Blogging has become a popular past-time but also a great way to make money from home!

Whether you already have a parenting blog or are thinking about starting one, the only way to make money is to focus on marketing such as link building, keyword optimization, content building, and traffic building.

This type of marketing is known as SEO – Search Engine Optimization. SEO ensures that your site lands at the top of Google search results so that web-goers can easily find your blog.

In fact, marketing statistics show that search engines bring in more than 75% of the traffic to small and medium websites!

So, let’s look at what you can do to optimize your site and start making money from home:

Create a Well-Designed Site

In the world of websites, creating a well-designed site is known as UX, or “user experience.”

UX is used to ensure that a site is well laid-out, attractive, and complementary to your niche (in this case, parenting). This helps gives your audience targeting information in a way that is easy to consume and navigate.

Also, it helps attract quality visitors who will actually buy what you are selling instead of looky-loos who will only take the information they need and leave. This will increase your conversion rate (the number of people who actually buy).

If your visitor can’t easily identify your product or find a way to access it, they will lose interest.

Additionally, make sure your site looks good on mobile devices. Known as “responsive design”, this ensures that mobile users have an optimal experience. And, because more and more people browse the web on their phones, this is extremely important!

Use Keywords and Descriptions

Google loves keywords! This is how the search engine determines if your content is the right fit for the user’s search term.

Keywords are words or phrases you use throughout your blog posts that link to the post’s topic. You can hack the keyword game by looking up popular keywords in your niche.

Check out sites like Ubersuggest that allow you to search for related keywords to your post’s topic. It will tell you how popular these keywords are – the more popular, the more it will boost your traffic!

Google is also smart and will know if you are stuffing your content with keywords for SEO’s sake. Try to include keywords as organically and naturally into your content as you can, especially in your headings.

Don’t forget to also fill out your post’s meta-description, which is the description that displays when a user finds your result on Google. Include your keywords here as well!

Build Back-Links to Your Content

Google has a complicated algorithm when it comes to determining the order in which search results display. One thing Google looks for is back-linking.

Back-linking is when another website links to your content. This shows Google that your information is good enough for other people to refer to – so it must be quality content!

To build back-links, you can begin by guest posting on similar sites. Do a Google search for your niche and guest writers.

For example, you can search for: “Parenting Blogs + Guest Writers”

Write a high-quality article including no more than three links back to your own content.

You can also search for link-sharing groups on Facebook where members reciprocate links by using your link when you use theirs.

Post Authoritative Content

Again, Google wants to post relevant results with good information. The best way you can ensure your content is relevant and strong is to be authoritative and link to good sources.

In fact, Google will look at what you are linking to in your article and use that to further determine what your article is about!

This doesn’t mean you have to public scientific papers about parenting. You just need to back up what you’re saying by linking to reliable sources related to the post’s topic.

For instance, if you want to post an article about freezer meal prepping, link to authoritative and popular sources such as The Food Network or The Pioneer Woman.

These are super strong sites and will show Google that your article is serious!

Try to include at least three links in your content to other sites and be choosey about who you link to.

Post Fresh Content Regularly

Google doesn’t want to serve up old, stale content to its users. This is why it’s important to ensure that your blog’s content is regularly updated.

There’s no magic schedule that will ensure SEO for your site so just aim to post as regularly as you can – whether it’s once a week or a couple of times per month.

Creating a blogging schedule can really help! Use a spreadsheet to plan on your content over the course of a couple of months. You can use your keyword research to build topics.

If you run out of ideas, look at your popular posts (you can check this using Google Analytics) and see if there is a point in that article that you expand upon in a new post.

If you’re just starting a parenting blog, begin by creating pillar posts that contain lots of useful information. From there, you can create posts that dive deeper into the content.

For instance, you could write an article called, “20 Rainy Day Activities for Kids,” and then focus on key aspects of that post to create new content:

• 12 Science Experiments You Can Do At Home That Your Kids Will Love
• How to Keep Your Kids Busy on Rainy Days
• Outdoors Activities Your Kids Will Love – Even in the Rain!

When you’re new to blogging, figuring out a full content schedule will take time but it will get easier as you go along!

Speed Up Your Page

Lastly, it’s important to make sure your page loads quickly. Complicated designs and multiple plugins can slow down your blog and affects its SEO.

Use PageSpeed Insights to see how your blog measures up. Be warned: There is a lot of technical information here!

Overall, clearing out unnecessary plugins, simplifying your blog’s design, and optimizing your images are easy steps you can take to speed up your site.

How Can I Make Money With My Parenting Blog?

Of course, optimizing your site does you no good if you don’t know what to sell! Here are some ideas of how you can make money with your parenting blog:

• Display ads
• Share affiliate links and earn commission
• Sell a course
• Sell a coaching service
• Sell a physical product
• Sell a digital product (such as calendars, printables, etc.)
• Write sponsored posts (where brands pay you to write about their product)

Just make sure you are marketing a product or service on your blog that fits with your audience. If it’s relevant to them and solves their problems, they are more likely to buy!

Be Patient!

Most importantly, be patient! Growing traffic to your site by optimizing your blog takes time.

But, once your site gains traction, you’ll soon be able to leverage your content to start earning money!

And, as you get into the swing of SEO, optimizing your content to attract viewers will become second nature.

It’s definitely a learning curve, but give yourself time.