Create, promote and monetize your blog | Full Course | Wix Learn

Here are some of the first posts on the WIX blog back in 2011. Not exactly awe inspiring, but give us a break. It was 2011. Fast forward to today, and the WIX blog has gotten a few upgrades and now brings in a whopping 1 million visitors every single month. I'm Kendall, a blogger for WIX and longtime writer for my own personal blogs. And in this course, I'm going to show you everything you need to know to take your blog from its own humble beginnings to into something you and your readers will love. Now, good blogs are both art and science, and while I can't teach you your own creative method, I can give you tips and best practices on how to set your blog up for success. And so to do that throughout this course, I'm going to build, promote and make money off of an actual blog. That's right. We're in it for the long haul and we've got a lot to cover. So let's get started. If it seems sometimes like everyone has a blog, it's because pretty much everyone does. There are 600 million active blogs online today. And I mean active. Every day. Bloggers publish 7.5 million blog posts. When you calculate that, that's 3 trillion words a year. So you might already be itching to get out there and join your 600 million companions. But slow down, because successful blogging means careful planning. And with that in mind, in this lesson, we're going to cover how to pick your topic, research your target audience, brainstorm ideas for posts, and pick a name. First, you'll have to figure out the what of your blog, and it starts with a topic. There's a huge number out there, but here are some of the most popular at wix. But within your broader topic, you need to find a niche, a specific angle that you want to work off of. So, for example, food is a great topic to go off of, but there are so many food blogs out there. But if we find a nice little niche, like food trucks, it separates your blog from the rest of the competition and carves out a spot just for you. Plus, you know, we love food trucks, so that'll be the focus for the site I'll create to help walk you through all of the steps of blogging. And it's a good thing that I love food trucks because I'm going to be writing a lot about it. If nothing else, 20% of bloggers spend more than six hours on the post. Just make sure that you have experience with your topic because you want to set yourself up as an expert to get people to read what you have to say. And if you're still figuring things out, just be upfront with that too. Readers will appreciate the authenticity. And speaking of readers, you need to find an audience who's actually interested in reading what you're writing about. And not every topic has that audience. But there are some ways to measure audience to make sure that your blog will get eyes on it and to show you how to do that. We're going to dig in and see if my idea for food trucks actually works. To jumpstart my research, I'll go to Google Trends and you might have seen this site before. And if you have, it's because it's an incredible free resource. It shows what people are searching for online back to 2004 and and can even compare search terms over time. So I'll search for my topic, Food Trucks, and from here I can see there's been a steady growth in interest in food trucks, which is a good sign. Plus, down here I could see the top places where people are searching for this keyword looking at you Honolulu. And something I do here always is that I look for related topics or queries to help me come up with ideas. So things like how to find food trucks near me or food trucks plus a location are things that I can definitely keep in mind when I need to look for keywords down the road. Next, I'm going to test out my keywords to make sure that I'm using the most effective ones for my site. So I'll compare food trucks versus let's say, food truck reviews. Okay, super interesting. So food truck reviews doesn't seem to have that much interest, so food trucks is going to work better for me. And this isn't just helpful when it comes to searching for keywords. This will also help me figure out what about my topic people are interested in. So here I can see that people are less interested in reviews and maybe more interested in finding food trucks near them. And that's something to keep in mind when I'm brainstorming topics. So how do you think of fresh new ideas to write about your blog? There are entire articles, case studies dedicated to the creative process and and no one has quite figured it out. For me personally, walking is helpful and apparently there's some science behind it. According to a Stanford University study, creative output increases by 60% just by walking. I also keep a note section on my phone for when I find random moments of inspiration throughout my day. Like if I'm out to dinner, an idea comes for me I just add it to my note. And if you're having trouble with that blank page, there are a few more methods that may help get things started. You might decide to share your personal experiences on your post because after all, a whopping 60% of our everyday conversation is gossip about our personal lives. Or maybe you could poll your friends and family, since another 60% of people say that user involvement makes content seem more authentic. You could also start by looking at trending topics and putting your own spin on it. There are dozens of other ways to start, but it's important to always remember your audience. What defines them, what topics interest them, what are some of their challenges, and and you are the expert. So would you read this article yourself? Once you've locked down a topic, it's time to give your blog a name. So let's talk names. It's one of the most important aspects of your blog planning. So workshop with your friends, have some fun with it, and it's okay to take a few days to come up with something you love. Usually I like to play around with my blog names by adding some sort of alliteration or riffing off of a well known quote or pun or whatever makes it memorable. So think about it. Are you more likely to click on Food truck reviews or Truck it? Right? Exactly. So no matter what you choose, make sure that once you settle on a name, you lock down a domain name asap. Now we're just easing in, and it all might seem like simple steps, and they are. But they also take a lot of careful planning. The WIX blog didn't grow into what it is now overnight, and neither will yours. It took a lot of trial and error. So take your time and make sure that your topic, your name, your posts, they're all right for your brand and they all work together. And soon enough, your own humble beginnings can become the basis of your successful blog. 94% of a website's first impression is about its design, not the words on the page or the post that you're featuring. It's all about what your readers first see on your screen. So. So your blog has to nail it. And in this lesson, we'll talk about how I'm gonna walk you through designing your blog strategically so that you can create a great first impression and convert users. So let's get started. Design can seem pretty daunting. There's just so much out there, so many options. And I'm a writer, so what do I know about design? But I do know what I like when I see it. So I always start by checking out other blogs and as I mentioned in the last lesson, I'm going to design a site for my food truck blog called truckit. So I've already gone ahead and picked a template that reflects my brand and lets my pictures of food stand out. So I suggest you do the same by just taking a look through the WIX templates and seeing what matches the look and feel