Year: 2020

How to Improve Your Google PageSpeed Insights Score

Google is fickle when it comes to providing information that can be helpful for publishers. They rarely publish SEO guidelines and are equally silent on algorithm changes overall apart from self-serving tweets from a few key employees.

One tool that Google does provide that website operators can use is PageSpeed Insights. This service is designed to score your site on a 100 point scale which is somewhat analogous to site speed. The higher your score, the “faster” your site is as perceived by Google. Whether this score itself is an SEO factor remains to be seen, but many experts would say that the technical components that go into the score most certainly are. But if we were to ignore this altogether, the simple truth is that if Google shares tools that can help publishers, you'll do well to at least look into it more.

In this guide, we wanted to breakdown how we look at PageSpeed Insights, and highlight several ways you may be able to improve your PSI score as well.

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The 10 Best Podcasts for Bloggers Looking to Grow

Recording Studio

Listening to blogging podcasts is one the most effective ways to grow and learn as a blogger.

One thing that people don't often think about when it comes to podcasts is that you can consume them passively. That means that you can be learning about things like starting a blog, photography tips for bloggers, or Pinterest while you're grocery shopping, at the gym, or out for a walk.

Since we feel it's our job to help bloggers grow wherever and whenever they can, we thought we'd do a rundown of the best podcasts for bloggers who are ambitious and looking to take things to the next level.

Oh, and while we're talking about blogger growth, if you aren't, be sure to sign up for our informative once weekly blogging newsletter which drops every Tuesday morning. It's designed to help bloggers like you stay in touch with what's going on in the blogging world, and offer actionable tips and advice to help you take blogging from a passion to a profession.

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35 Things You Need to Do When Starting a Blog

Launch Your Website

When it comes to starting a new blog, what you do at the onset lays the foundation for your future success. To call these steps critical is a bit of an understatement as there are many ways where you can go down the wrong path before publishing a single post.

In an earlier article on our site, we talked about everything you need to consider when starting a niche blog. For the most part, that article focused on how to research a topic that you can truly own. What it did not do was dive into the technical aspects of launching a blog you need to consider at the same time.

In this article, we're going to highlight everything you may want to do to get your new site off the ground. While we tried to highlight only the most important tips, these should help put you on the best path to success. Some of these bullet points may be brief but likely require a fair bit of work. When available, detailed guides (both on our site and 3rd parties) will be linked to provide more information.

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Best Practices for Using Stock Photos on Your Blog (Plus Sources)

In our photography tips for bloggers interview with Kevin Wagar, we briefly touched on the practice of using stock photography on your blogs.

This practice almost always starts robust debates online between those who are open to using stock photos and those who share content exclusively created by themselves. For over a decade I was purely in the latter, but have recently started using stock photos on my blogs to illustrate points where I do not have a relevant image of my own (this is especially true on This Week in Blogging).

Unfortunately, using photography that you did not take yourself opens up a number of issues that must be considered, and before you use stock photography online there are some things you need to know.

*This article is written based on my understanding of US Copyright law. Other countries may have variations, especially around privacy rules. We are not lawyers and the below should not be considered legal advice.

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Photography Tips for Bloggers with Kevin Wagar

Kevin-Wagar-photography-tips-for-bloggers

When we were debating who might want to wax lyrical on photography tips for bloggers, the name Kevin Wagar immediately came to mind.

For those who don't know, Kevin Wagar is a professional photographer, videographer, and travel writer based out of Brampton, Ontario. He got his career started in digital marketing and advertising where he photographed commercial and brand shoots for corporate clients including Microsoft, Google, Apple, and more.

Kevin now works full-time as a travel content creator and has partnered with companies such as the Lonely Planet, Matador Network, Movenpick, and more. Kevin’s primary outlets are his website Wandering Wagars – Adventure Family Travel, and Ultimate Ontario.

We'd recommend that if you'd like to see his work, you head on over to Instagram and follow @wanderingwagars. We humbly thank Kevin again for his time, and for offering some fabulous advice below that we know will be invaluable to our readers and subscribers.

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How to Use FAQ Schema to Improve Your Google Rankings

Schema Markups have become a useful tool in your SEO arsenal in order to provide more data to the search engine in exchange for enhanced visibility in results.

One such schema is the FAQ markup where a list of generated questions can appear below your meta description. While Google's main reason for incorporating these is to likely keep people on Google and off your site, when done well it can increase your average position, take up more vertical space in SERPs, and improve your clicks as well.

In this one, I did a test with 50 articles split between two of my sites to see if using FAQ Schema is worth it.

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What You Need to Know About Pinterest for Bloggers with Stephanie Mayo

Pinterest for Bloggers with Stephanie Mayo

In our quest to cover pretty much everything under the sun when it comes to aiding bloggers with content creation and social media strategy, we've turned out attention to Pinterest.

It was inevitable, right?

Anyway, today we're extremely fortunate to be joined by Pinterest guru Stephanie Mayo who runs the Pinterest account (and website), “The World As I See It,” which regularly amasses nearly 600 thousand monthly viewers. She's also a well regarded Pinterest Virtual Assistant who definitely has her finger on the pulse of what is and isn't working these days with Pinterest.

Here at This Week in Blogging, we're very grateful that she took the time to sit down with us, and let us just say that we're awfully happy we reached out because she delivered big time.  

We're thrilled to share this article jam-packed with her thoughts on Pinterest best practices, and all things to consider when looking at Pinterest for bloggers.

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Why Every Blogger Should Use Tailwind for Pinterest Scheduling

One of the things we lament about with Pinterest is the lack of an in-app scheduling feature like you have on Facebook. This means that to be more efficient in your effort to market on this social channel, you have to look towards third parties to fill the void.

One of those third parties is Tailwind, and is a tool I've been using for years in order to get an edge with my Pinterest marketing. In this review, I want to break down some of my favorite features of the service.

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Combatting Blogger Burnout with Scott and Megan from Bobo and ChiChi

A conversation about blogger burnout with scott and megan with Bobo and ChiChi

The first thing that we should note here is that the title doesn't do enough to full encompass all that we cover in this conversation. Sure, a major focus is on blogger burnout, but Megan also took the time here to bring this in a lot of other meaningful directions. I can't thank her enough for her thoughtful responses and honesty, and I'm sure that so many other bloggers and content creators are going to resonate with her words.

The title also doesn't necessarily do this article justice because Scott and Megan are a lot more than just one of their websites, Bobo and ChiChi. As you'll read, they've now got multiple websites, and freelance work that ranges from photography and videography to marketing and strategy.

Having had the pleasure to get to know Scott and Megan personally over the past few years, and to work with them on several occasions, I can't help but sing their praises. As many of us in blogging probably know by now, there are people in this industry who have sky high egos. But, you won't find that with this duo – they're just about the kindest and most humble folks you'll come across.

With all that said, we're thrilled to host this important conversation over here at This Week in Blogging.

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A Breakdown of Blog Acronyms You Should Know

Does monitoring KPIs in SERPs drive you mad? Or how about assessing the impact of CTR on CPA campaigns? Are you an expert in HTML, JS, or CSS for your blog?

We get it, blogging acronyms are confusing at the best of times. In fact, some of them make no sense what-so-ever.

To help with that, we've put together a guide of the most common blogging acronyms out there and hope that this glossary will help you understand the lingo just a bit better by the time you're finished!

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