A blog/website is a great way to start earning extra money alongside your main job. But while it sounds simple in theory, there are many things to consider if you want to be successful as a blogger. In key position is often SEO (Search Engine Optimization). Here are my top SEO tips for those who want to improve in this area.
It should be recognised right away that there are far greater experts out there in the field of SEO. I have no formal education in the field and have learnt my tricks through a passionate interest and trial and error. There are also no complicated tricks I teach in this article, but they consist mainly of simple tips that too few people think about when blogging, but which are no less important for that matter.
However, if you follow the tips, you will quite quickly see a difference in your Google ranking and create the conditions for actually making money from your blogging.
Read more: How to become successful
Can you live on a blog/website?
A common question is whether you can actually make a living from a blog. Actually, I don’t like the word “blog” because in my mind it is synonymous with a personal diary that you put online. Instead, I think a website is a better term to use to describe my sites. However, many people use the word “blog”, so let’s go with that for now.
The answer to the question is a resounding yes, you absolutely can! There has never been a better time to start making money from a blog/website.
My experience as a blogger
I earned well over 100.000 euros a year as a blogger before I sold my main site in 2022. It’s perhaps nothing remarkable in itself, but considering that it wasn’t my main job most of the time, it’s pretty good. Especially as the profit margin in this type of business is around 95% after expenses. What other kinds of businesses offer the same margins?
Still, I feel like I’ve only scratched the surface of what’s possible. Sure, I worked hard for years alongside my job, usually putting in 12-13 hour days in total. But it was mostly during hours when I was not at my best creatively. Therefore, it feels like there is a lot of untapped potential left.
How can you make money from a blog?
There are many different ways to blog and get paid. It’s a big misconception that you need a huge amount of traffic to your site to make decent money from your website. It’s all about making smart choices and targeting the right customer group. For me, affiliate marketing has generated the most revenue and accounted for about 60-70 % of the total sales when I still had my site Gentlemannaguiden.
Affiliate marketing is basically about planting tracking links on products and services that you then receive compensation for (usually 7-15% of the sales) if someone buys via these. An even more profitable earning model is Revenue Sharing which is more common in collaborations with Casino and Krypto deals.
The tracking time can vary greatly between different companies but is often around 30 days. This means that as an affiliate you will be compensated if someone buys the products you have promoted within 30 days of clicking on one of your links.
Here are the affiliate platforms that I have received most of my affiliate income from:
- Tradedoubler
- Adtraction
- Adrecord
- Awin
- Tradetracker
- Partnerize
- Rakuten
- Amazon Associates
- Apprl
These affiliate platforms usually have a wide range of different online stores that you can search for that match the content you want to promote.
Another major source of income for me has been the sale of links. This is done both through individual companies that contact me directly and digital web agencies that specialise in link brokering. You can register with various sites and then negotiate the pricing for links placed on your site.
Examples of link brokerage sites:
- Interlaced
- Bazoom
- Partnertekst
- WeDigitize
Actually, my favourite thing is to be in direct contact with customers. The margins are much higher because you don’t have to share the revenue with anyone. The advantage of using web agencies for link building is that they have a wide network and also provide content. This means that you only need to upload articles and images. It generally only takes 15 minutes, so it’s a very cost-effective way to work.
Pricing is always one of the hardest things for a blogger. Many people have unrealistic expectations of what they can get paid for a sponsored article. While you want to be able to get fair compensation for content placed on your site, it is also important to remember that an unreasonably high price relative to other sites tends to discourage potential buyers.
A third potential source of revenue is different types of services that pay for clicks and views. Here, Google Adsense is by far the biggest. If you have a lot of traffic to your site, Adsense can provide a really nice monthly income without you having to do any work at all for the money.
How to start a blog step-by-step
Below are my top SEO tips, but before that, here’s a step-by-step guide of things to consider when thinking about starting a blog/website.
1. Choose a domain name
Firstly, you need to choose a domain name. For Swedish bloggers, the top-level domain .se is recommended, even though it’s not that important in today’s world. Finding an available domain name can be a challenge, but remember that it doesn’t necessarily have to be that specific.
If you’re aiming to sell a certain product/service, finding a domain name that represents what you’re trying to sell definitely has an advantage from a ranking point of view. But at the same time, it’s worth remembering that an overly specific domain name also limits your ability to sell other products/services on your site.
Unless you have a very clear idea of what you want to sell, you should choose a domain name that is fairly general. Domains generally cost between 10-15 dollars annually depending on which top-level domain you use, such as .se or .com.
