics

Do you refresh your analytics every 5 minutes?

Does that make any difference?

You need to check your stats but you don’t need to do it on a minute basis.

That’s a big reduction in productivity.

FIX: Stop checking your analytics and limit yourself to only check it 2-3 everyday at most.

#64 – You never test your stuff

Often, I put up an opt-in plugin and it doesn’t work when I insert my own email address.

For some reason, I will make mistake somewhere but I’m glad that I test it before my visitors start reaching to me and complain about it.

You might not be a good tester but at least run some basic test to ensure that they are working fine.

FIX: Every time you activated a new plugin or widget, do a test by your own first. Make sure at least the basic usability works.

#65 – You install WordPress into a sub folder

When you first install WordPress into your web hosting, they will often recommend you to put it to “/wordpress” sub folder.

Don’t get trick by that.

This means that your blog home page will be “http://www.myblog.com/wordpress”.

That is not cool because you really don’t need the ‘wordpress’ to be there in the first place.

Even though you could use the .htaccess to rewrite it but that is too much of work.

Why not get it fixed in the first place?

FIX: When you first install your WordPress, don’t put it into a sub directory. Use the root directory for your installation.

#66 – You are still keeping all the unnecessary plugins

If you had tried all kind of site speed optimization techniques like caching, CSS sprites and etc, try this.

Take a road down to review all your WordPress plugins.

Identify whichever plugins that you are not using and remove them.

WordPress plugin is also another element to look at when optimizing your site speed.

FIX: Go to Plugins -> Installed Plugins and Delete the unused plugins. Note  that you need to first Deactivate them before you can delete them.

#67 – You have broken links

What is a broken link?

A broken link is a link from one of your articles linking to another site or page that does not exists anymore.

It can be the site owner no longer hosting their site or the content probably moved to a new URL.

So, find these broken links because broken leads to poor user experience and that leads to bad SEO.

FIX: Install the Broken Link Checker plugin and start monitoring your links.

#68 – You don’t have a sitemap

As mentioned here, a sitemap is the blueprint of your site or the structure of your site in another words.

This sitemap needs to be submitted to the Google Webmaster Tools so that Google will know what are the contents that you have on your site and index them.

Without that, it is very difficult to get your site indexed not only on Google, but most of the search engines.

FIX: Follow this guide to generate a sitemap and submit to Google Webmaster Tool.

#69 – You don’t do internal linking

By not doing internal linking, you are missing out two benefits.

First, is for a better SEO because even the link is internal, it counts as well.

Second, is or a better bounce rate because by internal linking, you are telling your visitors that you have something relevant to this content that they should check out.

You won’t run into trouble if you don’t do internal linking often but I’m sure the two great benefits above will be left out.

FIX:

Go back to the contents that you seldom link internally.

Mostly, the content that has less internal linking are the older content.

Review them and link them to your newer post.

#70 – You are indexing pages that shouldn’t

I remember when I first wrote an eBook for my first blog, I wanted it to be only available for my email subscribers.

So, I attached the eBook as a media in the WordPress blog.

Without realizing that the Google indexing is so good, my eBook is actually searchable through Google.

This means that by typing “Blog Name + ebook”, you can see my eBook link and when you click on it, you get to download it.

WITHOUT EVEN SUBSCRIBING TO MY MAILING LIST!

I was lucky to realize it within 24 hours and learn how to de-index that page from Google.

The lesson here is, there are times that you might not want to index all your pages.

Hence, watch for scenario like mine above.

FIX:

If you ever need to not index a page, configure it on your Robots.txt.

What you are configuring over there is to disallow web crawlers from crawling into that page.

And if the page is already indexed, use the Google Webmaster Tool’s URL Removal Tool and remove your URL away.

#71 – You are still posting with admin

This is another common mistake as well.

Since normally the first user in WordPress is ‘admin’, bloggers tend to use the default user straight away start writing and publishing.

They don’t realize that the default name is actually admin as well and until one day they find out themselves or somebody informed them.

It is kind of embarrassing as you are publishing the post but not your name credited for that post.

Hence, don’t make this silly mistake.

FIX:

Create a new user for yourself.

Use proper First Name, Last Name or even Nickname.

When you publish or preview your draft, double-check that proper name is being displayed.

#72 – You enforced a complicated forms

Have you gave up sending a form before?

I did and it was mainly because I was in an endless loop of solving Captcha.

The form wasn’t complicated at all where it only requires my name, email, and message that I wanted to bring to the webmaster.

However, the solving the Captcha is a nightmare.

It is super long and the worst of all, it is in thin italic (or rather cursive) writing that had given the best stress ever to my eye.

I gave up contacting the author and the next minute, I remove Captcha completely from my very own contact form.

FIX:

Don’t implement complicated Captcha.

If you really need to fight off spammers, follow this guide.

#73 – You enforced background music on your blog

I’m not gonna talk about site speed anymore because you probably will get bored with this phrase.