you're aiming for. No matter which template you choose, it all starts with the above the fold or the first fold of your site. And that's the term for the first thing your readers see when they get to your blog. And it's actually a term taken from the original blog. The newspaper, they would come folded in half and the article above the fold would be the first thing that people would see. So it had to grab the reader's attention and it had to give the most important information of the day right up at the top. So the knee jerk reaction might be to throw everything you have up there, but be selective. The more you add, the longer it'll take for your page to load and slow loading times will only frustrate your readers and make Google rank you lower on its search results. I'm going to click Edit text and type in my blog name right here to put my branding right up at the top and down here for the first fold headline. I'll do the same process I did with the header and edit this text. And I want something straightforward so readers know exactly what they're going to get when they come to my page. Scrolling down a bit right here is where my blog post will eventually live, but I'll get to that in a second when I edit my blog pages. For now, I'll scroll past this and over to my social feed section. Photos are going to be a big part of my blog, so I want them to be featured right here on my landing page. So over here I can click Manage Media and choose exactly what I want to show up. Here I can add a link so that if a reader clicks a picture here, it'll take them right to my Instagram. I can also switch up the order by moving these thumbnails around here and that'll update in real time. Perfect. Scrolling down a bit more to subscriptions. My rule of thumb here is that I never want to ask for more information than I need. Adding more fields just makes people less likely to fill out a form. So for now I'll keep it as is and ask for an email address. But I want to add one more thing so I'll click Add new field and also ask for a first name. And since I want this form to stand out on my site, I'll edit the header by doing the same process I did for the header on the first fold to something that matches the vibe and the voice of my blog. Then I'll change up this button here to something that calls for action, like sign me up. But I also want to make sure that people know they can reach out to me too. And so to do that, I'll edit the contact form here using the same process to edit my text. And I'm going to direct this at Food Truck Owners. But you can write anything you want here as long as it makes it clear to your readers that this is their line of communication between the two of you. And see this field title right here? I'm going to customize that too by just double clicking and changing up that text. Just making sure that everything matches my voice and my tone all the time. And I want to show you something super useful. Go ahead and scroll up to the top and click right here on this zoom out and reorder icon. It'll take you to this screen. And from the screen you can click on any of these sections and drag and drop them around to change the order up really easily. It's such a huge time saver when it comes to your design. And each of these movable sections here are called strips. So if you want to add another strip to your page, you can click out of your editor, click this plus button right here, and add whatever strip you want. There are contact forms, there's a welcome screen or a meet the team section. So I'll go back and play around with my homepage. But for now, I'm going to move on to some of the other pages in my site. Up here at the top of your editor under pages, you'll see a few options, but I'm going to focus on two main pages, which includes my homepage and my about page and blog pages, which is where my blog will live. I'll start with the about page. An about page is essential for your site. It helps your readers connect with you beyond just your blog posts. And if you're having trouble coming up with ideas, look around at other sites. You'll see that some are more inspiring, others are funnier, some are more serious. See whatever matches the vibe you're going for and model it off of that for me. I'll add something fun and I'm gonna put some emojis here to match the feel for my landing page because it should all look like it's part of the same site. I can also add some images right here to show readers some more of my personality. And I can either upload some of my own pictures that I've taken myself or or choose from thousands in the WIX library. And there are some stock photo options in there too. So I'll search for food trucks and just pick one of these options and add it in. Let's go with this one. You can do that same process for adding video or whatever media you want. But once I'm done here, I'll head over to my blog pages. To get to my blog page, I'll click Pages again and then select Blog. This is where I can do all the fun stuff like customizing my display layout and design, but I'll start with Display. This dictates what my readers will immediately see, and I can choose if it will include things like a comment counter or a likes counter if I want that. And under that I can choose if I want my blog to have a menu to keep things organized. Down here, I'll decide if I want readers to be able to share my posts to social media, which I definitely do. Moving on to the layout of my blog, I can choose any of these options and if I'm not sure I can click and see what they look like in real time, I want the focus to be on my pictures and I'll also add a little bit of text to draw the readers in. So I actually think this tiled layout works really well for me. And down below this, I can customize everything else about how the screen looks like, how much space is between my posts, which size my posts are, how many lines I can have for my title, and that all updates automatically too, so you can see exactly what it'll look like. All right, I'll head down here under Post loading and here's where I can choose if I want my blog to have multiple pages or Infinite scroll so here's another good rule of thumb. Having page numbers is great for sites where people are looking for something specific, like a post or a product. Think about when you're shopping online and you know the shoes you love were on page three. The infinite scroll option is better for readers who are just exploring and not looking for anything specific. It helps them stay on the page longer and poke around your content, which is great for blogs. So I'll keep this on scroll down for now and have, let's say, six posts load at a time. But in case anyone is looking for something specific. I'm also going to create an easy way for readers to navigate my page. Creating categories is a great way to break up your content, and depending on your topic, you'll want to choose something that helps divide up your content in the most sensical way, but also offers range so on the WIX blog we split up topics from more practical things like small business tips to more creative things like the Inspiration category. So based on the research I did in lesson one, I think that I'll have categories separated by location and region. So to start, I'll go back to this layout tab and click over here on Category feed to create a new category. So let's start with creating a category for the Pacific Coast. The URL for this page will automatically update too, and you can change that URL, but I recommend keeping them mostly the same, just for consistency. Over here I'll add a short description just to make my blog super easy to navigate. And also, readers like to know exactly