So, you’ve decided you want to share your vegan views with the world. You’re excited to get started spreading your compassionate message! There is so much advice online about how to start a vegan blog but not many show you how to avoid being buried on page 10 of Google, where nobody will see you 🙂
How Do I Start a Vegan Blog?
You can start a vegan blog very easily these days. There are many services vying for your attention but here I will be recommending only one. It is a service which provides you with everything you need to set up properly and run a successful website. Read on …
Watch: Sam from IDTLC on vegan blogging:
First, a very brief background on why I started Vegan Slate …
For many who choose veganism as a way of life it is a profound awakening. It was for me.
In all honesty, it’s probably as close to a spiritual experience as I have ever got. I’m not a religious man but the life-changing emotions I felt over that weekend during which the light bulb went off in my head, I will never forget.
… and I imagine that’s what religious devotion feels like.
To be so wholly convinced the path you’re taking is the right one and is something every single person on the planet should be considering.
This is why many vegans evangelise and many more non-vegans get annoyed with them.
Just as religious devotees feel the need to spread their “good word”, so vegans experience a similar urge to introduce our compassionate way of life to the masses.
That’s why I started this blog 🙂
Vegan activism comes in many forms and the written word is one of the most powerful tools you can employ, especially in the internet age …
How Can I Get My Voice Heard Above The Noise?
It’s all very well starting a website or blog. There are endless ways to get going on your creative path. But how do you rise above the flotsam and jetsam which pervades the web?
The ease with which we can now publish our thoughts online means every single person and their dog can become a website owner. Some create amazing content, others less so!
Gone are the days when you needed to learn a computer language to build your website. I’m old enough to remember the dawn of the web and I dabbled with code back then!
These days there are so many options open to you and so much more competition for pixel space on your computer screen. A quarter of a million new websites are created every day, according to Siteefy.com!
That’s a lot of web pages and Google does an amazing job of finding it all, categorising it and serving it up to you in a split second or two.
So if you want to get your vegan message out there online then guess where you need to be?
Yep … the first page of Google is the holy grail. Other search engines like Bing are also important but Google is where it’s at.
The majority of people never click past the first page of search results so if your website is buried on page 10, you’re highly unlikely to ever get clicks on your content.
No clicks = no eyeballs = no vegan activism.
No-one will ever see your amazing content!
Find The ‘Sweet Spot’ In The Search
Search engine professionals call it ‘keyword research’ – getting this bit wrong can mean the difference between a constantly busy website and one which has the odd tumbleweed blow through on a Sunday afternoon.
It’s that significant.
In the wise old words of Benjamin Franklin, “By failing to prepare you are preparing to fail” and this could not be more true of the art of keyword research.
A keyword is simply a phrase someone types into a search engine like Google. The algorithm then goes off to try and work out what is the intent behind that search. Then in the blink of an eye, returns hundreds of pages, listing the websites it thinks are most relevant.
It truly is a software engineering miracle.
Keyword research involves finding those phrases which enough people search for on a daily basis, but which do not have too many competing pages in the results returned by the algorithm.
When you find one of these phrases and you publish a piece of quality, unique content which answers the question posed or addresses the searcher’s intent, then Google will find your content, rank you high up the results and …
BOOM!
… you have eyeballs on your site!
If I did my job properly you found this very page today through that process 😉
Learn How To Start Your Vegan Blog – Like a Pro!
As I mentioned above, there are 1001 ways to build your presence online. Blogging is perfect for vegan activism though because it’s all about disseminating information and educating others.
There’s a lot of people out there interested in veganism and plant based lifestyles. They have a lot of questions to ask. If you have the answers then why not share your expertise?
Or maybe you want to bless the world with your delicious vegan recipes … again, a regularly updated blog is the perfect vehicle for this venture.
When starting your blog it’s easy to get lost in the world of web hosting, domain names, secure servers and the like. All very important but it’s a bit of a minefield to be honest, especially when you just want to be writing.
So for all budding vegan bloggers I recommend only one service. It has everything you need to get set up super fast, in the right way. It’s the service I use and it’s battle-field tested for the long term.
You also have access to a huge community of bloggers and internet marketers who have been very successful online. This community support alone is worth the monthly fee.
Any questions you have about your blog will be promptly and comprehensively answered by many willing members, some of whom run weekly live training classes, keeping it current.
But you get so much more than that …
Structured & Proven Search Ranking Course
Along with fast, secure web hosting and WordPress installation done right, the core of the service is a multi-part search engine ranking course.
You can take it at your own speed and complete the course material as quickly or as slowly as you need to. With near instant support for any issues you may encounter, you can see I’m a big fan of this service.
My only slight criticism would be, with so much educational material available on the platform, it can be a little crowded and you may find yourself drifting off down avenues which may not necessarily be the most productive use of your time.
Having said that, you’ll often find a golden nugget of info down that avenue!
Combined with some social media (Pinterest is great for recipes) which is also taught in the course you will be giving yourself the best chance of reaching the masses with your new vegan blog!
As I say, I can’t recommend this highly enough and I use the service in one way or another every single day.
In Conclusion : Patience Is a Virtue
Another wise old saying for you … “Rome wasn’t built in a day”.
Many people get their blog installed, quickly whack a few posts up online and expect the visitors to come flooding in. Unfortunately this is rarely the case.
Unless you managed to find a rich seam which no-one has exploited yet then you’ll have to be patient. It takes time to build authority in the search engines. It takes time for your content to mature.
Just as a real world business takes many years to establish and gain a rep, so a website is exactly the same. In the early days Google will not love you and you may sometimes feel the urge to give up, with only a trickle of visitors coming to your premium content.
But you give it time to mature, you learn from the community and you stick at it. After 12, maybe 18 months things start to happen. You get more and more people reading your posts; you get some engagement. It spurs you on.
From here on in, you just keep doing what you’ve been taught and the results keep improving.
You focus on quality and you don’t compromise. In another 12 months you’re managing a busy website, engaging with your mailing list, working joint ventures with other vegan activists … and dare I say it, making a living from your blog!
Now you’re making a tangible difference!
I hope you enjoyed this article and it has inspired you to get your blog set up. If you use the links in this article I will be notified and I will help you along every step of the way. Check it out here, for free. I even have a few tricks up my sleeve to help you gain visitors to your site in the early days. That speeds the whole process up!
Please comment and share below, it keeps me in vegan sausages 🙂
Thanks for reading and I hope to see you on the inside!
Rohan.