How to Do a Competitive Analysis in Digital Marketing

You will not be successful in content marketing unless you first master the art of running an efficient blog. Blogging, whether you like it or not, is a vital part of digital marketing, and if you want to establish a strong presence online, you need to be able to blog in a way that is both quick and efficient.

I am aware that some who are new to search engine optimization (SEO) or digital marketing have a hard time comprehending the worth of a blog and how it may assist a single blogger or a business in growing their online presence; nonetheless, this does not change the realities.

Blogging is a source of revenue for many people, while also providing others with a means to improve their positions in search engine results and serving as a marketing tool for offline and online businesses.

If you stop and give it some thought, you will realize that a significant portion of the Internet is nothing more than a collection of blogs that may be seen in the form of text, photographs, or video. If you give this some consideration, you will come to this conclusion.

You can search for whatever keyword you wish to use on either Google or Bing, and then look at the results.

The vast majority of them are links to blog entries that can be found on personal blogs, company blogs, or other online media.

To put it more succinctly, if you are able to develop high-quality content quickly, together with the appropriate plan and SEO approach, you will be able to earn your fair portion of those searches regardless of how much competition there is or how difficult it may be.

And precisely this is what I hope to do with this piece. to further acquaint you with the concept of effective blogging and to walk you through the steps necessary to become an effective blogger.

The following is a rundown of the 10 steps you need to take to have your blog up and running successfully:

Step 1: you should choose the aim of your blog.

Step 2: you should conduct research before you begin writing.

Step 3: Carefully select post names to use as samples

Step 4: Draft an outline for the post

Step 5: Compose the post’s introduction Step 6: Publish the post

Step 6: Size Does Matter (Post Length)

Step 7: Learn the Basic Principles of On-Page SEO Eighth Step:

Step 8: Make your work more aesthetically pleasing

Step 9: Draw attention to your blog

 Step 10: Establish a pattern of behavior

1. Determine why you are going to be blogging.

Why should you blog? What do you hope to accomplish by maintaining a blog?

This may seem like an easy point to make, but a lot of the time people just start a blog for the sake of having a blog without giving any thought to what they hope to accomplish with their blogging efforts.

The following are some examples of valid reasons for blogging:

Blogging for money

This is a common one to use. You build a blog, produce excellent material on it, drive traffic to it, and then you decide whether to monetize it using Google AdSense, affiliate marketing, or some other method.

Although it may seem like a remark from the 1990s, it is still relevant today, and it is one of the most widely used ways to make use of a blog.

Those who still find it difficult to believe it should keep in mind that this is how HuffingtonPost, Mashable, and how, along with many other fantastic websites, got their starts in the early phases of their existence.

Blogging for leads

Blogging is one of the most successful ways to create leads, and it can be used regardless of whether you are selling items or services online (or offline).

Blogging allows you to “communicate” with potential clients, convince them of the usefulness of your products or services, and ultimately close the deal.

Blogging for traffic

Do you want to increase people’s familiarity with your brand by driving more visitors to your website?

If you ask any knowledgeable person to respond to this inquiry, you will discover that they will all concur that blogging is the most effective method.

The three examples given above cover practically all of the possible uses for blogging; nevertheless, before you start blogging, it is crucial for you to determine your primary goal because this will affect how you go about accomplishing your goals.

Take, for instance:

• If you are blogging for leads, then you need to publish posts that are insightful and detailed in order to guide the reader into making a decision. If you are blogging for money, then you need the right tools and to concentrate on publishing content related to keywords that can generate you money (also known as “buying keywords”).

• If you are blogging for traffic, then you need to focus on publishing content related to keywords that can generate you traffic.

2: Before you start writing, make sure you’ve done your research.

The most time-consuming aspect of running a blog is obviously the process of creating new content, also known as writing new posts. However, before you get started writing new posts, you need conduct research in order to make writing simpler.

Consider the subject of your blog and conduct a search on Google using a variety of keywords connected to it.

At this point, you should focus on gathering information on what other people are saying about the subject in the form of written work. What headlines they are using, what kind of content they are using, and in general, what Google judges to be quality content for that subject are all things you should look into.

Take a few moments to go through the results that appear on the first page of Google, open the websites in new tabs on your browser, and read through the blogs.

Exist any parallels between the two in terms of the content? Do you observe anything that seems to be a pattern?