2. Choose a web host
The next step is to choose a web host. There are no opportunities to make any big money by choosing free services for bloggers. Examples include WordPress.com and Blogspot. So the first expenses are the domain and web hosting. Web hosts also have search functions for available domains and you can buy available domains directly from them.
I use One.com for most of my websites. It’s not the cheapest of all options, but in my opinion one of the best if you want to get started easily. Through a feature called Managed WordPress, WordPress.org (not to be confused with WordPress.com) is installed so that you can get started with the click of a button.
This feature also gives you automatic theme updates, so you don’t have to worry about your site crashing every time you update WordPress or add-ons. Nowadays you also get suggestions for improvements regarding the web health of One.com. In other words, I think One.com provides excellent service for the money, even though this web host costs a bit more than many competitors.
3. Choose a theme
There are a lot of ready-made themes to choose from if you want to design your blog in a nice way. WordPress offers some templates and at One.com there is also a design tool that helps you design your blog the way you want. However, there are many advantages to buying a ready-made theme.
I use SimpleMag, which has many built-in features that make it easy for you to just get started and post articles, rather than spending weeks on design. It’s a one-time cost of $39, which also includes updates. Definitely a worthwhile investment as you can also reuse the theme on as many sites as you like.
4. Install the theme and design the blog
If, like me, you decide to buy a theme, just upload the theme in the admin area and start designing your site. It may take a while to find all the features, but once you do, it’s easy to design your own blog.
5. Done!
Now it’s time to start populating your site with articles.
Top SEO tips 2023
Starting a blog can be frustrating. Why can’t anyone find my blog despite my efforts to promote it? Unless you have the benefit of a well-known brand or name to build on, it can be difficult to get people to find your blog. And even more difficult to monetise your blog.
Having a lot of traffic to your site can bring in some money through Google Adsense, for example. But if you want to sell products and/or services as an affiliate or business, Google is king. That’s where the dedicated buyers are.
If you only have a lot of traffic, chances are you’ll just get a lot of lazy surfers who have no interest in buying what you’re promoting.
What do you do when you want to find the best products/services in a certain area? Sure, you google. The advantage is that you usually get a visitor with a clear intention to buy when they find you via Google. It also provides the best possible conditions for someone to buy through your ad links.
What is Google?
Google hardly needs any further introduction. The search engine totally dominates the Western market today, with a market share of over 90% in November 2021. However, there is a lot to consider if you want to rank high on Google.
What is SEO?
SEO is an acronym for Search Engine Optimization and is an umbrella term for the methods and techniques used to make a website rank higher in search results on search engines such as Google or Bing.
How to write SEO-optimized texts?
Even the best-written article will not rank very well in Google without some optimization. This is a whole science and not something you can write about exhaustively in a single post. However, there are some simple tricks that can be applied to both beginners and more experienced bloggers.
Put yourself in Google’s shoes
Always think from Google’s point of view when writing. What is important to Google as a company? Well, it is in their interest to deliver the best possible search results when people search for a particular word or phrase. The best way for Google to remain the most relevant search tool on the market is simply to be the best at picking out the most relevant information and articles within certain keywords and phrases.
Therefore, you should deliver texts that are well-founded and that show that you have really done your best to investigate that what you write about is actually based on facts.
Google is constantly developing more and more sophisticated algorithms for this purpose, and with the latest updates, Google now places a huge emphasis on the reader experience. This includes mobile-friendliness, fast loading time and visuals. It will become increasingly important to make an effort to create nice visual details such as infographics and videos to guide readers beyond the written text.
Both mobile-friendliness and loading time can be checked in Google Search Console, which is a completely free tool (more on that later in the text).
Pro tip! Remember to link to your sources when writing about facts. This is not only for the reader, it also shows Google that you have used relevant sources. However, remember that you should not link to competitors that you are competing with in relevant keywords. (More on link building later)
Help for creating SEO-optimized texts
When aiming for an article that you want to rank high on Google, you should start with the keyword or key phrase you want to rank for. What do people search for when they want to find your product/service? For this purpose, Ahrefs is one of the best tools. But it’s hardly something you invest in as a new blogger because it has a pretty high monthly cost. I have used both Ahrefs and Ubersuggest for this purpose and both are really good.
Mangools Keyword Finder is also really good and significantly cheaper than e.g. Ahrefs. It is also possible to use e.g. Keyword Surfer which you can install on Google Chrome. It is said to be completely free, but I haven’t tested it myself yet.