what they're going to get when they're clicking through a site. Then I'll click Save Great X out of there and over to Design. Back in the editor I can go into every aspect of what I want my blog to look like by using this design feature. I can customize my font style and for now I'll choose something playful and easy to read, like this. Try to limit yourself to three fonts or less for your blog pages. Too many can be overwhelming and affect loading times. You want to be strategic when you're designing and creating your blog, always keeping that site performance in mind. I can also play around with adding borders and changing around the width if I want. And then I can click back again and over here on buttons and margins. If you have any buttons on your page like Read more or Share, this is where you could change up the color of those buttons and their opacity. So I'd recommend sticking with the color theme here because while you want these to stand out, it should also fit seamlessly with the rest of your site's design. Because no matter what decisions you make for any of your individual pages, again, you want this all to feel like the same site. So we just went through a lot. But here's the main takeaway. Your blog's design needs to do two things. It needs to make a great first impression, and it needs to make it easier for readers to navigate through it. Keep that in mind as you explore the editor and see all of the ways that you can customize your blog. And once you have that design down and you've created your site, it's Time to Start blogging. For a while now, blog posts have been getting longer and longer. And maybe it's because longer posts perform better and boost SEO, or because longer posts mean more chances to monetize, or maybe we just have more to say. But as posts are getting longer, it's more important than ever to organize and present your content clearly and effectively. So in this lesson, I'll teach you how to write and format your posts so that they add value to your readers and drive traffic to your blog. Before I lay out and draft my first post, I always start with some keyword Research. Keywords are words or phrases people are using to search for things online. So they can be something like food trucks or where do I find food trucks near me? We call the shorter ones Short Tail keywords and the longer ones Long Tail keywords. And you'll need a mix of both types of keywords to rank higher on something called SERP or the Search Engine results page. Whenever you type something into Google, SERP is what you get back. So by working on a mix of these keywords, you move yourself higher up the ranking. But wait a second. Why am I starting a blog writing lesson by talking about keywords? Because 92% of people using Google never click past the first page of search term results. I'll say that again, 92% of people searching on Google never click past the first page. That means you need to be within the first 10 posts on Google search or you lose 92% of your potential audience. And that's a lot of people. So if you want anyone to ever see your post, then writing with keywords and SERP in mind is a must. So let's brainstorm some of those keywords. I'll start with three terms I think will perform Food Trucks, Food Truck Reviews, and Best Food Trucks. If you want to stay on top of hot trends or seasonal shifts and add some long tail keywords in here, I'll add some more like best food trucks 2021 best food trucks to Eat at this summer. And if I'm really looking to hone in on that local audience, I can also add keywords based on location. Once I have that slate of keywords ready to go, I'll go ahead and search for one on Google and see what pops up below Google's featured snippet. Up here you'll see the top search results for your keyword, and down over here you'll see related searches over at the bottom. Take note of These they can help you think of even more viable keywords for your topic. And remember, this is just a list. You don't have to use them all. Actually, be selective, because jamming in as many keywords as possible into your article is an outdated practice we call keyword stuffing. Google has gotten smart enough to know when websites do this, and they'll rank you lower on search results. Plus, using the right keywords makes your site more accessible to those who are differently abled. So you need to make sure to really get this all down and download the blog outline sheet that I've linked in the Activities and Resources tab below. And you can see which keywords work best by going into Google Trends like we talked about in lesson one. Okay, underwriting. Now that I've stocked my arsenal full of keywords and checked out my competitors, it's time to write my first draft and I'm going to start with my title. My earlier searches showed that a lot of the top posts had numbers in their titles. And that makes sense because in business and in commerce, listicles are actually the most popular format for blog posts. So it could be helpful to start your post with a number and not just any number. Odd numbered headlines actually perform better than headlines with even numbers, no matter which number you use. Here's one to keep in mind. Aim for a headline between 6 and 13 words, and when you're thinking about headlines, try breaking things down into this formula. That's number question plus your keyword plus an adjective plus a promise. And that might sound confusing, but here's an example. You could do something like five Top Food Trucks on Maui with Epic Eats. It follows this formula and makes readers want to click and learn more. Okay, once you've locked in your title, head to your dashboard, click blog, and go right up here where it says Create new Post. I'll type in my text for my headline to match what we just discussed. As for my intro, I want one that'll let readers know what's coming so I can start with a quote, a statistic, an interesting fact or anecdote, and I'm going to write a Mark Twain quote here just to set the scene. Something like this is just a fun way to get started. Cool. I'm happy with that. From here, it's a good idea to take a moment to summarize what my post is about to give readers a roadmap of what to expect next. Personally, I like to follow a new story model, and that means that my first two paragraphs sum up most of what my story is about without giving everything away, then I use the rest of my space to give those details. It's my way of keeping readers engaged without making them feel like I wasted their time by putting some big reveal all the way at the bottom. And that's also part of something that we call at wix, showing our readers love. That basically means that we're keeping our readers who they are, their wants, their needs in mind when we write and do everything. We do that when we choose topics, when we format our articles so readers can digest our content whatever way works best for them. So with that in mind, next I'll add in all my subheadings. This is a great way to split up and give your readers some options. Every time a reader comes to your page, they can either skim it or read it word for word, and adding subheaders gives them a choice to do either or both, letting them focus only on the parts that they're most interested in. Under each of these subheadings, I'll add the price, food offering hours, my personal order recommendation, and an insider tip. So same thing here. Readers like seeing bullet points as just another option for how they can read or skim your content. After that, I'll add in the rest of my text, making sure that it's all in my voice that I've picked for my blog. Okay, while we're here, let's talk page length. Aim to have your post