Branding

Color Theory and Color Meanings in Blog Design

Color Theory and Color Meanings in the blog design

Do you feel confused while working with colors? Well, you wouldn't after reading this blog post. Choosing the right colors in your creative work is quite confusing at times. Within this post, we will make this process easy and understand Color Theory and Color Meanings in the blog design.

The color theory basically deals with the correct use of the color combinations and their effect on the final product. It is a science behind the creative work which ensures that the right message and ambiance is being delivered in your product, design, or a blog for that matter.

Why color matters in the blog design?

  • We put a lot of effort into various activities like branding, designing, writing the blog post, and promoting it. If it couldn't make the right impression among your visitors, all your efforts will be wasted.

  • Additionally, your blog has a personality, an ideology that needs to be carried out so rightly. That helps in maintaining the brand reputation. When a new visitor visits your blog, you nearly have 8-10 seconds to impress him and sell your brand.

  • Color theory becomes an essential aspect of your blog design which ascertains the personality of your blog to be professional and serious. We definitely want our readers to have a pleasing experience with our blog. We don't want to mess up or confuse them by choosing colors that do not go well with the blog.

  • With the help of colors, you can convey a mood, create an environment, send a clear message, or grab the audience's attention. The right colors help us build the connection and fill up that gap by creating the appropriate atmosphere.

  • Since color affects your mood, creates a pleasing ambiance, and grabs the audience's attention, you should use colors that make your visitors relaxed, happy, and comfortable. Hence it becomes necessary to understand the color theory and science behind it.

Let's understand the colors first and how they can affect your blog.

The color wheel and the color categories

Science says that human eyes can see nearly 7 million colors and women can see even more colors as their brain works and perceive colors differently. Though worry not, neither I have the capacity to explain all these colors nor wish to do so! 😁
However, we will have a look at the color wheel, will try to understand color categories and see how they work with each other.

Color wheel primary, secondary, tertiary colors

We have labeled these colors as primary colors, secondary colors, and tertiary colors in the above color wheel.

i. The primary colors: Red, Yellow, and Blue

Red, yellow, and blue are the primary colors in traditional color theory. These are named as primary colors as these colors cannot be created by mixing other colors.

ii. The secondary colors: Green, Orange, and Purple

These are the colors which are made by mixing two primary colors. The group secondary colors include Green which can be produced by mixing Yellow and Blue, Orange by mixing Yellow and Red, and our third color Purple by mixing Red and Blue.

iii. The tertiary colors: Yellow-Green, Blue-Green, Blue-Purple, Red-Purple, Red-Orange, Yellow-Orange

The third group tertiary is made by mixing one primary color and one secondary color. There are six colors named above which come under this category.

So, that was about major color groups. Furthermore, these colors can be mixed with each other in various combinations and millions of colors can be produced.

These colors are also classified into three major categories based on the effect they produce on the human mind. These groups are warm, cool, and neutral colors. Let's have a look at each group.


i. Warm colors

All hues of red, yellow, and orange fall into this category. Warm colors are striking and bold in nature. Warm colors represent warmth and hence the name. People often associate them with sun, fire, and energy.

ii. Cool colors

Cool colors, on the other hand, induce us the feeling of calmness and soothing. Cool colors include hues of blue, green, and purple. Water, sky, and plants remind us of the cool colors.

iii. Neutral colors

Neutral colors as the name suggests doesn't fall into the warm nor the cool category. Hence these colors are not included on the color wheel.

All hues of white, black, and grey are counted into neutral colors. They serve a very useful purpose in designing and used in combination with accent colors (cool and warm colors) which in all cases complement the accent colors being used.

What colors convey and which brands use it?

Blue

Blue peacock

Blue is the color of harmony. The blue color symbolizes calmness, peace, and trust. It is the most favorite color among people. Most of the large companies use blue in their branding.

From a psychological perspective, the blue color is more trustworthy, reliable, and secure. It creates a soothing effect. It can promote the feeling of calmness and harmony.

The blue color can be used to promote manly products, products associated with cleanliness, air and sky, water and see.

Companies that use blue in their branding are:
  • Facebook
  • General Electric
  • IBM
  • Intel
  • Nokia

Purple

Purple Flower

The purple color symbolizes royalty, spirituality, magic, mystery. The Roman magistrates and Egyptian kings used to wear purple color and hence it is seen as a royal color.

There is a story behind why this color is seen as a royal color. In the olden days, there weren't many resources available to create colors, unlike these days. Whatever available in nature was used for dying clothes. The purple is scarcely available in nature and hence dying fabric with this color was costly and required too much effort. For this reason, only the royal and wealthy could afford purple clothes. That is how purple became the color of royalty.

This color goes well in feminine designs and to give products a royal touch.
Companies that use purple in their branding are:
  • Hallmark
  • Cadbury
  • BenQ
  • Nivea
  • Yahoo

Red

Red Flower

Red is associated with love, danger, anger, violence, desire, prosperity, happiness, and strength. Red is also a religious color.

Red goes well with the brand where quick attention and decision are needed. It can also be used to feature an energetic, youthful, and loud approach. It is used for fire brigade vans and in signal lights to ring the alarm in your mind after seeing it.

It is a very intense color and has the highest wavelength. It is a highly visible color and often used where the quick attention of people is required. Hence it is a good color for "Buy Now" and "Click Here" buttons, and advertising banners.

Companies that use red in their branding are:

  • Coca-Cola
  • Netflix
  • Virgin
  • Kwality Wall's
  • Heinz

Orange

Orange pumpkin

Orange is connected with warmth, energy, excitement, sunshine, enthusiasm, encouragement, good health, and happiness.

Orange is a very attention-grabbing and energetic color. It gives you emotional strength in tough times. It also encourages stimulating a two-way conversation. As we see that it is a very energetic, exciting, enthusiastic color, hence brings people to think together and have a conversation.

It also helps in stimulating the appetite. Hence, many restaurants are decorated in orange color. It helps their customer engage in deeper conversation, increase their appetite, have a good time, resultantly consume more drinks and food.

This color is good for promoting food products and toys. It can be used to highlight and grab the audience's attention quickly.

Companies that use orange in their branding are:

  • Blogger
  • VLC
  • Nickelodeon
  • JBL
  • Fanta

Yellow

yellow lemons

Yellow color represents sunshine, warmth, happiness, joy, optimism, and on negative side cowardliness. Yellow is attention-grabbing color. It helps us study, focus, and remember information.

Yellow is the most striking color. It can be seen from a long distance when used in combination with black. For the same reason, it used for school buses, taxis, and traffic signals.
Alike orange, yellow is also used for food products. It is an attention-grabbing color and children get more attracted to yellow. Hence it is used in children's products and advertisements.

Companies that use yellow in their branding are:

  • Nikon
  • Sprint
  • Maggi
  • Lipton
  • DHL

Green

Green plants

The earthly color green represents nature, health, safety, money, fertility, and growth. It is said that green color has healing powers. This color is largely found in nature. Hence, it is also often associated with prosperity.

It is often used in medical products. The dark green color is often associated with the military, currency notes, and medical products.

Companies that use green in their branding are:

  • BP
  • Android
  • Animal Planet
  • Starbucks Coffee
  • Acer

Black

black zebra

Black is the darkest color. It is associated with death, fear, mystery, evil, witches, night, and magic. On the positive side, it is connected with style, power, and seriousness.

It is also used to denote negativity, empty and unknown areas.  It is mostly used in printings books, newspapers, and documents.

Companies that use black in their branding are:

  • Nike
  • Adidas
  • Gillette
  • Disney
  • Sony

White

White swan

White represents light, purity, goodness, positivity, cleanliness, peace, and faith.

