Blogging is powerful. Blogging is rewarding. But, what is the point of writing a great blog post that isn't being read? These 65 simple tips are designed to help you increase visibility, engagement, readership and improve your overall brand image online. Bloggers, online entrepreneurs and webmasters need to pay attention to these simple things to gain more visibility online.

1. 65 Tips To Boost Your Website Traffic, Engagement
And Brand Image
gauraw.com/65-tips-boost-website-traf f ic-engagement-brand-image/
Setting up a blog, promoting it a bit on Facebook and Google+, garnering some website traf f ic and
then adding Google Adsense to monetize – is all about making money online, isn’t it?
Well, several months ago, a couple approached me f or some guidance about making money f rom
home without jeopardizing their visa status in the US. They were students f rom India here to do their
Masters.
Interestingly, they introduced themselves to me in a grocery store but had been my blog readers f or a
while.
I asked them if they had already thought about doing something. Among other things, they made
mention of making money online through blogging. And the f irst line in the post which I wrote, I
paraphrased what they had said.
Blogging Is Not As Simple As You Might Think

2. But boy they were naive or what!
With millions of new blogs starting every year, although it seems like something that anybody can do
it because everybody is doing it, blogging is a bit more complicated than that.
Blogging is surely about writing new content, but it is way more than just writing if you are blogging
f or making money. If you are a hobby blogger, your lif e is much more simple, you have much less to
be concerned about.
However, f or prof essionals and to become one, it is planning, strategizing, publishing, promoting,
networking and many more activities. We will get into those things in this post.
So, How Do You Do It Right?
Success is a planned event. When you don’t know what to do, it’s a good idea to get started
somewhere. It does make sense to explore through your experience. Start, f all down, get up, try
again, get up again, learn some more and try again.
It’s all great as long as you are doing it to learn, to understand, to test your skills, your strengths and
your weaknesses etc.
But, as soon as you get serious about blogging and you begin to desire success online, to make
money and brand yourself to success, you need a plan.
What I have learned through experience is, you really need to have a system around the ef f orts
involved.
You need a checklist of things you need to do. You need an itemized list of everything you need to
know and act on — to track and measure your progress, to attract readers, to develop engagement
and to grow your online f ootprint.
So, here you go!
Putting A Strong Foundation
Foundation is the f irst and the f oremost important thing f or building your castle. Let's get started
with the things that can and will help you build a strong f oundation f or your brand image online.
1. Identify Your Niche
Although you can just share about yourself , if that is what you want to build your brand image
around, who you are — there is nothing wrong with it.
But, if you want to build a business, sell some products and/or services, you better identif y a niche
and commit yourself to building your brand identity around it.
2. Setup A Self-Hosted WordPress Website
Although you can build a popular blog on WordPress.com or Blogger.com, you may not want to do it
because you don’t have f ull control among other reasons.
Setting up your Self -Hosted WordPress powered website is not that dif f icult and you can f ollow this
guide and set it up yourself in 15-20 minutes if you want. Or, you can get a prof essional help in

3. setting it up f or you.
When you host your website with us, my team will take care of all the headaches around your website
hosting and maintenance f or you. Check out Krishna World Wide Hosting and ask me any questions
in the comments section
3. Get A Decent Website Design
There are so many ready to use website templates (called ‘themes’ in the WordPress world) available
to you. Select a good theme that suits your business branding goals and use it. Make sure your
design is not broken and ugly.
If you can’t get it setup by yourself , get some help. Let me know in the comment section if my team
can help you get a good world-class theme conf igured f or your website.
4. Display Your Headshot On Your Website
Although it’s part of your website design, I wanted to talk about it separately because it is important
and you may not realize it without explicit mention.
Your personal branding is very important as an entrepreneur. Putting your headshot on your website
makes people connect with you and your website instantly. That is such a tremendously powerf ul
idea that most top marketers do it very ef f ectively.
5. Secure Your WordPress
No brainer, right? Why would you not pay attention to security of your home on the internet if you
won’t leave your house unlocked in real lif e?
There are hackers trying to get into your website f rom all sides. You want to make sure they can’t
access your important f iles or inf ect your website while you are thinking you are doing okay. Tighten
your WordPress security!
6. Have SPAM Protection
Blackhat SEO and web spammers are ready to hit your website at the f irst window of opportunity
they get. You want to protect your website.
Set up Akismet. It’s a tremendously powerf ul and one of the most popular plugins that helps you
eliminate comment spam.
Usually, you get this plugin installed along with your def ault WordPress installation, but you still need
to activate it to put it into action.
7. Create A Good Tagline
Your tagline is a small little phrase that you say about yourself and/or your online venture. All top
marketers have it and if you want to make a lasting impression on your visitor’s mind, you should
work towards having a good one f or you.
8. Have A Good ‘About Me’ Page
This is the second most visited page on your website, as you know. Most visitors will come to this

