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11 Blogging Years. 11 Blogging Lessons. 11 Blogging Tips.

by MAHESH MOHAN on

11 Blogging Years. 11 Blogging Lessons. 11 Blogging Tips.

Note: This blog post is an updated version of 7 Blogging Years. 7 Blogging Lessons. 7 Blogging Tips. (published 4 years and 100 blog posts ago).

Yes, that’s right! It’s the 11th Blogoversary of Minterest. I started Minterest (minterest.com) as a personal finance blog in 2006, and later in August 2007, I started blogging about “Money, Internet, Investing” (yes, that was the first tagline of Minterest and now it’s — tech. marketing. mashups.).

To be honest it was literally “Just another WordPress site” and I was simply rehashing topics that were of “My interest“. But there was one thing… I was learning. And the transition from Blogger.com to WordPress.org is simply amazing.

Don’t Miss: Blogger vs. WordPress: The Ultimate Comparison With Pros & Cons

I started creating blogs on Blogger.com back in 2004 and was treating it like a simple publishing tool. I guess the reason why it didn’t impress or motivate me much was its inability to customize things the way I wanted.

When I tried WordPress I liked almost all of its aspects and found out that I liked coding as well. Oh yeah, I’m a software engineer by education but it is not the coding that inspired me — it’s the magic in “technology”. Thanks to Microsoft.

Coming back…

I’m going to feature here 11 blogging lessons and tips that I have… learned, realized, or experienced in one way or the other over the past many, many years.

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17 Unexpected SEO Lessons I Learned After Publishing My First Listicle

by MAHESH MOHAN on

17 Unexpected SEO Lessons

It’s been ten years since I started blogging. It began as a fun thing (and it still is!). Also, blogging was just another random stuff that I used to do at that time. But today my blog is much more than a random thing for me, and that’s the only difference.

I don’t know if I’m one of the so-called professional blogger or a hobby blogger or yet another nerd. It’s something that I’m trying to figure out. But I just know for sure that it’s been a long amazing journey so far. :)

And it didn’t happen in one day and it didn’t happen in a couple of years time. It happened over time and is something that’s still happening.

I don’t know if you have read this blog post of mine:

Over 201 Google Products & Services You Probably Don’t Know

Well, you should. You know why? Because that’s my first (original) evergreen blog post and apparently that’s my first (real) listicle too. It eventually became one of my first pillar blog post and taught me a lot of things that I never thought of.

Don’t Miss: What Does It Take To Generate 1,000,000 Pageviews & $3,000 Per Month

First things first.

I didn’t write Over 60 Google Products & Services You Probably Don’t Know (the original blog post — thanks to Wayback Machine) for SEO. And I didn’t write it for traffic either.

I did it as I was using (or tried) almost all of Google’s web products and services. So I just wanted to show my gratitude plus create a useful list as it wasn’t there on any other blogs.

Moreover, it was also just another random blog post that I did which happened to became the foundation of my blog’s SEO. You know why? Because it taught me a lot of things about Google SEO that I couldn’t find anywhere else.

Oh yes, that post was published way back in 2009 when there was no Google Pandas or Penguins. Also, I didn’t know any Neil Patels or Rand Fishkins of the SEO world. Back then I gathered most of my internet marketing knowledge from the Digital Point forum.

Coming back…

Here are the things that I learned about blogging and SEO from my favorite blog post — let’s call it “Google 101“. Okay? So yeah, they are all more or less related to SEO Google SEO. :)

Don’t Miss: 10 Blogging Years. 10 Blogging Lessons. 10 Blogging Tips.

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ProRankTracker Review: Track Your Keyword Rankings Everywhere

by MAHESH MOHAN on

SEO Tools

Image Credit: Flickr

I do not track my keyword rankings that closely, except in a broad way. And that’s to know whether my overall organic traffic is up or down. A few years back, I have listed a bunch of free Google rank checkers but realized later that free rank trackers do not work.

It may work at times when you randomly check it but free rank checkers are not something that you want to rely on especially when you are managing a lot of SEO campaigns or personally want to track hundreds of keyword rankings.

Meanwhile, if you want to track only a handful of keywords then the best way to track them is to do it manually. For instance, I use the Google Chrome extension SERPTrends when I want to track individual keywords without actually tracking.

That’s right. SERPTrends is just a lightweight tool that shows the ranking changes of the listed URLs within the search result itself. So when I don’t want to track any keywords, I just deactivate the extension and it’s that simple.

On the flipside, if you want to track hundreds of keywords and is looking for a premium rank tracker tool then ProRankTracker could be your best choice.

Today, I’m reviewing this nifty rank tracking tool that allows you to track the rankings of your keywords on almost all the major search engines on the planet.

And I’m happy that this is a sponsored review as otherwise, I wouldn’t have come across this less-known (oh, at least I didn’t know) SERP tool.

As of now, I’m using my complimentary SEMrush account for all things SEO (including rank tracking) as it’s an all-in-one SEO suite. And as I mentioned earlier, I use SEMrush’s Position Tracking to monitor the overall organic traffic trends (like this) and since it supports “Competitors” I will know whether it’s a broad-based change or not.

