We start blogging with a motive and sometimes those motives work out just perfectly fine. But, sometimes we miss out on the opportunity. Therefore, we work even harder the next time and try to overcome our shortcomings. This is the process by which any blogger keeps on growing and developing. The blog Assessment Checklist will help you to take your business at a new level.
The goal is a very powerful target that we set for ourselves and only after achieving the said goal we say that we have succeeded. As a result, we plan out our every move to walk towards it. Similarly, when we fail we should come up with answers to why we failed. This is where analysis comes into play.
Blog assessment is a very important part of the whole blogging process. It lets us know what we lack and how we can improve. Even if you achieve your goals there is always a need to assess your blog site and improve on the shortcomings. Take it the same way a business comes up with its financial statements and management comes up with the analysis of the whole year of the business.
So, to help you out in your blog’s assessment, there are several tips that you can follow to better organize your analytics and improvements.
Analyze your Content
When you start with a blogging niche it is highly necessary to stick with something that you are actually passionate about. However, the niche being a popular one is also equally important for you to generate profit. These two factors restrict your content in some way. Therefore, you should start an analysis of your content to improve it as well as to keep a check on it.
The first check you should be doing is if you are actually publishing content on the same niche or not. If you seem to be wandering over some unrelated topics then it is an unprogressive decision. It will become a hurdle for you to rank your content on the Internet.
Find out if your content holds value in the eyes of your readers by looking into stats. It is very essential for your readers to find what they were searching for, in your blog’s content. It can make or break your blog. No one would want to visit a site that writes common knowledge or just brushes off the topic. Focus your content to provide in-depth knowledge about the subject.
Writing on trendy and upcoming topics is very essential as your audience may be looking for someone to explain the new information. Moreover, you can find out if you are missing a topic that comes under your niche. This will give you something more and new to write on.
See if your blog has a personality to it. When a reader reads through the post he must feel like he is reading a blog that is written by an actual human being. It should not feel bland and bookish in any way. People get attracted to the blogger’s style and personality so it should be easily visible to the readers.
Focus on Blog Analytics
Looking into the analytics is one of the few reasons that make a casual blogger into a professional one. All the stats of your site can be used to boost your site’s performance.
Start with the post that got the most traffic throughout the year. There should be a reason why it was the most read. Was it a trendy topic? Did you make the content top-notch that no one could beat? Was it the most promoted blog post?
All such questions must be clear with you if you wish to improve in the blogging industry. You should see if your most popular blogs have something in common. For example, your top blogs are on similar topics, or they have a more easy language, or they contain small bits of your personal stories. Any factor could be the reason and you must have a keen eye to look for the reasons.
If certain topics perform better then, you now have proof of it and thus you can yield desired results. There should also be an increase in the subscription numbers on the popular pages. If you find that there is a marginal increase then maybe your subscription promotion banner is placed in the wrong part of the page.
Also, there may be a chance that a low performing blog post has the most email subscriptions. Check what caused this change in the readers. Headlines play a very important role in blog traffic, so compare the stats and improve on future blog headlines.
Analyze and see if you have a steady conversion rate of your audience. Solve the problems that may be hindering their decision to go for the item or service that you referred to in your blog.
Optimize your Site and Blog Content
Simply writing about the topic is not enough as information needs to be systematically presented to the people. Each piece of content on the blog site should be accessible to the audience. Also, they should be able to easily navigate through the website and find the content of their needs.
Check that all your links are working and are easily visible to the readers. Each blog post should show a list of related articles to help the readers in getting more info. This also helps you get more traffic to some less-visited blogs.
Make sure that your blogs have good appealing headlines as it is the first thing that interacts with the readers. You can implement a grid system layout that is very optimal for maintaining a structure of the whole page.
No one likes a bland page with just text, even if it is quality content it requires some other media. For instance, including images to your blogs helps the readers to better understand the concept. It bridges the gap between reading and imagining what the text is talking about.
Content can be presented in many forms and at this modern age, you should include other media formats. For example, an audio or a video clip or even an infographic can help bring in people who love such forms of media. A podcast is another great example that has seen a boom in the world.