4. page af ter they land on your website f or the f irst time and enjoy what they f ound.
If you haven’t done it already and you want to make it impressive, it may be a good idea to look
around and observe how other thought leaders in your industry have done it and mirror their
approach. But the important thing is, you must pay good attention to this page on your website and
get it done – right.
9. Schedule Regular Backups
Not just when your website gets hacked, there are many situations when a good backup can come in
very handy. Situations arise when you are upgrading your WordPress and something goes wrong, a
plugin you added corrupts your database or, you deleted a directory by mistake (well it happens.)
In such cases, if you have a backup, it becomes a lif e saver. Always take regular backups of your
websites and if you are like me, you will rely on a premium service like ManageWP to auto-schedule a
backup and have a good night’s sleep.
10. Create And Maintain Your Editorial Calendar
It is very important that you have a publishing schedule. You and your visitors should know which
days of the week you post and you shouldn’t miss the schedule. It is a very important aspect of your
branding.
So, one of the most important things you can do f or your blogging is the know your schedule and
know what are you going to post at least one or two weeks in advance. Maintaining an editorial
calendar is very helpf ul in achieving this goal.
SEO, Usability And List Building
11. Setup Your Blog SEO Properly
WordPress plugins such as All In One SEO or WordPress SEO by Yoast are two awesome plugins to
help your blog do well with SEO. All you have to do is, install them, activate them and conf igure their
basic settings.
But it is very important that you do it. Af ter all, you need search engines to send some people to your
website, right? Why wouldn’t you want that?
12. Add Your Website To Google And Bing Webmaster Tools
If you have a website, doesn’t Google know that you own it? Does Bing know that you own that
website? If not, it’s time to visit Google Webmaster Tools and Bing Webmaster Tools and add your
website and get it verif ied. These tools are very important to your experience with Search Engine
Rankings now, and in the long run.
13. Submit Your Website Sitemap To Google And Bing
Sitemap f iles are especially very important to your website’s perf ormance on Google because it helps
Google web crawlers to understand your website posts and pages and navigate through them. Bing

5. has also started to ask f or sitemap f iles and it is a good idea to submit your sitemap to Bing as well.
If you haven’t submitted your sitemap f iles, go ahead and submit them using the webmaster tools of
both these major search engines.
14. Display Your Social Media Profiles
Encourage visitors to connect with you on social media. This builds trust and deepens the
connection with your target audience. It also increases your inf luence on social media and on the
internet in general.
15. Establish Google Authorship
Google Authorship is becoming more and more important as Google is pressing towards Author Rank
and Google+ is the way you establish your Authorship.
If you haven't already, go ahead today and setup your Google Authorship right away and make sure
you verif y that it is set up correctly.
16. Display Your Blog Category Archives
It is very important that you show your blog categories promptly using the widgets in the sidebar
because that way your readers get to read some of your old posts. It is easy to setup and is a very
powerf ul technique to showcase your work.
17. Display Your Most Popular Posts
When someone visits your blog, don’t you want them to show them some of your best work yet?
Having a widget in your sidebar to showcase your popular posts (all time hits and recent – both) to
impress your f irst time visitors is a very important technique to engage them with you.
18. Sign Up For A Good Autoresponder Service
If you ever want to build a loyal reader base and have your website generate qualif ied leads f or your
growing business, you def initely want to build a list. You need an Autoresponder service to build and
maintain a list.
I use and recommend Aweber as my f avorite list building tool and I would encourage you to use them
too.
19. Display Main Sign Up Form Prominently
Make sure you have a well-designed sign up f orm in your sidebar prominently displayed at the top.
Many top marketers pref er to add the sign up f orm as the f irst thing on their website above the
content and it works great f or them.
You decide which is the best place on your site and make sure your sign up f orm f or list building is at
a prime location on your site and that it is converting.
20. Display One Sign Up Form In Your Post Footer
Sometimes, people are more inclined to sign up f or your blog updates and email newsletters af ter
they read a post or two and like your content.