The biggest advantage of these services is that you get the search volume, that is, how many people actually search for different keywords. However, remember that this search volume is only a rough estimate of search volume based on history, and is often inaccurate. You should also use, for example, Google Trends and your personal expertise to decide what is trending or not.
The search results you get when you are googling are also helpful in determining what people are actually looking for within certain keywords. Put yourself in the minds of the consumer – what is the search intent of the reader? How do you capture the right keywords that will get the readers (buyers) to your sites?
Keep track of the relevance of your keywords
The fact that you rank highest on Google does not necessarily mean much if no one searches for the word or phrase. Keywords also have different values when it comes to the potential to actually monetise them.
My previous site had many pages/articles that were number 1 on Google. However, that doesn’t mean that all of these had particularly high value in terms of traffic or potential to monetise the keywords associated with the articles.
A rough estimate is that 10% of my articles that were number 1 accounted for 90% of my affiliate income per month. Of course, I also had hundreds of other articles that are found on the first page of Google (i.e. top 10). We can go into the maths behind how important it is to be high in the search results in a later article.
For example, if you ranked highest on the term online casino, you would probably be a millionaire within a month with a well-structured article. Especially in the international market.
The downside? The competition is cut-throat in the most competitive of keywords, where the people behind the sites are often multinationals with an entire team behind the sites and an unlimited budget for link building (more on that later).
Find the right niche
If you as a new blogger want to compete and get to the top of Google’s search results, it’s all about either finding a niche that is not so competitive or targeting so-called long tail keywords. The difference between long and short tail keywords could be described as follows:
- Short tail: Best online casino
- Long tail: Best online casino in US with fast withdrawals
There is no exact rule for how long Long Tail Keywords can be, but you get the idea. By targeting a more precise and specific search, you may be able to get ahead of competitors in narrow segments in the search results.
The downside, of course, is that the search volume is significantly lower the longer the search phrases you use. With that said, it is usually easier to monetize on long-tail keywords, as people that have more precise searches also tend to be further in their buying decision-making process. That is also why long-tail keywords should be used frequently as a new blogger.
Tools for writing SEO-optimised texts
Once you’ve done a keyword analysis, it’s all about finding ideas for what to write about. There are some really good free tools for this purpose.
At Answerthepublic.com, you can find out what people are searching for in the countries you want to reach with your article. In the free version you have two free searches per day. Here you can get excellent ideas for everything from headlines to subheadings in your texts.
Another tip for writing SEO-optimised texts is to make sure you download the Yoast SEO add-on. This will give you suggestions on how to best optimise your texts for SEO as you write.
Pro tip! Include search questions straight from Answerthepublic in an FAQ section of your articles. Downloading Yoast SEO also gives you access to an FAQ tool. It is popular with Google to pick up these questions and answers directly in the search results and this can give you an additional advantage in ranking well.
About authority
Especially as a new blogger, your biggest problem will be not being seen as an authority in Google’s eyes. My site Gentlemannaguiden had a great advantage in this context because it was seen as an authority already through its more than 10-year-long history and this also means that new articles quickly had the potential to rank well the day after they were published. This while all new articles I have posted on new sites I started have struggled to be seen as relevant.
There are different ways to check your authority for free. In the DR Checker, you can enter your web address and get your DR (Domain Rating) and the number of sites linking to you. If you want to know exactly who is linking to you and with which keywords, you need to use tools such as Ahrefs or Ubersuggest.
However, this is only one way to measure authority (and not even the best) In many cases, e.g. Moz Domain Authority is a much better measure of authority. The problem with Ahref’s DR as a measure is that it can often give very high DR for practically inactive sites that have appropriated a few links with very high DR. Google has become much better at detecting this type of abuse and now gives less weight to DR as a measure of authority.
In other words, high DR does not necessarily mean much for ranking in itself – all else being equal.
That said, a site with a long history and authority is usually ahead of the queue. In Google’s eyes, this is also a mark of quality for the content delivered. But even if you’re new to the game, there’s still hope. Let me explain in more detail.
Links are the currency of the internet
Links are often described as “the currency of the internet”. This is because links have always been a way for Google to see how interesting and authoritative a particular article or webpage is. Link love is therefore extremely important if you want to rank well.
If you have a reasonably large site/blog, you will be contacted at regular intervals by other sites/bloggers who tell you about this great article they have just published and that they would love it if you told them about it.
Never do it if you don’t get anything back! If it doesn’t happen naturally when you wrote the article, you should either get paid or a link in exchange.
Also make sure to check that this link is indexed as a do-follow link so that you don’t get an “empty link”.