So let’s go back to user experience. (Hate me if you want for looping this but this is the fact)

Have you been to blogs that auto play music by default.

I have a habit of not muting my speakers but at the same time, I don’t play any music on my laptop.

Sometimes, the volume is max despite not playing any music or watching any movie.

I realize I have this habit when I visited some blogs that automatically play music by default and that freaks me off.

You know what’s the worst part of all?

I can’t turn it off!

I was like scanning the whole web page hoping that I can find the volume icon but I failed.

So, I leave that page and if there is anyway I can blacklist these sites from my computer, I would love to do that.

FIX:

There is no fixing here.

Just don’t implement any music on your blog.

#74 – You use pop-up ads

Placing ads on your blog can be a little annoying at times especially when it blocked certain part of your contents.

What make things worse is when you use pop-up ads where that completely block the entire content.

On top of that, you don’t really benefit in long-term from showing pop-up ads.

FIX: Just don’t use pop-up ads. That’s annoying. End of story.

#75 – You don’t use pop-up

I’m not hitting myself and not driving you into confusion here.

You shouldn’t use pop-up ads but that doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t use pop-up at all.

If you are going to use pop-up, use it wisely and make sure it benefit in long-term such as collecting email subscribers.

Do you know that using pop-up to collect email subscribers can double to triple your sign up rate?

If you still have doubt with me, why not watch this video from Social Triggers regarding showing pop-up on your blog.

FIX:

Install pop-up plugin for your blog.

You can use Optin Monster, the plugin that I use for this blog for pop-up.

#76 – You have confusing navigation

I have seen blogs that gives too many navigation options at the top header.

They have like categories, tags, pages, posts, RSS, Social Media profiles and etc in a single foul.

Giving too many options on your site will only leave your user not knowing what to do further.

FIX:

Start off by removing all the navigations link.

Insert only what you think is necessary or important.

Remember not to remove your About page and Contact page from the navigation because they are extremely important.

#77 – You are using too many social sharing buttons

Social sharing button takes time to load.

This means that, if you have more social sharing buttons, the longer your site will take to completely load.

On top of that, you shouldn’t give your visitors too many options as mentioned above.

FIX: Limit yourself to only 3 social sharing buttons. Pick the top 3 social sharing platform that is popular in your niche.

#78 – You are still using blinking text

If your target audience is people from the 70’s, then keep up your blinking text.

Otherwise, take it down.

FIX: That’s pretty obvious. Take down your blinking text if you are still using it.

#79 – You are flooding your footer

I had seen bloggers who tend to show a lot of things in their footer.

It is like showing off how many pages you have on your blog, categories and social media profiles.

Well, somehow that doesn’t work so well I personally feel.

I prefer a clean design where you really get rid of these stuff completely.

On top of that, how often you go to a blog’s footer and start clicking all the links?

FIX:

Clean up your footer.

Avoid putting any widgets there because they will not do any good.

#80 – You enforced horizontal scrolling

Was that a new feature that I didn’t know of?

Up to now, I don’t see any benefit of having a horizontal scrolling.

Even though I know that by using shift + scroll, I can easily scroll horizontally but how many people know that without being told?

As a result, you are just reducing your user experience score by implementing horizontal scrolling.

FIX:

Ensure your pages fit into the page nicely without the need to scroll horizontally.

If it doesn’t contact your WordPress theme support to fix it.

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#81 – You are making your blog difficult to comment

Blog commenting increases engagement of your blog.

This means, it helps you build a good relationship between you and your readers.

That is why it is important that your readers are able to leave comment on your blog easily.

FIX: Don’t make it anymore difficult to comment. Captcha especially should be removed.

#82 – You automatically open a new window for internal links

I do automatically open a new window for external simply because I want them to know that they are still reading my blog while they are reading some materials that I linked out.

However, when you do it for internal link, it will start to get really annoying.

Since no matter where your readers go to internally, it is still your blog and there is no need to ‘automatically open a new window’ for that.

FIX: Stop automatically open a new window for all internal links.

#83 – You are using Flash Player for a blog

I’m not sure if you really need to use a flash player, but if you really need it, limit that.

Flash will take some resources from your visitor’s computer to fully functional and if your blog is purely about text content, you can avoid using flash completely.

FIX: Reduce or stop (even better) using Flash on your blog.

#84 – You have too many widgets on your sidebar

Your sidebar can be very useful only if you make full use of it.

By flooding your sidebar with tons of widgets, you ended up giving your visitors too many options and they don’t go for any of them.

Hence, limit the number of widgets and only place those that are really important.

FIX:

There’s a formula for sidebar which works quite well for me.

It is not invented by me but I borrowed this sidebar idea from Social Triggers again.

Check out the sidebar formula here.

#85 – You don’t promote your blog

I categorized blogging as part of internet marketing.

So, the word marketing is there and you can’t escape it.

By just writing great contents and hope that someone picks up your article and share it to go viral is just not going to really happen.