6. You want to leverage that opportunity and make it easy f or them to sign up. So, remind them to sign
up and make it very easy f or them to sign up right as soon as they are done reading your post. So,
add a sign up f orm at the end of every post.
21. Create Your “Contact Me” Page
As soon as you start getting some traction in terms of traf f ic and engagement, some of your
readers will want to get in touch with you. Create a clean contact page using some awesome
WordPress plugins and give people a way to contact you. It is one of the most important pages to
add credibility to you.
22. Make Your Blog Posts At Least 500 Words Long
From a SEO perspective, any post of 300 words or more is considered valuable. But, unless you are
writing poems, you really can’t teach much in less than 500 words.
Theref ore, use at least 500 words in your blog posts. By the way, don’t make 500 words just f or the
sake of doing it. Do it because you have something of value to say. Only when you add value to your
reader will you have value f or yourself .
23. Add Images To Your Blog Posts And Pages
Images not only make your blog posts look prettier but also please search engines. Not just that,
when your posts get shared on social media, your images are picked up and displayed along with
your blog post title which draws the attention of others.
Do not f orget to add at least one image large enough to be easily visible easily and depending on
your blog’s layout, the larger, the better.
24. Link Out To Resourceful Websites
You can’t know everything. Nobody does. So, when you are writing a blog post to teach your
audience something, make sure you do your research and share ref erences of a f ew good
resourcef ul posts f rom thought leaders about the topic.
Your audience will appreciate you, the bloggers whose post you share, will appreciate you and also
Google will like you because you are sharing resources with your audience thus increasing the quality
of your posts.
25. Link Your Previously Written Posts
From a SEO perspective, you should use WordPress plugins like SEO Smart Links to automatically
link your current post with related tags, categories etc.
Also, it is a good idea to ref erence to your previously written articles related to the same topic. That
way, your posts f rom past come to the f ront and get some SEO benef its. It adds a lot of value to
your blog in terms of SEO.
26. Make Use Of Headings And Sub-Headings
Do not make your blog posts look like a f ew big paragraphs. If you do that, most people will not read
it. Plus, search engines do not consider your paragraphs f or keywords or ranking purposes.

7. However, if you use Heading2, Heading3, Heading4 etc. type headlines and sub-headings within your
posts, not only does it make your posts more readable to your visitors, search engines consider
headlines as an important text on your pages. Thus, it will help in your SEO as well.
Social Media And Your Website
27. Add Social Sharing Buttons To Posts/Pages
Social Media dominates the internet. Social Media also inf luences search engine rankings today more
than ever bef ore. The more your content gets shared on Twitter, Facebook, Google+ etc., the
greater your chances are to rank higher.
To enable your visitors to share your content when they like your posts, make sure you have
provided them sharing options. You can use WordPress plugins like ShareThis, Digg Digg, JetPack
etc. to provide those share buttons.
28. Ensure Your Social Media Profiles Represent You Correctly
This is very important f or your branding. Make sure your social prof iles descriptions, your prof ile
images are inline with your website design, your tagline and your mission.
If your social prof iles say something else about you and your website says something else, you
conf use people. Make sure you keep it consistent and simple.
29. Identify Your Two Or Three Favorite Social Media Platforms
There are too many social networking sites. It is a very powerf ul thing but it can also get intimidating
if you aren’t caref ul.
So, instead of trying to be everywhere, identif y a couple (or may be three) social networking sites
that make sense f or your business and become active only on those places. This is better than being
everywhere and not being ef f ective anywhere.
30. Stay Active On Your Favorite Social Media Platforms
Staying active means engaging with your connections. Share quotes, ask questions, answer
questions, share images, comment on inf luencers and promote your blog posts. You should at least
perf orm some activity every f ew hours. Use HootSuite or Buf f er to manage your social platf orms.
31. Promote Your Blog Posts On Social Media Platforms
Every time you write a blog post, make sure you consciously share your posts with your f riends and
f ollowers. If you have good people connected to you and you are f eeling comf ortable sharing your
content with them, that means you are writing good content. It is also your test of quality.
32. Be Approachable On Social Media Platforms
If you are too big to talk to, people will stay away f rom you. Make sure you are f riendly and

