22+ Blogger Hacks [That Will Make a Big Difference in 2023]

By: | December 21, 2019 | Tags: , , , |
Blogger Hacks

Are you ready to learn new blogger hacks?

Do you know that I share blogging tricks at least once a year on my blogging anniversary? I let readers know the blog hacks I learned since my last blogging anniversary.

I celebrated five years of blogging last month. 

My 4th-anniversary blogging reflections were so well-received, on my 5th anniversary, I’m sharing new blogger hacks I discovered this year.

Here, on my 5th anniversary of blogging, let’s reflect on what I learned this year. 

This post will cover blogger hacks I learned in the areas of traffic generation, SEO, branding, and content creation.

Furthermore, the post will include empirical evidence containing data in the form of screenshots that these blogger hacks work.

You will read these shortcuts in the order in which I learned the blogger tricks and hacks this year.

By the time you’re done reading this post, you’ll know new blogger hacks to save you time and improve your blogging success.

You’ll also be able to make a content creation plan for 2020.

Let’s dive in and see the blogger hacks that work.

Make sure you stick around for the updates at the end of the post where you receive three extra blogger hacks.

Are you ready for blogging best practices?

22 Effective Blogger Hacks

November 2018:

Blogger Hack 1: Unsend email if you make a mistake in correspondence. I told a guest author the wrong date. Since then, I learned how to unsend Gmail for 30 seconds!

Blogger Hack 2: Don’t think for people. At the request of a guest author, I posted about travel. I predicted readers would get irritated since this is a blogging tips blog. On the contrary, people seemed to enjoy writing about their favorite airlines.

Blogger Hack 3: If you monetize your blog, be firm in your pricing. I made decisions with my emotions. Now, I have a business manager who makes financial decisions with his head.

Blogger Hack 4: Don’t write in italics. I am a credentialed English teacher, so by habit, I keep putting titles of blog posts in italics. However, I read many bloggers read articles on mobile and italics are hard to read on mobile devices. Don’t use them.

Blogger Hack 5: Acknowledge people who made your blogging journey easier.

For the first time, I sent Thanksgiving cards to my blogging contacts who helped me the past year.

One of my contacts acted as an agent for me and got me a writing gig for which I was grateful. I sent him and others this “card.”

Before the evening was over, he advertised my ebook to his Facebook followers and arranged to interview me on his blog.

I sent the card to genuinely express thanks. I didn’t expect anything in return but it is nice it worked out that way.

As you can see, these blogging hacks also boost your brand. This increased exposure can lead to monetization opportunities.

December 2018

Blogger Hack 6: Don’t put “Update” in the headline.

I know I’ve mentioned some of these blogger hacks before, but here is a tweak.

You know that Google likes fresh content.

According to content marketing strategist Patti Podnar, “Pro writers want to know their sources are current.”

Therefore, when I updated a post, I’d write “Update” in the headline. Wrong move!

Feel free to write “Update” in the post before the updated information. You can also write “updated information” or “2019 update” in the meta description, so search engine users know your post contains recent information.

Look:

Blogger Hacks

This shows how I updated my review of email services.

For example, when I originally published my review of 7 email vendors, I wrote that Aweber did not have 24 hours a day technical help. After publication, I discovered that they implemented those extended hours.

As you can see, I updated the post with the new information. Then, I put UPDATE in bold, in a heading, and in all caps.

Blogger Hack 7: Focus on improving your SEO.

My theme loaded too slowly. Google shows quick-loading sites to its search engine users.

Concerned my SEO was being adversely affected by my lackluster speed, I hired my wonderful technical helper Phillip Dews to change my theme, reduce plugins, and in other ways speed up my site.

Blogger Hack 8: As time allows, put your posts together and sell your ebooks on Amazon.

You’ll keep collecting the passive income from the sales and realize the time you put in was worth it.

I rounded out 2018 by publishing a resource, HOW TO MAKE MONEY BLOGGING By VARYING YOUR INCOME, a list of my monetization resources.

Shortly after, I published my Instagram Tips and Tricks ebook.

January 2019

Blogger Hack 9: Make time to accept honors.

I accepted an invitation to judge the Bloggers Bash Competition.

People wrote to me from all over the world and wished me luck as a judge.

