How to Blog in 2022

To Create Naturally-Occurring Content for Search Engines (SEO)

When someone creates content for a blog, they create naturally-occurring content that ranks on search engines organically, which helps it get discovered. If you type a query in the search engine, the search engine scans the entire web for content that is relevant to your query.

Search engine algorithms are designed to scan the internet and get accurate results -if you search for pizza, you'll find a description, some recipes, and locations of nearby places that serve pizza. Blogs are optimized for search engines so the algorithm can easily process the content.

The better the content and the more optimized it is, the more likely it is for search engines to use it as an answer for their users' relevant queries. Blogs implement Search Engine Optimization (SEO) for this, and it allows them to use their content to drive more traffic to their website.

For example, blogs use keywords and add links to other blogs or their own content because they know that these practices are good for SEO and search engine algorithms. It also helps keep audiences engaged for longer by getting them to spend more time on your website.

To Gain Content for Social Media and Emails

You can also use good blog content to recycle on your social media platforms and email marketing campaigns. Content is a core element of digital marketing, and the most basic form of content is blogging.

Good, compelling content in your social media posts and emails will help drive more traffic to your website and build your brand awareness.

To Position Yourself as an Industry Leader

Most importantly, blogs allow a person, brand, or business to gain audiences, build trust, and eventually position themselves as an industry leader in their field or niche. They can use this influence in many ways, like promoting their other content, selling their products and services, and even promoting content, goods, and services made by others.

Quality content or blog posts hardly stays hidden for long because algorithms understand what their users like and promote it on their search engine results page (SERP). Good content allows good blogs to "organically" rank higher on SERPs and gain more visitors.

To Create Evergreen Blog Posts that Drive Long-Term Results

"Evergreen" blog posts drive long-term results for a website or brand. In short, quality blogs are a low-cost, effective way to garner audiences for marketing and generating revenue. Here are some key reasons why so many marketers and people want to create evergreen blog posts.

• To establish expertise (Domain Authority) and build an audience.
• To use it as an outlet for creative expression.
• To network with audiences and grow a business.
• To make more money or become self-employed.

To Inform and Educate

Some people blog to educate and inform audiences on subjects they are passionate about. Unsurprisingly, those blogs end up doing quite well. If you are an expert on something, passionate about something, or curious about something, you can blog to share your thoughts and experiences.

Your journey, expertise, and passion are worth talking about, especially because you have a unique voice. People write blog posts to inform and educate others while finding like-minded people and making money.

To Make Money

Blogging has many benefits. However, it is an easy way to earn some extra income for some people. On average, a good blog can earn you a few thousand dollars every month. A great blog can even generate seven figures in annual revenue.

Ultimately, all the reasons to blog mentioned above will result in monetary income, but only if you have good content, optimization (SEO), and learn ways to monetize on your blog posts and content. (more on monetization later).

So, if you are still wondering whether you should start a blog in 2022, the answer is a resounding "yes."

Starting a blog is one of the easiest, most convenient ways to launch your own business from anywhere in the world and earn online. Anyone can do it, and you don’t need to be a web developer or professional writer.

You don't even need any credentials, experience, or qualifications to blog and become successful doing it. You can learn the basics from the numerous free resources online. The best part is that you can create a profitable business regardless of your age, location, or experience.

However, you must understand that a blog is more about creating influence and authority in your niche, and this level of involvement goes beyond profit motivation. If you chase money, you'll run out of ideas soon or come off as a sell-out, whereas if you chase excellence, it will show in your writing, and success will follow.

What to Blog

The answer is not simple because it is different for everyone and depends on several factors. Factors like what you like, what you are good at, or what drives you often play a huge role.

Thinking about why you want to blog is a good place to start. Are you looking to communicate an idea or message to audiences? Do you want to engage audiences or build a community around a subject you enjoy?

