A Key To The Future Of Blogging You Should Steal

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A key to the future of blogging, however, would mean mixing the power of writing with creativity, which is found in the human imagination and heart.

As much as Google is working hard to make content that doesn’t match well with user search queries invisible on the search engine, I began to reflect on the future of blogging.

If you’re following the trends carefully, the future of blogging might surprise you.

Google’s John Mueller shocked SEOs when he said profile link building is trash.

Why wasting time on it?

This was a strategy we believed to be juicy and paid SEOs to work out for us.

No matter how fussy Google becomes, blogging ain’t going nowhere!

But the fact is, with the latest algorithm framework known as Google BERT, content that fail to meet user search intent might not live to see the future.

What’s your opinion on this?

You can drop your comment in the comment box and help us share this thought.

As for Sue-Ann Bubacz, she said and I quote:

A key to the future of blogging, however, would mean mixing the power of writing with creativity, which is found in the human imagination and heart. Sue-Ann Bubacz

She also made a short narration about how she got into blogging.

Thus: Well, my feet were getting worn out after thirty years in a highly on-your-feet profession as an owner/ operator of a professional catering production & event design company in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, working mainly with corporate clients.

And, oh, I LOVE to write!!!

So, insanely, I decided to start a digital business as a writer.

Online writing means blogging, I soon learned.

Funny, at the start, the word “blog” was completely foreign to me.

So, I’ve delightfully traveled light years (in about a half dozen) to find myself completely entrenched in professional blogging.

The real surprise is at the beginning, I had absolutely no computer skills.

That was a brief overview of how Sue-Ann became a blogger.

Who is Sue-Ann?

If you’re a blogger, one of the professionals you would love to meet is Sue-Ann.

She’s the founder of Write Mix for Business, a content creator for business. Her blog is about business, marketing, and content-related topics.

Many times my posts are about sharing what I’m learning or cool projects (also learning-oriented) in the digital space. Sue-Ann

She has a podcast channel called MIX/SIZZLE & SHAKE YOUR BUSINESS, which focuses on similar topics but also digital marketing, blogs, and websites as well.

One regular segment you can find on her podcast channel is Thriving Full Throttle on Social Media with Lisa Sicard, an SMM expert from the Inspire to Thrive blog.

Having Sue-Ann on STARcityNG to share her thoughts on what the future holds for bloggers was very inspiring.

We approached Sue-Ann for this interview two days after she released an online course, co-authored with Ryan Biddulph, an Amazon best-selling author.

The course is an online learning experience called, How to Bling Your Blog & Feed That Hog, geared to help bloggers and small business owners doing their own blogs, to make it a successful business content hub that attracts new business.

With all this going on, I never expected her to respond to us at the moment though.

But surprisingly, she honored our invitation by finding time out of her busy schedule to be on this series.

What an amazing, energetic, and resourceful blogger we have here this week??

Challenges bloggers are facing

Based on the above narration, most people that came into blogging ten or fifteen years ago would say they were faced with “the biggest challenges of blogging“.

Traditionally, blogging challenges included:

  1. Lack of basic computer skills
  2. No good internet network
  3. No mobile devices to blog in real-time
  4. No social media to do the PR and outreach
  5. Low internet users

But as the world would have it, those people are the ones we refer to as the successful bloggers today.

Despite all the cutting edge technologies we have today, blogging success, to many bloggers, is still very uncertain.

There are some recurring challenges that beginners face as a result of their attitudes to blogging.

And this includes what Karalee listed in the reasons why bloggers fail.

You need to be aware of certain things before you can create a successful path into blogging.

The biggest is to know does blogging worth to be a career?

The problems which bloggers face today have gone beyond lack of computer skills. Never forget, we’re in a computer age. What bloggers are most concerned about now is majorly how to rank better on Google.

As a result of this, visibility, traffic, conversion, and engagement issues have become great problems no bloggers can escape.

So, the question is do we have the same spirit, strength, passion, and commitment as did our heroes?

The answer is NO!

In this circumstance, we need to consider what is the future of blogging.

