12 Blogging Best Practices To Build Income In 2024

Blogging has changed drastically from what it was in the last decade. With millions of blog posts published daily, simply hitting “publish” doesn’t cut it anymore. So, how do you cook up that sauce? By nailing the blogging best practices.

Today, I’ll discuss 12 strategies for building a successful blog, showcasing your expertise, and turning casual readers into die-hard fans (and customers).

TL;DR

Here’s the list of the 12 best practices for blogging that I follow: 

1. Understand the blog post’s purpose
2. Don’t ignore the audience’s pain points
3. Understand the Good, Bad, and Great keywords
4. Match to user intent
5. Build Topic clusters
6. Add internal linking
7. Include CTAs wisely to increase conversion
8. Optimize for On-page SEO
9. Vary between trendy and evergreen content
10. Shift from Only-SEO to Integrated Marketing
11. Plan A content calendar
12. Plan for Content Repurposing

12 Blogging Best Practices To Increase Income and Traffic In 2024

1. Understand the Blog post’s Purpose 

Purpose-driven blogging has the highest chance of hitting your traffic and income goals. When you focus on the purpose first, you go deep instead of wide and focus on the keywords/topics that matter to you and your audience. 

In short, you reduce opportunity cost and time spent building the blog and create something that won’t get lost in the blogging matrix. 

Start with defining the blog’s purpose. Are you trying to educate, inform, entertain, or convert? Each blog post should have a specific goal aligned with your broader content strategy. Understanding the purpose helps you tailor your messaging effectively.

For example: Not all posts are created to rank in searches. Some are to help you build thought leadership or authority. In that case, you will focus on creating an outline that guides the readers through your unique take on that topic. The outline won’t focus on the search intent because there might not be a search intent for that topic. 

2. Don’t Ignore the Audience’s Pain Points

Though you won’t create all blog posts equally, one common point to them all is the audience’s pain points. 

When it comes to measuring the success of written content, there are a few ways to do that. One such point is checking if the post solves the audience’s pain points. 

A great blog post solves problems. Ask yourself:

• What are their challenges?
• What solutions are they looking for?
• How can you offer real value through your blog post?

For each post, check what underlying audience problem you’re dealing with. Solve that and you earn the ticket to getting the desired actions.

Here’s how you can research your audience’s wants by focusing on audience personas. 

Many think blogging is all about SEO. Not so much. It’s also about copywriting that understands how to hit the right emotions of your audience. 

3. Understand the Good, Bad, and Great Keywords

It’s common to say start with keyword research. But you really need to start with understanding the difference between the good, the bad, and the great keywords. 

This degree of keywords depends on what business value they hold. Each keyword you target should be aligned with your business goals. Ranking the business-aligned keywords helps you speed up the income-building process through blogging. (As it helps you ensure the traffic you generate has the potential to convert.)

I’ve seen people targeting the wrong keywords and wrecking their good blogs by going after any topic. Don’t make that mistake. 

Here’s how to ensure your keywords drive real business value:

• Relevance to Your Offer: Does the keyword directly relate to your products or services? You can prioritize the keywords into high, medium, and no business value based on their relevance to the offer. 

For example: If you offer content writing services, here’s how the keywords’ priority will change:

• Search Intent Matters: Understand what the user is looking for. Do they intend to buy now, or are they still researching? Ensure that your keywords reflect the intent behind your objectives.

Let’s look at the keywords from the earlier example: 

• Potential for Conversions: High traffic is great, but are those visitors likely to become customers? Focus on keywords that attract warm leads. This way, you only target visitors who have an intent to buy. 

Create a list of keywords and score them based on relevance, intent, and conversion potential. Prioritize those with the highest scores.

4. Match The User Intent

The endgame of blogging is about delivering what searchers actually want. Google aims to provide its users with exactly what they want, and that too, instantly.  

When you nail user intent, you’re not just satisfying the algorithm; you’re keeping readers on your page, boosting engagement, and setting the stage for conversions. 

