Everyone knows that SEO is hugely important to most online bloggers because search engine traffic can propel you to new heights. A newbie sets up his first website in whatever niche he can find and prepares to bombard it with thousands of backlinks that's going to offer nothing beneficial in the long-term. It almost breaks your heart when you think about people that dedicated the first year of their life to building a few dozen links per day.
They will probably end up at the top of the search engines for a lot of nice keywords, but they have forgotten to build a business. Everyone failed to mention you need a plan when someone eventually shows up. You need to have ways in place to make money because first-page rankings don't pay your rent. Try to have these things in place before jumping ahead and building links.
Get your niche sorted
You need to do a few things right when it comes to choosing a niche. There obviously needs to be people out there who will pay you money. This is easy to find out once you check other blogs in the possible niche. The other big thing is loving the niche, because if you're not passionate about it you will give up before you find success. Expect to work hard for a few years unless you get lucky.
Choose the right domain name
A domain name with SEO benefits shouldn't matter because you want something that people will remember. It should be your brand and not a long-tail keyword. When you build small sites it's fine to use these, but build a proper business and you want a short dot com domain. Preferably one that will allow you to expand instead of being stuck in a small niche.
The content needs to be tight
You need to build an army and that takes great content, but it also takes targeted content in a specific sub-niche. I know we already said your domain name should allow you to expand into other areas, but that's after you have already built a big following who are super-targeted to your message. You will grow much quicker than talking about everything under the sun.
Start collecting emails
You don't want anyone landing on your site without a way to sign them up to a mailing list, so you'll need to start using an opt-in form and collecting emails. This is going to be the main income-stream because personal emails are the best way to build great relationships with your readers. You will also be able to gently remind someone you still exist when they leave your site and forget about you.
Don't have a bad design
You don't need to go out and spend hundreds on a great design, but if you're using a cheap Wordpress theme you need to make sure it doesn't look terrible. People need to stay on your site and come back because they like it, but when you have a horrible design they would rather not bother. An easy way to please most people is sticking to a basic no-frills style.
Henry is a very tech savvy person. He gives simple but effective tips on search engine optimisation on his blogs.