White represents cleanliness and often used in design to equal the balance with other colors. It is the color of perfection as it is considered to be purest and complete color.

It can be used to promote dairy products and medical products.

Companies that use white in their branding are:

Almost all brands use white by default in their branding colors.

Conclusion

We learned that color theory is about using the right combinations of the colors in your design. We can use perfect colors in the design by understanding the science of the colors. Hence we understood the basic color palette.

We had a look at the color wheel and how colors are categories into the primary, secondary and tertiary categories based on their evolution. Furthermore, we understood how these colors are categories into warm and cool categories. We also had a look at neutral colors.

To understand the better application of the colors we understood what each color has to say, their meaning, and where you can use them.

So, next time whenever you are designing or playing around the colors, you know which color to pick for your design/ blog. We will talk more about colors but in the next post. If you have liked this post, do share it with your friends. Happy designing!😊
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Branding

How to Create a Strong Brand Identity for a Blog

How to Create a Strong Brand Identity for a Blog

Like Wikipedia says, a brand is a name, term, design, symbol, or other feature that distinguishes an organization or product from its rivals. Within this blog post, we'll see what is brand, branding, and how to create a brand identity for your blog.

Brand
When we talk about a brand, a couple of things come to mind, like logo design, it's business activities, tagline, products, and etc. to name a few. A brand is basically a unique identity that helps your readers or customers recognize your business among your competitors. In simple words, it is an emotional connection between you as a business and your customers.

Branding
When we dig down further in this context, a term branding comes into the picture. The process which involves creating a strong and positive identity of your brand in the mind of the customer is called branding.

Branding involves creating your logo, defining mission statement, laying out rules and regulations to keep consistency in your marketing communications, fonts, and color themes.

Brand Identity
Going even further, brand identity becomes a result of all the efforts taken by the company to promote the brand to the customer as a single entity

Why branding for your blog is necessary?

Why branding for your blog is necessary?

  • Impression: The right branding efforts makes the first impression impactful in the mind of visitors. It is always good to have a positive impression among your readers when they visit your blog.
  • Seriousness: It makes you look serious in the line of business. We all bloggers always work in collaboration with each other as well as with our readers. We can not let our blog look casual anytime. 
  • Unique Identity: Branding makes your identity unique. It makes your readers aware of your presence. It establishes a connection between the blog and the blog readers. Your readers will start to recognize your blog as often they visit and spread the word about your presence through the influential channels.
  • Helps you Grow: Branding helps your blog grow by building authority. Branding builds a positive image. Hence, building trust and personal attachment with readers. Ultimately, helping your blog grow.
  • Helps you sell: Branding helps in building authority as discussed above. A high authority blog makes selling products or services easy. Hence generating better revenue.

To take blogging ambition to the commercial level, the branding of the blog is very much necessary. Branding helps to create an impactful image for your blog. Within this post, we will have a look at all the factors that help to build a strong brand identity for a blog.

In a brand development process, we transform a couple of blog elements. We set certain rules and guidelines for marketing communications. We make sure that every communication that is taking place follows these rules and our blog is as per these standards.

Let's have a closer look at the elements which ascertain an impressive look of the blog and builds a professional brand image.

1. The blog name

The first and foremost factor that comes to our list while creating the brand identity is the blog name. Finding a unique blog name is a complex task. Since there is a huge competition and you may not get the desired name so easily.

Though we will ensure adhering to below points while deciding the blog name:

  • A blog name should be unique and original.
  • It should be easy to remember.
  • It shouldn't be taken by anyone else before. 
  • It should be descriptive enough to get understood by everyone.
  • Should have a connection with your niche.

All these points need to be taken into consideration while deciding the blog name. Also, you need to be careful, as once chosen the blog name, it is going to stick around with the blog for forever.

2. Choosing the blog address

A blog address or a domain name plays a vital role in building your blog identity. It should be unique and not confuse your readers with your competitors. Here is the list of other factors that need to be considered while registering a domain name:

  • It should be short and easy to remember.
  • A blog address should be easy to type. Should avoid confusing spellings.
  • Include your keywords in your blog address
  • Try to get a .com extension or an extension that best suits your niche.
Registering the desired blog address is really a difficult task. All creative blog names are already taken. Hence do quick research before designing a blog logo and registering the address. 

3. Designing the blog logo

The next step is to design a creative logo that can be used in marketing communications and for the blog as a face image. Look at it as a face photo with which all people will associate. Now, the logo can be designed in three ways. Those are:

i. Logo with typography: This type of logo contains pure typographic work that represents your brand name. Google, Cadbury, CocaCola are few examples who follow this type of logo style.
Logos with typography

ii. Logo with a symbol: Some brands use a symbol to represent their brand. A single icon or a graphical object is used as a logo that gives a clear picture of the brand. Apple, Mercedes, Twitter, Playboy are some brands that use this type of logos and easily recognizable.
Logos with a symbol

iii. A logo with mixed elements: You will find many brands with this type of logo. So in this category, we use both, i.e. text and symbol to design the logo. A new blog should have this type of logo. Once you have enough exposure you can go for the logotype that we discussed in the second category. Blogging Hacks has this style of logo. Some popular brands that follow this type of logo style are BMW, AT&T, Puma, so on, and so forth.
logos with mixed elements

(Note*: We do not have any kind of affiliation, connection with the brands listed in this post. These are purely to list out the logo categories and information purposes).

Best practices for logo designing:

  • Keep originality in the logo.
  • Make sure it has a connection with the blog and the audience.
  • It should tell the brand story.
  • The logo should look good in the brand colors, black and pure white color, small and large size.

4. Write a catchy tagline

A blog tagline is the key piece of the information that helps your readers understand what is your blog about. It could also define the long-term goal of your blog.

Some of the popular taglines used by famous brands are:
McDonald's – I'm Lovin' It 
Imperial Blue – Men will be men
KFC – Finger-Lickin' Good
Kit Kat – Have a break, have a kit kat

A tagline could be very helpful to a new visitor visiting the blog for the first time and has no idea about the content on your blog. It helps readers understand the blog niche and the objective of the blog. A tagline gives you an opportunity to build an image before a user starts reading the blog.

A catchy tagline helps to build brand identity in the mind of the readers. Hence, consider below tips while writing a tagline:

  • It should contain a positive message. 
  • It should be written in the active voice rather than passive voice. 
  • Use strong words to make it impressive.
  • Keep it concise.

5. Choosing the color palette

There is a lot to talk about the color theory and simply can not be covered within this point. Colors have a connection with psychology. Colors can convey emotions, feelings. For eg., the red represents anger, love, or glory, blue represents peace, black represents silence.

You may read the blog post on Understanding Color Theory and Meaning of the Colors to understand which colors best relate to your blog niche and the title. List down 6 different colors excluding black and white (are added by default in every color palette) which could be used in different marketing communication and on the blog.

One or two colors from the color palette should be chosen as your primary colors and these can be used in the logo, blog, and every marketing communication.

Your blog, social media channels, emails, and every marketing communication should follow these colors only. It creates a strong brand image and attracts your audience.

6. Selecting fonts for your blog

Now there is one principal rule to follow. The font used in designing the logo should not be used in other text elements of your blog. This helps to keep your blog logo prominent rather than getting it lost in the rest of the texts on the blog.

The second thing is that you will have to define different types of fonts that can be used in various text elements on the blog. For eg., different types of headings, quoted, or emphasized text, normal body text, attributions, etc.

While we choose different font styles and typefaces for the blog, one thing needs to remember is that we should keep consistency in using these fonts throughout all the marketing communication, blog, and collateral documents.

