STEP 1 - decide whether you will be doing this for money, or for fun. Because if you're doing it for fun you can just write a few words or post a few images / videos about things you like on a free blogging platform and you're done! You've just blogged
If you're doing it for money, though, you will be creating blog posts like a maniac your entire life, so you need to be ready for this long-term activity mentally and financially because it will cost you a lot of dedication, effort and money spent on either quality content (if you can't write, or hate writing, even on topic that you care about), or money spent on both quality content and good backlinks. Strong backlinks is what ensures your blogging success in niches, and for keywords with high competition.
STEP 2 - once you've decided that you want to blog for money (which I assume it's the reason you are here in the first place), you need to take good stock of your finances because - like I said - blogging as a business will cost you money - and also take stock of your skills and abilities so you can figure out which tasks you can do yourself, continuously and without getting burned out or bored to death by doing them, and which ones you can outsource.
STEP 3 - after you've had these 2 preliminary steps all figured out it's time to "start blogging" which means doing ALL these things, in THIS order....
STEP 3a - choose a niche (topic) that you wish to blog about. A good niche is one that meets ALL of these requirements:
- is profitable (people spend money on it)... for example, niches like health, relationship, business, gadgets, etc are profitable niches because they are some of the most important things in life that people of any sex, religion, political views, financial situation or time of day / year will spend money on because health, relationships, business, and technology are always parts of our lives and we have to spend money in these niches. Whereas niches like balloon inflating, or meme making, or whatever other silly nonsense are not good niches to blog about because people don't buy memes, or spend money on tutorials on how to inflate balloons (if that is even something you need help with). I realize that the examples I gave as bad niches are actually really bad, but they're the only ones that came to mind at the moment, so you will have to excuse the poor examples I gave. But if you use your brains a little, you will probably be able to figure out at least 10-20 niches that are not profitable enough to justify blogging about;
- is evergreen... experienced bloggers can make money in all sorts of weird niches, but you are not an experienced blogger so I suggest you find an interest in one of the 4 big niches I mentioned above and blog on that niche instead of niches like chimney cleaning, or swimming pool cleaning, or christmas presents, etc. Obviously that these 3 are VERY seasonal niches and if you start blogging on these niches (even if you are expert in all 3 of them) you will make most of the money during their season (few weeks in the summer, few weeks in the winter, etc). But if you blog in niches like health, business, technology, relationships, etc you will make money around the clock because people have health / money / relationship issues every minute of the day, 365 days a year, so someone, somewhere WILL spend money on a product or service that helps them fix their health / relationship / money problems. So, these are always good niches to go into.... well, the seasonal ones are good niches, too because they can make you huge chunks of money in the season, but it's better to let these niches to the experts as they are usually more competitive and require more know-how to make money with them;
- is broad... this is very important when blogging, and something that many newbies overlook. A niche like painting for example... or ice sculpting... or whatever other arts & crafts niche is usually bad for blogging because there are only so many things you can blog about such a niche. Take ice sculpting, for example: you can write a post about which tools you need to sculpt in ice, then an article about how to handle those tools and which ones to use for which particular project, then probably an article about some famous ice sculptures in the world and their life.... and maybe 2-3 more articles about other things that I don't know about (I have no clue about ice sculpting, I just gave an example). But after writing 10-12 such articles you will have covered most of the niche in less than 20 articles (there might not even be a lot of keywords on such a topic to be honest). So, what are you gonna do next?? Start another blog in another (better) niche? If that's the case why not focus on a good (broad) niche right from the beginning. Or, if you are an experienced ice sculptor and desperately want to blog on this niche because no one else is covering the niche in detail and you feel like you can position yourself in google as an expert in this niche and make good money with it, sure, go ahead and blog about ice sculpting. But you are probably the 1 in a million cases of people who can blog about these niches (or any other narrow / small niches, like there are so many of in the arts & crafts niche). But otherwise, stick to a broad niche, one that has millions of keywords you can choose from, and millions of monthly searches for those keywords. This way you know you are gonna be busy making content for decades to come, without ever frying your brains figuring out which keywords you can write on;
- you have even the slightest interest in.... as someone who hates writing (the fact that my reply is almost a novel in itself stems from my desire of helping newbies see the light, but otherwise I wouldn't write such long messages).... anyway, as I was saying, as someone who hates writing you can take my word for it that if you don't like the topic you are blogging about you will have a hard time maintaining the content creation routine, no matter how motivated you are in the beginning, or how overconfident you are in your abilities. And if you - stubbornly - refuse to take my word for it, then go ahead and write 100 articles on a topic that you have zero interest in and see how you will not even want to hear about writing a single sentence for the next 2-3 months anymore. Just humour me and try to prove me wrong and see how it goes
So, choose a niche that you are even remotely interested in is very important, even if you're not gonna create a single piece of content but outsource it all to someone else. There will be moments when you will have to proofread and fact check the content you're getting and if the topic doesn't interest you in the slightest and you're gonna post that unchecked content on your blog there's a big chance that your traffic will see through that content who you are (not an expert, nor interested in the topic) and label you as "bad quality website" and their actions will send signals to google that you don't know your shit and google will get rid of your site from their rankings. You might be lucky and get away with it for a few months or years, during which you might break the bank, but why not go all in and for the long-term if you're gonna invest your time and money into blogging? Just do things properly from the get-go...