clock in at least 300 words, but that's just the minimum. Studies show that the average word count of a top ranked post comes in at 1,890 words. If you're feeling ambitious. Good news, because posts with the word count even higher 2,500 words earn the most organic traffic online. Personally, I have a rule called letting posts be as long as they want to be. You can tell when a post is starting to get dry and drag on a bit too long, and so can your readers. So if I feel like a post is dragging and the story is as long as it wants to be, I'll end it. And another way to keep your posts exciting is adding things to break up all that text. So let's get into that. Images, videos, gifs, infographics. All of them can help break up your articles so they aren't just one giant block of text when you can throw in your own photos. Because photos of real people have a 35% higher conversion rate than stock photos. So to put in some of my own, I'll select Add, then click here where it says images and I'll choose the image that I want. There are options in the WIX library and stock photos, but I uploaded my own photos so I'll choose one of those and edit it. This opens up my photo studio. So this guy is wearing a great orange shirt and if I want it to pop a bit more, I can adjust the color by sliding over this toggle and I can also change the sharpness of the photo. And there are a ton of other ways to enhance my images to make them stand out. Now we're at the homestretch, folks, but before I hit publish, I want to make sure everything stays organized. Next, I want to add this post to one of my blog categories so that my readers will have an easier time navigating through my site. As far as categories, each of your posts can be assigned up to 10, so I'll click categories from the left side menu. I created this specific host category earlier and I'll assign it to this post. This will file my story in a specific place for readers looking for content like this. And finally, I'll add some tags. These are words or phrases that describe my posts like Maui Thai, fish and chips. See what I did there? I'm showing readers more of that love that I just mentioned by adding yet another way to make it easier for them to navigate through my blog. All right, let's hit Publish. One post down, an entire blog to go. And as I said in the beginning, blog posts are gradually getting longer and longer, so writing and formatting them correctly is more important than ever. Every move you make here when you write and format your posts should make it easier for your readers to navigate through your content. Whether that's adding subheaders or categories, it all goes a long way. In general, the more you blog, the more traffic you get. But there's no science or magic number of posts per week or month that you have to be reaching. It basically comes down to your goals. Start out with one to two posts a week. If your goal is to generate awareness for your blog, try a more aggressive approach, posting three to four times a week if you're aiming to drive as much traffic as possible to your site. And for best results as you get started, aim for six to seven posts a week. I know it's a heavy lift, but hardcore bloggers who publish daily actually see 57% better results than bloggers who publish just a few times a week. But again, there's no golden rule. What matters most is keeping your content fresh, original, and value driven. Because remember, good content serves both your readers and search engines readers because obviously they want new content, and search engines because they rank you in part based on how often you publish. So here's the question. How can I make sure I'm publishing enough content? And the answer by creating an editorial calendar. So let's talk about how. I use my editorial calendar as my way to plan ahead, hold myself accountable, and stay focused on my goals. When you're making one, make sure to remember to keep those goals smart. And that stands for smart, measurable, achievable, realistic, and time bound. Goals that are too ambitious with unrealistic deadlines can be discouraging and you'll just never get to them like a new workout program or training for a marathon. Go hard, but go steady. Build up a habit for blogging that's realistic with your schedule, and you can always start slow and work your way up for my Check it blog, I created an editorial calendar in Google Sheets. But any spreadsheet can work like Airtable or even Excel. Pick whatever you're most comfortable with. So let's take a look. I made columns for the publishing date right over here. Status like research, drafting, editing, published post title for all of my working titles, keywords based on my research, and author. Because eventually I want to collaborate with guest bloggers. But that's something we'll get to in lesson eight. I also have a comments column and this is for my personal notes reminding me to update content, to edit images, anything really. It just helps me stay organized and on top of things. In general, I like to spend a day planning all my posts for the month ahead. But that doesn't mean that I'm writing them all in a day. It just gives me a roadmap to keep me on track for my writing. Of course, my calendar is always open to revision. Things can come up that throw off my schedule. A food truck can open up tomorrow and I'll have to give that top priority. But bottom line, having this spreadsheet while still having flexibility is key. And if it's helpful, add all of that to a calendar as well so you can see it all laid out in front of you. So now that you have that, let's make sure that all of your posts go out on time and according to schedule. All right. As a blogger, scheduling my posts is a lifesaver. On some of my more chill days, I'll just write out a bunch of posts and schedule them to go out on my blog later on in the month. It's helpful in case I want to take a few days off or if I'm taking longer on another story if something slips my mind or if I'm just not by a computer on posting day. So here's how I'll do it. From my main dashboard, I'll click Blog, then drafts and select the drafted post that I want to schedule. Next I'll go to this Publish button and you just click on that dropdown arrow and select Schedule Post. From here I can pick the specific date and time I wanted my post to go live. And here's something to keep in mind when you're doing this Research shows that the best time to publish to get the most traffic is on Mondays at 11am Eastern and to get the most comments, It's Saturdays around 9am for me, I want a little extra traffic. So I'll go with Monday August 30th at 11am and schedule. And don't worry, just because you scheduled it doesn't mean that this is all set in stone. You could still make changes to make any changes or view your scheduled posts, just go back to that main dashboard, go to Blog and click Scheduled. And from here I can click on my post to make the content updates before it goes live. Or if I change my mind, I can click the Publish dropdown again to either cancel scheduling or reschedule posts. And that's it. This is a short one, but it's a really helpful step as you get more into your blog. And now you're all set to start scheduling your posts so that you can hit whatever your publishing goals are on time and according to schedule. Just remember, be smart, establish your goals, and plan ahead. You'll thank yourself later. There are 63,000 Google searches every single second. That's crazy. Just think about that for a minute. That means that there are 2 trillion Google searches every year. Actually, 93% of all online experiences start with someone somewhere searching for something on Google. So getting