Even if it could happen, the percentage is very small.

As a result, if you are going to blog and especially making money out of it, you need to promote it.

FIX:

There are many ways to promote your blog such as SEO, blog commenting, social media and even word of mouth.

In fact, you can do all of the ways mentioned to promote.

#86 – You over promote your blog

On the other hand, you have jackass that simply just promote their blog wherever they go.

They promote when they go social media.

They kept promoting their stuff on their newsletter.

They go to other people’s blog  to leave comment and promote their blog & products.

Overall, they just keep promoting only until people get annoyed by them.

That’s not how you promote your blog.

The objective to promote your blog is to build trust and relationship.

With strong trust and relationship in place, it will be easy for you to sell things to them.

By just doing promoting itself, you are not going anywhere with your blog.

FIX:

If you are one of those jackass, reduce all your promotion thing.

Do it as often as only probably 20% of the time.

This means, if you tweet 5 times a day, only one tweet should be about promoting.

The rest is useful and educational stuff.

#87 – You are doing things alone

Blogging requires interaction with people.

You can’t just blog alone.

If whatever you write is all what you think is important, then the people who is interested in reading your blog is only yourself.

As mentioned, you need interaction and you need to know what your readers need.

Sometimes, reading comments from your readers give you some new writing idea that actually gives better attention.

FIX: 

Start talking to your readers either by email or blog comment.

Try to get what they really need or the problems that they are facing.

Research, find a solution, blog about it and tell them that you had found a solution for them.

#88 – You are not reading other people’s blog

You should always read another person’s blog especially you guys are in the similar niche.

Sometimes, they might have a better idea and you could use improvise that idea and make it even better than before.

Not only that, since you guys fall into the same niche, it is also safe to say that their readers will most probably have interest in your blog as well.

So commenting in their blogs with useful and helpful comment can demonstrate your domain expertise in that niche and you stand a good chance for their readers to read your blog as well.

FIX:

Go to Google now and type the “keyword + blog” of the niche that you are in.

Go to Feedly, and subscribe at least 20 of those blogs into your Feedly reader.

Everyday after you are done with your emails, go to your Feedly reader and start reading other people’s blog.

#89 – You ignored SEO

SEO can be tough and complicated to understand.

Optimizing SEO will be even tougher where some bloggers basically just drop this topic off their promotion strategy.

Dropping SEO is a big mistake and you shouldn’t do that just because of the complexity.

In fact, SEO is not a tough thing.

The only reason you are failing is because you tried too hard and you start performing black and grey hat SEO.

Once you take that path, your SEO effort will be killed by the Panda and Penguin algorithms and eventually gave up doing SEO.

FIX:

Don’t stress yourself too much in SEO.

Remember that SEO takes time.

First, ensure you had done a good job optimizing your on-page SEO.

Second, build quality links from high authority sites.

Don’t go for quantity unless you have a bunch of quality sites to link from.

#90 – You ignored Social Media as well

Social media is the next big thing after SEO in my personal opinion.

There are a lot of social media platform out there today but that doesn’t mean you need to focus into all of them.

You can always pick up to 3 popular ones in your niche.

In my opinion again, if you want early traffic to your blog, Social Media is the way to go because SEO takes longer time to see the result compared to Social Media.

So, never ignore this source of traffic.

FIX:

If you are new to Social Media, why not just pick one platform and become an expert in it instead of focusing into several platform.

Start following and engaging people within your niche to show your social media presence.

Once you start to get followers, then you can begin to promote your blog slowly.

#91 – You have no patient

In blogging, you really need patient.

Doesn’t mean you spent days crafting a post, you expect it to be popular.

Doesn’t mean you have a 10,000 words of post, it will go viral.

Doesn’t mean you tweet everyday, followers will click on your link that you are promoting.

Instead, give yourself some time on whatever that you are doing.

Don’t rush into the conclusion that everything just doesn’t work and gave up there.

FIX:

Don’t give up easily.

My first 3 months of blogging’s revenue is $0 but that is not what I look like 6 months after that.

So, be patient.

#92 – You sell links (especially dofollow links)

When your blog gets slightly more popular, you will have black hat link builders approaching you to buy links on your site.

They will probably tell you that they need to place a backlink with certain anchor text at one of your content page that score well in Page Rank & Page Authority.

But the ugly truth is, Google will eventually find out and when they do, your page or site, will probably be de-indexed and there goes all your organic traffic.

FIX:

Never sell links, especially when they requested it to be dofollow.

Google clearly says that it is forbidden to do so.

#93 – You don’t offer incentives for signing up

If you still have less than 10 subscribers in your email list after couple months, that is because your sign up is not attractive enough.

One of the best way to improve this is to offer freebies or incentives that only people who signed up for your email list will get it.

My personal favourite strategy is to write an eBook and give it out to people who subscribe to my email list.

I had done this twice on two different blogs and they worked so far.