Would SEO still be the major strength of professional bloggers or do they need to share a part of their hard-earned revenue with Google and invest largely in PPC?

Well, since SEO is becoming tougher and tougher, it’s possible Google is eyeing what bloggers are making and trying to leave bloggers with no choice but to pay for getting their blogs visible.

I don’t expect the likes of John Mueller to come outside and talk about the tricks used by Google to make money in this circumstance.

But the fact is many bloggers are beginning to give Google ads a thought.

Shouldn’t Google make as much money as they can since Bing, Yahoo, and others aren’t going to break the monopoly in the nearest future?

PPC may seem promising but won’t that be a big trouble for beginners?

A key to the future of blogging

According to the World Internet Stats of 2020, the future of blogging is that there would be proliferation of bloggers as the internet users increased with more than 1000% growth rate between 2001 and 2020.

Internet Usage and World Population Statistics estimates for June 30, 2020 by Miniwatts Marketing Group

The world has a population of over 7.5 billion people out which more than 4.5 billion people are internet users. World Internet Stats

All internet users might not be reading blogs. But based on figures, 3/4 of what is consumed online are blogs.

With an increasing population of people that consume the internet, bloggers have the tendency of growing their audience at an alarming rate.

But unfortunately, most of the blogs won’t be visible on Google without following the industry standards for quality content.

So, how do you improve the quality of your content?

Is it by SEO, PPC, or social sharing?

What’s the role of SEO? Would it continue to send your 100% search engine optimized content to the first page of Google?

I doubt it!

Google BERT framework

After the release of the Google BERT framework in November 2019, there was a serious disruption in the blogging community.

Most websites that didn’t meet up with the standard lost their traffic and rankings.

Blogging success, however, evolves around quality content.

Previously, all you needed was a good SEO score to rank on Google. But as it’s now, no good amount of SEO score would rank you on Google without good quality content.

This doesn’t mean SEO is going to be out of the way.

It means, beyond SEO, there is something you must do to rank on Google. And that is focusing on search intent whenever you’re creating new content.

Meanwhile, it takes good writing skill and creativity to please Google.

Before now, a 350-word long blog post was cool with Google. If your competitors have a better content, they take the chance to outrank you.

The trend, however, encourages a new relationship between SEOs and content creators to ensure good quality content are published.

A silver lining

Less would SEO determine a quality content as the future of blogging unwraps.

With all indications, the approach and strategies to create the type of content readers want to read would be challenging.
SEO or PPC might lead you to the front page of Google, but won’t make searchers click through your post if it lacks relevance.
There are new factors coming up that play a major role in how your content will fly.

And these include:

  • Avoid ambiguous words – Know that a common English word could have different meanings. If humans can determine which meaning is appropriate at a point in time, machines can’t. When it comes to content management, you should know that search AI has its limitations in understanding the content. By implication, your content might not be visible if the bot can’t understand its relevance to the searcher’s search intent.
  • Avoid the use of long sentences – When a sentence is too long, it becomes too difficult for machines to hold on to what the sentence connotes. And that can make the bot drop your post and pick what is next to you if it is better.
  • Avoid too much natural language – Natural languages need a common sense of reasoning which machines can’t handle perfectly. So, mind its usage in your content.
  • Use words that live together – The meaning of a word becomes clearer when you use words that share similar neighbors with it. Eg. “Mother and Father” and “Daughter and Son”.
  • Adopt keyword planning – If you don’t plan to succeed, then you plan to fail. Strategic keyword planning can help you understand the search intent of your audience and create content that is relevant to the audience.
  • Use long-tail keywords – The future of blogging hinges on long-tail keywords. To create a content that can match up with the search intent of searchers, you have to adopt long-tail keywords.
  • Prioritize mobile optimization – The trend indicates that Google gives priority to mobile indexing. This resulted from an increasing rate of mobile users in the last few years. For this reason, blogs that perform ultimately on mobile devices would continue to rank higher on Google.

The following are the other questions answered by our guest. If you like to get more tips on what the future of blogging holds, carefully read further.