Blogger Hack 10: Speed up your site loading time.

My technical helper built me a custom theme which he said would load faster and therefore would improve my SEO.

February

Blogging Hack 11: Don’t skip Header Tags.

If you look in the top left-hand corner of your WordPress screen when you’re in Draft mode, you’ll see an icon of a low-case i in a circle.

Click the icon and you’ll see an outline of your post.

Blogger Hacks

Do you notice how I didn’t skip any Header Tags? They are in descending order.

Make sure you don’t skip any numbers. In other words, I didn’t jump from H2 to H4.

In a real outline, your numbers would look like this.

Are you ready for more blogger hacks?

March

Blogging Hack 12: If possible, try to get a link to your site from a .gov or a .edu site.

Do you want to know one of the dreams of every blogger?

Bloggers wish to build links to their sites from a .gov or a .edu website. Since these are government websites and websites from educational universities, a link from a .gov site and a .edu site carries more weight with Google than other links.

Look:

Since I am not a university student, I can’t click the link to see which of my articles the university linked to, but seeing a .edu link on my traffic referrals is exciting nonetheless.

Here are some ideas about how you can build links from .gov or .edu sites to your website.

April

Blogger Hack 13: Don’t underestimate the power you have as a blogger.

I received a thank you letter from a victim of the Oklahoma bombing. She thanked me for giving the victims a voice as they overcame adversity and emerged stronger.

If you’d like to see what she wrote to me at my blog party, scroll down to the comments or look at this screenshot showing the comment section from the post.

Are you ready for more effective blogger hacks?

May:

Blogger Hack 14: Use Google Analytics to determine your best days of the week for publishing.

I realized the days of the week people came to my site changed. Blogger Hugh Roberts also reported seeing this population dynamic change on his blog.

blogger hacks

To see your metrics, go to Analytics.Google.com. Scroll down to “When Do Your Users Visit?”

The result: I started publishing on different days of the week than I had previously been publishing.

For example, instead of my blog parties coming out on Saturday at 2:00 am, I started publishing on Friday.

My big post of the week that used to publish Sunday at 2:00 am, I now publish on Saturday at 2:00 am.

June

I didn’t learn new blogger hacks in June. Perhaps you can contribute to the discussion and suggest effective blogger hacks in the comment section.

July

Blogger Hack 15: Realize blogging takes a percentage of luck in addition to hard work.

Immediately after I published my post about unfollow apps, Instagram penalized users of unfollow apps.

As a result, there was a mass interest in this topic, and the post was my third-best performer of 2019 in terms of page views.

Blogger Hacks

Image Credit

As you can see, 61 different keywords or keyword phrases bring up my post when users search for it.

August

Blogger Hack 16: Use a keyword position tool to discover the keywords bringing you traffic.

Then, put that keyword in a new keyword and publish a post focused on that term. This tells Google you are knowledgeable about all things related to that topic and Google will send you traffic.

Look:

Look at #2 and #4 in the screenshot. I knew my Instasize post was sending my blog traffic so I composed a post about a new topic related to Instasize– Instasize video.

At the time of this writing, there are 1300 searches for Instasize video monthly and my post ranks on Google’s Page 1 of the SERPs in Position 5.

I repeated the process again using the keyword terms “Ubersuggest” and “Ubersuggest io.”

In the past, Google sent a great deal of traffic to my Ubersuggest post.

Afterward, I composed a follow-up post with the keyword term “Ubersuggest io.”

Blogger hacks

Image Credit

Now my Ubersuggest io post ranks well also.

As you can see from the screenshot, my Ubersuggest io post ranks higher on Google than two blogs with higher Domain Authority Rankings than mine, FortuneLords.com and ShoutMeLoud.com.

September

Blogger Hack 17: Put a Table of Contents (TOC) in your blog posts.

I heard that if you put a Table of Contents into your post, Google will rank your post higher in the SERPs, so on September 2, I put a Table of Contents in a post I was composing about the SERPRobot tool.

Shall we see if the hack worked?

Look:

Blogger Hacks

Position 12 puts my post at the Top of Page 2 in Google’s SERPs. If I update the post by adding images or additional information, I might be able to give it a nudge up to Google’s Page 1.

