I love how accessible it is to have a blog these days. Especially as an artist, blogging is a fantastic way to to add value, build relationships and get free traffic to your site. We just need to make sure we’re doing it right. So I’ve put together a curated list of simple – but incredibly helpful – tips for blogging as an artist.
I build this blog in Japan back in early 2019. Admittedly, I didn’t exactly know what I was doing then.
But over the past couple years of learning, improving and working hands-on in the content marketing industry, let’s just say I’ve picked up a few key tricks that I wish I had known.
OK, let’s get it!
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14 Incredibly Helpful Blogging Tips
Here are my top 14 blogging tips. You can also use this like a checklist, making sure your blog is fully optimized.
For each tip, I’ve linked out to further reading on the topic, should you want to dive a little deeper.
Alright, please enjoy and leave any questions in the comments below!
1. Create Content Silos
This is definitely one of my top tips for blogging. And it took me a while to use it myself…
So let’s start with a basic definition.
A content silo, or a content cluster, is a group of related content for a particular audience.
I like to use a tree to visualize content silos and clusters.
Here, the tree trunk is your core niche, the content silos are sub niches and content clusters are simply the leaves on the branches.
- The tree trunch is your main niche
- The tree branches are your content silos
- The tree’s leaves are your content clusters
- The tree branches are your content silos
So my main niche are creatives and solopreneurs. My tree trunk.
My content silos are offshoots from this main niche, such as artists, musicians, crafters, graphic designers – and more.
The content clusters are the related blogs I write specific for each content siloed audience.
I also have very long, detailed, “ultimate guide” posts, which are relevant for each of my content silos. These are my tree trunk, pillar posts.
2. Stick To A Schedule
OK, I’ll be the first one to fully admit I’ve not always stuck to a consistent posting schedule.
Still, being consistent is incredibly helpful and keeps your site active.
HubSpot recommends smaller blogs post 3-4 times a week to build organic traffic and 1-2 times a week to support brand awareness.
I know what you’re thinking: that’s a lot of blogging.
But don’t stress, I stuck to a one-post-per-week schedule in the beginning and was able to build some traffic.
The main takeaway is this: it takes time and consistency to build a successful blog.
We can’t just write three or four blog posts all willy-nilly and expect to rank in Google.
So just try to stay focused and be patient – all good things…
3. Use Long-Tail Artist Keywords
Your focus keywords will guide your blog’s strategy. They’re the first steps to creating topics and content for our blog.
And the best keywords to use for newer, smaller blogs are long-tail phrases.
So what’s a long-tail keyword?
Long-tail keywords are low-competition phrases that tend to be longer, more nuanced and specific.
Low-competition means you’re not competing with big, well-established websites and brands for the same keyword.
For example, if I search “blogging tips” in Google, the competition is tight. There’s very little chance that my small blog will rank against these bigger sites.
However, I can niche down, such as “blogging as an artist”.
Here’s a quick strategy for finding long-tail keywords:
- Start with a main, seed keyword search in Google
- Notice what Google is auto-suggesting
- Start typing the first letter of the next word
- Go through the entire alphabet with this
- For example “blogging for a…“, blogging for b…“, etc.
- This is aptly name the Alphabet Soup technique
- Hit enter on a phrase and dig deeper on the search page
- Use the Related searches and People also ask features on Google search results for more ideas
4. Add Art-Relevant Value
The core function of a blog is to add value. People are searching Google for answers to questions and solutions to problems.
This is where we find opportunities.
After finding long-tail keywords, we simply provide the answers and value-adding content people are searching for.
So what is value? You can see value as falling into one of three main categories.
Educational
Value
Inspirational
Value
Entertaining
Value
So when you’re trying to think of how to make your blog great as an artist, think about what unique value you can add.
5. Write Longer Posts
Short posts can work. But longer posts perform a lot better for ranking in Google.
According to HubSpot, the ideal blog post length is around 2,100-2,400 words.
Yikes! That’s a lot.
But to be honest, I think you’ll find (if you’re new to blogging) that writing 2- or 3,000-word articles isn’t that difficult.
Just plan out your outline and draft the main topics, dig deep, add examples and keep wiring. You’ve got this.
6. Use Your Art Skills
Original images rank better. As an artist, what better way to improve your content than with your original artwork?
As a double-win, this is actually a subtle way to advertise your art and style to readers.
So if you have the digital inclinations to make art, try creating some unique assets for your blog.