FIX:

Think of an incentive to giveaway.

If you can’t, spend few days and write a good eBook and give it away to people who signed up for your email list.

Boost it further with pop-up opt-in box.

#94 – You don’t use meta tags

The meta tags actually tells the search engine how your site should look like on search engine listing.

By writing and displaying a good meta tags, you will tend to get a good Click Through Rate from the search engine listing.

FIX:

Review back your meta tags.

Ensure your headline is correctly written

Ensure as well your description has this Call-To-Action element in place such as:

• Check out this article on <benefit>.
• Find out more from this article on <benefit>.

#95 – You duplicate content from somewhere else

Duplicating contents probably works before the existence of Google Panda.

Today, every content that you duplicate will easily get caught and penalised by Google especially.

Detecting duplicate content is not a big issue anymore so don’t duplicate any content.

FIX: I can’t fix this. Just don’t do it.

#96 – You buy cheap articles

You pay for what you get.

If you want a well written articles, you have to pay for the price.

Cheap articles will mostly lead to low quality articles where Google Panda is getting better now in detecting low quality content.

FIX:

If you really want to do well in blogging, only produce high quality content.

There is no use even if you have a bunch of low quality articles.

Your readers want quality, not quantity.

#97 – You spin articles

Articles spinner is quite a popular too couple of years ago because they can turn a great content into another piece of great content with similar information but presenting as a unique content.

How this can be done?

It replaced words with synonyms, restructuring the sentence and making minor modifications so that search engine will not be able to match the spinned articles with the original one.

Does it work?

Well, I would rather invest my money into something more useful instead of subscribing to an article spinner.

On top of that, what do you want to do with the spinned content?

Post it to article directories? Build another smaller blog and build low quality links?

These grey hat SEO don’t work anymore and even if it works, it won’t last long.

FIX: Don’t waste your money buying an Article Spinner.

#98 – You don’t link out to others

As been said, you can’t do everything alone.

If you obtained certain good information as reference from somewhere, link it out.

This shows that your content is well researched.

If you want to learn more benefit of linking out, check this article out by Rand Fishkin on the benefits of linking out.

FIX: Link out to other sites. Don’t be afraid of losing visitors as visitors are leaving your site or losing PageRank juice or even losing in the search engine ranking game.

#99 – You focus too much on keyword density

No one care about keyword density in today’s SEO.

All the information such as 3% of your article should contain your keywords do not make real sense.

The thing that make sense here is to write as natural as possible so that human visitors love your article.

FIX:

Don’t write for search engine.

They don’t appreciate your work.

Humans do and therefore, write for them.

Throw away what you know about keyword density.

#100 – You don’t subscribe to this blog

I know I am being a dick here but let me continue this first.

You are making a big mistake for not subscribing to my mailing list because I deliver quality blogging tips to your email that you might had missed out by not subscribing earlier.

If you want to receive contents like what you are reading now, you know what you need to do.

FIX:

Obviously, subscribe to my mailing list.

I offer multiple ways to sign up. You can:

• Do it from my sidebar. It is the first widget on your right.
• Do it at the end of this post.
• Go to my Newsletter landing page.
• Go to my eBook landing page.
• Go to my home page and there is an opt-in box at the top-fold of the page.
• Clear your cookies and cache, then visit my site again. Wait for the pop-up to appear.

Conclusion

Congrats!

By knowing these 100 blogging mistakes, I’m sure you know by now what a successful blog is made of.

From time to time, if you ever feel there is anything missing from this list, feel free to add-on in the comment below.

And if you really find this article useful, I could use your help to share it out through Social Media!

On-page SEO is something that you can do on your site or web page so that search engine can understand and interpret your content better also also know how to rank your content.

If you are looking into how to improve your search engine ranking, that’s off-page SEO but before you go into optimizing your off-page, a good on-page SEO is what you need to start with because it is like a SEO foundation for your site.

Before you move on, do check out my SEO fundamental post if you are new to this SEO thing.

#1 – Content is king

I hate to say this because this is like the most overly used phrase in internet marketing.

But over the years, with the Google Panda and Penguin algorithm going on the wild, quality content had become even more important.

Therefore, the old tricks such as duplicating contents or spinning contents doesn’t work anymore.

Instead, below is what your contents should look like:

• Unique and original in the sense that it is not found anywhere on the internet.
• Long contents with 1,000 to 2,000 words because as per Neil Patel’s research, that’s what top 10 contents on Google have in similarity.
• Written for human and not search engine because the old SEO strategy says that your keyword density should be somewhere 3%-5% which forces writers to repeat a particular keyword numerous times and resulted a poorly written article that only search engine can understand.

#2 – Meta tags

The meta tags of your page is important when it comes to displaying your site’s information on search engine.

