What is Blogging and Why Is It Important to Online Success

The term “blog” came from web + log, wherein a person would write a journal or log on the web.  from weblog it is now popularly known as blog – this is how blogging came to be.

Blogging has become increasingly popular and is the way of influencing people in today’s modern times. There are food blogs (food reviews), fashion blogs, lifestyle blogs, travel blogs and so on.

Now, this site is primarily to teach readers to get started with an online business, so where does blogging come in? Why can’t we just create an online store and sell products?

THE IMPORTANCE OF BLOGGING FOR ONLINE SUCCESS

CREATES CUSTOMER INTEREST

A product may not be a need of a website visitor, but with proper and well-written description and information, it has a greater likelihood of convincing the website visitor to buy.

GENERATES LEADS

Let us say I am selling eBooks on Relationships. Will I just go to an online forum to say I have an eBook on relationships? Or will I promote the article I have written in my website about how to win an ex back? Writing articles in your blog thus leads readers to your site.

ESTABLISHES AUTHORITY

One need not be an expert in a particular niche to sell products. But when you have a blog about your niche, it translates to a sense of authority towards your readers.

HELPS IN GOOGLE RANKING

Let me start by saying that of all search engines, Google is the most popular, with about 80% of internet users using it as their default search engine. And Google loves useful content – let us say there are 10 new online stores in your niche or market.

If all of that were pure online stores,  Google will not really be able to assign authority.

But if you offer good information and valuable content by way of substantial articles, you will have a greater likelihood of ranking over online stores that do not have a blog section.

A study by one online guru showed that longer articles ranked higher in Google. Articles were as long as thousands of words per article even.

 IMPROVES BACKLINKING

What is backlinking? Backlinking is when other websites refer back to yours.  And when you offer good content, other websites will cite your useful content in their website too.  Google perceives this backlink to you as a vote of trust. The more websites linking back to you, the higher you will rank in Google and the more website visitors it will create.

Furthermore, this can make your site go viral. One very good content that people want to keep sharing especially through social media, can suddenly make your website popular.

BLOGGING BASICS – WRITING ARTICLES THE RIGHT WAY

In the past, one just needs to write away.   With search engines, notably Google, updating their algorithm for ranking websites and web pages, one needs to write articles in a way that is friendly to search engines.

So what are the basic skills one needs for blogging?

1. KEYWORD RESEARCH

   You need to know the focus keyword when writing an article.  You need to know, in particular, which Keywords are high in monthly search volume, but low in competition. In other words, a search term that internet users are popularly typing, but not too many websites are using that search term.  Keyword research is very important because that is one of the ways Google will rank your web page or website. How else will Google know what your topic is about?

2. SEO WRITING

   What is SEO writing? It is writing articles in a way that search engines love, such as using keywords the right way, structuring articles using headers, images with keywords also “embedded” (alt text) and using internal and external linking.  There will be more about this in the article specifically for SEO Writing.

3. WORDPRESS

   In this site, learning how to blog includes learning at least one website platform, and we might as well learn the most popular, which is WordPress. WordPress is, in simple terms, a website builder.  Why WordPress?

    

   WordPress is the most popular of the “website builders” or content management systems (CMS).  58% of websites in CMS use WordPress, and of all websites around the world, 25% are using WordPress.

   Hence, even if you do not decide to create an online store, learning WordPress is, in itself a potential source of income for blogging. Bloggers with a lot of followers are earning big time from companies. Yes, companies will pay a heavy sum to a blogger with a heavy following, because the blogger has become an influencer.

   Lastly, if you become an expert in WordPress, you can also earn by building websites for others or managing/maintaining sites for them.

   Now that you know the importance of blogging, let us get to the first step – Keyword Research.