However, SEMrush’s SERP checker is not as comprehensive as ProRankTracker. Moreover, SEMrush is good for tracking only Google SERPs. So if you want to track your keyword rankings on all search engines then you will need a premium rank checker and ProRankTracker is worth a try. [Read more…] about ProRankTracker Review: Track Your Keyword Rankings Everywhere

What Is Fiverr, Anyway? 13 Gig Ideas To Make Money On Fiverr (Or Elsewhere) #Review

by MAHESH MOHAN on

Fiverr is the most popular micro-job marketplace on the web where you can sell almost any of your random services. I said random because it’s a marketplace which is much more diversified than what you can imagine.

Here’s proof:

Awesome Fiverr Gigs

As you can see, it’s got terrific value.

Where else on earth can you get those gigs done for $5?

What you saw above was  just a tiny list of some top rated gigs on Fiverr. But, that’s not all folks! There are a lot more bizarre gigs that you never would have thought of. In fact, there’s an official category for those gigs (go here if you’re curious).

First things first.

A micro-job on Fiverr is called a “Gig” and gigs start at $5. It basically means that the base price of any service on Fiverr is $5 (also known as one Fiverr). But the order can be hundreds of dollars if you provide add-on services (known as “Gig Extras”).

It’s certainly a place where people do what they love and get paid for it.

Originally, the tagline of Fiverr was “What are you willing to do for $5?”. Today it’s not just a micro-job marketplace but much more than that as the gigs now “starts at $5”. And like I said, the total order value can be hundreds of dollars by way of “Gig Extras” or “Custom Offers”.

Thanks to some of those Fiverr competitors that were offering gigs of almost any value. Anyway, Fiverr is still one of the best way to make money online — as long as you love what you do and can offer something unique and valuable. [Read more…] about What Is Fiverr, Anyway? 13 Gig Ideas To Make Money On Fiverr (Or Elsewhere) #Review

The Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Handbook — 201+ Resources, Tips, Guides & Tools

by MAHESH MOHAN on

Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is evolving. And the good thing is… you no longer need a ton of backlinks to rank higher on search engines. In fact, all the Google algorithmic updates that happened over the past several years were to filter out low-quality websites.

For instance, there was an algorithmic update to penalize content farms and websites that were engaged in spamming. And there was another update to penalize web pages with slow loading speed or one with lot of ads.

Here is a comprehensive list of SEO resources that I have collected over the past several years. I have made sure that only the best resources that are comprehensive and simple to understand remain in this list. And to make it easier to consume I have organized all the resources into the following categories and sub-categories. [Read more…] about The Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Handbook — 201+ Resources, Tips, Guides & Tools

12 Blog Marketing Resources To Promote Your Blog (Plus 21 Quick Tips To Increase Traffic)

by MAHESH MOHAN on

Blog

My blogging strategy is pretty simple. When I publish a blog post I just ask myself whether it solves some or any problem, or is it literally “just another blog post” on the blogosphere.

And I try to make sure that each blog post of mine targets different audience (by focusing on different long tail keywords). That’s why I do not have multiple blog posts covering the same topic over and over.

Read: Why 365 Blog Posts (Or Less) Is All You Need To Become A Great Blogger

Also, I rarely do content promotion or link building because as an “on-page guy” I spend most of my blogging time over on-page stuff. For me, blog marketing is all about publishing and attracting organic visits — yes, I love organic traffic. :)

That said, today, content promotion is as important as content creation. If it was all about content creation back in 2000’s then today it’s like — 90% promotion and only 10% creation.

I have already written about different aspects of blogging over the past several years but I haven’t written much about blog promotion or traffic generation strategies. It’s simply because I don’t have a blog promotion strategy, yet.

Today I want to share some of the best blog marketing resources that I think is good for beginners as well as experienced bloggers.

If you have started a new blog recently and is wondering how to promote your blog then the following resources should help you.

[Read more…] about 12 Blog Marketing Resources To Promote Your Blog (Plus 21 Quick Tips To Increase Traffic)

The Definitive Guide To Writing A Perfectly Optimized Blog Post

by MAHESH MOHAN on

Writing is my Hobby

First Published: March 18, 2014; Last Updated: February 3, 2015

Over the past several months I have collected a ton of good resources about how to write a perfect blog post. And I thought it’s better to do a mashup than simply rewriting/reposting what’s already said in the blogosphere.

So, I will be focusing on writing a blog post that’s well optimized and that attracts search engine and social media love.

As you probably know, there are a lot of bloggers who write really awesome content but the problem is their blog posts are not so optimized. The reason could be they don’t care about SEO much or they are not so tech-savvy so they don’t know how to optimize their blog posts.

Hence I believe that this blog post will also help the not so tech-savvy bloggers (food blogs, personal blogs) so that they can optimize their existing and future blog posts to skyrocket the traffic.

Don’t Miss: 15 Blogging Tips To Supercharge Your Next Blog Post

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