Focus On Your Niche

Blogs allow you to inform, educate, promote, or even sell things. However, you need to know what the specific niche of your blog is and build everything around it. Your niche must be clear to you from the beginning, so you can work on building an audience around it effectively.

Just remember that no idea is ever truly unique, even if it is a great one. However, your experiences and personality are unique, which means you have a distinct voice. You can use your unique voice and experiences to attract audiences.

There are many ways to discover your niche or what you want to blog about. You could consider your passions, expertise, or interests. For example, if you are love cooking or films, you could start a blog dedicated to one of these interests.

It would be best to choose a category you are an expert in because you can create valuable content about it that audiences can appreciate. However, you don't need to be an expert to start a blog about something.

A blog can simply be about your journey towards a passion. For example, if you want to learn the piano, start a blog about your entire journey. You will find like-minded people online going through a similar journey with time. You might even build an online community around learning piano.

If you care about the environment, start a blog around environmentalism. The niche you pick will determine your audience, which will help you understand what to blog about.

There are two key questions you must ask yourself when nailing down your niche.

1. Are you genuinely interested in your niche and like learning about it?
2. Are other people interested in your niche?

If you don't genuinely like your niche, it will show in your writing, and you'll eventually get bored of your blog. It will likely turn into a boring job, which would be ironic if you had started a blog to get away from a boring job in the first place.

When you aren't interested in something or naturally curious about it, you won't be able to create good content for it consistently. If you are still unable to close in on a niche, consider what people ask your advice or opinion on.

Do friends and family ask you about your cooking or recipes? Do they ask you for advice on fitness and health? Or perhaps they come to you for sound business advice. These are indications that you are better than most at something, and you can use it as your niche as long as it interests you.

If you are afraid that others may not be interested in your niche, you might be worrying about nothing. A simple Google search of your niche will show you millions of results targeted for audiences in your niche, looking for content you can provide.

Answer Questions Your Readers May Have

Think about the questions and concerns of your audiences and try to inform, explain, and answer them with your content. Starting from the basics can be helpful to make your blog more comprehensive and detailed.

It also allows you to create more interlinking between your blogs, which is good to retain readers on your blog for longer. However, this may not always be easy because it requires more time and effort. You are more likely to pick up trending questions and concerns to answer in your blog posts.

Regardless of how you approach this, it is important to answer questions about your niche that audiences may have.

Use Topics that Google Suggests

Google is incredibly helpful for blogging because a simple search of a topic or your niche can instantly show you what most readers want to learn and what their key concerns are. Just look at the "People also ask" section for any search, and you will instantly get popular questions about your search.

This can instantly give you dozens of blog topics to write about on any subject or niche. You should aim for the interesting topics that are trending or rank higher on search engines. However, a good, comprehensive blog doesn't just target the big topics. It also gives a broad and unique outlook on the niche as a whole.

Learn From Competitors

Conducting Google searches not only helps you learn more about your niche, audiences, and what to write, it also helps you learn about your competitors.

You might want to learn what your competitors are talking about and which topics are popular. You can find out which competitors and search terms (keywords) rank higher on SERP. This information will give you a better idea of what's popular, trending, and worth blogging about.

This competitor research will also help you make the content of your blog posts stand out from others and develop an original perspective for your content.

Recycle Popular Topics from the Past

You can recycle the topics that have been popular in the past and use them with your perspective and thoughts to engage audiences in your niche. Your unique perspective will make you stand out from the crowd.

Consider things like:

• What personal experiences make you a trusted thought leader on the subject?
• What problems can you solve for audiences?
• What are your opinions on topics trending in your niche?
• Will you teach audiences how to do things relevant to your niche?

All these questions will help you develop various topics and help you identify your unique style and angle for writing. Once you understand what to blog, you'll need to execute the most important part of blogging, i.e., writing.

Come Up With Unique Topics

If your blog is about personal experiences, or you want to share something unique, you can choose your topics. Here are some questions to ask that will help you develop many interesting, unique topics for your blog.