STEP 4 - once the niche selection is done and you've found a winning topic you wish to blog about it's time to do keyword research so that you know what to actually write content on, because if you mindlessly write on various things that come into your mind without targeting keywords that people search for in google you might as well quit blogging and find an offline hobby because the results will be the same. Even worse, the offline hobby will at least be morally rewarding because you're having fun doing it, whereas your online business will bring you no money but instead will cost you time and money. So, keyword research is very important and you need to get it right because it will mean the difference between making money or just having a pretty site that you can show off to your friends and family.
When doing keyword research you need to decide whether you have time, money, and dedication to go after medium to high competition keywords, which will obviously bring you lots of traffic and sales given how popular those keywords are, but which are also hard to rank for without enough money and know-how because everyone and their little brother will want to target those keywords.
Or, you will go after low competition (usually low search volume, but not always true) keywords that you can possibly rank for within 2-3 weeks but which will also - most of the time - bring you 10-20 visitors a month at most.
So, you need to decide which type of player you are (the overconfident and filthy rich player that always aims high and strikes big, or the scaredy, play-it-safe type that just wants to see a bloody result to know that something works), and - depending on which type you are - you will choose one method or the other.
I'm not aiming this tutorial at the overconfident, filthy rich bloggers because those people have it the easiest way: just throw money at everything until you see what sticks, focus on what sticks and then rinse and repeat until you make money money than you throw at things.
But if you're the take-it-slow type of blogger than keyword research for you will look like this....
STEP 4a - insert several topically-relevant seed keywords into Ahrefs to have a good selection of keywords that you can filter through and find a few dozens of them that you can target. By "topically relevant seed keywords" I mean this... let's say that the topic you want to blog about is automotive (so, cars). For this niche, topically relevant seed keywords are: engine, brakes, car battery, engine fluids, tires, wheels, car interior, transmission, etc. When you input such a large variety of different - but TOPICALLY-RELEVANT - seed keywords into keyword research tools (well, into Ahrefs since this is the tool I am referencing in this tutorial) and hit search you are bound to find millions of them that you can filter through and find a few 100s of winning keywords than if you were to just insert "how to repair car", or "how to jump start car battery" or other very specific keywords that you can write an article about and be done with them;
STEP 4b - after inserting several seed keywords into Ahrefs, and which are topically relevant to the main niche of your blog, you can then use the various filters to find keywords you would like to target and which you think you can rank for. Generally, I recommend that you target keywords with 0-3 KD score, but if you find a keyword that is KD 4, for example, but which has 1000s of visitors a month you might be tempted to target that keyword, too. Well, if it's indeed low competition you may want to include that keyword in your list of good keywords that you can blog around, but otherwise - as a newbie - just stick to keywords with a KD score of 0 to 3, as these are really easy to rank for if the other metrics also line up with the KD. Sure, chasing after such keywords (which sometimes don't even have search volume) might seem disappointing at first, but create decent content around 100-200 of such keywords and watch your rankings increase and traffic grow outta nowhere after several months. I can't explain why this works cause I don't know google's internal workings, but I've seen it happen more than once on this forum, with people targeting completely empty keywords (keywords with ZERO search volume) and getting something like 150k visitors within 6 months. Google is trickier than they make us believe, so go for these keywords as a new blogger. It will help you in the long run... and even on short term, to be honest, because it will give you proof that your efforts are being rewarded, and this will motivate you to chase even tougher keywords while your site picks up the delicious domain authority and organic references;
STEP 4c - after inserting the seed keywords into Ahrefs, filtering the keywords by KD (0 to 3 is the sweet spot for newbies) it's time to take a look at the other important metrics of your competition, and at this point I am discussing RDs, DR, and backlinks, so....