Know the different types of fonts and choose the right type of font for your blog:

  • Serif: This type of fonts has curvy lines at the end-points of the letters. These are classic and traditional fonts and generally used in publications of the books and newspapers. Eg., Times New Roman, etc.
  • Sans-serif: These fonts don't have the curvy lines at the end-points. Instead, each letter is represented in a clear sharp shape. These are easier to read and used in the blogs, and other digital collaterals. Eg., Arial, Calibri, Raleway, etc.
  • Script: This type of fonts have cursive and connected letters. They generally follow a calligraphic style and are used where the extra emphasis is needed. Eg., Great Vibes.
  • Strong fonts: These types of fonts are generally attention-grabbing and have a bold appearance. They can be used in headlines to attract readers' attention. Eg., Impact


7. Selecting and customizing a theme

One of the tedious job in brand building exercise is to select and customize a blog theme. A lot many tiny details have to be taken care of while customizing a blog theme.

Since it is nearly impossible to find a theme that offers all the features you desire for your blog. Hence, find a theme that closely matches your requirements.

So we will find a theme that has an outline and structure we wish to apply to a blog. Be sure about using 2 or 3 columns layout, having a responsive and mobile-friendly template. Now, to convey a uniformity throughout the blog, a couple of things you will have to update in the selected theme.

  • The first and foremost thing is selecting the font. It includes all settings for mentioning font-family, different font sizes for headings and paragraph text, list items, links and etc.
  • The next thing is to include your brand colors in your theme.
  • Add your blog logo and favicon in your theme.
  • Define a format for picture elements and the iconography

8. Sticking with the niche

We should stay focused on a particular niche rather than touching a variety of niches. We will observe what your niche audience wants from the blog and work towards it to meet the desired goal. We will try to provide a better solution to your audience which is not done by your competitors.

Working in a specific niche helps to build a stronger brand image. A stronger image could help to become a leader in the chosen segment and gives vigorous competition to your business rivals.

There is a term is called niche marketing. Niche marketing involves putting your marketing efforts towards a specific segment and targeting a specific group of audience. Niche marketing is an effective tool to create a strong brand identity.

9. Building the common language 

A common language is always easy to understand and helps to connects with the people. A personalized touch in your writing helps to connect, people with the brand even more closely. It helps to develop a personal relationship with the brand.

Depending upon the niche and the audience type, we will use or restrict the use of technical words and jargon in our writing. Including readers in the story, and making them part of it is another strategy to keep them engaged.

Take an example of Google, nowadays, we do not search for the information, we Google it. That level of branding needs to be incorporated into our language.

10. Consistency in all collateral assets

All big brands are easily recognizable through their slightest presence over any medium. Many times you might have recognized a brand featured in a TV commercial without watching that ad completely.

Ever wonder how this happens? The answer is consistency. Their content looks so exclusive from the rest of the brands and easy to recognize. Consistency helps to build awareness, trust, and loyalty with your readers. Blogs changing their appearance often, fail to build a strong brand identity.

Streamline the brand guidelines concerning logo usage, fonts, color, messaging, photo, and iconography. Keep them consistent in all channels of communication. Document the guidelines for future references and in case you need to share them with anyone else.

With that point, our list of creating a strong brand identity for your blog has come to end. Let's have look at what we discussed in this post.

Conclusion:

We had a look at the terms brand (a unique identity), branding (the process of creating the brand image), and brand identity (the final image positive or negative after all efforts).

We understood branding helps to make our blog presence impactful, brings seriousness, creates a unique image, helps the blog grow, and sell your services.

We had look at all aspects that help to build a strong brand identity. It includes creating and shaping a personality for your blog. We follow certain rules to enrich its unique personality and make it impactful.

I hope you had a good reading experience. I would like to know from your end what practices do you follow on the blog and communication channels to make your brand identity stronger? Let me know through your comments and do not forget to give it a share. With love! 💗
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SEO

Is Quora a New Source to Drive Traffic to Your Blog

How to drive traffic from Quora to your blog

Quora is basically a question-answer site where a user can ask questions and get answers from other users. Most internet users must be acquainted with this website at least once. Within this post, we will explore how Quora could become a new source to drive traffic to your blog.

To understand how Quora is a crucial part of this strategic approach, observe Google search results for every query you make on Google. You will find at least one Quora link in the first 10 results. Realize the potential, the amount of traffic it could draw to your blog. Quora has a vast list of questions and answers to satisfy your quest for traffic.

You will find many users giving prolonged answers covering substantial information in their answer's write-up. This is nothing but the part of a strategic approach to drive traffic to their blog from Quora.

Is that so easy to drive traffic from Quora? No, it isn't. It takes a lot of precision in your opinion, proactiveness, authority on topics, and loads of patience. But then don't get disappointed. We are here to help each other, aren't we?

So, what does it takes to have that authority, proactiveness, and precision over the topic? We'll have to look at it step by step.

Quora has a tremendous amount of traffic, precisely over 300 million monthly unique visitors (2018 statistics), as stated by Ryan Browne, VP of Revenue at Quora.

Such massive traffic which is ever-growing and not utilized properly. Imagine if you could drive traffic even a thousand users to your blog. Quora traffic could give results in a lesser time span as compared to SEO and it is a sustainable source.

Let's have a look at the strategic approach to drive traffic from Quora.

1. The Authority - Setting up a profile

 Why it is necessary to set up a profile? You could straight away write pleasant, lengthy answers and get to enjoy that traffic, isn't it? But it is necessary to set up your profile before you do so.

A well-written profile explains your reader who you are, what are your skills and expertise.

A profile picture, with your bio, and expertise could help you to establish authorship among your readers. Users could relate and will have reasons to trust you.

Additionally, you can include your blog link and social media links in your profile. Your reader might want you to follow you on social media too.

2. Choosing topics for your questions

The next step after creating a readers-ready profile is choosing a topic for your questions. There could be multiple topics for answering questions. The only factor you should consider while answering the questions is that you have to be 100% perfect.

Now, our ultimate goal is to drive traffic from Quora to your blog. Hence on Quora, we will stick with the topics that are related to our blog.

In my case, I can choose to answer questions that are related to starting a blog, monetizing options, free resources for blogging, SEO, and so on. You can choose topics that are related to your blog.

On a home of the Quora, you can edit and add topics relating to your niche in the left panel.

3. Finding the right questions

The most crucial part of this strategy is to find the right questions. Questions with a high number of answers and followers should be your prime destination.

Yet, you should avoid the most highly popular questions unless you have something extra to contribute which is not done by anyone else. Highly popular questions are already answered and these are extremely competitive. There is the least chance you could derive something from there.

The questions which are posted recently and not older than a week, questions with answers ranging from 20-50, and followers more than 20 should be your prime spot.

More the followers better will be the opportunity to get highlighted. Since when you post an answer on a question with the high number of followers, those many followers get notified.

4. Long answers over the short answers

Well, this is a bit tricky part and you will have to get the best of both worlds. Take care of a few small points here and you are sorted.

  • Write well descriptive and long answers.  However, your answer should not reveal everything, at the same time a reader should feel valued while reading your answer.
  • Avoid using long paragraphs. Instead, break your answer in small chunks of lines, making a paragraph of not more than 4 lines.
  • You can arrange your answer in points. Use formatting a little to make words bold, make a number list, or bullets to list out the points.

A user should have a pleasant experience while reading your answer. The user interface and everything else cannot be managed by the contributor. Though, formatting the answer could make a little difference.

5. Include pictures in your answers

You all know that a picture could convey a thousand words. Pictures grab the attention of the readers than normal textual answers. Hence for better impact use images in your answers.

Including infographics in your answers is a good idea. I often do that. Statistical and even categorical data can be converted into an infographic. This looks really amazing and catchy as compared to other plain answers.