• What excites your readers?
• What challenges do they face?
• What do they love about your niche or voice?
• What do they hate about your niche or voice?

Any of these questions can give you plenty of topics to write on, and you can even come up with topics that address more than one of these questions. No matter how small your niche is, these questions will help you understand how to choose good topics for your blog.

How to Blog

Here is a guide to help you write your blog posts in the best, most compelling way possible. Firstly, you'll need an attractive, memorable title for each blog post.

Create Compelling Titles

This part of the blog writing process is a lot of fun. Your title is a great way to attract audiences and readers. It is how you deliver relevant information about the content of your post. However, you shouldn't stress too much on the title.

Once you know what you want to write about, just brainstorm for a bit, and you will likely land on an attractive title. Most times, your title will be a common, relevant question or concern of your readers, which is great for SEO and generally attracting the right audiences.

Remember to come up with catchy headlines that draw attention but don't border on clickbait. Poor tactics like that will only disappoint your audience and discredit your hard work. Make sure that your main ideas should be in the title and heading titles for clarity and SEO purposes.

Try to give insight into the discussion without giving away too much. Using this strategy will help you create intrigue for audiences reading your content, making them learn more.

Here are a few things to consider when creating titles.

• Think of the things that your readers will relate to or recognize.
• Ask a relevant question to intrigue audiences.
• Use keywords in your titles naturally (SEO).
• Use descriptive and vivid titles to grab attention.
• Avoid clickbait titles.
• Use numbers in your titles (odd numbers are more compelling than even numbers).
• Promise something in your titles (and then deliver it in your content).

All these things will help you create catchy and compelling titles. However, most of the time, asking relevant questions and incorporating keywords so that they feel an organic part of your content should be your main concern.

Length of Your Blog Posts

You can write blog posts of 500 to 1500 words for most topics. However, the ideal length of a comprehensive blog post that offers value, solutions, and insights is typically around 2500 words. This word length gives you enough room to dive in deep and bring your unique perspective to audiences.

It allows you to capture audiences and engage them in a meaningful way. Shorter blog posts can be great. However, they often fail to connect deeper with audiences or establish the brand or blog as an expert or authority.

Writing Your Initial Blog Posts

Content is the core of your blog, as it is the core of any marketing or digital marketing effort. Good blogs produce compelling content that keeps readers and website visitors coming back for more. However, running a successful blog in 2022 means that you first need to establish yourself in your field or niche.

Your initial blog posts could be anything, but it is best to focus on topics that will help you establish your name. For example, if your blog is about plumbing, you wouldn't want your first blog to be about how to fix a leaky pipe joint.

Instead, it would be best if you first talked about different plumbing pipes, faucets, or showerheads. Discuss pros and cons, or talk about your favorite options. Such content will help you establish authority and expertise in the field.

So, when you write about fixing leaky pipe joints, audiences will know you are giving expert advice. As a beginner, you shouldn't worry too much about getting into the hard topics. Instead, start with the basics and gradually bring your content up to higher levels.

Use Lists (Numbered or Bulleted)

Lists are a great way to structure the content of your blog posts neatly. It allows easy readability and segments your ideas in shorter, bite-sized pieces. If you bullet or number your content's sub-headings, readers will find it easier to consume your content.

Moreover, this helps some readers skip to the parts of your blog post that they are most concerned with. For example, a guide-type blog post should always have a numbered list so audiences can easily navigate which step of the guide they are on.

Similarly, numbering is a great way to attract more readers. As mentioned previously, odd numbers in your titles like "7 Best Kitchen Faucets" compel more readers than even numbers. Such blog posts that list things are commonly known as "listicles" and are incredibly popular in blogging.

Use Keywords and SEO Best Practices

Keywords are essential for optimizing blogs for search engines, helping search engine algorithms identify your content as relevant. You can use keywords correctly to your advantage or poorly and get no results.

Keyword stuffing, for example, is one of the worst ways to use keywords.

