If you’re trying to take advantage of additional time that the pandemic has left you with by creating a blog to earn some extra money, you need to get more people reading your blog, subscribing to your email list, and coming to you for important information. Here are some things to consider so that you can get started and be more successful from the beginning. If you are already blogging, use these tips to improve your blog posts.

Focus on a Subject

When you focus on a subject, you’ll be able to garner an audience that will look to you as a reliable source who is an expert in your field. Focusing on a subject also allows you to establish credibility with search engines as you build your website’s structure through links to your own material and links to material on other sites. Once you become an expert, you’ll be able to secure all important backlinks, which are those links coming from other sites to yours.

Learn SEO

Search engine optimization (SEO) allows you to take advantage of search engine algorithms to improve your site’s performance by getting better rankings on search engine result pages (SERP). Building links shows search engines what your site is about. When sites link back to you, it shows search engines that you have authority in the subject matter. The amount of time people stay on the page and where they go afterwards are also considerations. If you don’t want to worry about SEO, the least you need to do is create an optimal user experience with each blog post, including photos and videos related to your subject.

Choose Keywords

The keywords that you use for your blog posts can help you get a larger audience because you’ll use search terms that people are actually typing into the search engine. If you’re writing about the history and future of spacecraft, “books” is a good keyword, but one that many other websites are also targeting. “Books in Alameda” is better because it’s longer and gives you a local tie-in. However, for your keywords, you’ll want to go to Google’s Keyword Planner to find out what people are really searching for. The keywords you choose should be used once in the first paragraph, once in the last, and possibly in the title.

Be Original

Search engines do not like duplicate content, so make sure that all your writing is original. If you use other sources, and you should, be sure to provide a link and a citation. The citation can be as simple as “according to (name of website linked to website page)…” Original work also ensures that you won’t be subject to accusations of plagiarism, and it will provide a good user experience.

Exchange Blog Posts

Find a blogger or influencer who is a subject matter expert in your target area and see if they would be willing to exchange blog posts. You can provide each other with valuable content and backlinks to each other’s website. More importantly, you’ll be able to increase your readership through sharing their audience. When you gain more readers, you can offer to do the exchange again to help them grow their audience, too.

Stick to a Schedule

It’s important to establish a schedule for your blog posts. People should know when to expect a new post from you, and they will wait for the day to arrive to search for it. If you post sporadically, you won’t be able to build a reliable readership because they won’t know when to find you. Most bloggers find that once a week is easy to maintain, but once a day is too much. If you’re starting out, you can create several posts (about a month’s worth) before you actually put them on the website. You can then schedule ahead of time and keep your content fresh, even if something happens to keep you from writing for a week or two.

Hire a Writer

Writing is difficult, especially if you have other things to do. Hiring a writer, especially one who understands SEO, will allow you to have the time to devote to other parts of blogging and small business, like marketing. A good writer will freshen up your content and give you more ideas about what your readers want. They can improve your blog posts through better grammar and spelling. Better yet, they can help you build a backlog of content to schedule for the future, which allows you to be ahead of the game.