Building a Better Blog The Second Time Around

Things are going to be different this time around! This time I’m building a better blog! The Geeky Shopaholic is special and means a lot to me but that doesn’t mean that I did everything right there. In fact, there was a lot I did wrong!

I mentioned a few things I plan to do differently with this blog versus TGS in my first post, but I wanted to go into more detail here. If you’re looking to improve your current blog or building a new one these tips will be sure to help!

Have a Plan

I started The Geeky Shopaholic on a whim no real plan for what it was going to be. I didn’t even know I needed a plan, to be honest.

But this time I know what I want this blog to be about and who I want to talk to.

I still want this to be a lifestyle blog. I’ve always been a bit nicheless when it comes to blogging which I’ll write about at some point.

Blogging is a creative outlet for me. And I know I’m not alone. So I also want this blog to be a resource and encouragement to others who blog for the joy of it.

They need to know that it’s ok if they don’t want to make six figures from their blog. It’s ok if they don’t want to make any money from their blog at all. There is room for all of us. Those who want to blog for the love of writing, Those who want to make money. Those who want to do both!

Knowing that these are the readers I want to reach, helps me to create my content and lay a good foundation for the future of my blog.

This brings me to step number 2 for building a better blog this time around.

Laying a Foundation for Email Marketing

I never started an email list at The Geeky Shopaholic. Can you believe it? I knew that I should but I kept putting it off.

But this time I’m laying the foundation right off the bat. I already have my free offer up and ready. You can check out the free blog planner here. I’m signed up with a free account with Mailerlite and have my welcome sequence ready to go.

Actually, I’m taking a page out of one of my client’s books and creating a “forever funnel.” This means I’m adding my best content to a sequence that will go out on a bi-weekly basis so that whenever someone signs up they never miss out on those past informative newsletters!

I mean I have over 500 posts from The Geeky Shopaholic and over 100 at my business blog to pull from. No point in letting all that goodness go to waste!

I’m all about making each piece of content you create work hard!

Laying a Foundation for Affiliate Marketing

I never made a dime off of The Geeky Shopaholic. The thought of doing a sponsored post just didn’t appeal to me. Somehow I knew that getting paid to write would take the fun out of writing a post.

But with Penned by Paula, I’m more open to making money from the blog. While I’m still not interested in sponsored posts, I do like the idea of Affiliate marketing and promoting the tools and resources I actually use and love. That’s why I’m starting right off with a resource page full of my favorite tools, many of which are affiliates. I plan to write posts about my favorite blogging tools as well. And you even see a few tools over in the sidebar.

Setting up Google Analytics Right Away

I’m not sure how long I had been blogging when I finally created my Google Analytics account. But it was a long time after I started I know.

But this time, I’m connecting it right away. It’s important to keep up with your stats so you know what’s working and what isn’t.

I’ll also be setting up Google Search Console right away too so I can submit my sitemap. A sitemap helps Google better understand my website and its content, so I definitely wanted to get that up as soon as possible. If you use the Yoast SEO plugin it will create a sitemap for you and it’s super simple to add to Google Search Console.

SEO

I pretty much just relied on the Yoast SEO plugin at TGS. I never did keyword research and didn’t really understand all the factors that went into SEO.

I’m not saying I understand them all now either! There is a lot of things Google looks at to determine search engine ranking, but I know a lot more now than I did back then. And I have no doubt that this knowledge will help me to make this blog better.

While I’m not worried about ranking posts that are personal, I know I’ll be writing more evergreen posts that I will want to rank and help drive traffic to my blog. And this time I’m better equipped to do that. I also know that SEO is about the long game and it’s best to get started on it right away.

Optimizing My Images

I didn’t do this for so many images at TGS! I just uploaded them right from my phone. This isn’t good practice people!

So this time I’m resizing my images to what I need them to be, then optimizing them with TinyPNG before I upload them to WordPress. I started this practice rather late at TGS.

I’m also making sure I name my images correctly and always add ALT Tags. And I’m making sure those names and ALT tags reflect what the image actually is and then if I can work my keywords into that I will. It’s way more important that the ALT tags describe the image accurately for screen readers than they include my keywords. At TGS I was under the impression for a long time that ALT tags were just another place to add keywords.

Promoting Right Off The Bat

I didn’t really start promoting TGS until after I’d been blogging for a few years. People found me from commenting on their blogs.

While I don’t enjoy promotion, being an online business owner has helped me get over a lot of my fears about it. Besides what’s the point in building a better blog if no one finds it! Well, writing is really the point but I do want people to read and enjoy what I write too!

So, I’ve already grabbed my social media handles and started a Pinterest account so that I can start promoting my content right away.

While I don’t think social media is the best way to drive traffic to your blog, it’s not impossible to get traffic from those sources so I will at least be trying it out to see what works for me. I’ll start with a focus on Instagram as I enjoy it more than other platforms.

And of course, I’ll be putting effort into Pinterest as well. It’s more of a search engine though instead of a social media platform.

Well, this is it! This is how I plan to build a better blog the second time around. How many blogs do you have? What did you do differently on each one? I love for you to comment and tell me your thoughts!

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