These tags that you need to pay attention to are the Title tag (50-60 characters) and Meta Description tag (160 characters) where:

• Title tag – The headline of your article and it should be attractive enough to get users to click on it. Copyblogger has the formula for writing a good headline here.
• Description tag – You have under 160 characters to summarize your article. My formula for writing the description tag is to give a short description of what the article provide and end with call-to-action (e.g.: Find out more on how to improve SEO from this article) because by having a call-to-action, it gives your search a better click through rate (CTR).

In the old days, there is this Meta Keyword tag but this tag is no longer in use anymore. So, don’t waste your time here.

Having these information in the meta tags gives a better user experience in general.

You can learn how to setup these meta tags in this post.

#3 –  SEO-friendly URL

By default, the URL for each blog post on a WordPress CMS is NOT SEO friendly.

Take a look at the screen below.

You can check this by login into the Admin area and go to Settings -> Permalinks.

To enable a SEO friendly URL, select Post name instead of the Default one.

On top of that, you can also  refer to my full guide on how to make your URL SEO friendly on WordPress blog.

#4 – Sitemap

Sitemap is like the blueprint of your website and it is always good that you submit your sitemap to the Google Webmaster Tool.

First of all, by submitting your sitemap there, you get your site and your pages indexed faster.

Secondly, by submitting your site to Google Webmaster Tool, you basically get free monitoring in web crawling.

Basically, this tool will report to you whenever your site has issue with the search engine crawlers where if these crawlers unable to reach your particular page, that page will not be indexed.

Hence, using this tool will be able to tell you which page actually went wrong and probably what you can do to fix it.

For a full guide in submitting your site to the Google Webmaster Tool, you can refer to this post.

#5 – Internal linking

Internal linking is a method of linking to one of your own content which fall in the same domain name.

By performing internal linking, you actually tell search engine and your readers that you are writing within the same niche that all your contents are related to each other.

On the SEO side, it helps to spread your ranking juice or ranking power across your site.

Last but not least, it helps you to reduce your bounce rate where your readers will stay on your site longer and visit more pages.

So, before you publish any of your post, ensure that you had internally link all your necessary articles.

#6 – Site speed

Believe me or not, a good user experience means good SEO.

If search engine were to find out that your site is loading in a very slow manner, there goes your SEO score.

As a result, a good web hosting,and clean WordPress theme are what makes a fast loading site. So, ensure you had invested into these two important things.

You could also use cache plugin to speed up your site but my web hosting, Flywheel forbids such implementation as they had already done their own caching.

#7 – Images

If you are using images in your blog post, ensure that it is relevant and include as well a relevant alt tag and description to your image.

Research shows that apart from your blog post where on most social media like Facebook and Twitter, contents with images tend to get more share and perform better.

Apart from that, you are also advised to optimized the size of your image so that it doesn’t affect your site speed.

For this, you can use plugin like WP Smush.it to do so.

#8 – Keyword density

Don’t get me wrong here. I am not asking you to write with your keyword density of 3%.

That is poor user experience for repeating the same word over and over again.

What I am trying to advise here is to forget everything about keyword density.

Write your article naturally like how you normally do.

You will be surprised that the way to optimize your keyword density is to stop optimizing it.

#9 – Link out

In the old times, webmasters are afraid to link out.

For one obvious reasons, they don’t want to lose some of their Google PageRank juice which is no longer important anymore since Google PageRank no longer updating.

On the other hand in the modern SEO, you should link out often.

Here is 5 reasons why you should link out from your website by Rand Fishkin of Moz.

#10 – Mobile responsive

Mobile visitors are getting more these days.

If you notice the traffic trend in the old days, traffic tend to get lower during weekends and spike back on weekdays.

But in today’s traffic trend, even though there is a decrease in traffic during weekends, but you can see that most of those visitors are from mobile.

You can setup the Google Analytics account and link it to your site to see how your site performed.

So, having a mobile responsive site is extremely important in order to have a better user experience and SEO.

Studiopress has loads of mobile responsive themes that worth checking out.

If paying for a WordPress theme is not what you are looking for, you can check out as well these 50 Free Responsive WordPress Themes.

Conclusion

Before going to the link building part of SEO, ensure that you had done all these on-page SEO optimizations.

By creating this good foundation, only then your link building can perform well.

Did I miss any on-page SEO optimization that is worth mentioning here?

Tip me below.

Don’t just jump into the techniques yet.

Why not spend some time with me going through the basics of SEO first?

I have 18 fundamental facts here to prepare you for your SEO learning where these are extremely important especially when you are new to SEO.

#1 – The definition of SEO

Really. What is SEO?

Here is what I got from Wikipedia.

Search engine optimization (SEO) is the process of affecting the visibility of a website or a web page in a search engine’s “natural” or un-paid (“organic”) search results. In general, the earlier (or higher ranked on the search results page), and more frequently a site appears in the search results list, the more visitors it will receive from the search engine’s users.

Wikipedia

#2 – The source of traffic

Usually, people label traffic coming from search engine as organic traffic.

You will be able to see such traffic category in your Google Analytics.