Similarly, SEO best practices involve ethical ways to practice ranking higher on SERP. Always adhere to the best practices highlighted by search engine guidelines like Google's Webmaster Guidelines. If you follow them correctly, you will get long-term, sustainable ranking and good results from organic traffic to your blog.

Use Linking

Another SEO effort is to interlink your previous blog posts in relevant, recent blog posts. Not only will this help retain visitors for longer, but it will also help boost your ranking, readability, and user engagement. Similarly, you can also go back to your old blog posts and link the relevant newer ones.

Apart from interlinking, you should work towards gaining as many backlinks from other quality domains in your niche. Backlinks or links on other websites that lead to your website help establish domain authority and build trust among audiences while improving your SERP rankings.

Backlinks are not the easiest to achieve, and there are unethical ways to do it, but they can hurt your SEO efforts, hard work, and credibility in the long run. Wrongful backlinks are ground for bans by search engines, so always strive for quality backlinks through ethical means as guided by search engines.

Stick to a Schedule

Most bloggers write when they feel like it, which is a key perk of blogging. However, this is not the best approach. Your readers are hungry for content, and you shouldn't disappoint them. Consistency is key, and you have to prioritize a schedule for writing regularly.

Maintaining a schedule will not only grow your blog consistently but also help you get better at writing, organizing, reaching higher goals, and managing your blog. You don't need to burden yourself by writing every day.

Start small, two long-form blog posts a month and work your way to twice a week until you eventually write multiple blogs a week. However, respect your schedule and don't take on more than you can deliver because stepping back or losing consistency can hurt you in many different ways.

Monetize Your Blog

There are three main ways you can monetize your blog and generate income.

1. Sell Products

Selling something is the simplest way of monetizing your blog because you create or source a relevant product and sell it through your blog. However, you shouldn't do this from the start. Many bloggers make this mistake from the beginning and hurt their brand.

Instead, it would be best to focus on building an audience first and then introducing relevant products that you stand by. You can even conduct market research on your blog in the form of surveys or through comments to understand what your audiences are interested in before you create or source a product.

If your audience responds well and seems interested in a product that they will pay for, that's when you know it is a good time to introduce a value-adding product.

2. Sell Advertising Space

This is perhaps the best one for all levels of bloggers, including beginners. You can easily put up ads on your blog using Google AdSense. This allows Google to put up relevant ads on your website, and you generate passive income when your readers click on these ads.

However, once you have a high-traffic website, you can leverage your traffic to sell ad space full-time to large corporations that pay far better than Google AdSense.

3.  Affiliate Marketing

Most blogs use affiliate marketing to generate revenue. They put affiliate links in their posts to promote existing relevant products from marketplaces like Amazon. For example, if you run a fitness blog, you can use affiliate links to guide audiences to third-party nutrition supplement products on Amazon.

If they buy the product through your link, you profit from that sale. However, if you decide to use affiliate marketing on your blog, be transparent about it to your audiences and only promote products worth your audience's time and money.

If you fail to mention that you profit from the sales, your readers may lose trust. Similarly, if you promote poor or bad products, they will also lose trust. Just be honest and only promote relevant products that you would use yourself.

Monetizing your blog should always be the last step in your journey because money shouldn't be the driving factor in your early efforts. As you build your community, your audience can help guide you in the right direction by sharing their needs.

Conclusion

Now that you have a better understanding of how to blog in 2022, we hope you will follow our guide to create your own blog this year. Just remember to find a niche that genuinely interests you and write to connect deeply with your audiences.

Provide valuable content, built trust, and remain consistent. Use SEO best practices to sustainably rank higher on search engines and gain organic traffic for your blog. Over time, you will build meaningful relationships and a community around you that sees you as an authority and thought leader in your niche.

Making money from blogging is more about fulfilling those needs than anything else. If you want more information on how to blog in 2022 or require help with your blog's digital marketing and management, please visit our website today.