Blog Like a Rockstar

What was that?  You heard me.  I said BLOG LIKE a ROCKSTAR!

Blog like you enjoy it.

We get caught up in all this SEO and keyword research stuff.  Hey, it doesn’t hurt to add enough of that into your writing, but after awhile you can start to feel like a caged tiger.

Meow….

Catch my drift?

Don’t Enter the Keyword Prison

Listen up, Google will crawl and index your page for the keywords that it finds.  I’d say that the biggest thing that you DO want to avoid is an overall blog that has 20 different directions.  If your blog has several related categories and you blog in that space, and you blog like a frekin warrior, then it’s all good.

At the very least, blogging should be fun.  After that, you should be providing answers to somebody’s questions.  Take this article, for instance.  If anyone finds it then they were probably somehow searching for blogging topics or how SEO relates to blogging or blog traffic.  Google and other search engines SHOULD crawl this page and catalog it correctly. That’s why they presumably have all of these big brain PhD’s on their payroll.

I use a mix on my blog.  Sure I research keywords and sprinkle them in my articles for exposure.  I like writing around keywords as it creates discipline in your writing when you have to tailor a piece around a central thought.  That being said, do that all of the time and two bad things happen.

1. Your blog starts to resemble a long tail keyword farm
2. You get burned out confining your writing to narrow keyword phrases

Go ahead and write exclusively around keywords for a few months straight and then come back and tell me how you feel.  You might be a worn out shell of your former cheerful happy self.

Listen up, people, going through life worn out and tired while staring at a blank screen for your next blog post wording is no way to live.

Get this super duper effective and cross platform keyword research tool that I use.

Focus Your Blog

Make sure that your overall blog topics are related.  Don’t blog about Bigfoot and investments is what I mean.  Keep your overall topics related and interlink the posts with each other to increase search engine crawling.  If your blog is schizo, then the search engines won’t know how to classify or rank it.

Spice up your writing

My old high school algebra teacher, Brother Adams, (a tall Irish Christian Brother who looked like Adam West and had the nickname of “Brother Batman” because of that and he wore the long flowing priestly robe) used to tell us, when he was assigning many math problems for homework, that, “Variety is the spice of life!”

It is!

You have to spice up your writing every so often.  Of course we write our serious pieces, but you have to have fun, and allow your reader to have fun, too.  You can also mix that into serious posts by character switching your writing style.  I do that from time to time and it’s a blast.

Outline or Unstructured?

You can use a mix.  Some articles lend themselves better to outlines while others are better written in a freestyle paragraph by paragraph manner.

If you have lots of data to get across, then a list type of presentation is probably easier to organize and present.  The reader will not get lost as often plodding through a lot of writing while getting the facts.

If it’s more of a manifesto or conversational piece, then paragraph by paragraph will work fine. Other times, you might have a mix of the two in one article as some of it might be conversational while other parts of it might be presenting data.  Just use your judgement.

Set the Tiger Free

Once your writing is set free then you can expand your reach.  As old Brother Adams my math teacher used to imply, and applied to blogging here, your blog will be better off with a mix of keyword tailored on page SEO articles mixed with more freestyle informational articles that the search engines WILL catalog for all sorts of keywords.  It HAS to happen.

Once you have author and page authority, which comes with time, you will rank for many keywords that you never thought you could rank for.  Have faith.

Blog Like You’re in Therapy

If there are ideas that you want to express, then EXPRESS THEM.  If there ever was an activity that was invented for this, then it was blogging.  As far as I am concerned, blogging is as much for the author as it is for the readers.  In serving your fellow humans you also serve, or save, yourself.  You get to express those thoughts that deserve to have an outlet. You get things off your chest and in the process build a lasting imprint on the internet.  If it’s a monetized blog, then you are also earning an income.  Either way, you are providing value for those who are reading your content and also valuing yourself and your contribution.

Release your Inner Badass

Get down with your bad self when you blog.  Let it all hang out and don’t hold back.  Today’s readers don’t want sugar coated crap cakes.  They want content.  Not everyone will appreciate your brand of writing or humor, but someone will.  Remember, the surest path to failure is trying to please everyone.  Just be yourself and express yourself your way.  Have or create your own style.  It comes with practice.  Trust me.

Blog Daily

Make sure that you blog on something every day.  Add content to that blog and grow it daily.  Search engines love content and they love blogs that grow and expand all the time.  If your blog isn’t growing, it’s dying, and the search engines know it.  Make sure that your blog shows that it has a pulse.

Write good blog posts and make most of them on the longish side. Use photos. Make lists. Relay data. Google likes that.

Syndicate

Get your content out via syndication.  Share it socially and across Web 2.0 properties.  Have sharing buttons on the page with the content.  Make sure your RSS feed is in a syndication site like Tribepro/Onlywire or something similar.  Link to it from external blogs and social accounts.  Broadcast it via Twitter.  You get the idea.

Enjoy Blogging

Just make sure that you always enjoy blogging about what you are sharing.  In this blog I love sharing information on Empower Network, but along with that goes the art of blogging and things that go along with creating and running a blog, or inspirational topics that go hand in hand with blogging and creating an “internet lifestyle” living.

I have other blogs on other topics too, since my range of interests spans several information genres.  You can do the same if you have motley interests.

Just remember, provide useful information, and also have fun.  Be expressive and enjoy what you do.  If it’s not enjoyable, then there is little point putting in the effort.

If you have any other suggestions, include them in comments.   I’m sure there’s tons I left out, simply because it’s such a huge subject.

Just remember, content is king, and turn out tons of content!

Have fun!