Make your content clear and use points for every sub-topic as it is preferred by many readers. Readers usually skim through the whole blog post and points quickly give them what they are looking for.
Your site should be mobile friendly meaning anyone should be able to browse through your website with ease on a mobile phone.
Related Read: What Makes Your Blog Posts More Interesting?
Take Competition into Consideration
In the modern era of blogging, we see many new bloggers emerging. These people bring new ideas and new topics to their respective niche. Therefore, it becomes your duty to know what your competitors are doing and where your site is lacking. This is a very essential step if you want to make a successful career of out blogging. Just like a business keeps on changing and developing according to market demands, a blogger should also keep on growing and changing as per the audience’s demand.
Look up other bloggers as well as other content creators on youtube and Instagram as they can shed light on many elements that you are unaware of.
You should be knowing what your competitors are publishing so that you can add something unique to your content. This will ensure that you stand out from the crowd. Look up their headlines and see how they are different from yours. Does it contain a trendy word that ranks better in search results? You can also use Ahrefs, a tool that will help you find what keywords your competitor is using for a specific blog.
Google trends is also an amazing tool that will help you to compare your keywords with your competitors to see which is more popular with the people. You should be knowing how your competitors present a product to their audience. Try to change your style if you are doing something wrong in these parts of the blog.
Make yourself aware of how often others publish their content and how do they promote their blogs. You should know if they have a separate team for specific tasks like marketing, writing, etc.
Knowing your competitors inside-out gives you a chance to be at the top of the charts.
Improve your Blog Site’s Design
A blog must have an appealing factor to it when a user opens the website. It has to look clean, organized as well as up-to-date. This shows the visitors that you are indeed a professional blogger and it adds up to your blog’s branding.
Check if your current blog structure is adequate with the targeted audience. A design that went great at the start of the year may be outdated now, so you must focus on this and fix it.
Add graphics that go with your blog brand. There should be a color scheme of your brand and that should be easily visible throughout the whole website. Hire expert graphic designers to add graphics to the page making it feel more complete and full. Analyze and see if all your text has consistent fonts.
Do include brief info about yourself this helps your audience to understand the person behind the site. If you have a guest blogger then mention his bio on the same blog page. Similarly, an about us page is a huge positive in your blog’s favor.
Make sure the pop-ups and ads have a good design that eases in on people when the ad pops up. Have a clean layout and make sure that it is uniform over all platforms i.e. mobile, laptops, tablets, etc.
How to do it?
Now coming to the part how you can customize the website’s design. You need a tool that can take care of every aspect of the WordPress design interface and for that, you can use the Blog Designer plugin. This plugin allows you to customize the website’s layout and make it look however you want. You can choose from 50+ professionally designed WordPress blog layouts and can further customize these layouts with the settings dashboard of the Blog Designer tool.
With this tool, you can take full control over your website’s design and can make it look the way you want with simple customization options. All the design layouts in this theme are responsive and the layouts will function perfectly even if your users are accessing the website from a responsive device like a tablet or mobile.
Blog Designer comes with all the features that you will ever require for customizing your WordPress website. You can take a look at the free version of the plugin to see some of the powers of the plugin.
Related Read: Top 10 Blog Layout Best Practices in 2020
Focus on Different Elements of your Blog
Your content alone cannot bring in more audience, your whole site also plays a major role in doing that. Therefore, you must change some other aspects or bring new ideas to your site.
Make a good navigation system for your site so no content gets hidden from the readers. It will help them get to any blog or any info they want to read about. This includes the about us page which is very necessary as people also want to know who is behind the blog site. About us page gives info about your organization or yourself, it thus gives you authentic value in the minds of the readers.
Also, it can be used to contact you if they want to ask their queries. Replying to your audience’s emails is a great way to be in contact with them and make them feel valued. An email subscription box should be placed such that it is visible to the readers. Moreover, it should provide special content like pdf, ebook, an audio file, that will make the readers want to subscribe to your site.
You should include related articles links at specific parts of the page to help older posts. Also, links at the bottom of the page help visitors in navigating the site.