your SEO down or search engine optimization is crucial when it comes to your blog. And in this lesson we'll talk about SEO for bloggers. So let's get started. To get to my SEO settings, I'll head to my main dashboard, click on Marketing and SEO and get found on Google. It'll take me right to my custom SEO plan. Now this will only work for the static pages of my site, not my blog pages. First up, I'll enter the name of my blog truck it where it asks for a physical location. I'll skip this part since I'm a blogger and so my content lives online. Next, I'll describe my business. This is where I should use those trending keywords we talked about during part one. I'll go with Food Truck Reviews, Food Truck Tourist Guide, and Best American Food Trucks. And I could use multiple words as my keyword. I just have to separate each of these phrases with a comma. I think that's good for now. And there it is. My custom SEO plan. The wiz tells me exactly what steps I've already covered and what steps I still need to complete. And I can click to expand each step to get a little more info step by step. Guides and some even come with a video to show you how, and it'll keep track of whatever progress I make. So I'll get back to these steps, but for now, I want to move on to another important part of SEO. When we're talking about SEO, it's not just a matter of sprinkling keywords here and there. It's also about being smart with how your content works together. And that brings us to internal linking. Linking out my posts to each other makes it easier for search engine bots known as spiders to discover, crawl, and read all of my site content. Yeah, I don't love the name either, but these spiders help the page get saved to an invisible online library that holds everything on the Internet. To create internal links, I'll scan over one of my posts and see if there are places that I can link out to another post. The key to internal linking is connecting relevant content in an organic way. Don't force it. That will only hurt your SEO. So let's try it out. With my Maui post, I see under beaches and fishes that I talk about simple seafood. And this could definitely work as anchor text to link out to another post that I have about lobster food trucks. So I'll just add that link in right here and make sure to leave this set to open in a new tab so readers don't lose their place in the article when they click another thing. Remember categories and tags back in lesson three. So like I said before, categories are helpful for organizing content. But here's an added bonus. They also create strong internal links throughout your site and make your SEO even stronger. So don't forget to group posts. Now let's start personalizing. I'm going to go ahead and customize my SEO settings and I could do this post by post, or I can apply the same SEO logic across all of my pages as kind of a one size fits all approach. So I'll show you how to do both. For individual posts, I'll go to each article's editor and Click SEO on the side here. This is where I can customize my URL slug and title and description for my post. So, okay, let's go in order. You can see right up at the top this is what it'll look like in Google Search. Under that we have the URL slug, and that's what comes at the end of your page's URL or domain extension. So anything that comes after truckitguide.com will be my URL slug. So here it's Maui Food Trucks. But whatever it is, it should be short and specific. Keep in mind, URLs need to be clean and easy to read to keep them search engine friendly. And it's really good to include a keyword for the URL slug. Make sure it has dashes between each word in the title so that it's quick and easy to read. And if I make any changes, my slug will automatically update in that Google Preview window. Okay, next I have my title tag. This is the headline you'll see when you'll search on Google. In most cases you can use your article title as your title tag followed by the name of my site, but you can always shorten it or make it something that you think would get more readers to click on it. Whatever your SEO title is, just make sure to keep it around 50 to 55 characters. Moving on to my meta description, this is what readers will see under your header on their Google searches. So it needs to draw people in and I want to aim for 160 characters or less. So I think what I have here is way too long. I'll shorten it to something a bit more compelling to get readers to click. And I also want to mention some of my keywords in here so that Google can highlight them in people's searches. Finally, I'll make sure the show this page in search results is toggled on and I'm all set. Moving on to the Social Share tab. You know when you post a link and it pre populates with the article's image and headline? That's what this is. The first section covers my settings for Facebook and Pinterest, and the second section is for Twitter and I think I'll shorten my title and description a little bit for social. Scrolling down to Twitter, I'll select the large card size to make sure that my post will really stand out on everyone's timelines. Now let's go to the Advanced tab. Your site comes with structured data by default, but if you want to edit that or customize it with meta tags you can head over to this advanced tab, but unless you're an SEO pro, I'd just stick with the default settings. So that's how I do it for an individual post. And it's super helpful if you have a specific plan for a specific post. But if you want to create a plan that isn't individualized like this, let's talk about another method. Now, if I'm looking to save time, then instead of going into each of my blog posts and customizing their SEO settings individually like I just did, I could just use the SEO Patterns tool to create one pattern or template that will update all all of my SEO settings on all of my post pages all at once. To get to SEO Patterns from my main dashboard, I'll go to Marketing and SEO, then SEO Tools, and then head over to SEO Patterns. Here I have preset patterns for different types of pages like blog posts and blog categories. Each page type includes basic tags that I can customize to fit what I need. I'll go ahead and create a pattern for all my blog posts. To do that, I'll go down to the page type and click Edit Pattern. From here, I can create patterns for search engines and social media, add my own structured data, and create advanced SEO tags. For now, I'll just create a pattern for search engines and social media. Under SEO Basics, I have the default settings for my title tag and meta description, just like I did when I did those individual posts. And all of the changes I make will automatically show up in this live preview. Let's start with my title tag. I'll click Add Variable to see what my options are. After my post title, I want my readers to see my site name. It's good for promoting my blog and my brand. And I'll add a dash to separate my title from my site name just to make it clearer. On search for my meta description, I definitely want to include a date so that anyone searching can see how fresh my content is. Two variables work for me here. Date published and date last modified. I'll go with date last modified. That'll give me the most recent date to go off of again. I'll add a dash to separate the date from my meta description so that it's easier for people to read. I can do all of this using the same process for my social settings for Facebook, Pinterest, and Twitter. All right onto the last important thing that I want to cover. And it's one of the most overlooked aspects of SEO. So let's talk alt text. Since Google can't actually see an image on a site. Alt