What’s ranking tells you volumes about what people want to see. Are they after how-to guides, product showdowns, or deep dives? That’s your north star. 

Pay attention to intent modifiers, too—words like “best,” “vs.,” or “near me” are dead giveaways of what people are after. 

Remember to give justice to the content from all angles. Answer the WHAT, WHY, and HOW of each piece of content. This will also help you nail the search intent as you spend time understanding how to make the content look “investing” for the readers. (This will help you uncover the real problems your audience faces.)

The tricky part is that intent isn’t static. What worked last year might miss the mark today. Keep your content fresh, revisit old posts, and always be ready to pivot. At its core, matching intent isn’t just an SEO play – it’s about consistently delivering value. Nail that, and you’ll build trust and authority that keeps people returning for more. And in the blogging game, that’s the real secret sauce to building a steady income.

| Suggested reading: What role does E-E-A-T play in your SEO strategy

5. Build Topic Clusters, Not Random Posts

Ditch creating random posts. Instead, build an interconnected hub of content (topic clusters). Google loves it and can’t resist but sees your website as an authority in the topic you choose as the center of the topic cluster. 

Pick a core topic that’s central to your brand. Let’s say you run a fitness blog. Your main keyword could be “strength training for beginners.” This is your pillar. Create a comprehensive guide covering the basics – this is your foundation post that’ll rank for broad searches and keep newbies returning for more.

Now, branch out. What questions do strength training newbies ask? “Best bodyweight exercises for beginners,” “How to create a strength training schedule,” or “Proper form for basic lifts” could all be subtopics. Each gets its own detailed article, diving deep where your pillar post just scratched the surface.

Link everything together. Your pillar post links to each subtopic, and every subtopic links back to the pillar. Throw in some cross-linking between subtopics, and you’ve built a content web that search engines eat up. 

As you cover more ground, you can create new clusters and build a complete content empire on the main topics of your niche.

| Suggested reading: How to do keyword clustering 

6. Add Internal Linking

We just discussed how internal linking benefits in topic clustering. But it’s not limited to just that. Internal linking is one of the most effective ways to improve search engine rankings. 

Through internal linking, you can group related posts together to show Google how your website is structured and how each piece is connected. This helps with the bigger picture of gaining topical authority as you link a bunch of posts on different aspects under one topic. 

Here’s how I add internal links to my blog posts: 

• As a rule of thumb, I add 3-5 internal links per 1000 words
• I add links to posts directly related to the topics discussed in the post (for example: This post can have backlinks to posts related to SEO, blogging, etc.)
• I also consider links from topics not related directly but can be a good read to the audience (For example: Though this post isn’t about email marketing, I can link to that article when I mention email marketing in content distribution)

When done correctly, internal linking helps:

• Distribute page authority
• Keep readers on your site longer
• Improve the user experience

7. Include CTAs Wisely to Increase Conversion

I’ve observed blogs that fall into three categories when it comes to adding CTAs:

• Bombarding CTAs left, right, and center without context
• Not worrying about adding a single CTA
• Strategically positioning CTAs where they add the most value

Guess who has the highest conversion rate? 

CTAs are critical parts of the content. Use them carefully to direct readers toward the action you want them to take. Not all readers will take the action without being prompted, so you need to place CTAs so the readers think of it as the only obvious next step.

Here’s my way of including CTAs that help increase the conversion rate:

• Add a CTA at the end of each blog post intended to capture the TOFU audience
• Add CTAs strategically throughout the content where they elevate the content (Eg: Adding a guide on the SEO checklist under the subheader discussing on-page SEO)
• Add important CTAs for guides, webinars, etc. on the sidebar
• Add timed pop-ups such that they don’t distract your readers 

Make sure your CTA is compelling and matches the reader’s intent and the post’s purpose.

