Having a blog is essential today. A surprising quote when you see the predominance of social networks on the Internet today. Nevertheless, more and more companies are investing to create a blog quality, for several reasons. Free traffic, long-term visibility, engagement and retention of readers, the benefits of a blog they have never been so numerous!
With all this information, you may feel lost and don’t know where to start. Don’t worry, in this article we will explain what a blog is, why create one and above all, blog examples to inspire you.
blog definition
The blog, from its French name blog, is the part of a website that contains articles. It is intended for an individual or company to become a media medium, to tell their story in one case or to sell their products in the other.
Many netizens are wondering what is the difference between a website and a blog. In fact, a blog is part of a website, but it’s primarily designed for posting articles. Conversely, a website is neutral and vague. Clearly a website can be an e-commerce, a professional showcase site, but also just a blog.
The different types of blogs
Despite the multitude of websites that exist today, when it comes to blogging, we can distinguish a few types.
The most popular blogs today are professional blogs, used by businesses to attract a target audience. In this case, a company will create specific content to attract visitors and convert them into customers. For a marketing agency, for example, the company will do it create informative marketing content. Subsequently, readers will read the different pages of content and, if interested, can request support, directly on a page of the agency’s website, specially prepared.
Next, we can note the blogs of scientists. This blog category is not meant to be profitable, but to convey the knowledge of a scientist. In scientific blogs we find news articles, doctrine but also and above all disclosure of their subject.
Finally, we will find the famous personal blogs. This type of blog will rather be an individual’s diary, where the blogger will tell about his life, his passions, his adventures and more.
Finally, you should know that there is another category of blogging, which will be a mix between a personal blog and a professional blog. This is called a niche blog, which is a structure that it is just one topic specially. This type of blog is usually created by a person, but it also aims at generate revenueunlike a particular blogger’s site.
Note that for niche blogs, most of the topics revolve around these themes:
- Money and personal finance
- Health
- Travel
- Seduction
- New technologies
- Pets
- Greenhouse
Clearly a niche blog can also become a real business. Bloggers really can use different means of monetization to do live their website. These include the sale of product information, affiliation, advertising, and the sale of sponsored items.
Why create a blog?
Now that you know what a blog is, you need to understand its different interests. The benefits of a blog will obviously depend on the type of blog you create and your target audience. However, a blog has many advantagescommon to all bloggers.
For starters, the blog allows you toget qualified traffic, of course and for free. Indeed, through techniques of natural reference, your blog articles will rank on the SERPs, that is, the search results of Google, Yahoo, Bing and others. So, different users will browse the web and land on your blog.
This is a real plus because you can get visitors every day, for free, and this in the long run.
So, having a blog and regularly writing relevant content allows you to do that gain credibility. Imagine you are a company specializing in digital marketing. You have a part of the blog on your website, with high added value content, that is picked up or quoted by certain recognized media or people. You instantly gain popularity and credibility with your potential customers, who visit your blog.
Steps to create a blog
If you know what kind of blog to create (niche, personal or professional blog), it’s important follow some key steps to make it work. Knowing that creating a blog can be a complex exercise, so we’ll show you the main aspects of it. So it’s up to you to train create the blog of your dreams !
Step 1: choose the niche
To get started, you need to know what your blog is going to be about. Choose a passion, something that speaks to you. Or, start with a global theme (money, health, travel), and then find a niche between different topics.
Step 2: Create your website
Once you know what your website is going to be about, you need to create it and choose a domain name. The best way to do this is to use content management software (CMS), such as WordPress. The latter is completely free and allows you to create quality sites. For the domain it will be necessary to purchase it from a registrar (internet BS, Godaddy etc).
Step 3: article writing and optimization
Once the base of the site has been created and put online, you need to add content. The best here is to choose keywords using SEO tools. This way, you are sure to write articles that interest people and most importantly, without too much competition, in order to attract traffic quickly.
After putting a lot of content online, you can start networking strategy. This step is the fact of placing links on other websites to your blog in order to‘get more popularity with Google. Be careful though, find out about natural references before linking to avoid getting penalized.
Once your blog starts attracting people, it will need to be optimized based on your goal (collect emails, sell your products / services, etc.).
Helpful blog examples that work!
Now you know what a blog is, what it’s for and how to create it. We will help you by showing you some examples of blogs that work, so you can get inspired. By blog that “works” we mean a blog optimized for SEO and conversion. A useful blog that works is therefore a website that brings value to Internet users by allowing the blogger to gain customers through her articles.
Les Makers – The blog to learn how to blog
Les Makers is a blog on online business and SEO, which is the showcase of the “Affiliation & SEO” training of Asyncr0ne, a web entrepreneur specializing in the creation of niche sites. Through this blog, the Makers team provides valuable advice to website editors and bloggers looking to get started.
Thanks to guides (use wordpress, manage your natural references, create a sales page), comparisons but also case studies, a beginner can train there for free.
This blog is a good example of a business blog that works for several reasons. To begin with, we can see very high quality content, which provides a lot of information and advice. This allows you toattract visitors thanks to a good ranking on Google and other search engines. So you can see that the pages speak directly to the target audience. This maneuver facilitates the retention of readers.
Finally this blog contains calls to action (CTA), which allow the production team to collect emails. Thanks to the relevant content and the collected emails, Asynchrone obtains prospects and customers completely free of charge.
Books to Change Your Life – Olivier Roland
If you are interested in the world of blogging, you must have heard of this blog. Olivier Roland, his he owner, summarizes the books he reads and shows what he has learned through his reading of him. However, his blog quickly gained popularity. From now on, he sells on this site online education become a professional bloggerlearn wordpress, create relevant content, etc.
Here, we are typically on a blog that contains high quality articles, which is why this blog works so well. On the one hand, the articles provide value to the readers, and on the other hand, they contain a capture page, which allows the blogger to retrieve the emails.
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