You can also optimize your image to be found in Google image searches using alt text.
Through this, you can rest assured that your visuals will stand out and above the rest.
7. Optimize the Right Places
When I say optimization, I’m talking about SEO (search engine optimization).
This is just a fancy acronym that means formatting and writing your content so Google understands it and ranks it.
Some of the most important pieces of blog optimization are:
(images, title, headline tags, URLs, 1st paragraph, etc.)
- Keyword research
- Remember those long-tail keywords
- Keyword placement
- Put your keyword in your title, first paragraph and meta description (see below for more on this)
- UX (user experience)
- Make your site easy to navigate, readable and user-friendly
- Images
- Use alt text to optimize your images
- Blog structure
- Organize things with headlines, sections and graphics
8. Avoid Balky Text + Split Things Up
Nothing is worse than trying to read a blog that is just one big chunk of text and offers no “breaks”.
Don’t do this.
You want to break up your paragraphs and make things easy to read, skim and scan.
I usually avoid going past 3 or 4 lines of text. But ultimately it’s your choice – so just keep this in mind when writing and editing.
9. Use the Skyscraper Technique
The skyscraper technique is a pretty popular method for bloggers.
Essentially, this means you’re creating a blog that better, longer and more valuable than all of the other competition currently ranking for your target keyword.
It’s a great strategy – especially for newer, smaller blog.
Remember, longer content ranks well and high-value content with a lot of great information also improves ranking.
So just audit who’s ranking for your target phrase, and simply write some thing better and longer.
10. Be Click-Worthy (Not Click-Baity)
OMG #6 Will Shock You!
Yea, let’s not do this.
It’s cheap and people usually see right through it. Although it can get you clicks, it’s definitely not fostering the type of brand we want.
So keep your title click-worthy, not click-baity.
We can do this by being specific, mentioning a specific problem, pain point or solution, or using numbers and timeframes in the title.
For example, this title is click-worthy because it’s specific, emotional and numbered. I mean let’s be honest, which of these two titles is more “clickable”?
- Blogging As An Artist Guide
- Blogging As An Artist: 14 Incredibly Helpful Tips
11. Use Internal Linking
Internal linking creates a site architecture and organizes your blog.
It’s a fantastic habit to get into and offers structural value as well as ranking value (as Google can better understand your content map and what it’s all about).
Basically, internal linking simply means linking to other relevant articles on your site from within a blog post.
For example, my SEO 101 and Blogging 101 posts are very relevant articles that I can recommend you to read (no really, go check them out, they’re super helpful!).
But at the end of the day, interlinking creates a framework and various connections within your blog.
12. Use Statistics + Quality Sources
Simply put, statistics, data and information from reputable sites add credibility.
This in turn establishes more trust and authority for your site (through the reader’s lens).
It also creates more compelling support for your arguments.
For example, what if I told you that blogging can make you lots of money!
OK cool – but “prove it you jerk!”
Fair. So now, what if I said according to research by Glassdoor, the average base pay for bloggers is $54K per year.
OK, that’s way more believable and credible sounding.
13. Write Meta Descriptions
Writing a meta description is a simple and effective tip. But what is a meta description?
You know those short description on a Google search result page, that explain the article (before you click on it).
Yea, those are meta description and they actually have ranking value.
So this is one more place you should put your keyword and spend time making a short summary of what the article is about.
14. Use the Right Tools
Finally – but not least – using the right tools can very often get you farther.
My grandmother used to say that it’s not always about knowing something and more about using/having the right tools.
And this wisdom applies to blogging.
Luckily (or overwhelmingly…), there are a ton of blogging tools we can use – many of which are totally free.
But to keep things simple, here are some of my favorite blogging tools:
- Keyword research tools
- I use Moz, UberSuggest, Jaaxy and Ahrefs personally
- Website plugins
- I love the Elementor plugin if you’re using WordPress
- It’s a simple drag-and-drop site editor for beautiful designs
- Tools for strong visual content
- for example, I love Canva, Renderforest and Wave.video
- Research tools
- Google and Facebook Audience Insights are great free tools
Conclusion
This post has been a short list of some of my top tips for blogging as an artist.
There are a lot of moving parts to blogging, and it can take a lot of time and effort before things start “clicking”.
But I hope this post has helped inspire you and provided some helpful ideas for improving your blog.
As always, thanks for reading today and happy writing!
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