8. approachable by people in your network. If somebody asks a question which is genuine, make sure
you respond in a reasonable amount of time.
33. Write SEO Friendly Content
When you are writing your blog posts, it’s important to remember to write your content in such a way
that Google/Bing can send people to your articles based on the words they search f or.
What does that mean?
Write SEO f riendly blog posts. Use those keywords in your post headlines, sub headings etc. and
variations of the keyword within the body of the post. SEO optimization of your content is important.
34. Make Your Content Pleasant For Your Visitor’s Eyes
If your content is too f lashy, has too many color combinations, too many f ont variations, it becomes
painf ul f or your viewer’s eyes. If people f eel stressf ul while reading your posts, they will just walk
away.
Do not use too much styling. Keep it simple, keep it easy to read. Use a f riendly f ont such as Arial or
Georgia and either size 14 or 16. You will do just great.
Content Creation And Syndication
35. Decide A Writing Frequency And Stick To It
Your regular readers need to know when is your next post coming out. Do stick to your blogging
schedule as you work your editorial calendar. Whatever the posting f requency, stay the course!
36. Consistently MaintainA Blogging Ideas File
It is hard to come up with a new blogging idea everyday and every time. That is why it is important
that you always be on the lookout f or new ideas f or getting inspired to write.
Have a place on the cloud where you can easily record your blogging ideas so you can ref er back to
them later when you need. I use Evernote as my online diary. Here is how to use get going with
creating your blogging ideas.
37. Take Time To Promote Your Content Every Day
What’s the point of having great content if it can’t get readers? Make sure you promote your new
blog posts on as many social networks and f orums and bookmarking sites as possible.
However, you need to make sure you don’t come across as a spammer (You will if you only promote
your content). Promote other people’s content more than you promote yours and you will be f ine.
38. Observe Thought Leaders And Duplicate Their Strategy
Conf used about what works and what doesn’t? Watch out f or leaders in your niche. See how are
they writing, how are the promoting, how are they engaging and emulate them. You will f ind success
pretty f ast.
39. Create Great Headlines

9. You have one great opportunity to make your audience curious, that is your blog headline. You need
to always make your readers understand the goal of the post through your headline. The better your
headlines are, the better your chances of getting readers to actually read your content.
40. Hone Your First Paragraph Writing Skills
Af ter your headline, the f irst paragraph is the one which makes people continue to read your post or
walk away. If you want people to read your posts, make sure the f irst paragraph is as interesting as
possible.
41. Write Short Sentences And Paragraphs
No brainer! You do not like to read big long paragraphs, do you? Then don’t write it and put others
through the pain of going through your big long paragraphs.
Also, the shorter your sentences, the better. I had to work on this a lot and actually, I am still working
on this one.
42. Draw Your Readers Into Your Post With Stories
You should incorporate a story or two into your posts. Pref erably, start with a story early on in your
post to draw your readers into your post. Everyone loves stories, everyone loves drama. You can
capitalize on that craving and build great posts!
43. Teach Something In Every Post
What do you want your reader to do? As a blogger, another way you build your authority is by
teaching something to your readers. You want them to walk away with something to act on. So, if
your post teaches them something, they will come back next time to learn something new.
44. Create Some Very Detailed Guides
This is a great way to establish authority of your blog in your niche. Create some really awesome,
long and very detailed guides f or a f ew topics in your niche. Make the guide as resourcef ul as
possible.
This will get you incredible traf f ic, awesome backlinks and higher search engine rankings. Work on it.
45. Syndicate Your Content To Social Bookmarking Sites
Submit your content to various content syndication sites. This is important f or SEO and also
important to getting some targeted traf f ic. Here is a very comprehensive list of syndication services
you may want to leverage.
Monetization – Offers, Products And Services
46. Offer Something Of Value For Signing Up Into Your Email List