It doesn’t have to be Google. It can be Bing, Yahoo, DuckDuckGo or anything as long as it is a search engine.

#3 – It is all about backlinks

If you happen to move too advanced in SEO, you will find out that it is getting more and more difficult to build links to your website.

Some even gave up on that and start to focus on other things instead.

However, I would like to point here that SEO is still all about backlinks.

It doesn’t matter what Google had updated in their search engine.

At the end of the day, it is all the backlinks that matter.

#4 – Black hat SEO techniques

As been said, SEO is all about backlinks and whatever kind of technique you use is to ultimately build backlinks.

The Black Hat SEO are the kind of SEO techniques that will definitely get your site penalized by search engine.

Techniques such as paying $5 at Fiverr and get 100 backlinks to your site where the seller might be just running around forums and small sites to post links to your site.

Back in the old days, it is very effective because most search engines count the number of backlinks your site have and the more you have, the better you rank.

In the modern days, it is not quantity that matter anymore. It is the quality where search engines are now considering the quality of sites that links to your website and give a weight to that backlink.

This is just one example and no one should perform any black hat SEO if you want to have a good search engine ranking in long term.

#5 – White hat SEO techniques

The white hat is obviously the opposite of a black hat SEO technique.

So, white hat SEO involves you creating extremely good content where a lot of people like it including search engine which resulted in generating a lot of natural backlinks from large to small sites.

It is the safest SEO technique but also the technique that requires a lot of resources and time to do so.

As a result, people will rather focus into other way of generating traffic such as PPC if they want instant results.

#6 – Grey hat SEO techniques

The grey hat SEO techniques is a little tricky here.

It is a technique that is close to a black hat seo technique, but it is being implemented like it is a white hat technique.

Let me give you an example.

Back in the old days again, there is a grey hat SEO technique called the Pyramid Link Building.

This technique requires you to build an authority site before using that site to link to your actual site.

The whole process takes time but in order to speed up, SEO marketers use tool like Article Spinner and Unique Article Wizard.

At the end of the day, search engine had become smarter where article spinner tools no longer work as effective as before.

In conclusion, the grey hat SEO actually gives me a short period of good result but that didn’t last long.

I personally would not recommend any grey hat SEO techniques and would rather use the time and resources to create a better content.

#7 – Don’t expect instant result

SEO takes time.

It is not like when you get a link from a super high authority site and then instantly see yourself ranking #1 on search engine.

So, if you happen to really get a super quality backlink, don’t be so down when you don’t see SEO improvement.

#8 – Indexing & Crawling

From time to time, search engine will send their ‘robots’ or ‘spiders’ out to the internet to start crawling for new contents or sites.

Once they found those new contents or sites, it will be then indexed on search engine where indexing here means listing it on search engine.

You can always control robots crawl such as denying them to crawl some private pages so that those page will not be indexed on search engine.

Common way to do this is to specify the pages to deny at the robots.txt.

Here is an example of this blog’s robot.txt file.

As for indexing, there are many ways to check the index status where it varies from one search engine to another.

In Google, to check for your index status, just type “site:your-site-name.com” at the search bar.

If there are no results returned, this means that your site is not indexed by Google.

#9 – Anchor text

The anchor text is the text that you use to refer the name of your link.

For example, ‘Blogging Fever‘ is a backlink where the link points to the home page of this blog and the anchor text is “Blogging Fever”.

Anchor text is an important element because it tells search engine what is the best ‘keyword’ to refer to your content.

In the same example above, what I am trying to tell search engine is that the link above should be referred to as Blogging Fever since that is my anchor text.

So, if anyone tried to search Blogging Fever on the search engine, my site would probably be listed somewhere on the search engine because that is how I tell the search engine to find me.

#10 – rel=nofollow

The ‘rel=nofollow’ is one of the attributes that you can set on your backlink.

By default for all links, there isn’t such tag and that actually means the opposite which is ‘follow’ or ‘dofollow’.

What does this means?

Basically, when you do a ‘dofollow’ link, you are actually telling the search engine to follow this link or to treat this link as important.

On the other hand, if you put a ‘nofollow’ relationship, you are telling the search engine not to treat this link as important.

Hence, by not treating it as important, the site you are trying to refer to will not get any SEO benefit.

If you are really new to SEO, this might not make sense to you until you know how to optimize your off-page SEO.

#11 – Sitemap

The Sitemap tells your users or web crawlers the list of pages that your site has.

Normally, it is best to submit the sitemap of your site to search engine because that is the best way as well for them to index your site.

By doing so, you not only get to index your main site, but also the rest of the contents on your site will be indexed as well because your Sitemap specifies them.

You can learn how to create and submit your sitemap here.

#12 – Google Panda

Google Panda is not really an animal but instead, it is an algorithm.

Back in the old days, internet marketers abuse the method of duplicating content to create site that is content rich.

Ever since Google implemented the Panda algorithm, this technique is no longer usable.

