Learn Blogging Episode 6: Promote Your Blog And Improve Indexing

A lady cannot be called beautiful if she is covered. In fact, a lady of beauty without duty is guilty.  To prove to the world that you got all it takes as a blogger, then you must make your blog visible to humans and search engines.

How do I make my blog popular? The solution is brought to you by this golden Episode 6 of learn Blogging, SEO and how to Make Money Online with Isaac.

In my last article which is a prerequisite for this Episode, I fully explained the meaning of crawling, indexing, ranking and rendering. You won’t enjoy this episode until you have gone through my web crawling, ranking and indexing tutorial.

Episode 6 has one major agenda and “food” to bring to the table. It is simply to teach you how to make your blog is known to robots and human beings. Like you already know, this is a series tutorial and if you have not been following us there is still chance for you. Below are the Episodes released so far:

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• The Vision And General Framework (Episode 1).
• Introduction To Blogging, SEO And How I Started (Episode 2).
• Niche, Domain, SEO, Hosting And WordPress (Episode 3).
• Get Domain, Pay For Hosting, Cost Analysis And Designing A WordPress blog (Episode 4).
• OnPage SEO and Creating high Quality Content (Episode 5).
• Crawling, Ranking, Indexing and Rendering (Basics For Episode 6).

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…………..WELCOME BACK……………

Now, have you ever wondered:

• How do I make Google Index my articles faster?
• How can I get people to know and visit my blog?
• Can I build traffic without Google And Bing?

Those were the three questions that motivated me to discuss this topic. Funny enough, those were the questions I asked myself when I started blogging. It took me time to get answers; however you are about to get a faster response in this very simple and straight forward article.

Making your blog popular requires hard work and conscious effort on your part. It doesn’t just happen; you make it happen.

 How To Get Your Blog Indexed And Popular

The steps below would do the magic…..

1. Create A Sitemap: Just as we need the World map or the map of Nigeria to get direction; so does search engines need Sitemaps to know how to crawl your pages.

The Sitemap lists all the pages in your blog and as well inform search engines when new pages are being added to your blog. The Sitemap also tells search engines how long to check whether you have updated any existing post or pages.

You could see that the usefulness of sitemap cannot be overemphasised. Hence the need for you to set up XML Sitemap in your blog (if you haven’t done so).

A question comes to mind, how do I set up sitemap in my blog? You can actually do that in many ways.

If you have the Yoast SEO plugin, then it would help you generate Sitemap. The yoast sitemap for your post is usually “yourblogname.com/post-sitemap.xml”. Yoast creates different sitemap for posts, pages and tags.

If you are not using yoast seo plugin, then Jetpack, Google XML Sitemaps plugin or XML Sitemaps Generator will do the Job. However you should ensure to use only one at at time. Don’t use two sitemap generators at once; it could cause issues.

See Also: Guide on how to install and use plugins for beginners

2. Submit The SiteMap You Created: You have created the sitemap, good job!

What next? You would have to submit your sitemap to Google, Bing and Other search engines.

Google webmaster tool helps you submit your sitemap. If you don’t have a Google webmaster tool then click here to create one. It is very easy to create and verify the ownership of your blog; All you need is your valid gmail account.

Now, follow the steps below to submit your sitemap….

• Login to your Search Console or Webmaster tool.
• Click on your site/blog/property.
• Click on crawl.
• Click on sitemap,
• Then add/test your sitemap.
• Submit.

3. Submit Your Site To Google: At this point, you would have to invite Googlebots to crawl your blog and index it if it meets the webmaster guidelines. You could also decide to fetch and render.

I have already discussed about crawling, indexing and ranking. Therefore, I would not have to dwell on it. Check here to know more about crawling, indexing, ranking, and rendering.

Now, follow the steps below to submit your blog to Google…

• Login to your Search Console or Webmaster tool.
• Click on your site/blog/property.
• Click on crawl.
• Click on Fetch as Google,
• Fetch.
• Request Indexing.
• Done.

Submit every new post for faster crawling and indexing.

4. Get A Simple And Attractive Design: It is true that content is the king (we shall get there), however, visitors look beyond content when they visit your blog.

Aesthetics matters a lot. In fact, when people visit flashlearners they are like, WOW! I love this design.

Ensure that the design of your blog is neat, attractive, simple and easy to navigate. I explained this in my article on how to pass Google Adsense second review process.

5. Create High Quality Content: In the blogging world, we have princess and queens; however, content is the king.

Nothing makes your blog popular like wonderful and unique content. No wonder, bloggers who copy and paste always end up in the dark.

One of the things that have attracted readers to flashlearners is that I do things differently. I may not be the best but something always separates me from the rest.

Quality content gives you natural backlinks, increases your social shares, gives you faithful readers and increase your ranking and visibility. I have already done a great job on how to create high quality content.

Read: How to create high quality content for your blog

6. Create Offsite Content: This is somewhat of OffPage SEO and entails the following link building processes;

• Commenting on blogs.
•  Submitting guest posts to blogs in your niche.
• Submiting articles to quality blog directories.
• Using quality social bookmarking sites like Delicious and StumbleUpon.

7. Do More Of OnPage SEO: It would be a crime for me discuss onpage seo over again. I have discussed everything about that here.

8. Place Share Buttons In Your Blog: Insert social share buttons in your articles. Those who find your posts helpful would always share on Facebook, twitter, instagram, Google plus and other social platforms.

9. Social Connection: Create Facebook Page And Twitter Account With Strong Promotion. Let your friends be aware of your blog and social handles.

10. Start Building Email List: For a start, you may want to use Feedburner to get subscribers and let then get  daily updates of your posts. If you are a Jetpack fan then you should go ahead to use Jetpack subscribe in your sidebar or after content.

11. Blog Frequently: Search engines as well as humans love blogs that get frequent updates. Ensure to add fresh content to your blog regularly and as well try to update your old posts once in a while.

12. Ensure that your robots.txt file is not blocking robots from crawling your pages.

13. Spend money and time to promote your work across various social networks.

14. Write hot cake topics.

15. Get a mentor to motivate and give you insights.

Hope you found this helpful? Feel free to share with others and do not fail to ask your questions.

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EPISODE 7 TITLE: 6 Ways To Make Money Online

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