However, any random pics won't add value in your post. You should be able to find relevant images or at least relate images being used in your answer to the story being conveyed.

6. A final step, adding links

Once you are done answering the question and happy with your writeup, the final step is to include a link to your blog post.

As discussed in point #4, we do not reveal complete information and keep some information on our blog for readers to follow. So that they find a need to click on the link and read the rest of the information on your blog.

Write a good call to action while placing a link in your answer. A reader should be convinced completely to follow the link and visit your blog.

There is another approach. You may give full information to the reader and place several links to your blog (don't spam with so many links, 4-5 links are fine) relevant to the topic of the question being asked.

An SEO technique could be applied here while adding links. You may use important keywords for the anchor text so that your keyword ranking, PA, and DA have a benefit out of it.

7. Review before you post

It's a good practice to review your write-up before you publish it online. Verify your answer for correctness, language, etc. See if you have covered all the points asked in the question.

Apart from that, you should correct spelling mistakes, ensure there are no missing words, and fix grammar mistakes if any.

Poorly written answers may create a bad impression and may convey a lack of seriousness. Your answer should have the highest level of precision.

8: Proactiveness and regularity

Once you are familiar with how Quora works, the next step is to apply that strategic approach proactively. Answering one or two questions wouldn't take you anywhere.

To get regular traffic from Quora in a greater number, you will have to answer more and more questions as possible. Your answers on Quora will definitely become a new source to drive traffic to your blog.

Proactiveness and regularity are the key factors that make this strategy practically successful.

Conclusion

There are a variety of options one could drive traffic to their blog. We have listed a few amazing traffic sources for a new blog in the post How to Get Traffic to Your New Blog. To me, Facebook and Google are the prime traffic sources and work well for my blog.

Writing answers on the Quora is a crucial part of the strategic approach. Many bloggers use Quora to drive traffic to their blog and hence there are prolonged answers with the links.

Quora has huge traffic, in millions per month. We can drive some of this traffic from Quora and get benefited. To do so we need authority, proactiveness, and precision in our answers.

We set up a profile to build the authorship and trust among users. Later we define our domain by selecting the right topics which are relevant to your blog.

Furthermore, we find questions that have the potential to drive traffic to your blog. We looked at writing descriptive answers and restraining an urge to follow your blog.

Including pictures in your answer may put life into a text-heavy answer. Adding contextual links in your answer would make the user follow the link.

Finally, before posting your answers on Quora, it should be checked for correctness. In order to work your Quora strategy effectively, you will have to work on it proactively and regularly.

Do not spam your answers with too many links or affiliate links. The ultimate motive should be to route Quora traffic to your blog in search of the information.

I always urge readers to comment on the blog post. As it encourages and helps me write more and more blog posts. Please let me know through comments if you liked this post. Give it a share on Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn.
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SEO

How Internal Links can Boost your Ranking

How Internal links can boost your ranking

Internal links play a significant role in link building exercise. Within this post, we will have a look at what is internal linking and how internal links can boost your ranking.

So, what are internal links?

Links which points to the links within the same website are called internal links. In other words, any links on a particular domain (mysite.com/home-page.html) pointing to another link (mysite.com/contact-us.html) on the same domain are the internal links of that domain.

The links placed within the sidebar, top menu bars, footer and even in breadcrumbs are all examples of the internal links. These links help Google understand the hierarchical structure of your blog. They make navigation and access to your blog easy and faster.

However, links placed within the actual content part of your blog serve a more meaningful purpose. In the following story, we will see how these internal links can boost your ranking and Page Authority (PA) of your blog post.

Let's have a look at benefits offered by internal linking to boost your blog SEO.

Benefits of the internal linking

Benefits of Internal linking

1. Internal links can boost PA of non-performing pages

Let's understand what is PA first. Page Authority is the metric which is developed by Moz to foretell how well a specific page will perform in search engine ranking. It uses score 0-100 to rate the performance of a web page. 0 being the low and 100 being the higher chance to rank in SERP.

Naturally, your blog will have few blog posts with higher PA and few with the low PA. Internal links can help to distribute this page authority with the rest of the pages with low PA.

We can use the popularity of a particular blog post which drives more traffic to your website to promote other blog articles on your blog. This will boost the PA of all pages on the site.

This concept of passing PA from one link to another is called "Link Juice" or "Link Equity". Though while passing link juice through internal links, it should be ensured that there is a contextual reference to the topic. This way the user will stay focused on the topic, be more engaged with the site and will reduce the bounce rate of the site.

2. Internal linking increases user engagement

One of the main reason behind the effective working of the internal links is that they are context based.

As internal links tend to stick with the topic, a user is more likely to explore more content on the site. Internal links not only provide further reading options to readers but also reduces bounce rates.

Most of the visitors don't pay attention to the links placed within sidebars, menu bars or even related links section.

However, the righteous use of internal linking within the content-oriented blog post will ensure your visitors to click around, spend more time reading other articles and go deeper in the site.

Since internal links are more co-relevant to the topic, the user is more like to persuade them. For instance, we are discussing how internal links can boost the ranking of your blog. If I share a link to the post on 13 On-Page SEO techniques for better ranking, then there are good chances to get it clicked than the links in the navigational bar. 

3. Internal links define site structure

Internal links, be it navigational links, menu-bar links or footer links helps Google understand the structure of your site. Along with the structure, they also establish the hierarchy of the site. It let Google understand which are high authority blog posts from the rest of the blog posts.

Having that said, it is not possible to add all links in navigation or menu bars. The contextual links placed within the blog post can also serve this purpose. Besides that, there are several benefits of placing internal links within the blog post.

4. Improves ranking for certain keywords

Hyperlinks, whether they are the internal or external help to improve the ranking of the keywords. Google gives extra weight to the anchor text being used in the link. Hence, internal links give us a chance to promote the keywords from your blog.

With the help of internal links, the author can use important keywords to tell a search engine that, these keywords convey special meaning for the blog post being hyperlinked. Have a look at below hyperlink:

Off-Page SEO Techniques

I have purposely used Off-Page SEO Techniques keyword to add extra weight and associate these keywords with the blog post on off-page SEO techniques.

When Google crawler crawls your web pages, it associates these keywords used in anchor text with the hyperlinked blog posts. Thus and so, allowing blog author to improve the ranking of the keywords.

The author does not have a choice to choose the keywords being used in the external link. However, in an internal link, all important keywords, which matters for your blog can be used in well established contextual writing.

Best practices for adding internal links:

1. Add internal links in the flow of the content: 
Generally, we add links to several articles in the sidebar and menu sections for easy site navigation. However, if you add internal links within the flow of the content, it would be more beneficial from the SEO perspective. Since there are more chances a user could notice it and possibly follow it for further reading.

2. Do not place irrelevant links until it's necessary: Internal links should be added only to contextual places. Adding irrelevant links wouldn't please your readers as well as Google.

3. Add links on popular pages linking it to non-performing pages: Use your popular blog posts to link other important posts on your blog. Your highly ranked blog posts can help to distribute link juice across your blog. This will help increase the ranking of the non-popular web pages.

4. Use targeted keywords in anchor text: Author can use targeted keywords to establish a connection between the post and keywords being used in the anchor text. Google will come to know that your blog post hosts information relating to the keywords.

5. Use alternate keywords in anchor text for the same link: A particular blog post can be linked through the variety of the linking text. Use a combination of alternative keywords to link to your blog post.

6. Link ratio: A linking ratio should be maintained between the internal links and external links. Also, there should be a limitation on the number of links being used as to the length of the overall blog post.

Conclusion:

We had a look at what is internal linking. We discussed the benefits of internal linking and how internal links can boost your blog ranking.

