Blogging tips: How SEO training helped me to grow my blog

Are you a book blogger and not having the success you would like to see on your book blog? Or are you considering how to start writing a blog and are not sure where to start? Or perhaps you are achieving some success with your blog, but you want to see it grow further?

If any of these situations apply to you, these book blogging tips can help you out.

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Just over a year ago I was wondering if it was worth continuing to work on my blog at all. It felt like I was spending a lot of time writing about topics I really cared about it, but that these articles received very few views.

I wondered if no-one was interested in my ideas. Or was the problem that though they were interested, they simply couldn’t find my blog?

Finding helpful book blogging tips

There are a lot of blogger tips and tricks around – sometimes giving contradictory advice – and the amount of work which they suggest can be overwhelming.

Another common issue for book bloggers is that there are a large number of book review blogs out there. How can you make sure yours stands out from the crowd and finds your audience?

When I started looking for book blogger tips I found the often long and exhausting lists of must-do blogging tasks overwhelming. Some of the essential tasks suggested included creating marketing profiles, reaching out to influencers, posting daily and spending a lot more time on social media.

Consider how much time do you really have to work on your blog – and how you should spend it

When you want to build a blog you have to be honest with yourself about how much time you have to work on it. Consider how much can you really do within the time you have?

I’m someone who blogs part-time. I also work in education and am a busy parent! Starting to try to accomplish everything at once on my blog was impossible. This just left me overwhelmed and with no ability to do what I enjoy most on my blog – writing about books and reading!

Perhaps you are in a similar situation to the one I was in then. Do you spend a lot of time and energy working through exhausting task lists? If like I was, you are doing this without any real focus or strategy to help you build your blog, you are probably feeling pretty fed up right now! You will be relieved to know you can have a successful blog without exhausting yourself!

One way you can do this is by using SEO.

What does SEO in blogging mean?

Put simply, SEO keyword research and other SEO techniques help your audience to find your blog when using search engines like Google. When I started blogging I had very little idea about what Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) was and how to go about using it. 

SEO is a really great way to drive traffic to your website. Best of all it will mean that the readers who really want to read your content can find it.

The difference using SEO made for my website

Learning SEO techniques meant that my website traffic grew from a handful of views per month to currently reaching 4k plus views per month.

While these figures may seem low for some bloggers, remember I am only working on my blog part-time for a few hours a week.

Earlier this year I had a period of several months when I could commit no time to work on my website. Despite this, the traffic coming to my site increased during this time! This was all thanks to the previous work I had done to improve SEO!

The growth in the audience to my blog helped me to know that readers were finding my website, enjoying it and that the content was useful and valuable.

This made me feel more confident in putting the work in to create more content and to further grow my blog. It has also meant I have been able to confidently put in place monetisation strategies to cover my blogging costs.  

How to learn SEO

Free blogging challenges and masterclasses

There is a lot of information around about SEO and some of it is more useful than others! I decided it was important for me to learn from established experts in the blogging community.

I started following courses by Sharon Gourlay at digitalnomadwannabe.com to first learn the basics and then learn more advanced techniques.

SEO Boost Challenge

Sharon inspires a lot of confidence as she has built a number of blogs on different topics from scratch. This helped me to know that it was possible for me to have success with my blog, whatever type of blog I was setting out to build.

A starting point for me was to join in one of Sharon’s popular free challenges. The first challenge I joined was the 7 Day SEO Boost Challenge.

In those 7 days, I learned a lot about what I had been missing in my blogging. It was an active challenge and it was great to instantly take steps to put the best blogging practices in place.

Check the challenge out now:

7 Day SEO Boost Challenge

Link Building Challenge

Another day-by-day and step-by-step challenge which Sharon runs is the 7 Day Link Building Challenge. This is a great way to work with other bloggers to build the authority of your blog. You will find out about how to go about effective collaboration with other bloggers including by guest posting. I’ve completed this challenge twice and each time has really helped my blog to grow!

Check the challenge out now:

7 Day Link Building Challenge

Goal Setting Challenge

If you want to find out how to start a book blog, deciding on the goals you want to achieve with your blog is essential. It is important to be sure in yourself what success for your blog means to you.

Whether your dreams lie in building a community of book lovers, blogging for money, or getting thousands of views on your blog you need to be clear about it to know how to move forward. Once you understand what your goals are you can ensure you are only working on the steps which will help you achieve them. Sharon’s 5 Day Goal Setting Challenge supports you in setting effective goals.

Check the challenge out now:

5 Day Goal Setting Challenge

Go to SEO Boot Camp

If you are already ready to dive into learning SEO quickly, Sharon’s SEO Boot Camp masterclass is also a great place to start.

All of the above challenges and the masterclass are free to join and take part in. They create a great foundation for understanding SEO and creating blogging success!

Check the masterclass out now:

SEO Boot Camp

Build Blog Freedom Fast Track

The free challenges mentioned above are a great starting point and I’d encourage you to try them out before paying for any blogging or SEO courses.

However, there is a lot more to SEO to learn. Sharon also runs a paid for, and really in-depth course called Build Blog Freedom Fast Track.

This course really covers everything you need to know for blogging success from getting started to earning an income blogging.

I have followed this course and I would highly recommend it. It has been the best blogging course for me personally to work on having the confidence to build my blog.

Check the course information out now:

Build Blog Freedom Fast Track

How the Build Blog Freedom course helped me

Build Blog Freedom really helped me to focus on what would work for my blog. Sharon provides successful blogging tips and helps bloggers to prioritise what tasks really matter to them individually. Implementing what I learned about SEO from this course led to an increase in the traffic to my blog as outlined above. I have also been able to learn how to make money blogging.

I am a part-time teacher and also a parent, so I don’t have time to spend 40+ hours of blogging per week. But blogging is a passion that I can’t let go of – so I want to do it as well as I can! The course encouraged me to understand that it can be possible to build my blog successfully with very little time and resources.

You can find out more about Build Blog Freedom and see if it’s right for you by clicking here.

I hope you can build a great book blog too! Good luck!

– Find lots of great books for all ages here at readinginspiration.com –

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