Keep in mind that your objective is to improve your blog, and now is the time to begin considering strategies to differentiate your content from that which has already been published on the same topic.

If you come across something that interests you, such as a specific header, reference, or point, you should start a new document and begin taking notes on it.

3: Choose the titles of your posts carefully

Your next duty, now that you have a decent concept on what is written about the issue, is to think of a title for what you are going to write about it.

Your title should ideally serve two purposes: it should be catchy so that visitors will want to click and read it, and it should be SEO friendly so that you have a greater chance of reaching higher rankings.

I select my titles in the following manner:

After I have selected the broad keywords that I want to focus on in my article, I then begin a search on Google for the specific keywords that I want to use. During this process, I make a note of the suggestions that Google provides as I type in the search box as well as the ‘Related Searches’ that are displayed at the bottom of each page.

After that, I select the keywords that are the most relevant and enter them into SEMRush to research their level of difficulty as well as other long-tail keywords that are comparable. For a more practical illustration, please go to the section of my SEMRUSH review that discusses keyword research.

The next thing I do is narrow my choices down to one or two potential contenders, and then I start thinking about what the final title would look like.

Consider, for instance, the following:

General keyword: “SEO Tips”

The following is an example of a long-tail keyword: “SEO Tips for Beginners.”

“15 SEO Tips for Beginners to Boost Your Google Rankings” is the title of this article.

Important

Before coming to a conclusion, it is important to conduct one more search on Google using the full title of the topic in question.

What I want to find out is the kinds of websites that score well for that title, and in particular the domain authorities of those websites (Hint: using SEMRush).

Regardless of how high the quality of the material I provide, the likelihood of my blog post achieving good ranks will be reduced if the top slots are filled by websites with a high level of authority and very large audiences.

I am aware that this may appear to be puzzling (those who have more experience would comprehend what I am referring to), but it is essential to devote some of your time in writing on titles or keywords that will help you gain traffic.

If this is the case, then I adjust the title even further by removing or adding words so that I can compete with websites that have less authority.

4: Create an outline for the post

After you have finished preparing and optimizing the title, it is time to move on to developing the post outline. When we talk about outlining, we mean deciding on the various titles that the blog post will have as well as the topics that will be discussed in each blog part.

If you take the time to produce a detailed outline at the beginning of the project, it will be much easier for you to create the content that goes under each heading later on. This will save you a lot of time.

It is much simpler to write 500 words to cover a subheading than it is to attempt to write 3000 words that have no conclusion.

You should aim to have a new heading for every 500 words, although this isn’t always possible depending on the length of the post.

Reading is also made simpler as a result of this, particularly for individuals who prefer to skim read.

5: compose the opening statement.

When it comes to writing the beginning to your blog, the old adage “Well begun is half done” holds true. This is because a Greek philosopher once claimed that “Well begun is half done.”

After you’ve written the introduction and gotten the ball moving, the remainder of the process will go much more quickly and easily (provided of course that you know your topic and have a good idea on what to write in the body of the article).

When I write the introduction for the blog entries that I publish, I make it a point to keep it very brief (two to three lines) and describe what the piece is going to be about.

I am well aware that this is not one of my strong suits, but I make it a point to improve by practicing often with a variety of approaches to writing the introduction.

After I’ve finished the beginning, the rest of the post is much simpler to compose, albeit it does require a significant amount of effort on my end (especially if you have created a good outline as explained in step 4).

It is a good idea to include your keywords (or related phrases) in the first 160 characters of the post while you are writing the introduction; nevertheless, you should avoid doing things like keyword stuffing or writing sentences that don’t make sense.

For instance, take a look at the first sentence of this post’s introduction; you’ll note that I’ve included one of my goal keywords there: “how to blog effectively.”

Because I frequently utilize portions of the introduction as the meta description of the page, the time that is spent writing the introduction serves not only this goal but also this reason.

6: It’s all about the proportions (post length)

Size does matter. According to a large number of studies and polls, longer posts perform better in search and social media (they are more shareable and likable), in addition to doing better on different publishing platforms, such as LinkedIn posts or BuzzFeed.

The longer the post, the better, but how lengthy should it be? This is a question that a lot of people ask. The answer that is easiest to understand is to conduct a search on Google for articles that are comparable to the one you are interested in and to count the number of words included in each blog post that appears on the first page of Google.