Internal links can help to boost PA of non-performing pages by linking them to popular pages. Internal links also increase user engagement resulting in a lower bounce rate and hence increasing the conversion rate and revenue.

Internal links help to define the site structure and hierarchy of the web pages. It also helps to improve the ranking of certain keywords used in the anchor text.

Furthermore, we had a look at the best practices for adding internal links to boost your blog ranking.

Please share what is your story on the topic. Also, share this blog post on your Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, and Instagram.
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Monetizing

Top 5 Advertising Programs to Earn Money from Your Blog

Top 5 Advertising Programs to Earn Money from

In our last post, we talked about monetizing a blog and earning money through various channels. Placing relevant ads in the content and sidebar is one of the easiest and traditional way of monetizing your blog. In this post, we are going to discuss the top 5 advertising programs we can use on blog to earn money from.

If your blog has a readership in greater extent these advertising programs will start giving you earnings in no time. Though if your blog doesn't have visitors in greater volume, no need to worry about. Just keep on publishing content on a regular basis which readers would like to read. Little drops of water make a mighty ocean.

Eventually, readers would come to your blog and your advertising program will be successful. This was the story with my first blog. With no visitors to increased visitors which in return made my dream of earning money from my blog possible.

So without talking much further let's have a look at some of the top 5 advertising programs widely known in the blogging sphere:

1. AdSense


It was so exciting when my first AdSense cheque was delivered to my address. Back then there was no Facebook, but I do remember that I posted my second cheque on my Facebook account though.  Later on, I had this opportunity to see the Adsense cheque a couple of more times.

Google's AdSense Program was launched in March 2003 and ranks top in our top 5 advertising programs. Earlier it was named as Content Targeting Advertising. In the current era, it is so widely known than any other advertising programs and ranked #1. Every new blogger who thinks of putting ads on a blog definitely tries their luck with the AdSense program.

Google AdSense is a CPC (Cost Per Click) based advertising program. Google pays to the blog owner when a blog visitor clicks on the ads. The ad content is entirely managed by Google and is relevant to the blog content most of the times(referred to as contextual ads).

The blog owner just has to place the HTML code provided by AdSense into the appropriate places on the blog in order to display those ads.

2. Media.net

Media.net is the #2 largest contextual advertising platform in the world in terms of revenue. They are the top #5 largest ad tech company in terms of market cap. With 800+ employees, offices in many countries and clients list ranging from Forbes, Meredith, MSN, Yahoo, Reuters to NY Daily News and many more.

The Media.net advertising program is easy to register and doesn't require waiting to get your account approved. There is no restriction on getting minimum traffic to your blog to start earning money from. It offers CPC based ads for publishers to display on their blog.

The minimum payout threshold is $100 and can be redeemed by Wire transfer or PayPal account.

3. Amazon CPM ads

Amazon CPM ads is a very good alternative to Google AdSense program. AdSense account has a longer approval process. Whereas Amazon CPM ads can be set-up in no time with the Amazon Affiliate program. Below is an example of Amazon CPM ad:



Amazon CMP ads are based on CPM (Cost per thousand) method. Meaning you get a certain amount of money on displaying a thousand impressions of an ad. Irrespective of those ads are clicked or not.

Amazon is a great brand in itself to trust. Amazon CPM offers a monthly payout option. It lets you display ads from other networks we are discussing here in case there are no ads to display from Amazon.

4. Propeller ads

Propeller ads offer CPA(Cost Per Action), CPI(Cost Per Install), CPL(Cost Per Lead) and CPM based ads. It lets you optimize your ads to reach your maximal earning potential.

As they say on their website, Propeller ads have 700 million ad impressions on a daily basis, 100 thousand websites in their ad network, 4600 ad campaigns, and 6000 active publishers.

You can display the web, mobile, and even video ads on your website. Propeller ads offer multiple payout options so the publisher does not have to wait for a long period to get paid. Propeller ads offer real-time statistics to understand the best-earning source and which ads or web pages drive more income to the publisher.

PropellerAds

5. Chitika

Last but not least in our top 5 advertising programs is Chitika, another renowned name when it comes to deciding on a qualitative advertising program for publishers to earn money from. It was founded in 2003 and have won many awards for providing best advertising solutions in the industry.

Chitika displays ads based on blog content. They claim to have a network of more than 350,000 quality publishers. They serve around 4 billion targeted ads per month and have access to top-tier advertising partners like Yahoo, SuperMedia, and HomeAdvisor.

The signup procedure is very easy and requires no waiting time to get your account activated. The payout options are amazing. A minimum $10 can be redeemed by PayPal account or you can wait for it to reach $50 and get paid by cheque.


Conclusion:

We discussed the top 5 advertising programs to earn money from, on your blog. So if any particular program doesn't work on your blog, then you know that there are several alternatives to try.

These advertising programs are well renowned and can earn revenue irrespective of whether you are new to the blogging sphere or your blog has low or high volume traffic.

Try these advertising programs in conjunction with one another, experiment a little and see what works best for you. In order to earn better revenue, you'll have to build more traffic to your blog. More visitors implies more the chances of earning revenue through advertising channels. The key to success here is the quality content and regularity.

With that tip, I'll take your adieu. In our next article, we will discuss some of the top affiliate programs we could join and make money from them. Please like, share and comment if you like this blog post. Thanks! 👀
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HTML

How to Make Money by Blogging

How to Make Money by Blogging

Thousands of bloggers make money online by blogging and it's a hot topic of discussions today. We all will agree that today most of the new bloggers start a blog with the prime intention of making money after hearing success stories of other bloggers. But the question remains unanswered. How to make money by blogging?

Monetizing your blog through ad channels, referral programs, and affiliate programs are some of the ways to make money online. In this blog post, we will see a few more ways of making money by blogging. But, is that so easy? No, it isn't.

Blog traffic and monetization

In today's time if and only if our blog has a significant amount of traffic coming in regularly, then only we will be able to see the benefits of monetizing a blog. Only huge blog traffic can help you to sell web services or products through advertising. 

Now there are plenty of bloggers who will advise writing blog articles frequently and wait for years to make money by blogging. Well, that could be true but not necessarily has to be true in all cases.

I started this blog in mid-2017, tried deliberately to generate traffic but was disappointed to see no traffic coming in. Demoralized by this I didn't publish any new content in the coming time. For the next year, I more focused on updating the content and getting more views on the existing blog posts. 

Eventually, the efforts paid off. A few blog posts started to show up in the first 10 results for desired keywords. I applied the same strategy to all blog posts and traffic for these posts is also improving slowly. With that positive change monetization programs also have taken a boost.

To make ads work effectively on our blog, we must add good quality content. I have written a separate article with plenty of useful tips on how to write a perfect blog post. I am sure these tips will come in handy to you too. Our work doesn't end there, these articles need to be updated frequently to get more traffic.

Once you have regular traffic coming into your blog, the next process is to sell services or products to this traffic by monetizing the blog. This could be through affiliate programs, ads, paid reviews, etc.

Let us have a look at all the possible methods through which we can monetize our blog and make money by blogging.





I have divided the monetization methods broadly into two categories:
  • Basic methods: The basic methods could be helpful to those who are new to monetizing a blog. Bloggers having no previous knowledge of monetization can begin by learning about these methods. Having said that one shouldn't restrict themselves to this method only.
  • Advance methods: Advance monetization methods may require a blogger to have or develop a specialized skill to sell the service or product. However, with little help from experts or bloggers with good technical skills in this domain can make use of these methods too.

I. Basic methods of making money by blogging:

1. PPC (Pay Per Click) Advertising

In pay-per-click advertising, an advertiser pays to the blog owner when a displayed ad is clicked by the visitor. Pay-per-click advertising is also known by the term cost-per-click.

