This was originally posted here on a thread from February 2022 in the promotion forum and it kind of got buried in there with the blog sharing so I thought I would bump this up for those new and old looking to make the most out of a low cost/free "website". With today's economy I know a lot of us can't spend a lot on site hosting, and while these tips aren't all completely free, they are low cost in the long run and can help you pull together a professional looking website to bring your whole brand together. You can also use these tips to start an affiliate website as well, which I have done in the past (though I am not currently an actively affiliate.)
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These tips are from my experience on the Blogger platform and may not pertain to other platforms, though most are general tips.
My tips for blogging are:
- Make sure you enable rich pins for Pinterest because it gives you a little rank boost.
- Make sure you fill out your meta data fields. I only use the blogger platform, but even it has spots for your post search description and to change your permalink if you want to. Make sure you repeat your main keywords in the title, the post search description, and the throughout the body of your text. Consistent SEO is important!
- You also can add meta data in your main blog settings with your blog description. Make sure you add your important keywords for your blog description because search engines pick that up.
Bringing those first 2 tips together, Pinterest picks up the title of your blog post and the text you put in the post search description for the pin title and description respectively when you have rich pins enabled and share images directly from your blog. They used to pick up a snippet of the post body, but don't anymore.
- Use as many words as you can in your post body (2,500 is supposed to be a good number and not more than 5,000). The more text and the more keyword rich it is, the more google considers you an "authority" on the subject of your blog and that bumps you up in searches.
- Break up text into sections that use headings or subheadings that are keyword rich and use those keywords in the following paragraph text.
- Make it easy for visitors to pin images from your blog by adding a Pin It hover button directly to your blog. There are tutorials out there that tell you how to do that depending on your platform. I've even customized mine to match my color theme. This makes it faster and easier for you to pin products from your blog to Pinterest as well, especially if you don't have/want to add a browser button.
- Put at least 1 image in the recommended Pinterest size in your blog post and use a call to action such as "Pin this for later" in your image caption.
- Branding is important depending on your overall business goals. Try and use the same color themes and logos through out your platforms. That way when you link everything to your blog it looks cohesive and your customer can immediately see that they are still looking at the same artist/designer/creator. This matters less with pure affiliate sites, though it can help the customers confidence in clicking your links if you make your site look informational and not spammy.
- On that note, when possible add a custom favicon. A custom favicon helps your blog really look like your own site. You can do that in the main blog setting on Blogger.
- Using a custom domain on your blog can help with branding and the overall professional look of your blog
Take it all with a grain of salt since I am sure there are varying opinions and I am by no means a successful blogger. All of these tips definitely add to the time it takes to put up a post and I have yet to streamline it.
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A couple of things that I did not mention back then:
You can get custom domains fairly inexepensively. I use GoDaddy and just renewed one of my domains for $23 for 2 years. There lots of places to buy domains so shop around. I know that with GoDaddy, it is super simple to get your domain connected to Blogger, but I do not endorse any particular company. This is just my personal experience.
I did a quick search on Etsy and, on the first page alone, for as little as $5/10 (and up) you can buy a custom blogger template that will elevate the look of your blog and no one will be able to tell it is just a free Blogger blog. In my opinion my own (very neglected) website looks as professional as those spending a lot of money, and, being that I do not need any shopping integrations, I find it suits my needs very well. It even has a YouTube integration where my new videos automatically post on my front page.
I hope a few of you get some use out of these tips!
I have been using blogger since 2008 and I like it a lot too. It doesn't have a lot of fancy features, but even before I decided to go with a custom template a few years ago, I found a lot of information by googling on how to manipulate the HTML and I was able to give my blog a nice website look. The little I know about HTML I learned from this work and if I can do it, anyone can.
Thanks for adding your thoughts! Your website looks really good.