Facebook’s Jim Miller agrees. “Tables and structure of data help a lot on Google at the moment.” Therefore, I started using Tables of Contents and Structured Data on my site.

Facebook’s Jill Barletti believes having a Table of Contents improves social sharing since the section links on the Table of Contents improves the user experience.

This is due to the fact that a Table of Contents organizes your information for your reader.

Note: I realize we don’t know how well the post would have ranked without the Table of Contents.

Blogger Hacks

I did not use a Table of Contents for this post since I only have two subheadings.

This is the Table of Contents for my post about blog comments. Do you notice the different sections?

These are live links to the different sections in your post.

This improves User Experience. If your blog visitors are only interested in reading one section, instead of scrolling down, they click the name of the section. The link will take them to that part of your post.

Blogger Hack 18: Use Push Notifications

In September, I started using push notifications.

Some people prefer getting notified of your publications through push notifications instead of emails. This is to avoid cluttering their email boxes.

Subscribers is a free plugin. Can you tell in a 10-day period I received 92 subscribers? This occurred between September 12 and September 22.

Blogger Hack 19: Vary your passive revenue streams.

September was an exciting month. My business partner, Peter Nyiri, and I started the Mostly Blogging University where Peter teaches people to make money blogging.

October

Blogger Hack 20: Add new keywords and update the information in your posts by making them longer.

You can also add more images and structured data such as a Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) box. Adding a Table of Contents also counts as Structured Data.

Then, I told Google I updated my posts since Google likes fresh content by going to Google’s Search Engine Console.

November

I reflected on my blogging success this year so you can emulate my wins.

Blogger Hack 21: Apply the EAT acronym to your blogging practices.

I did not create the EAT acronym. However, the concepts are relevant to this post on blogging hacks:

E: Expertise

A: Authority

T: Trust

Looking at my Top 2019 posts, you can see that Google considers me to be an expert and an authority in the area of social media first and video making tools second.

Look at my highest traffic generators.

Google has spoken loud and clear this year: It considers me a social media expert. It trusts me (the 3rd letter in the acronym), to give its users reliable social media information.

Blogger Hack 22: Set your content marketing objectives.

Play to your strengths. In other words, continue what is working.

Those should your content marketing objectives for 2020.

If Google ranks my social media posts and my video tips posts above all others, then my content marketing objectives should be to create more content on those topics in 2020.

Update More Blogger Hacks

You need to make sure the keyword research tool you use is accurate. I struggled in the SERPs (Search Engine Results Pages) when I switched away from my go-to keyword tool, KWFinder.

My recommendations:

Blogger Hack 23: Try one keyword tool and see how you rank. If you don’t rank well, try another.

Blogger Hack 24: Try two keyword tools and see if their metrics agree. If they don’t, try a third. Many people prefer Neil Patel’s tool, Ubersuggest. Here is a list of Ubersuggest alternatives.

Blogger Hack 25: In July 2020, I conducted my first link audit. This involved disavowing over 70 unsavory links using Google’s disavow tool. Supposedly, this results in a rankings boost. We shall see!

Blogger Hack 26: Getting people to stick to your blog is important since it reduces your bounce rate which helps your SEO. Getting people to return for more is even trickier. Both blogger tricks are accomplished when you use the Sticking Blogging method.

Wrapping Up: Blogger Hacks

In closing, this post shared what bloggers do when they want to be successful.

As you read this post, did curiosity strike you? Have you checked your year-end summaries in your WordPress dashboard?

What topics does Google consider you to be an expert in? What will your content marketing objectives be to focus on in 2020?

Readers, please share so bloggers discover these blogger hacks and have a more successful blogging journey in 2020.

I look forward to your views in the comments section. Are there any blogger hacks you can add to this list?

  1. Jeanette S. Hall

    Janice,
    I use .gov sites in the resources of some of my posts. If the post is about a government function, it just makes sense to show the readers how I resulted in this conclusion.

    • Janice Wald

      Hi Jeanette,
      Great to see you. Happy holidays!
      Linking to .gov sources is a great idea. It gets you credibility with your readers and establishes you as an authority in Google’s eyes. Thanks for commenting.
      Janice

  2. Enstine Muki

    Hey Janice,
    Today, I added a Travel category on my blog and one article is live. Still to get feedback on it but from my talks with readers in the past, I expect it to be positive.