text is a way to describe that image so that Google knows what it is. And it's super important when it comes to your SEO rankings. And it also just so happens to be a key for making your site accessible. Screen readers use alt text to tell readers who are differently abled what images are showing up on a page. And with that in mind, let's go back to the Maui Post and add some alt text in there. First we'll click on Settings. From here I can add a caption to my image to credit photographers or add sourcing. And just below that I can add my alt text. When it comes to alt text, I want it to be descriptive but not overwhelming. I don't need a paragraph's worth of prose describing the image. I just need a concise description under 100 characters that includes some of the essential keywords we talked about earlier. Also, no need to start all text with a picture of or an image of. Just get straight to what's in the photo. So for this image I'm going to go with the name of the food truck, the type of food and its location, and then I'm good to go. It's an easy step, but it's also super important for getting found on Google. Keep in mind that while SEO might not be the most fun part of writing a blog, it's still essential if you want to break through those 2 trillion Google searches a year. And be patient. Climbing up the search results means establishing yourself, and that takes time. There are 4.3 billion active social media users all over the world. That's more than half of the world's population, or 65% of the people over 13 years old. So with all of those users, how do you make sure that your blog content gets in front of the right ones and attracts the right attention? In this lesson, we'll cover just that. I'll walk you through how to identify the right social media platforms for your blog, create really eye catching posts, and then I'll go ahead and promote some of my own content on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram to show you how. Let's get started. If you want your blog to get noticed, and of course you do, then you need to have a strong presence on social media. And getting users engaged starts with engaging yourself. So here are some of my tips and best practices for getting started. First, find your blog's communities, and I'm not talking about starting your own just yet. See what's already out there. Join Facebook groups that cover similar topics. Follow Instagram Influencers in your market or search for Twitter hashtags that are popular in your niche. And don't just look around, actually engage. That means commenting on posts about your topic, retweeting content you like, and reaching out to other bloggers and readers in the community. It'll help you become part of the conversation and get noticed. You can also use social media as a way to stay updated on news and collect inspiration from your industry. So if everyone's talking about that trendy new Michelin star Mexican restaurant, maybe it's time for Truck it to post about that awesome taco truck I reviewed last month. Because the articles you post on social don't necessarily have to be your newest ones, they just have to fit the moment. Also remember, social media moves fast and topics and trends are always changing, so make sure to check in often with your social networks. Dedicate some time every week to engaging with your online communities and catching up with industry news. It'll help keep your posts relevant. So now that you're engaged with other posts, I'll walk you through how to create some of your own. A good strategy starts with identifying which social media platforms best match your content and your target audience. So let's start with Instagram. For posts that rely on graphics and photos, Instagram is your best bet and the largest demographic here is 25 to 34 year olds. That's the same for Facebook, where it's all about starting a conversation. So there you should focus on posts that foster some type of discussion. And Twitter, that platform works best for posts that are more timely, like if they're related to current events or news in your industry. But heads up here, before you go investing all of your time in Twitter, just make sure that it's the right fit for your target audience. Because of the 187 million active daily users on Twitter, 70% are male and only 30% are female. So that's something to consider. Also, don't worry, you don't have to just pick one platform. You can always change it up or do any combination. The main goal here is to just make sure that you cater each post to the platform that you're posting on. Don't just blanket post all three. For me, when I'm deciding where to post, it helps me to think, would I engage with the post myself and if I did, where would I do it? And when I'm deciding what to post, it doesn't always have to be my latest article. I can always refresh a headline or post an older article again if it fits the moment or has already performed well. So after doing some research, I've decided that I want to promote my trekit post to all three platforms. And here's how I'll do that. This next part is pretty simple, so I'll just quickly speed through it before we get to the good stuff. Right from my dashboard, take any post and click the three dots and choose Share Post. For now, I'll start with Twitter. Now, since I'm already logged into Twitter, everything is already right there. My link, my cover image, SEO title and description. And I can customize any of that right now as long as it's under 280 characters. But I actually think this is good as is. So I'll just hit tweet and it's the same process for Facebook. Just click on that icon and press share. But if you want to step it up a bit, there's a tool that can give your images that extra boost to really make them pop on social media timelines. Let me show you how to do that. Good looking, eye catching graphics are super important for attracting attention on social media. Actually, on average, posts with images get three times more engagement than posts without. And there's a tool called social posts built right into your site and I'm going to make one to walk you through it. So from the main dashboard, click marketing and SEO and then social posts. Here you'll find a ton of design and made templates and they're updated regularly to match seasons and trends. But I'll go ahead and start with a blank slate to show you everything you can do from the editor. I can do things like change up the font. I'll pick one that's bold and easily readable with some of those emojis that I used on my landing page for branding. Then I'll write new post here just to make it clear what I'm talking about. I'll write in read now also, and for this main text, I'll keep it short and I'll explain why. When you post on social, you only have a few milliseconds to grab someone's attention. Keeping your text short helps with that, and if you want to add more text, there's plenty of room to do that in the caption. Now that we have the text down, let's do some design. I'll change the background color to match the look of my blog so that everything seems cohesive and has the same branding and overall vibe. I want people to see this and immediately recognize it as a trucket post. Then I'll drop in some Graphic elements. I'll just click this button of text right under here, choose the image I want from my library, and add that right in. I'll also add my logo right at the top just to put some more of my branding in here. And then I'll add some shapes. Putting a box around Read now makes it look like a button so it shows people that there's an action that I want them to take from this post. This looks awesome, and it looks like a natural extension of my