What the Panda algorithm does is to ensure quality content is being published on the web.

Apart from that, this algorithm also becoming smarter where it can detect most of the spinned contents (one of the grey hat SEO) on the web.

As a result, it down to only one way to beat this algorithm which is to write good contents.

#13 – Google Penguin

Again, it is not an animal from Google and again, it is an algorithm.

So, the Panda focused in checking of web contents.

The Google Penguin on the other hand, focused in checking quality links or web spam.

As you had already knew, SEO is all about link building and there are many black and grey hat SEO techniques that focus into building low quality backlinks.

With the Penguin algorithm, Google now able to filter and penalized all the sites that obtain low quality backlinks to rank well previously.

So, this algorithm basically tells you that you should build high quality links and try to at all times, forbid yourself from black & grey hat SEO.

#14 – Google Hummingbird

The Google Hummingbird is sort of like a revamped of the entire search engine.

It is like an intelligence in Google search engine to be able to tell you the answer the minute you try to search it on the web.

For instance, I tried to search the word ‘weather’.

Instead of bringing me the top 10 sites that being ranked for the keyword ‘weather’, Google instantly showed me the weather for today.

This goes the same if you type “50 + 40” on Google, you will get the answer plus a calculator for you to further calculate.

As a result, if you have a web page where the solution can be answered by Google instantly, then you might be affected by Google Hummingbird.

Otherwise, this is just another feature to be taken note of.

#15 – On-Page SEO

The on-page SEO is the SEO technique which you can apply on your site or web page for a better SEO.

Things such as Title Tag, Header Tag, Keyword Density, Internal Linking and etc are all the things that you can do on-site to give your site a better SEO.

On-page SEO is not really a big thing because often you will find tools on the internet that can help you to go through it.

But once you are familiar with it, you don’t really need those tools anymore.

#16 – Off-Page SEO

The off-page SEO is the opposite of on-page SEO where you perform optimization of SEO off your web page.

If you are long enough in this field, you will notice that the off-page SEO is often being called ‘Link Building’.

As mentioned before, SEO is all about backlinks and the link building process is the key to the success of your SEO campaign.

Comparing to on-page SEO, the off-page SEO is much more difficult to master.

#17 -Monitoring your SEO

If you are really concern of your site’s SEO, you should check your SEO status from time to time.

There are many tools out there that do so but I personally prefer to go for the free one which is the Google Web Master Tool.

Adding your site to the Google Web Master Tool enable you to check the problems that your site has.

This tool will be able to tell you the pages that it not able to crawl or even other crawling issues that will affect the SEO of your site.

As a result, it is always good to put your site to this tool and let them do the checking for you.

#18 -Learn from the experts

One of the fastest way to learn about SEO is to learn from the experts.

I personally love reading Neil Patel’s blog as it teaches me a lot about blogging, SEO and internet marketing.

Apart from that, I also follow these 3 giant website closely regarding SEO news:

1. Search Engine Journal
2. Search Engine Land
3. MOZ Blog

Conclusion

All the points above mentioned are to prepare you for SEO.

By reading them, I can ensure that you will be less likely to fall back when reading mediacore to advanced link building SEO guide.

Have anything to say about these SEO fundamentals?

Leave your comment below.

I’m not sure about other region or countries but I’m certain that we, the Malaysians are not alone.

As a blogger and internet marketer, I personally think that this is not the right way to use a Facebook page.

I’m not opposing the usage of Facebook page because I personally have a couple of them as well, but I don’t treat them as my one and only source of online presence.

I still believe that having a proper business website, with a proper domain name and web hosting is the way to go to bring your business online.

Here are 10 reasons why Facebook Business page is not even close to be the alternative for your business website.

[Read: How to start an internet business today]

#1 – You don’t own them

Whatever you have in your Facebook page belongs to Facebook.

They have the final say whether to remove or remain your contents in your Facebook page.

And if one day they have to shutdown their business (although is very unlikely to happen), you are tagging along as well.

As a conclusion, you don’t really own anything in your own Facebook page.

#2 – You are showing people that you are cheap

Having a Facebook page only without any proper website, you are just showing people that you are too cheap to even invest for a website.

You might have your own reasons such as no webmaster to maintain, no time to build one and etc., but you can’t fight it when people think that your business can’t even afford a basic web hosting.

Starting a business website is nothing rocket science today.

Stop giving yourself excuses and start one today.

#3 – You don’t have full control

On a Facebook page, you can’t control how you want your page to be.

Facebook tells you how you and everyone’s page should look like.

You can’t even control where to place your text and images.

Everything is already been defined and what you can do is just to follow.

#4 – There are terms & policies (I call them limitations)

You have a long essay telling you what you can do and can’t do on a Facebook page.

It could well be a policies that make the world a better place but I see them as limitations.

Those long written essays are the blockage to your creativity.

You can’t succeed when you have so much limitations and restrictions.