A blog owner isn't paid until a user clicks on the ad. In other words, you will not earn money with your blog for displaying ads, but those ads have to be clicked by visitors. This advertising method is slower and only works when you have a good amount of traffic to a blog. 

2. CPM (Cost per thousand impressions) advertising

Cost per thousand impressions as the term itself suggests that a blogger gets paid for a thousand impressions of an ad from a blog page. An impression is nothing but a single occurrence of an ad on a web page.

This type of advertising works well for blogs having higher or mid-range traffic.

So if a blogger charges $1 for 1000 impressions, he will receive $1 on completion of 1000 views of an ad. Amazon CPM is an example of CPM advertising.

3. Affiliate marketing (most used method to make money by blogging)

Affiliate marketing is a bit different from the above two methods we discussed. This type of advertising has a huge potential to make money online. Most of the renowned bloggers use this method as a primary source to make money by blogging.

In affiliate marketing, a blogger displays an ad or link to sell a product or service from the advertiser's website. On a successful sale of a service, a blog owner receives a certain share of the sale as revenue.

Affiliate marketing ads could be successful if you have good authority over the audience. Since the audience has trust in you, they are more convinced, which helps to sell the services/products.





4. Donations

Well, this is a bit grey area and this method may work and may not work in some cases. It depends on the blog traffic and overall goodwill of your blog. If we have leadership quality and good bonding with the reader's donations ads might work as well.

So usually a blogger places a PayPal or nowadays a UPI link and asks readers to donate the blog owner. Of course, the approach has to be humble, your blog must add value to the readers and you must have a good relationship with the readers.

5. Blog Selling

You might have heard about the selling of the online businesses to a third party and earn revenue through it. The best example would be that of YouTube. It was created by three former employees of PayPal. A year later it was bought by Google in the year 2006 for US$1.65 billion.

But making money by selling a blog isn't that simple. Someone would buy your blog only if they feel it has the potential and it would be beneficial for them in the future. So, for it, you will have to work on making it popular and earn goodwill for the same.

Many bloggers prefer to work on the methods as this to make money by blogging in a short time. They create a blog, work on it to make it a brand, and then they sell it for money.

II. Advance methods to make money by blogging:

1. Writing a sponsored blog post or a review

Positive traffic flow to your blog brings all new channels of opportunities that can help you to make money by blogging. Writing a detailed and factual review is one of these opportunities.

A sponsored blog post or a review can convert your blog visitors from normal readers to a consumer.

Additionally, you can generate revenue through the lead you just converted. This is quite similar to affiliate marketing. But within this case, you write an entire blog post or review to make the sale. Though to earn readers trust a review must be unbiased and based on the true facts.

2. Paid membership service

A paid membership service may include exclusive web pages that are password protected and available to members only. It could also be a premium series of emails sent to the members only.

If your blog is about providing solutions to the problems of the readers, a paid membership service might work just well in the course. You may think of providing exclusive solutions to the reader's problem which are scarcely available in the market.

Two key points to remember while providing paid membership service are:

  • Your service has to be superbly qualitative, and users must feel it valued for the money they are paying.
  • There has to be regularity as to how often a visitor will be able to use the service in pre-decided time.





3. Sell eBooks, products or services

Selling eBooks, products, or services that are relevant to your blog content may also generate revenue for you.

In this matter, a WordPress like a platform helps a lot to set up space for selling eBooks, digital services, and even physical products. Various plugins make your job painless and assist you in the selling process.

4. Event marketing and making money by using a blog

Event marketing is nothing but promoting products, services, or brands through personal interactions with visitors. It could be in the form of a webinar or a live workshop.

Event marketing helps advertisers directly connect with their end-user, it enables smooth flow of interaction, question, and answers are exchanged in real-time.

Arranging such events through your blog not only creates revenue channels but increases chances of getting larger exposure to your blog on the internet.

Conclusion:

The basic methods to make money by blogging are PPC advertising, CPM advertising, affiliate programs, donations, and blog selling. These are widely used methods and may generate the least income as compared to advanced methods.

The advanced methods of making money by blogging include writing sponsored reviews, paid membership services, selling products or services, and event marketing.

The advanced methods of making money by blogging may require specific setup on your blog to sell the services or products. The earnings earned through these methods is higher as compared to the basic methods listed above.

If you think there are more ways to make money by blogging, then let me know through your comments. Let us know how was your experience reading this blog post.

Check out my new blog post on Top 5 Advertising Programs to Earn Money from Your Blog. Support me through your comments, shares, and likes. Thanks!

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Blogging

Use Yoast Plugin for Blogspot/ Blogger (and non-WordPress Platforms)

Yoast plugin for Blogspot and non-Wordpress blogs

 Yoast is a very powerful WordPress plugin that makes bloggers life way too easy. It helps optimize the content by suggesting significant updates to the content you have written and make it ready for the search engines. Within this post, we will see a trick to use the Yoast plugin for Blogger and non-WordPress platforms. I have made this post a little descriptive covering all aspects so that everyone gets it.

Yoast is fantastic, no plugin good as this is!

Yoast is a search optimization plugin and exclusively available on the WordPress blogging platform. I was amazed to see how easy it makes the life of a blogger by optimizing the content. Just in case you want to know about the features offered by Yoast have a look here. I wished something like it was also available for the Blogger platform. I tried looking for the information for the same, but couldn't locate any.

Google's Blogger platform is my first love in terms of simplicity and features it offered since the beginning. But not able to use a Yoast like plugin on the Blogger is quite upsetting. Also, changing the blogging platform just to use Yoast didn't sound a wise decision. Though, I realize this could be worked around. We just need to validate the content in Yoast regardless of the platform on which it exists. 

Let me explain you this in more detail, but before that let's understand how Yoast plugin works.

Generally, webmasters perform a couple of checks to ensure our blog post is search engine friendly. Similarly, Yoast analyzes your blog-post content and based on the content written inside a post, it gives you suggestions to improve it. 





Meaning Yoast checks your content line by line and word by word. Based on this, it displays notifications at the bottom of the post. These notifications basically highlight several SEO related suggestions in bullet points that should be applied to the blog post. This can be done manually also, but it takes a lot of efforts and could be a tedious job.

Yoast uses several colors for bullet points in notifications. Red bullet point means that you have done something terribly wrong in the blog post and need to be corrected. Orange indicates that content is fine, but still, it can be improved for the best result. Green bullet point represents that you have done a good job optimizing the content.

Limitations with the Yoast plugin

Now, in order to use the Yoast plugin on your blog, the prime requirement is that you should have a WordPress blog. I dug the internet for many days in search of the alternative. It seems that there is no alternative but that you must have a WordPress blog to use the Yoast plugin. 

Furthermore, having an ordinary free version of a WordPress blog is not enough (web version) as it would not let you install any plugins on your blog. It requires a storage place where you can install the plugin which is not possible with the free version WordPress blog.

This leaves you two choices. i.e either you buy hosting space and install the WordPress or self-host your blog which will save your hosting cost. Buying hosting space is out of the question as we don't want to invest our money just for the sake of using a plugin. Another way is the self-hosted blog. But then, you will need to have a sound level of knowledge to manage the blog and install the necessary software on the laptop/pc.

The solution to use the Yoast plugin for Blogger and non-WordPress platforms

Now the solution I'm going to share would overcome all the problems we discussed above. So the first thing first. You will have to find out a free WordPress hosting service provider to host your dummy blog. There are a couple of sites which provide free WordPress hosting.

I find 000webhost the most popular and renowned hosting service provider than the rest of the sites. They will let you install the latest WordPress software and provide great support to keep your WordPress software and plugins to the latest version. They provide hosting space totally free of cost. 