10. People will be more inclined to sign up f or your email list if you of f er them something of value as a
bonus f or signing up. Create an awesome e-book or an online course or solve a problem f or your
email subscribers and of f er it.
47. Create A ‘Hire Me’ OR ‘Work With Me’ Page
You’re running a business online. So, start acting like one. Add a ‘Hire Me/Work With Me” page f or all
your readers to see. If you don't have this page, people don’t know how can you help them
prof essionally or what to expect to pay you f or your service. Help them. Let them know what you can
serve them with.
48. Add Appropriate Advertisements
Get a Google Adsense or Media.net account to begin with and add a f ew non obstructing
advertisements and monetize your blog. If you have 10000+ visitors a month or so, you can also
apply f or BuySellAds account to have even better control and good looking ads.
49. Recommend Some Affiliate Products
When you are blogging, living lif e, f ixing your problems, using an Autoresponder service, some
premium theme, you will have enough exposure to enough number of products and services others
are looking f or.
Make sure to check with the service provider if they have an af f iliate program and if they do, make
sure you use your af f iliate links to promote those products. This is a great way to make some money
while you blog.
50. Create Your Own Products/Services
You may not have it right away. But, if you have been blogging f or some time, marketing some
af f iliate products already and doing well, you will have enough expertise that you can sell some of
services to others in need.
Smart marketers work towards creating their own products and services while they are marketing
other people’s products and making money through advertisements etc.
51. Build Joint Ventures
Content marketing needs time and energy. It can be overwhelming at times if you try to do everything
on your own. Theref ore, get smart about it. Launch some products and services using joint ventures
with other authorities in your niche. There are so many opportunities available to you. If you don’t
know where to get started, check out f ounder2be website.
Improving Engagement And Influence Online
52. Encourage Your Readers To Comment
One of the best things you can do on your blog is to create engagement where people who come to

11. read your posts, also ask you questions, answer your questions and interact with you though
comments. You should encourage them to do it using every opportunity you have.
Using a good commenting system like CommentLuv or DISQUS will help tremendously. Explore your
options and f ocus on this aspect.
53. Ask Questions At The End Of The Post
Many times people love your posts but they don’t know what to say. Plus, they don't want to say
“Great Post” and run away because it looks like SPAM. So, in conf usion, they don’t say anything and
leave.
You can help them by provoking their thinking brain through a question. Add a question at the end of
the post so they can at least comment to answer your question. It helps a lot in getting more
organized comments.
54. Respond To Genuine Commentators
When somebody leaves a comment, they took time to share their thoughts on your blog. You should
show your appreciation to them by responding to their comment and pref erably, have a conf iguration
on your website so your commentators can get an email notif ication when you reply to their
comments.
You don’t have to do it to every single person. But have some criteria f or responding to commenters
and then respond as appropriate.
55. Comment On Other Related Blogs
What do bloggers love the most? Comments on their posts. You do too and so do I. So, how do you
build great relationships with other bloggers? Start by regularly commenting on their blog. Eventually,
you will get enough opportunity with them to engage and build relationships.
And yes, do not expect them to reciprocate right away. You do it with an intention of giving and
sooner or later they will recognize you and start to value you too.
56. Share Other People’s Content
Promoting your blog posts is great. But you can’t promote your same content many times on the
same social networking site, right?
But, your content can get shared by many people on the same network and thus creating buzz about
your blog, buzz about you and increasing your impact on search engines. You can do that by this
simple rule.
You share other people’s content enough and some of them will begin to reciprocate. Eventually, you
will start seeing your posts being shared on every social network by a large number of people.
57. Join Blogging Communities And Build Relationships
To have a system around your blog syndication, social sharing and relationship building, joining a f ew
blogging communities is a great idea. Check out websites such as Triberr.com, Blogengage.com and
SocialBuzzClub.com and start building a routing around your activities.

