Peter’s Lookout South Island New Zealand
I recently deleted the related posts embed from my blog.
Reviewing my metrics revealed something: most traffic flowing to my blog originates from the homepage combined with a few select posts. Some posts rank on page one of Google. Other posts generate organic traffic through the 80,000 backlinks pointing to my blog. Other posts snag organic traffic through the dozens of marketing channels pointing to my blog.
Related posts generate scant traffic here.
I deleted the plug-in primarily because it became buggy. Seeing flaws caught my attention span. The thing did not load properly at times. My layout looked wonky. Staring at my numbers made me trash it.
Look closely at the lesson here.
Blog Design Is Secondary
Blog design is secondary. How you set up your blog is not terribly important.
Publishing new, detailed content consistently is your most critical task. Most bloggers struggle for getting lost in the forest of design. I plant more trees. I make my blogging forest bigger, more impressive and more expansive. I learned my lesson a while back. Landscaping obsessively kills your scale.
I envied highly successful bloggers who drove organic traffic consistently. How did they do it? Most published detailed, helpful content consistently. Top professionals ship persistently. Rarely do you see these leaders fiddling with blog design for hours on end. Pros publish new content frequently.
Blog design is secondary.
Creating fresh, targeted, in-depth content is primary.
Never forget your fundamental task.
Publish new content consistently.
Forest Analogy
Visualize your blog to be a forest.
Hikers easily find massive forests. Hikers enjoy forests with a cooling canopy.
Hikers are like readers for your blog. Readers easily find, enjoy and spend ample time on a blog with hundreds of detailed, targeted posts spanning your niche. The blogging forest reaches far and wide for prolific bloggers.
Being consistently prolific for years is the only way to publish a heavy volume of in-depth blog posts.
Publishing detailed, new blog posts is like planting seeds for trees. Plant seeds consistently. Be patient. Observe the seeds slowly but surely grow into massive trees.
Imagine bloggers who plant a few seeds before waiting around, messing around with landscaping, waiting for the seeds to grow. Never mind that this is like watching paint dry. Trees take a long time to mature. Fiddling with landscaping, focusing on non-essentials and doing all that jazz means that you’re not creating fresh new content consistently.
No hiker finds your forest because who’s looking out for a few seedlings? Do seedlings offer shelter? No.
These bloggers quit. Most bloggers quit for this reason.
Focusing on design over content destroys your ability to leverage.
My Blogging Deal
I published this post today after publishing daily for weeks. I run the show here. I set the blogging rules here. I grow my forest here.
Google does what it does but that doesn’t affect me. Twitter does what it does but that doesn’t affect me. Facebook does what it does but that doesn’t affect me. Even my email list does what it does but that doesn’t affect me.
My blog is the monetizing asset because I set every rule here. As a U.S. citizen, I cannot say that with my email since strong domestic regulations influence email marketing. Strong regulations do not influence owning your domain and hosting on a WordPress Dot Org blog.
Resist the urge to get lost in design. Stop obsessing over statistics. Make everything secondary to publishing fresh new content consistently.
Update Old Blog Posts Consistently
Update old posts consistently. Maintain relevance. Delete dead links.
Updating old posts is like pruning mature trees. Remove dead branches. Trash dead links. Check the roots. Observe the trunk. Is the tree healthy? Do you need to cut it down? Is the blog post irrelevant? Do you need to trash topical content?
Never get lost in maintenance.
Grow your forest far and wide.
Leverage the hell out of your blog by publishing new content consistently.
Write quality posts. Plant seeds in ample sunlight. Water seeds. Or plant seeds in environments with sufficient rainfall.
But keep planning those seeds!
Keep publishing fresh new content.
Gain massive exposure over the long haul.
Prioritize Publishing New Content
Do a little bit of window dressing. Do a little bit of updating.
But publish new content consistently to expand your reach.
You cannot force growth. No one can will a tree to grow taller or faster.
But you can plant a bigger forest.
Make your blogging forest wider. Expand. Publish blog posts. Plant seeds. Do maintenance work after planting more seeds. Plant more seeds. Do maintenance work. Plant more seeds.
Design Cannot Save You
Imagine if I spent hours tweaking my design. Picture me deliberating over my related posts plugin, my social media share plugin and my blog sidebar. Doing these things does not send increased organic traffic to my blog. Changing the blog design increases conversions.
I could spend hours thinking about blog comments. Is the design sufficient? Should I prevent bloggers from posting links?
But I do not spend much time on design elements. My blog design cannot save me. My blog design does not generate heavy organic traffic and blogging income. My blog content does. Writing and publishing new, detailed blog posts primarily drives organic traffic and blogging income. My blog design can enhance both statistics. But my detailed content makes my blog. Nothing else heavily influences my worldly success.
Make Content the Star of Your Blog
Content is the superstar of your blog.
Make creating content the priority.
Prioritize publishing new content consistently. Aim for one blog post weekly.
Write long form posts. Hit 1200 words per post to keep readers on site. Lower your bounce rate.
Publish a high quantity of high quality content over an extraordinary stretch of time. Think long-term. Treat blogging like a marathon not a sprint.
Conclusion
Content makes your blog.
Become prolific to thrive.
Focus on blog design as a secondary or even tertiary element.
Grow a massive forest not an empty seed patch.
Blogging Resource