    I have many travel bloggers reading my blog for SEO, blogging and monetization tips. This new addition will be a cool section for them.

    Tons of useful tips you have shared here my good friend 😉

    • Janice Wald

      Hi Enstine,
      I have tried to narrrow my focus lately. For example, I removed the Case Study category. The reason: if Google doesn’t see me as an expert in the blogging niche, I won’t rank for blogging-related keywords. Google traffic is up the last few weeks despite the lull usually felt around the holidays. This could be a coincidence, but maybe not.
      Thank you for the compliments on my post!
      Janice
      Janice

  3. Justin

    I’ve been doing a lot of what you wrote here. Making improvements to SEO, including adding an SEO plugin and a table of contents plugin. It seems my site was hit by the latest Google Algorithm update. I need to try the subscribe to new notifications plugin too.

    I also switched from shared hosting to cloud hosting. I hope all of this improves my site performance.

    Take Care

    • Janice Wald

      Hi Justin,
      Thanks for commenting. My SEO has been up recently, so I figured the Google algorithm update helped me. I hear getting away from shared hosting definitely helps. Which SEO plugin did you install? I just discovered RankMath. I’m already a huge fan.
      Janice

  4. Kayla

    Wow there was so much content and helpful information in this post. Thank you! It actually inspired me to go back and update some of my previous posts with more in-depth content. I will be definitely be using many tips from this post.

    • Janice Wald

      Hi Kayla,
      I’m so glad I could inspire you! Thanks for writing to tell me I did!
      Thank you for following my blog, by the way! I received the notification. Happy New Year to you! I look forward to getting to know you better in the new year.
      Janice

  5. Arumugam Rangasamy

    Hi Janice,

    I have become a big fan of your’s blog. Your content is super easy and worth reading. I made a habit of checking your blog often.

    I have a doubt. Is still scholarship backlinks working? Is Google still considers them for ranking?

    Looking forward to your reply!

    Regards
    Arumugam

  6. Chris Camp

    Hey Janice,

    Thanks for the blogging tips and congrats on the 5th anniversary. I was wondering what your recommendations are for catchy titles for blogging? Should it be more informative, or can you be more creative as a means to draw people in?

  7. Elizabeth Jeter

    I love this list! It’s much more informative and thought-provoking than what I’ve read this year so far. Especially “don’t think for other people.” I really needed to hear that 🙂

    • Janice Wald

      Hi Elizabeth,
      Thanks for your compliment on my 22 blogger hacks and for reading what I wrote. I’m glad to hear my tip about not thinking for other people resonated with you.
      Thanks for commenting on my post.
      Janice

  8. tumpa

    I love this rundown! It’s substantially more useful and intriguing than what I’ve perused for the current year up until now. Particularly “don’t think for others.” I truly expected to hear that 🙂

  9. Natalie Portman

    Hi , This is very nice article and useful . keep doing good work. Thanks for sharing this amazing post and helpful information.

  10. Bella D. @ Self-Publishing Made Easy Now

    I love this post. All these blogger hacks you shared are really helpful. You are an inspiration to all bloggers. Keep on writing and sharing articles like this.

  11. Mitch Mitchell

    Sounds like you have a very successful year, Janet; congratulations! I have a specific question based on one of the things you listed. Is #11 only in the new editor mode? I couldn’t find it on my draft, and I’m using the classic editor plugin.

    My blog had a minor bit of growth as well this year, though it was strange. I got a bit more traffic by re-writing some of my older articles and publishing them as new, but overall comments are down from the previous year. I’m not greedy; I’ll take what I can get! 🙂

    • Janice Wald

      Hi Mitch,
      I don’t recall seeing the little i referenced in Blogger Hack #11 that indicates your word count and outline in the Classic Mode, but I’m going on memory.
      Thanks for coming by! Great to see you here! Congratulations on your growth. Growth is growth no matter how small.
      I also get new traffic from search engines by updating older posts and sending them to Google for rescanning. I don’t normally rewrite unless I can find a new keyword I believe I can rank for. Then I do.
      Janice

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