12. Visit these websites on a daily basis, share other people’s contents, comment on their blogs and
share your valuable content so others can do the same f or you and it works great!
58. Guest Blog OnAuthority Blogs In Your Niche
One of the best ways to build authority around your brand image is to become a guest author on
blogs with social authority. Not only does it help improve your credibility in the marketplace, but also
it helps you get more exposure and increased traf f ic f or your own website.
Make a list of inf luential bloggers in your niche, build relationships with them and once they start to
recognize you, request them to publish you as a guest author on their blog. If a f ew of them do not
allow guest posts, do not get discouraged. Move to the next one.
59. Follow Authority Bloggers On Social Media And Engage
So, you met some of the thought leaders f rom your niche through one of the blogging communities.
You start commenting on their blogs, start sharing their content. That is all great. But, are you
engaging with them on social media? If not, start doing it now.
It is very important because that adds to your social media inf luence which in turn f eeds right into
your main blogging objective.
60. Invite Authority Bloggers To Guest Blog
Similarly, af ter you have developed a meaningf ul connection with thought leaders in your niche, check
with them if they would like to be a f eatured guest author on your blog (and may be suggest them an
idea or two) and teach your audience something.
61. Link Out To Authority Bloggers Regularly
Do you realize how many authority blogs I have linked out to right f rom this post alone? Linking out
to popular blogs in your niche is actually good f or your SEO and besides, it gets you the attention of
the author you are linking out to.
Your audience appreciates you because linking out is what makes your blog more resourcef ul. It
shows you care and you want to provide the best content to your readers. Be generous and link out.
62. Conduct Interviews With Thought Leaders And Publish
Just as you f eature guest blogs, sometimes, you may not be able to get f amous bloggers to write
f or you. But, you can still f eature them on your blog by interviewing them. If you check some of the
top bloggers in the world, they take a lot of interviews and publish on a regular basis.
You can publish interviews as text or audio if you don’t want to go live in a video. But, if you can,
video interviews are the best! You can use Skype to record video interviews and publish. It’s that
easy!
Thought Process Development

13. 63. Treat It Like A Career – Invest In It
Blogging truly can be a career you can be proud of . Take it seriously. Invest in your blog. Don’t cut
corners. If your blog need a good hosting, invest in it. If your blog needs a premium theme or plugin,
invest in it. If you need to learn a new technique, a new marketing strategy to take your blog to the
next level, do it. It will grow at the level you want it to and growth needs your commitment.
64. Stay Consistent – Do NOT Do Yo-Yo!
Do I need to even talk about it? You can’t be a yo-yo and succeed in anything f or that matter –
blogging included. Consistency is the name of the game. Stay consistent no matter how you f eel. It
will pay big dividends in the long run.
65. Always Be Learning Something New
Do you read a good book every day f or at least 15-20 minutes? Do you participate in educational
workshops regularly? To lead yourself to success, you need to keep learning at least one new thing
every day. To be a pro-blogger, you need to keep learning every day. Invest in your time, money and
energy on your own personal development.
Some Final Thoughts About These Tips
Looking at the number of things in this list, you might be f eeling overwhelmed at the moment. It might
as well seem very complicated.
But the good news is, you don’t have to do it all in day one. Instead, it’s a checklist of items you need
to keep checking of f as you take care of them one by one.
As you start checking the items on the list of f , your to-do list starts to shrink and you would have
already started to see some awesome results already!
There are many items on this list which are just a one-time thing. Once you do them, you don’t have
to do them again, ever. How relieving is that?
Do not f eel f rustrated because anything is worth having is worth putting in an organized ef f ort. Get
to work and begin to put a strong f oundation f or your bright blogging career!
Over To You – Have Questions Or Suggestions?
How many of the items on this list are you already doing? And how many of these are in pipeline f or
you to accomplish this year?
Are there a f ew more tips that I have missed? Please suggest through your comments in that case. I
would love to hear your thoughts!
Please click here to go to comment section or scroll down. Thank you kindly!