#5 – It is not your brand

A Facebook page is a Facebook page.

It doesn’t matter who’s Facebook page because it is eventually a Facebook page.

You don’t get any branding of your own there.

The brand that I only see in every Facebook page is the brand ‘Facebook’.

Whichever page you go, you see Facebook for sure.

So, there’s no branding when you are running your business on a Facebook page only.

#6 – Social media trend is your risk

You might be doing well now because the traffic to Facebook is awesome.

However, if one day there is a social network over taking Facebook traffic, that is where your traffic drops as well.

And when traffic drops, it directly reflects your revenue.

Hence, you need to pray hard that Facebook will be the number one social network forever.

#7 – There’s no e-commerce

I see people selling things on Facebook.

Let me get this straight, there is no e-commerce in Facebook.

Whatever you are doing now are all manual works and these manual works are your limitations that stop your business from growing bigger.

If you are serious on selling anything at all, get a proper e-commerce site.

#8 – You need to go the Facebook way

If tomorrow Facebook says that Timeline 5.0 is going to launch and whatever older versions will be automatically upgraded, you are tagging along as well.

You will need to learn the new Timeline 5.0 things and run your business the Facebook way.

There are arguments that having own website has more maintenance than a Facebook page but that is not really true.

If you really own a business website, it is your call whether you want an upgrade in place or not.

Not anyone else and most importantly, you run your business your way.

#9 – Losing revenues indirectly

If you run a business website, you can place things like image advertisements on your own website at some places such as after a news, at the sidebar or probably a pop up.

This is some sort like a ‘call-to-action’ where you remind your visitor that they should take action now to buy your services.

But in a Facebook page, you don’t get to do such ‘call-to-action’ thing.

That’s where you lose revenues indirectly when you don’t have control for such simple thing.

[Read: 7 ways you can make money from the internet]

#10 – The more the less merrier

I mean, the more social network being created out there, the less merrier you are on Facebook.

Rewind back to couple of years ago when Instagram, Pinterest and Google+ are not in place.

Almost everyone is obsessed with Facebook but ever since all these new social media networks came out, some started to focus on the social network that can benefit them more.

This is how I come to the conclusion where the more social media network out there, the less merrier your Facebook page is.

Conclusion

Does that mean I should stop using Facebook page now?

NO!

In fact, if you have a very active Facebook page now, you should convert all these Facebook fans into your email list.

How you do that?

First, sign up for an autoresponder solution such as GetResponse to keep your email list.

Second, bring these Facebook Fans to your website landing page that has the capability of turning them into your subscribers (also known as leads). You can also use the Page Tab of Facebook Page to do so.

Third, start sending them emails to build a strong relationship and trust and convert these leads into your paying customers.

As I said, I am not opposing in creating a Facebook page but rather, I see that as an opportunity for you to get more email subscribers that can turn into your revenue one day.

You don’t need to be really fancy when it comes to creating a business website unless you have a big budget to splash on.

The purpose of a business website are:

• To tell what your business provides.
• To let people know where your business is located.
• To let potential customers to contact you on the internet.

So, if you are going to do this alone or with a team that has limited knowledge on web design and technical knowledge on web programming, here are 3 basic elements of any basic business website must have.

#1 – About Page

Many business owner who build a business website without having an about page.

What is an about page?

It is a page that tell your customers or potential customers who you are, where you come from and summary of what you do.

Apart from that, it is also recommended for you to insert a photo of you or the business owner so that it increases reader’s confidence that your business is a legitimate one.

Lastly, it is also good that you include your social media profiles into the about page.

If you want to see an example of an about page, why not check out mine here.

#2 – Contact Page

This is the second important page as this page tells the audience how to find you.

What I normally do for my clients who requested me to build a business website for them is to insert a contact form which will email the message to the business owner’s email address.

On top of that, I also display the business email address on that page simply because there are some customers that prefer to send email by obtaining the email address.

Finally, for local business, I will also include the telephone, fax and mobile number so that they can be reached via this channel as well.

The telecommunication channel is quite important for business such as restaurants and beauty salon.

So, the contact page is an extremely important page and you should always keep them up to date.

[Read: Setting up your Contact page]

#3 – Services Page

The services page basically tells your audience what you your business do in detail.

On top of that, you should also list down all your packages if you have in this page as well.

The services page is normally the second page that I will visit in most business website after visiting their about page just to see in detail what they offer.

Certain business even publish their prices on the services page but this is optional because there are situations where business owners would like to keep their prices away from their competitors.

So, be careful when you publish your prices on your services page.

Conclusion

Apart from those 3 pages, I usually build a home page as well for my clients.

By using the Genesis Framework from Studiopress Themes, I can easily create a home page but of course this requires some basic knowledge on WordPress and Genesis Framework. [Read: Here are 10 quick tips to get started with Genesis Framework]

If you are interested in creating a basic business website now without splashing out a lot of money, you can refer to the services that I offer here.