8. Optimize for On-page SEO

At the end of the day, search engines are bots that need to read your posts in a certain way to understand them. That’s why on-page SEO is inevitable. To get your content seen by search engines: 

• Make your title tags catchy (but not clickbait). Keep them under 60 characters, as more than that will be removed from the search results. 
• Front-load the primary keyword in the title tags.
• Write meta descriptions that crisply explain what the content is about. 
• Use the main keywords in the URL slug, title tag, meta description, blog post introduction, and naturally a couple of times in the content (focus on incorporating it naturally)
• Use variations of the main keyword (secondary or semantic keywords) in the subheaders.

As you can see, I’ve followed these practices in this blog post. 

Note: All green lights on SEO tools like Rankmath or Yoast aren’t the only way to measure on-page SEO. Missing a few green lights is fine if you follow the proper practices. 

| Suggested reading: Blogging tools you need in 2024

9. Vary Between Trendy and Evergreen Content 

SEO is about evergreen content. Yes, but it’s also about knowing when to leverage timely or trending content. 

Evergreen content brings in 80% of traffic and helps you sustain your blog for years. If you do it right, it brings in audiences and leads months and years after it’s published. 

However, the right timely content also holds massive power to give you quick wins. A case in point is my blog post on Google updates. I released it when the latest August update was live, and it ranked on the second day of publishing. It’s still going strong and brought me a lead, too. 

You see, you need to focus on the long game but be flexible enough to utilize the small window of new, highly targeted traffic with trending content. 

| Suggested reading: What makes an article different from a blog post

10. Shift from Only-SEO to Integrated Marketing

The way search works is changing. SEO is not the only way to help your blog get ranked. You need an integrated marketing approach where you build an entire brand ecosystem. 

That means you need to dive into content marketing and build a brand outside of Google using branded content. Use email marketing, social media marketing for content promotion, podcasting, collaborating with peers, etc., to make a comprehensive and well-received perception of your brand. 

The more branded queries you can get, the better. A recent study by Moz also proves that Google rewards brands with more branded queries (brand authority) than brands with a lower rate of acquiring brand queries. 

How do you increase your brand queries? Make your brand known to all through other marketing channels. 

11. Plan A Content Calendar

Winging in with blogging is a recipe for disaster. You’re inviting inconsistency, burnout, and more chances of no results, reducing your interest in blogging. 

Plan your content at least a couple of months ahead. I like to plan one month’s content around one content pillar. It helps me keep things easy, and the published content stays aligned with one topic (meaning, more chances of building authority).

To plan the monthly content calendar, you can also map your key dates and events, such as product launches, industry conferences, seasonal trends, etc., and batch similar tasks. It’s more efficient than constantly task-switching.

Leave room for flexibility. Breaking news or sudden inspiration shouldn’t throw your whole schedule off. Build in some buffer for spontaneity. 

Here’s a glimpse of my content calendar.

Use tools to streamline. Trello, Asana, or even a simple Google Sheet can work wonders. Find what fits your workflow.

12. Plan for Content Repurposing

Stop creating content from scratch every time. Use existing content to generate new content. 

One blog post can become:

• A video tutorial
• A series of social media posts
• Multiple infographics 
• Carousels 
• A newsletter issue
• A Case Study Guide 

Related blog posts can become an ebook or guide. Now, you have a lead magnet to attract the top-of-the-funnel audiences. 

Have you got a podcast? Transcribe it for a blog post. Or vice versa – turn your best-performing posts into podcast episodes.

Updating and republishing content in different formats is often easier than creating something new, and it can boost SEO.

The key is to think modularly. From the start, create content with repurposing in mind. It’ll save you time and expand your reach without burning out.

| Suggested reading: Blog rebranding guide to increase targeted traffic

Frequently Asked Questions

Final Thoughts

Blogging has the potential to help you increase income and generate targeted traffic. The condition is that you create purposeful, high-value content that resonates with your audience and drives results.

Whether you’re building topic clusters, nailing SEO, or consistently repurposing content, every move you make should bring you closer to your goals. Stick to these blogging best practices and keep adapting, and you’ll not only grow your traffic but turn your readers into loyal customers, steadily building your brand and income.

---