Include brief info on the writer of the blog so that the people know who wrote it especially in case you took help from a guest blogger.
Include any legal info about your website and organization to make your site as transparent as possible. Take advertisers into consideration and additional information, so that it becomes easier to contact you by them. Any visitor whether for a good read or business purpose should have an easy time browsing the website.
Quality Check on your Content
Writing is just one element in managing a blog site. Good research and maintenance are also key factors in deciding the fate of a blog site. Assess how frequently you publish your blogs and make sure that you are consistent. Most successful bloggers have shown a routine of publishing 2-3 blogs in a week.
The day of the publishing can also help in increasing the traffic as many users read on the weekends. Also, bombarding your audience with blogs is not a great idea as you will feel the burden of publishing daily and your quality will decrease. You can surely improve your consistency and timing.
A professional blogger always re-checks his work for any error. The mistake of grammar and spelling can be a major setback for many readers. It breaks the flow of reading and it shows that you are not very serious about your work. Change this by always checking your blog before publishing it. Read your content the next day you write it as it will give you a fresh start and you will be more aware of the errors.
Use tools like Grammarly to make this task easier for you. Headlines should also speak to the readers that make them want to click on the link. The content should be well researched and should contain relevant and unique information on the topic.
Your purpose should be to help the readers get the answers they were looking for. They should feel satisfied with your blog and feel a connection with you and your blogs.
SEO optimization is a necessary part of blogging as this will ensure that your blogs rank on search results. Analyze which blogs lack in optimized content and try to work toward making all of your content SEO friendly.
Promote your Content
A blog cannot become popular on its own. You have to put effort into promoting your blog posts. This will make it reach to a large audience. Reminding your audience as well as promoting your blogs on social media ensures that you get ample traffic. Moreover, you get to apply all sorts of marketing tactics to bring in more people to read your blogs.
The email list that you created from your loyal subscribers comes in very handy after publishing the blog. Sending them notification emails makes them feel more valued and this ensures that no one misses out on your new posts.
You can use a highlight or a quote from your blog and use it to promote your blog. This way the readers would want to know more about it and they will click on the post. The home page of your blog site can also be used to promote the latest posts. Also, send the notifications to all your previous advertisers as they may be interested in knowing about your new posts.
Use a good feature image while promoting in social media websites, as it makes it easier to promote your content amongst the people on those platforms. If you are working on a large scale then it is better if you make a marketing team who will handle the job professionally. Moreover, you can use paid marketing to promote your blog posts.
Building Networks
A business requires a lot of networks of people to run, similarly, a blog requires that you make connections with people. Communication and networking are the basic foundations of a successful blog site. You need the help of the audience, experts, and the whole community to reach the heights.
Therefore, you must work on your interactions. You can improve by commenting on other people’s blogs and sharing your thoughts and writing what you liked the most. This is a great way to start getting noticed in the community. It shows that you are active and are aware of other bloggers in your niche.
You can ask other experts for their help or you can both collaborate on a topic. This will help you both as both of your audiences will get to know the other’s blog site. Indulge in discussions on your topics and have a healthy relationship with the community.
Be active on all social media sites and response to queries of the readers. This is another good way to bond with your audience. Moreover, you can take feedback on any blog or any topic meaning you will get to know what your audience thinks of you and your blogs. Feedback also helps you to supply the content that is in demand thus making your work easier.
Attend the events organized by the community and take an active role in the event. Make yourself be known and you will start to see how much easier your work has become.
Conclusion
The concept of blogging has been changing and bloggers have been keeping up with the new trends. It is time that you too focus on changing some things around your blog site to keep up with the world. There may be things that worked earlier but a better alternative may have arrived in the market.
Work on your site and content and look for those parts that may need improvement. Look into the matter that you missed earlier. Analyze your business, fix errors and try to use the aforementioned tips to come up with a better blog site in preparations for the next year.
Please do share what you found to be the most helpful for you. I would love to read your story and what your plans are for the upcoming year.
Read Next: 80/20 Rule For Blogging Success: Introduction and Implementation