blog's branding. So all I have to do is click next, preview my post and download it. I can connect my Facebook page and share it right to my Facebook. But for Instagram, I'll have to download the post myself. So I'll choose my country and add my phone number. And there it is. A text with a link to the image sent right to my phone. Now I could save it to my photos and add it right to Instagram. And I just want to leave you with one last tip before I go. If you haven't done this yet, make a Facebook business page for your blog now. It's not just a good step for creating a community and sharing your latest post. It'll also help you monetize your blog and connect with other bloggers later on. So we've covered just a few of the most effective ways to promote your blog on social media. And you don't need to put all of your posts in front of all 4.3 billion of those active social media users. You just need to get them in front of the right ones. So be strategic and use all of your tools to your advantage. And remember, keep building those social communities. Gmail, Outlook, aol, Yahoo. Let's talk about email. You have it, I have it. In fact, 4 billion people around the world use email. No surprise that communicating over email is absolutely essential for running your blog and expanding your reach. So in this lesson, I'll teach you everything you need to know to run smart email campaigns. We'll go through how to connect with new subscribers using an automatic welcome email, highlight some of your top content with newsletters, and notify readers each time a new post drops. Let's get started. Remember back in lesson two when we talked about adding a subscription form to your blog? Your site automatically saves everyone who filled this out into her contact list. So I can go ahead and access that list now from my main dashboard. I'll click Contacts here and that'll bring me to this list, which includes subscribers, readers who reached out directly through the contact form, and even customers who brought check it swag and I can filter them. So for now I'll click Subscribe Status and then subscribe to see who actually signed up for my content and I'll tell you why. Email subscribers are 3 and a half times more likely to share your content than other readers. So I want to make sure that I take care of them and make sure that they are having a solid experience. So with that in mind, let's set up this email automation. As soon as readers subscribe, I want to send them an email right away while on top of mine. So I want my blog to automatically send a confirmation. I only have to set this up once and then the email is good to go. Anytime I get a new subscriber, I'll click CRM Tools over here and then automations Under Build Customer Relationships, there's a button that says Send thank you emails to visitors that submit. Select that and click Use this automation now when creating an automation, there are three main parts. The trigger, the action, and the timing. The trigger is what a user does on your site that sets everything in motion, like clicking subscribe. The action is the thing that happens once the trigger is activated, like sending an email, and the timing is how often or when you want this action to occur so naturally. Let's start with the trigger. Click on the dropdown and you'll see the trigger is already set to when visitor submits a form. Works for me, but you can choose whatever you want here for trigger every time. I'll set it to where it says Visitor submits a form. Next I can select which specific form triggers the automation. In this case, I want my email to link up to my subscription forms on both my homepage and my individual post pages. All right, the trigger is all set. So next up is the action. This is what I want the automation to actually do. Send emails to contacts pre selected. Great. But if you're looking for something else, there are a ton of other options here under here where it says customize your sender details. My from name and my reply to email are already filled in. And make sure to make this personal and add in your own name or your blogs. Because the average person receives 121 emails every day. That's more than 44,000 emails every year and one busy inbox. So half the battle is breaking through. All that noise and making it seem like it's actually from a person is really helpful for that. So with that in mind, let's head to create your email. Here you can customize the content, look and feel of the automated email so that it reflects your brand. Click Edit Template and first I'll edit my subject line. I'll go with something straightforward for now, like thanks for subscribing to Truckit so they'll know exactly why they're receiving this email, and then I can get a bit more creative later on when I send them email updates now that they recognize me. Since I asked for my subscriber's name on my contact form, I can add dynamic values and personalize each subject line with the reader's name, and that usually helps boost open rates when it comes to writing subject lines. A good benchmark to know your emails are working well is that your email should have a 20% open rate. Anything less means that your subject line wasn't compelling enough. And another fun fact, emails sent on Tuesday usually have a higher open rate than the rest of the week, and mornings always work best. Next up, the body of the email at the top of my email, I want to add my logo. So I'll click here to change the image and I'll pick my logo from my folder that's already in here, then add a link so that readers can click it and get right to my homepage. In my email header, I'll welcome readers and let them know that they're now on my subscriber list. I like saying they're on the list because it gives some sort of exclusivity to it. I'm going to go with Helvetica and 48 pixels so that it's readable everywhere and will work on any computer or phone. Then for my body text, you want this to be conversational and exciting, so thank people for subscribing and give them a taste of what they can expect to come. As a closer here, I want to include a Call to Action or CTA that pulls my readers back into my site somehow, because that's the main goal here, bringing them back to the page. It can be anything you want, but make it logical. Think about it for a second. They just signed on. What do your readers want to do now? Since my blog includes a store that lets them buy Trucket swag and we'll talk about that in lesson 14, maybe they'll want to celebrate their subscription, so I'll use that as my chance to create a call for action. And now that we have the text for the body of this email, it's time to spruce up the actual design as well. So I'll change out the fonts and the colors and I'll go with helvetica here again. And I can also change the background color to match the colors of my blog and keep that branding going and down in the footer. I'm also able to link out to my own social pages and encourage people to share on theirs. And I'll make sure that my website link actually goes back to my page. So I'll do that by clicking Clicking right here and adding a link right in. Okay, done. Now that we've drafted an automated email for new subscribers, I'll click Save and Publish to see what I've created. And I can't stress this next step. Test your emails out before you send them to readers on desktop and on mobile. Make sure it looks the way you want. Check for spelling mistakes. Test out links to assure they lead you where you want them to. This is their first impression of what it's like to be a subscriber on your blog, so you don't want to start it off with an embarrassing mistake. To do that, I'll hit Preview and Test Send Test