Different linking strategies
Google hates artificially created links. Therefore, direct link purchases and link exchanges are discouraged and Google is constantly developing algorithms to better detect this.
The days when you could simply do a direct link exchange for better authority are long gone. It worked perfectly well even 10 years ago. You could simply contact another blogger and suggest a link exchange, which resulted in you getting link strength from that site while giving link strength back to the site you exchanged with.
Today, it doesn’t really work that way anymore. Now Google recognises this direct exchange and doesn’t put the same emphasis on direct link exchanges anymore. Sure it can be better than nothing, but if you’re aiming for link exchanges, you should generally aim for tri-party exchanges or purchases. I’ve never used a direct link exchange strategy myself, so for me this was just a welcome development in not being rewarded for this type of “co-operation”.
Direct link buying continues to be the standard in the industry, with huge sums being paid every day to gain linking power in important keywords. I would say that this is an area that has grown quite substantially in recent years.
Additional SEO tips – help Google understand your site
A big part of SEO is also about making it easier for Google to understand your site. Both by downloading tools like Google Analytics and Google Search Console, you can gain important insights into how visitors find your site and how they interact with your site.
You will also receive regular improvement suggestions from Google in these tools to help you develop your site.
But even when it comes to structuring the content on your site, there is a lot you can do to help Google. Think of Google as a catalogue. To get into the catalogue, it needs to know where to place your content. In other words, well-structured content makes it easier for Google to index your content and understand what you’re really writing about.
- Enter Alt tags on images
Firstly, always make sure to include alt tags on your images. This will help you rank better in Google’s image search function. Surprisingly, many people find your site through images. It also increases the chances of getting relevant images for the content to appear together with the article on Google. - Enter the meta title and description
Also, always enter the relevant Meta title and Meta description in the Yoast tool. This is usually what will appear on Google in most cases. It also has another function in that an enticing Meta title and description can help you attract readers to your article. An easy way to check which Meta title and description different sites use on their articles is to download the Meta SEO inspector in your browser. - Structure the content in a sensible way
Use different sizes of subheadings and divide the content into subheadings such as H2s and H3s where necessary. Also, use numbering and lists where needed (like here). It’s common for Google to use good and relevant lists to appear in their entirety if you rank highest. - Internal links
Don’t forget to add internal links! This is both a way to make your readers stay longer on your site and show Google that a certain keyword belongs to a certain article.
Pro tip! Do a site search to get SERP results. You can do this simply by placing the following in the address bar:
site:sitename.com keyword
This will bring up the articles that, according to Google, are the most relevant for a keyword.
If you are not completely satisfied with the result, you can start reorganising so that you add internal links to the post you want to rank highest for a particular keyword. It is mainly in the articles you find in your site search that you should target when doing this work. For example, take the first 10-15 articles and get internal links with suitable anchor text (words for the text you place your link on) to the article you want to be prioritised by Google.
It is important that you use everything from directly optimised anchor texts to long tail + generic keywords. Also, feel free to add 150-300 words to old articles when reorganising in this way.
Update old articles
It’s a common misconception that you need new posts every day to stay relevant as a blogger. Especially in affiliate marketing, it is far more important that you keep important articles relevant and updated.
Remember that keeping all information up to date and current is an important part of the business concept behind Google. Therefore, you too should make sure to constantly update old articles to keep them relevant. Otherwise, they will definitely lose ranking over time. Especially if new information comes along that changes the relevance of what you wrote.
It usually takes a certain amount of time to get an article indexed and ranked on Google. This is especially important to keep in mind as a new blogger.
Pro tip! Be well ahead of time when writing an article you want to sell well. For example, if you are aiming to sell well as an affiliate before Christmas, it is good to be out at least six months in advance, i.e. already in the summer, to let the article settle. Remember that the first article you put online doesn’t have to be perfect by any means. The most important thing is that you put out a URL to be indexed and then you can add content as you go along.
Keep the URL general
In both the title and the meta title, you can be as specific as you want and e.g. write “best shoes 2023” if you want. However, you should always make sure to omit information in the URL itself that will not be relevant in the long term.
This gives you the advantage of being able to update and build on old articles endlessly. In this case, a URL that reads “best-shoes” would be much better. In other words, omit “2023” if you want to keep the article alive over time.
If you’ve made the mistake to include the year in the url, you can always download a plugin called “redirection” and redirect the old address to the new one after you’ve updated it.
In conclusion
Despite this long text, I only scratched the surface of the amazingly fascinating topic of SEO. Stay tuned as I continue to share my best tips to make you a successful blogger in 2023 and beyond!