Now let's come back to our main task, installing the Yoast plugin. Once you are on 000webhost you will have to register an account to get the free hosting space. While registering you will be asked to enter an email address, password and domain name for your blog. Enter these details and create a 000webhost account.

Register for 000webhost. Free WordPress hosting

On successful registration, you will be redirected to the member's area. You will be asked to verify your email before you proceed to create a website. Just verify it by clicking on the link you have received in your mailbox.






Once verification is done, your website will be active and you will be able to do a further modification to the website. Click on the Manage Website button as indicated in below screenshot.

Activate 000webhost website

Now to install WordPress software, click on the Install Now button just below the text Build WordPress Website as indicated in below screenshot.

Install WordPress on 000webhost

The next process requires to create a WordPress account by providing username and password for managing WordPress blog.

Creating WordPress account

After clicking on the install button, WordPress software will start to get installed. It will take 1-2 minutes. After installation click on Go to Configuration Page. A new page will open and will ask to enter credentials for the WordPress blog.

On successful login, you will be redirected to the WordPress dashboard page as like below picture.

WordPress Dashboard

Now in the above picture, you will see Plugins option in the left sidebar. Move your mouse over it and select Add New link from the options that have been poped-up. Click on the Popular tab and you will see Yoast in the top results. Click on the Install Now button to install the Yoast plugin. After installation, you will have to click on the Activate button from the same window to activate the plugin on your website.

With this step our installation process is complete. Now to use the Yoast plugin for Blogger/ non-WordPress platforms follow the simple trick mentioned below. I am going to demonstrate this for a Blogger blog. Keep the WordPress blog open in the one tab of your browser and open the Blogger blog in a different tab.

Let's say we have completed writing the Blogger blog post and want to optimize it for the SEO. Now, since we don't have Yoast plugin on the Blogger, we are going to copy the blog content from Blogger and optimize it on WordPress.

We will copy the HTML code which is been generated at the backend to retain the formatting of a blog post. Hence after writing the complete blog post, click on the HTML tab to view the HTML code of the blog post. See below picture for more information.

Blogger HTML View

Copy entire text displayed in the HTML view and toggle to the WordPress window. From the dashboard page, mouse hover the Posts link and click on Add New option.

WordPress - Create a new post

It will open a post editor window. Now click on the Text tab in the upper right corner of the post editor box. Paste the copied content in the textbox. Similarly, copy the blog post title from Blogger to WordPress.






After this process, scroll down a bit and locate Yoast SEO box below the post editor. Here, enter focus keyword of your post to get the best result from your SEO strategy. See the below example.

SEO analysis report of the Yoast plugin

If you scrolled a bit more in your WordPress window, you will see an analysis report generated by Yoast plugin. Red points indicate that these changes need to be made in your blog post to make it SEO compliant. Orange points indicate areas of improvement to make it even better. Green ones are just fine and no need to worry about it.

Once you have made all the changes and converted as many red and orange points into the green one, you have done optimizing work for your blog post.

After this process, you will have to click on the text tab again to get the updated HTML code for the revised content. Copy the entire text and paste it into the HTML tab of your Blogger post.

Conclusion:

This is how you will be able to use the Yoast plugin for Blogger / non-Wordpress platforms which do not support Yoast plugin. The procedure requires a little effort from that of the WordPress users. But once you have set up the WordPress blog as we discussed, you will only have to do the copy paste work.

With this trick, you will have Yoast at your feet and you would be able to do the SEO task with more convenience. Since using Yoast is time savvy, you will be more productive and your posts will have more weight from an SEO point of view. Happy optimizing! 

Please do not forget to like, share and comment and share your love. 😊
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Free resources

10 Free Blogging Tools Every Blogger Should Have

Free Blogging Tools Every Blogger should have


Are you new to blogging? Or finding it difficult to manage multiple activities associated with it?. Don't worry, today we are going to discuss ten free blogging tools that every blogger should have. I assure you after using these free blogging tools you will feel more productive and relieved for saving time and effort. These tools come from renowned brands like Google, and hence can be trusted completely.

When we maintain a personal blog, we have to look at every aspect of creating, updating, and promoting blog posts. We also have to check our progress routinely and see if we are going in the right direction. 

Nowadays, the competition among bloggers is so high that you will have to stand on your toes to be in the game. Time plays a very vital role here. Though managing all these tasks with the help of free blogging tools makes the life of a blogger a lot easier.

What you will achieve by using these free blogging tools?

  • These blogging tools allow us to save time. 
  • Resultantly helps us to create more blog posts 
  • Understand our scope for the future blog posts by knowing the audience response to the current blog posts
  • Overcome the difficulties, and connect with other bloggers and the audience. 
Success in achieving these goals at a greater pace will ensure the faster growth of your blog.

Let's have a look at:

The best 10 free blogging tools every blogger should have:

1. Google Analytics

Free Blogging Tools Every Blogger should have: Google Analytics

At #1 in our list of free blogging tools is Google Analytics, the free service offered by Google that tracks and reports traffic/visitors to the website. It is one of the most widely used analytics service used by the majority of the webmasters.

Google Analytics will let you:
  • Review online campaigns by tracking the quality of blog pages and conversions. It can provide you with details of the sales made, leads generated, visits to the specific web page, or downloads of a particular file made on your site.
  • The detailed reports can provide in-depth information containing where did visitors come from, how long they stayed, their geographical location, whether a mobile or desktop user, their browser and language details, and so on.
  • Google Analytics lets you identify poorly performing web pages and provides you with a tool to increase the performance of these pages.
  • A user can track 100s of websites they own and monitor sites having pageviews up to 5 million.
  • Google Analytics lets you integrate the analytics services with other Google services like Blogger, Search Console, AdSense, AdWords, and various other tools and services.

2. Google Search Console

Blogging Tool to Understand Google Traffic: Google Search Console

We all how important is the role of SEO in promoting our blog. My article on SEO and the importance of SEO in digital marketing focuses on some of the basic fundamentals of SEO. It's a good start to understand how it helps you get the traffic from SERP.

Google Search Console is another free blogging tool by Google, like many other free services provided by them. Search Console tool allows bloggers or webmasters to optimize their website and make it ready to display in Google search.

Some of the activities where Google Search Console helps you to perform SEO related tasks are:
  • Submit a sitemap of your website for Googlebot to crawl so that all the required pages can appear in Google search.
  • Write and submit the robots.txt file and set the instructions for Googlebot mentioning which pages to be indexed and which to be excluded
  • A webmaster can check the internal and external links to their website.
  • A webmaster can track the URLs which are not crawled by Googlebot and fix the errors for the same in order to include them in Google SERPs.
  • A webmaster can check the keywords for which the website has appeared into Google SERPs, what rank your website has, and click-through rate for the same.
  • A webmaster can set the preferred URL among the various versions of the URL that will be displayed in SERPs
  • A webmaster can customize web pages to display rich search results in SERPs, can improve the HTML code, and optimize pages for AMP.
  • A webmaster can demote certain site links from SERPs for which he does not wish to appear.
  • Blogger can track the penalty notifications for manual actions and take the necessary steps to avoid it.

3. Google Keyword Planner

Tool that helps you plan keywords: Google Keyword Planner

If you are blogging for quite some time or know how important it is to rank in the search engines, then you must be knowing the importance of using the right keywords for your blog posts. Google has created an amazing tool to serve this purpose by suggesting the right keywords for your blog post.

Google Keyword Planner tool identifies the right keywords for your blog post. This tool suggests the trending keywords that could be used for a particular phrase or entire post altogether. Along with the keywords, it also shows statistics like, how many users searched for the term, difficulty level, etc.