Q. 1. Where do you see blogging now and beyond?

So, in my view, everything begins with writing.

And while mobile device usage, AI and machine learning, voice-activated search, video as marketing and blogging, podcasting, and other trends are all quite relevant, I’m still a firm believer in the power of the written word as a foundation.

However, a key to the future of blogging success will mean mixing the power of writing with creativity− found in the human imagination and heart.

Q. 2. Can you tell us something about your niche?

Well, I’m apparently a great fit for B2B marketing/ content marketing, web copy, and ghostwriting work, judging from the clients, industries, and creative projects and I attract companies I do business with the most.

I love B2B as that’s where my entire business background was built and thrives. And those kinds of business projects also offer better budgets for content writing professionals.

Q. 3. How do you get content to fill your blog?

I never run out of things to write about. I see, feel, think, and observe ideas for content everywhere, online and off.

I also read tons, take courses, listen to podcasts, and have conversations that inspire content ideas. I HAVE the content, just not enough time to produce it all and keep up, sometimes. Lol!

Q. 4. What strategies do you use to increase your web traffic?

Social media marketing is the main tactic I use to draw new traffic. However, re-purposing content can also effectively bring new traffic and reach for websites.

This is something important to keep an eye on to initiate more growth opportunities. There’s always so much to do and guest blogging is the most fun way to gain new audiences and traffic, though.

Q. 5. What do you think is the best strategy to get more quality backlinks?

In my view, there are two keys.

First, produce riveting content worth reading and sharing.

Secondly, continue to build your network of connections and human relationships.

Q. 6. How do you want to improve your blog this year?

In too many ways to count! But, the beauty of a blog and digital work, in general, is the ability to continue to evolve, change, update, and grow as you go.

Q. 7. What monetization strategy is the best to make money blogging?

The answer to this is different to everyone. The simple answer, then, is “it depends.”

Start with this question,

“What is the purpose of your blog?”

Oh my gosh… this is a can of worms… too many questions and factors to answer in any simplified way that’s relevant… sorry.

Working on it!!

Q. 8. What challenges have you ever experienced in your industry?

As in any life situation, my answer is people.

People don’t always keep their word, follow through, act professionally, and so on. Roadblocks in work are often people related. Though I wish it wasn’t so, you know.

Q. 9. Who do you look up to in your industry and how have they helped you so far?

Oh my gosh, there are so many.

Plus, many have influenced or helped me in different ways, too. I mostly feel grateful (and sometimes in shock) at the kindness and friendships, colleagues, and business associates I’ve made online.

Hmmm, I’m not good at looking up.

I look around and see value in people all around me, whether well-known as many I call friends, or not at all known.

Q. 10. What is your greatest achievement outside blogging?

I’m proud of the creativity and originality I’ve brought to building more than one successful business.

My greatest achievement feels small really but here it is, I do what I want in my life.

Q. 11. Does blogging worth to be a career?

I love it! So, for me, yes!

Yeah, yes, yesss, and yippee!!

But, that’s me because I love it and have fun working hard.

I also LOVE to write which is mega helpful.

Everyone must look at who they are and what they want in order to make this decision.

Q. 12. What advice would you like to give job seekers roaming the street looking for jobs?

There are so many things to do, I’m having trouble answering this.

Basically, if you need work, then your current work is to work every day until you find something, or two things.

Start somewhere, anywhere.

Conclusion on what the future of blogging might hold

The future is brighter for bloggers only if what the industry requires is met.

After the release of Google BERT, there has been a serious disruption in blogging community. Google uses the contextual tool to determine quality content and those found not complying with the standard began to lose their search visibility.

Although, there’s no confirmation until this moment that Google’s BERT framework is a ranking factor.

But when you look at the trend, you will realize that the framework has a very strong impact on click through rate which significantly affects traffic.

Against this disruption, less SEO you need to gain traction if you’re affected negatively. You should focus more on creating a good quality content.

By implication, SEO isn’t going to become a thing of the past.

The future of blogging would only see a very strong collaboration between SEOs and content creators. And the synergy can help bloggers secure the future they desire with good writing skills and creativity.

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