Whispering in Wonderland | By Alicia Izzo

Secrets to Successful Blogging

Blogging can be super hard, yet super rewarding at the same time. Whether you’re early in the blogging game or you’re well into your way and non seeing or feeling traction, I’m going to share five secrets to successful blogging.

Blog as often as possible

When I first started blogging with my first site, Feast on Fashion, I wrote 10 posts before I launched it.

I wanted to ensure I had content for people to browse through and not a lonely looking blog. It was a fashion and beauty blog.

Once I launched it, I wrote a post every single day.

Yes, I know this sounds daunting and the thought of coming up with a daily topic may seem impossible, but it’s not.

Search engines favor websites that are very active.

There’s a reason you chose to blog, so no matter what your topic is, you’ll want to talk and teach others about your topic.

Submit your blog to search engines

Many website owners don’t realize they have to submit their site to search engines.

Search engines can be the trickiest thing when you’re trying to figure out the secret to blogging. They can be tricky period.

For your site to appear in a search engine, it needs to be indexed by that search engine.

There are some unique tools out there that claim they will submit your site to all the major search engines.

If you’re using WordPress as your blog platform you can search plugins to help you do this.

Yoast SEO has a wizard that will ask you a series of questions for how you’d like search engines to read your site.

Check out these helpful tips from Google for more on submitting your site to Google.

If you need help submitting your site, I can help!

Use your own images when blogging

I can’t stress this enough! You build an audience with your readers and followers by showing them your work!

Yes, this can be a lot of work and take a lot of time, but the blogs that take shortcuts don’t win in the end.

I know how easy it is to find pretty images on Pinterest and use them, but you need to use your own authentic images.

You also need to add alt text to every image on your site. Alt text is a description of your image that is used by search engines to find your site based on your images.

For example, they can appear in a Google image search when they have alt text.

Configure your blog for SEO

So, now that we’ve covered alt text on images, let’s move on to SEO.

SEO stands for search engine optimization.

The text book definition is this: the practice of increasing the quantity and quality of traffic to your website through organic search engine results.

Ensuring your site is optimized will give you higher rankings in search engines and allow people to find your site easier. Which in turn, leads to more traffic!

The more traffic, the higher your blog ranks in search engines. See the circle and how it works here?

I remember when I created my first blog, I was shocked I didn’t see it when I Googled the name of the site.

I was in for a rude awakening and LOT’S of learning ahead.

Be authentically you

This is a secret you’ll see over and over again. Readers are attracted to a blog because they like the uniqueness of the author.

You build trust with readers by being authentic, which in return, will bring them back over and over again.

It’s easy to pickup on someone who is trying to mimic what others are doing. It’s the quickest way to not gain a following.

I started out as a fashion blog, which I love, but have grown into a lifestyle blog because I realized I have so much more to offer to the world.

I struggled with the idea and felt that my followers would leave me, but to my surprise, more traffic came my way. AND I’m happier and feel more fulfilled!

Sure, fashion is still all over this blog, because of my love for it, but I also want to share my learnings and other passions with you because I care about you!