Blogging Resources

Lesson 1: Blogging Resources

In the previous unit, we went over the things you need to consider when writing the post, as well as the importance of writing valuable and consistent content. Now, we will explore various resources that will help you analyze, advertise, monetize, and grow and nurture your audience.

Resources

These days, there are so many free online resources to help make your website better for your users. From analyzing data to recording user sessions on your website, there are numerous resources out there. In no specific order, here is a list of free resources (though some include paid versions for more features) that you should definitely sign up for:

Google Adwords

Are you going to advertise? Then, you should definitely sign up for this. Are you not going to advertise? You should still definitely sign up for this. It is free and there are a lot of tools that are useful within Google Adwords to understand search volumes for specific keywords. This was previously explained in Unit 3, Lesson 1: Considering SEO in your post.

Google Adsense

If you are going to monetize your website, Google provides you with a way to display ads and get paid each time a user clicks on them. This is a good way to monetize your website if you have some extra space in your blog or on the sidebar to fill. More on monetizing your blog later.

Google Analytics

Get it! Get it now! Do not hesitate. It is free and very powerful. They also offer free courses to help you get started with analyzing your data. There is no reason not to sign up for this. Understand how many users visit your website per day, what time of day, where they were referred from, how long they stay on a page, how many pages they visit, and so much more!

Google Webmasters

This tool allows you to see what people search on Google before they click your website. It also allows you to index your website and provide Google with information about your website.

Google PageSpeed Tools

This simply allows you to see how fast your page loads. It will give you a score out of 100 based on a mobile device and a computer. It will also provide you with ways that you can improve your score with links on how to implement these strategies.

Inspectlet

This is a great, free tool! Sign up to view user sessions on your website, what your users are viewing and clicking on, and so much more! They also offer a paid version that unlocks so much more potential.

Mail Chimp

Begin building your email list right away! Do not hesitate. This is extremely important. Mail Chimp allows you to register for free without paying until you reach a certain amount of subscribers. Hopefully by that time, you are ready to invest into the paid version.