This may not be a scientific method for determining the perfect word length for your subject, but it is a straightforward approach to learning what Google is looking for.

You should determine the average amount of words, then make your response longer and more insightful, provided that it is logical and that you have something to add that will make the information more valuable.

7: Acquaint yourself with the fundamentals of on-page SEO.

When it comes to producing articles, having a solid understanding of SEO is helpful, but it’s not necessary to be an industry professional to get the fundamentals down.

You only need to be conversant with fundamental on-page SEO ideas to accomplish this.

On-page search engine optimization (SEO) is nothing more than a rule set that you may apply to your content in order to make it more user- and bot-friendly for search engines. Things like having titles that are less than 60 characters long, descriptions that are between 140 and 150 characters long, ALT tags for images, an H1 tag for the page title and H2, H3 tags for the headings, setting a canonical URL for the page, having well-formed permanent URLs, having pages that load quickly, having content that is mobile-friendly, having internal links, and having a structured layout. The incorporation of data is essential if you want search engines to index and understand the content of your website.

8: Add some flair to your work

You’ve written a wonderful post and given it an attention-grabbing headline; what comes next? You have not yet completed your task.

Simply filling a page with text, even if those words are of high quality, will not go you very far. What you need to do is make sure that the appearance of your postings is appealing as well.

Make use of bold and italics to highlight significant points, make subheadings larger, make links easily discernible, include graphics where appropriate to display statistics or underline a point, and provide external links to assist people in learning more about a subject (or verify a statistic or study).

All of these minor adjustments can make your postings simpler to read, more professional, and more sociable. They can also keep readers on the page for a longer period of time, which increases the likelihood that they will read the content because they enjoy what they see.

9: Raise awareness of your blog.

Let’s face it: you can’t have a good website or be a successful blogger if no one is reading your pieces, sharing them, or commenting on them.

When you put in a lot of time and effort into crafting an article, just to have it deleted, it’s a frustrating experience. What actions may you take in response to this?

The uplifting news is that these are tried-and-true methods that will bring attention to your blog.

You may get your carefully crafted masterpiece in front of a lot of people by using advertising, social media, guest posting, content distribution, email marketing, and a whole host of other marketing strategies.

When it comes to blogging, blog promotion should not be seen as something that is optional but rather as something that you “have to do.”

Nobody will care about your new post unless you bring it to their attention and show it to them on their screens, unless you already have a large readership and a lot of followers.

As soon as you have hit the publish button, you should make a list of things to do, including the following:

• Publish the article on the company pages of your various social media platforms.

• Publish the article to your personal social media accounts, and do it many times.

• Publish it to websites that specialize in content discovery, such as inbound.org and growthhackers.com (there are similar website for different niches)

• Promote it on Facebook by using Facebook advertisements.

• Promote it on Twitter by using Twitter promotion ads.

• Submit it to StumbleUpon.

• Notify other bloggers that you have published a new post by emailing them.

• Notify users of any updates made to your Android or iPhone app

• Distribute a newsletter to the addresses on your email list

10: Establish a Pattern of Consistency

Maintaining consistency across your blog can help you generate results, or traffic, more quickly.

Because I am not very constant in producing fresh content for this blog, traffic is increasing at modest levels; yet, traffic on other blogs that I have done on a consistent basis has gone to more than 400 thousand views each month.

The frequency with which you should post new content is governed by a set of guidelines, but as a general rule, websites and blogs that are regularly updated with content that is fresh, original, and pertinent do better than other websites in a variety of respects.

If you provide search engines and social media platforms with the content that their readers desire, you will enhance your chances of being seen either organically or socially. This is because search engines and social media platforms are continuously seeking for new information.

Reflections on the end and important takeaways

The process of blogging is an essential part of digital marketing. Always having fresh information available is important for users, search engines, social platforms, and content networks.

Because the production of quality content requires a significant investment of time, it is critical to possess the ability to rapidly generate quality content. If you are unable to complete the assignment in a timely manner, the associated costs will increase significantly (even if you are only factoring in the time you spend working on it), rendering the endeavor unprofitable.

What I’ve outlined above are the ten steps that I take each time I create a new post on my blog to ensure that it is as successful as possible, and I hope that doing so will help you achieve the same results.

Leave a comment below if there is anything that is unclear to you or if you require further explanation on any of the things that were brought up in this article.