- RDs... RD means Referring Domains, and it means how many UNIQUE domains are linking to a particular website. When you put a keyword that you wish to rank for, into Ahrefs, and you notice that all of the websites ranking on google's 1st page for that keyword have insane number of RDs you will usually want to stay away from that keyword, even if the KD is 0. More than once have I seen keywords with 0 KD for which the top 5 spots have been taken up by websites with huge authority (DR / DA) and which are very relevant and popular in that particular niche, and these websites are usually very had to beat if you don't know what you're doing. If you see sites like reddit, pinterest, wikipedia, facebook, quora, or forums, or yahoo answers types of websites you are good to go. But if you are blogging about PlayStations, for example, and you see Sony, bestbuy, amazon, etc for the (PS-related) keyword you are trying to rank for, taking up the first 3 spots in google you should find another keyword. Again, even such companies can be outranked, just not yet... and not by newbies anyway. Your site needs to gain more authority and you need to get more knowledge and experience in general before tackling keywords whose first spots in google are taken up by big, authority websites in that niche.
So anyway, the point I'm trying to make is that RDs is a pretty big deal, and if you see that the rankings for your target keywords are occupied by websites with insane number of RDs stay away from that keyword if ALL other conditions in this tutorial are met. RDs alone is not enough to asses the real competition of a keyword, and if the RD is high but all other metrics are positive you should go for that keyword. But, if the RDs is high, if the DR is high, if the number of backlinks is high, and if the websites ranking in the first 5 spots in google for that keyword are all topically-relevant websites, then you should drop the keyword even if it has 0 KD;
- DR / DA... while not extremely important nowadays, you will still want to take a look at the DR (Ahref's way of telling how much authority a website has) or the DA (Moz's way of telling how much authority a website has), just a confirmation more than anything. If the DR / DA of most websites ranking on google's 1st page for your target keyword is under 20 that's a good sign. It typically shows that there is room for new players (you) all things being equal and if you are able to provide better content for that keyword than your competition does. But otherwise, if your competition is made up of websites with high DR / DA (say, 40 or higher), if they are all niche-specific websites (so, for example Joe's Car Services, or Manhatten Auto Repair, etc) instead of generic websites like facebook, pinterest, reddit, etc... well, that's a tough keyword for a newbie, so I would move on to the next keyword;
- number and quality of backlinks... I usually prefer to see 4-5 websites in top 10 that have ZERO backlinks. This means that I can - theoretically - beat any of those 4-5 weak competitors with only 1 backlink, no matter if it's a weak backlink (blog comment, web 2.0, profile link, etc) or a strong one (PBN, guest post, niche edit, .edu blog, etc). But in most cases you won't need a single backlink to rank for that keyword if your content is better than the other guys' content, and if you're website has more, and better content in general and if it's also covering one niche, and one niche only, instead of multiple, totally unrelated niches. For example, if your site is about cars, or car services, or car repair, or car insurance, or whatever other car-related topic (even SUVs, or trucks, etc) and you are trying to rank for a keyword like "how to repair a hole in your car's condenser" be sure you're going to outrank a website like quora, or pinterest.... again, all things being equal (so, assuming that your content for that keyword is at least as good as the content of the websites you try to outrank);
So, if you're seeing a lot of websites in top 10 which either have no backlinks, or have very few (2-5) backlinks which are not even good (they are web 2.0s, or profile links, or whois type of backlinks, etc), or if the websites have nothin in common with the main topic of your keyword... these are all good signs that you can rank for that keyword as a newbie, even if - somehow - Ahrefs shows that the KD score of that keyword is 4... or 5 even... Many times, when doing keyword research, you need to use your brain, experience and common sense in order to ascertain the real competition of a keyword, relying on metrics alone is not a good idea as numbers can lie many times.....
STEP 5 - after you've chosen your niche and found at least a few dozen keywords (20-30 keywords that you can create or buy quality content around is a good start) it's time to either start creating the content yourself, or pay someone else to do it for you if you have the money.
Regarding the content... most of the time you will want to mimic what your competition is doing. If the websites ranking in top 10 of google for your target keywords all have 500-800 words of content - again, in general - you will not want to create a 3k words article for 2 reasons: 1) google prefers short content for that particular keyword, and 2) if all your competitors rank with such little content it means that the topic of that keyword can be covered in detail in 500-600 words, so there's no need to go overboard with it.
Also important regarding the content.... take a look at the sub-headings (H2, H3, H4, etc) that your competitors have included in their content (a tool like frase.io can detect those headings automatically if you're too lazy to check 10 websites manually) to get an idea what kind of sub-topics your article should cover, and then write content addressing those sub-topics, put them together in one bigger article with the main keyword in the title, publish it on your blog and you're done with that keyword.
And I think that's about it.... I think I've covered all of the basic stuff to help you blog for money. The only thing for you to do now is to actually start doing these things instead of sitting on your butt like me and not making a single cent online. Despite of my laziness, the knowledge I've shared with you is true, but - again - it's up to you to make it work