Google Keyword Planner is mainly designed for advertisers on the Google Adwords program. However, webmasters and blog owners can use this tool without worrying to use Adwords. You will find plenty of information related to advertising while using this tool. However, you can ignore it and focus on finding relevant keywords for your blog post.

4. Yoast

One of the best Free Blogging Tool for Every Blogger: Yoast

Yoast is truly an amazing plugin that is specifically created for WordPress users. I wish it was, or something like it, available on Blogger and other platforms. It does a wonderful task by giving important suggestions to make your blog post SEO compliant.

If you have Yoast then you don't have to worry about managing On-Page SEO. Yoast will take care of it. Yoast highlights important points in red from an SEO perspective which a blogger has missed in his blog post. A blogger has to make minor tweaks to the post content and ensure that all red points are converted into green points in order to meet an SEO compliant blog post.

Yoast will help you with the below things:
  • Yoast helps to write a captivating title for your blog post.
  • It gives you a suggestion about using the right keywords and their placement in the article.
  • It will give you suggestion on adding the right numbers of internal links within the post
  • It helps you break long paragraphs into small ones.
  • Yoast helps to write a clear and descriptive call to action for your blog post.
  • It also helps write and manage multiple keywords for a single blog post
  • It gives you suggestion on the right use of transition words(most important, because, hence, etc.) in the blog post
  • Finally, it helps you with choosing the right category and tags for the blog post.

If you do not have access to Yoast, make sure to follow these tips in your blog post: on-page SEO techniques. If you want to use Yoast for non-WordPress platforms like Google Blogger, these tips could be helpful: use Yoast plugin for Blogspot or non-WordPress platforms.

5. Grammarly

Free Blogging Tools Every Blogger should have: Grammarly

Everyone put their efforts to write a good qualitative blog post. Though we are human beings and may tend to do mistakes. Any author wouldn't want his visitors to have any unpleasant reading experience. For authors like me, whose English is not a primary language, Grammarly like a free blogging tool becomes a lifesaver.

Grammarly tool constantly keeps on checking your writing. It not only highlights your mistakes but also will give you suggestions to correct your mistakes. All these checks and corrections can be made in real-time with the help of this tool.

So what things Grammarly can help with? Here's the list:
  • Grammarly will look-after your critical grammar and spelling mistakes.
  • It will suggest you the right words based on the context of your writing.
  • It will suggest the correct punctuation marks in the places necessary.
  • The premium version also helps you with plagiarism check, sentence structure, and vocabulary enhancement suggestion.
There are mainly three ways you can use this tool.
  1. Write content in a word document, upload it to the Grammarly website, and correct your mistakes.
  2. Copy-paste your content in the Grammarly web interface and correct your mistakes.
  3. Install Grammarly plugin in your web browser and it will take care of every writing you do on the web through the browser.

6. Facebook Page Insights

Blogging Tools to track insights: Facebook Page Insights

Just like Google, several social media platforms also have a key role to play in communicating with your site visitors. Hence it is really important to analyze your social media engagement. Facebook is one of the highest popular social media platforms used by almost every site owner.

Though having a strong presence on Facebook is not enough. What if we could analyze our Facebook engagement, decide our strategy, and work towards our targeted goals. Facebook Page Insights comes directly therein. It is an absolutely free service run by Facebook and very easy to use.

On a Facebook Page Insights page, you will find the last seven days' performance of your Facebook page. Further, a page owner can have in-depth details on total likes, new likes, a total number of unique visitors who viewed your page, posts views, and different engagement types.

7. Twitter Analytics

A Free Tool that Helps you Track Twitter Traffic: Twitter Analytics

Twitter Analytics is another free blogging tool that will let you analyze your twitter tweets and followers. We have already seen how Facebook Page Insights could benefit us. With the Twitter Analytics metrics on your hand, you can decide your Twitter strategy and ensure your reach to the end audience.

Twitter analytics will provide you with details on the demographics of Twitter users and help you learn about your audience. It will help you understand what type of content (textual, images, infographics, video, etc.) is being liked by the visitors. A time and the days when most of the users are active. Which hashtags are being successful?

8. Canva

Free Blogging Tool for Creating Infographics: Canva

If you haven't known by now what Canva is, let me have that opportunity. It is an internet-based application to create stunningly beautiful graphics (images). Many bloggers use it to create images for their blog posts and social media accounts. It is absolutely free to use. In fact, many beginner levels and even professional designers use it.

This free blogging tool can be used for both purposes. i.e. to edit and even create images from scratch. The drag and drop functionality makes the designing job even easier for those who are not familiar with designing applications like Photoshop or Illustrator.

Canva lets you have plenty of layouts, free-images, icons, shapes, and fonts. With this tool, you can create images for your blogs, banners, social media images, brochures, emailers, book covers, infographics, photo collages and what not!

9. SEOprofiler

Free Blogging Tools to know your competitors: SEOprofiler

SEOprofiler is a free cloud-based SEO tool, a free blogging tool that helps you with all SEO tasks from optimizing your web pages to tracking your competitor's data. There are even better services available on the internet but those come with the premium account.

SEOprofiler itself offers limited services but it is worthy to try it for free. It offers SEO tools which mainly helps you with the below tasks:
  • Rank Monitoring: It gives you statistics on your daily ranking in search engines like Google, Yahoo, and Bing.
  • Website audits: It provides weekly reports based on the sitewide audit which consists of content update suggestions from an SEO viewpoint.
  • Link analysis: By allowing to connect with Google analytics data of a website it ensures to integrate both the SEO data and visitor's behavior. This helps in the better planning of the marketing strategy.
  • On-page SEO: The weekly audit helps in updating the content for grammatical mistakes, spelling mistakes, sentence reformation, and maintaining an internal link profile.
  • Competitive intelligence: By providing information on competitors keywords, his link profile, backlink sources SEOprofiler helps to make your place in the race.
  • Link building: It provides information on free web directories, places where you can include your site links.
  • Keyword research: SEOprofiler will provide all statistics on currently ranked keywords. It will let you monitor URLs based on the keywords, will find link building opportunities, and also will suggest keywords for your blog posts.
  • Social media: SEOprofiler could monitor your website presence on a social networking site. The statics could help in the better planning of the social media strategy.

10. HootSuite

Free Blogging Tools Every Blogger should have: HootSuite

Every blogger has at least an account or two on the social media platform to promote their content. A blogger like me who manages everything by own, HootSuite as a free blogging tool comes very handily managing all social media accounts.

HootSuite platform will let you manage your different social media accounts through a single interface. HootSuite not only saves your time managing multiple accounts but also makes it less cluttered to keep track of every social media post and respond to reverts that come through these channels.

With the free plan, you can manage up to 3 social media accounts through HootSuite. The free service will also provide basic analytics reports of your social media activities. You can schedule up to 30 posts in advance on each social media profile. It will let you integrate your RSS feed.

Conclusion

We have seen the list of 10 free blogging tools that every blogger should have. These tools will help you in everyday blogging affairs and make your job pain-free. The data provided by these apps will help you grow your reach to the end audience.

The statistics and the refinery suggestions made by these tools will help you produce more quality content. These tools will help you stay a step ahead in the blogging run, will improve your blogging experience, and will save time. Saving time will help you produce more blogging posts and will make you more productive.

I hope you had a good time reading this post. Please share and comment if you like this post and stay tuned for more such posts.
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Hi. I am Ramesh Wetkoli. Three things I try to include in my blog posts are creativity, useful insights, and trendy information. IT graduate and working professional. I have leveraged 9+ years of work experience in IT industry and learnt various technologies, providing merchandizing support and handling digital marketing responsibilities.

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