Email and type in your own email address and then click Send. Now the final component for your automated email is timing. This automation is scheduled for immediately after trigger. Great, but if you want to delay this email, go to Choose a time to send this action and click Set custom time and choose whatever you want under limit frequency 2, I'll select once per contact and there my email automation is all set. Okay, now let's create a newsletter. To create an email newsletter, I'll have to go back to my main dashboard, click Marketing and SEO, and then Email marketing. A few templates will pop up right away, and they're usually related to upcoming holidays or trends. And I'll select this one and start editing. If this screen looks familiar, it's because the setup and the features for email marketing are exactly the same as what we just used for email automation. So again, for my main header here, I'll change it to something short and informative that clearly represents your brand so that people know it's you. This header may seem a little short, but the average person only spends 13.4 seconds on a single email before moving on. So it's really important to relay a lot of information pretty quickly, keeping this in mind as we head into the email subheader. I'll do something fun right up here and play off some seasonal trends to make sure that this is relevant no matter who's receiving the email and where they are in the country. As far as this picture, I can change it up, but I'm actually going to delete this to minimize the amount of scrolling my readers will have to do on their phones. And just to show how much you could change up this template and to minimize that scroll again, I'll delete this big chunk of text right here too. I'll put in a header for my first article here and a description. And remember as I do this, this is not your blog post. Don't go too long here. Just give them a taste of what's to come, enough to drive them back to your site for more. Because again, that's the goal. Then I'll change the image here, choosing one from my library. And down here I'll click on the CTA and I can change up the content to say read more. And then I'll click over design and I'll change the text color to black, the fill color to white, and the border color back to black. And while I'm at it, I want these lines to match too. So I'm going to go ahead and click one, click Design and change that to black too. So now I want to add another section here. So I'll click on Add then Columns and choose this layout and I'll drag this down under here under what I already written. Now you can repeat the same steps to add another section and change up anything else you want to. And once you're done up top, I have a desktop and mobile icon that lets me preview my email from both devices. And again, don't forget to check mobile. 80% of people navigate the Internet on their phones, and it can be easy to forget that when you're creating something on desktop or on a laptop. I'll click Send Test Email, add my personal address in the Send to field, and click Send. And after a quick check, I'll click Back to Editing Next and select which of my contacts I want to send this email to. I'll keep my toggle set to only show active contacts, and then under labels I'll select all and click Next. Finally, this is where I can edit my subject line, add a dynamic value like a subscriber's name, and check that my from name and reply to email are all correct. I want this email subject line to stand out in my reader's inboxes, so I think something like this could work. Then click Send now to blast out your email marketing campaign. Or you can also set the date and time for a future newsletter if you want to send it later. I'll click Schedule Email, select this coming Tuesday at 11am and then schedule Campaign. How often you send Your newsletter to subscribers is entirely up to you. But just keep in mind, more than once a week could annoy your subscribers, but less than once a month could cause them to forget about you entirely. But what about the times when you want to send an email that's not part of your monthly newsletter? Let's get into that. A final way to keep up your relationship with your readers is to send out an email every time you have a new post. Now, I only suggest this if you post periodically. If you're posting daily, skip this. It'll only annoy your readers to create an email marketing campaign for a single post, I'll select the post I want for my blog and choose Create email campaign. Just like my automation and newsletter, I can customize this email any way I want. What's different is that my email comes pre populated with my blog post title and preview text from the article itself. But same thing here. Once you're done, just check that everything is good to go and either send it or schedule it. That was a lot. So just review Today we ran through how to send welcome emails, monthly newsletters, and new content announcements. And each are essential for building your following, nurturing your communities, connecting with readers, and ultimately growing your blog. Let's say you write an article and you publish it to your blog. You obviously share it with your social media platforms and fill out your SEO info. But how far of a reach does your blog post really have? Now let's say you write that same exact post and then let's say that you send it to your blogger friend, they share it with their following, which also includes some bloggers who comment like and share it with their followers. And suddenly you get the point. This is why professional bloggers say that connecting with other bloggers isn't just important, it's the single most effective way to turn your blog into a successful brand. In this lesson, I'll walk you through some best practices and share some of my own methods for building relationships with other bloggers. And that'll help boost your credibility, reach and Search Engine ranking. Let's get started. It's all about who you know. And the same goes for your blog. So you want to surround yourself with the right people. And that's not just because I want you to make friends. It's because of something every blogger should know about, called eat. Eat is an essential part of how Google ranks websites on its search results. And it stands for expertise, authority, and trustworthiness. And it means you have to have all three of these things to rank high on Google search results and how important is it Important enough that Google mentions eat 135 times on its search quality guidelines. So, yeah, pretty important. Stuffing your post with keywords is no longer enough to break through the noise. Google's smarter than that and knows how to identify content that's worthy of readers time. So to really climb the search rankings, you you have to be an expert in your field. And cementing that authority means connecting with other bloggers that readers trust. It starts with finding your people. And by people, I mean bloggers in your field who are already proving their eat. I always start with a Google search and see which blogs are showing up as the top results. That's what I use as an indicator that these are the blogs that Google considers the most high quality and have already established their own EAT online, then poke around their sites, and you can also look at sources like Facebook, LinkedIn and Instagram until you find other bloggers in your niche that match your brand. And that's not just a good way to find new bloggers. It's also a really great way to find potential readers for your own blog. So while you're there, try following some of the people who follow these blogs, seeing which posts work best, and learning.