The Dos and Don’ts of Weight Loss Blogging for Beginners

This guest post is by Karol K.

There’s a popular trend on the internet these days among people who have taken upon themselves to lose some weight. I’m talking about starting a weight loss blog.

The idea in itself is perfect. You get a place to document your progress, talk about the things you’re doing, get additional motivation by interacting with other people through comments (also great for getting additional tips from them), and finally, you’re making your journey public, which is sure to improve your success rate all by itself.

There are some problems, though. The weight loss blogging space is really heavy on purely promotional sites, deceptive sales messages, or even scams desired solely to earn some quick money.

All this makes it really hard to build a credible brand that stands out from the crowd.

That’s why I decided to create this quick tutorial to show you some things you can and should do ASAP, as well as other practices that are better left alone—unless you want to be mistaken for a spammer.

Before I get to that, let me take a minute to list some people who do this the right way. Here’s the light side of the force (so to speak), just as an example on how weight loss blogging should be done.

MindBodyGreen.com: MindBodyGreen was founded by Jason Wachob, Carver Anderson, and Tim Glenister—all wellness experts and enthusiasts. Their team is one of the best in the business. From top yoga instructors to wellness gurus, and weight loss experts, there’s something for every interest and ability level on this blog.NowLoss.com: A very successful blog in the weight loss niche by Andrian Bryant. NowLoss.com now helps over 1.5 million monthly visitors look good naked by losing weight, getting curves, and/or building muscle. NowLoss.com is the #2 weight loss website in the world behind commercial giant Weight Watchers.WorkoutsForHome.com: In her blog, Susan invites us to join her in Operation Awesomeness and lose weight fast, right from home. She is here to teach you everything she knows about becoming awesome…Does This Blog Make Us Look Fat: A blog founded by Rebecca Regnier—an Emmy-winning television journalist and author of “Your Twitter Diet,” available on Amazon. The blog’s mission is to teach you how to lose weight in a way that’s suitable for you individually (whatever weight loss steps you take, Rebecca supports you).A Black Girl’s Guide to Weight Loss: A blog where you can join Erika in her journey from 330lbs to personal trainer. Everything she shares comes from her personal experience. An great blog with lots of personal touches.

Now, let’s focus on how you can join the ranks of these quality weight loss blogs.

These days people don’t have that much trust reserved for websites talking about weight loss. With so many poor affiliate blogs around—blogs publishing low quality content purely to promote other products through affiliate links—you never know who’s for real and who’s in it just for the quick buck.

One of the common things such marketers do is that they never use their real names. Instead, they showcase some lame brand name, like LoseWeightTacticsBlog, or something.

The easiest thing you can do to differentiate yourself from this crowd is to prove that you’re a human being by using your real name. Then, go one step further and display some actual photos of you (either taken by you or your friends; nothing too professional-looking).

When your audience sees your face on the blog, they will know that you are a real human being who genuinely cares about the content they publish.

Whenever you want to endorse something (a product or service) be careful about promising any kind of results. This is something spammers do every day. They publish loads of promises, great looking success stories, and even fake before-and-after pictures.

People are very careful now when it comes to believing any sort of promises. Whenever you say that something will bring massive results you’re immediately becoming suspect.

Now, I’m not saying you shouldn’t endorse anything. But do it only when you are absolutely sure that the product is of great quality. You have to experience the results yourself, otherwise you won’t be believable.

This is about the name of your site.

Now, you can take one of two possible paths here:

Get a custom domain at godaddy.com (or some other registrar) and your own hosting account.Register your blog at wordpress.com and get a free subdomain.

Both approaches have their pros and cons. The first one is obviously more expensive. You have to spend $10 a year for the domain, and around $6 per month for hosting.

But what you get in exchange is better credibility and a more serious look from the get-go.

The second path is quick and cheap. You can set up a new blog within minutes, but its address will end with .wordpress.com.

This is up to you, but make sure to go with a good name. Whatever you do, don’t make it seem spammy. For instance, WeightLossTacticsBlog is spammy. MagicWeightLossToday is too. LosingWeightWithKaren is not. There’s no rule of thumb here. Always go with your gut feeling.

The consequences of getting this wrong can be serious. If people see your blog’s name as spamm—as a hidden marketing pitch of sorts—they won’t believe a thing you’re saying.

As I said before, trust is the rarest commodity in weight loss blogging. If people don’t trust you, they won’t listen to your advice, and might even find it hard to believe your stories.

There are some ways to boost your believability rate, so to speak, and your trust:

Use your real name and display pictures of yourself (already discussed).Try storytelling and sharing personal insights. This is where you get to describe genuine stories that are taking place in your life (related to weight loss, obviously). People love stories, and it’s the ultimate way to prove that you are real. If people can relate to what you’re saying, they will surely pay attention. Make every post you publish personal to some degree.Display trust elements. “Trust elements” sound fancy, but what I mean is quite simple. Whenever other website mentions you in one way or the other, put their logo in your sidebar and label it “Websites talking about me” or something similar. The point is to prove that other sites see you as a real, credible person. If you don’t have any of those yet then don’t worry, the day will come.

One of the main giveaways that we’re dealing with a weight loss marketer rather than a real person is the fact that each post only touches upon the positive side of things.

As in life, in weight loss, too, there are good and bad days. Good and bad products. Good and bad people.

You can create much additional credibility when you share a message that’s not that positive, but is still 100% real.

Only the strongest people are able to share a negative story and be confident about what they’re saying at the same time.

Advertising is the most intuitive way to monetize a website. Essentially, I’m not against advertising. If there is a possibility to earn a couple of bucks from your blog then I believe you should take it.

However, be careful not to make your blog overloaded with ads. Such situation will bring your credibility down very quickly. Just one block for AdSense ads (or any other provider) in the sidebar is really enough.

You can skip this if you’re not planning on publishing any reviews. If you are, keep reading…

The main problem with reviews online is that a big chunk of them is simply fake. Every day countless marketers publish reviews of crappy products without even having those products in their possession.

This is especially visible in the weight loss space where, as we all know, there are hundreds of products available … pills, diets, training programs, training equipment, DVDs, you name it.

That’s why if you’re going to write a review, you should remember a handful of things:

Always list the bad sides of the product (there surely are some).Provide pictures of the product taken by you (or better yet, pictures of you using the product if that’s possible).Get in depth to the core benefits the product delivers.Don’t quote any of the information from the product box or the official website.Give an honest final opinion.

Most of the time, spam-bloggers publish only simple 400-word blog posts providing no actual advice. You can differentiate yourself pretty easily by looking at the topic of blogging much more broadly.

Some examples, besides the traditional blog post:

Your progress update. If you’re on a weight loss program yourself then you can share your weekly progress updates. I guarantee that your readers will love those.“Meal of the week” or something like that. Provide a complete recipe.“Task of the week.” This is where you can set a goal for the week and update your audience on how well it went. For instance, your goal could be to exercise at least 20 minutes a day.Interviews. If you can have a talk with someone knowledgeable about a given weight loss-related topic, your audience will surely be glad you shared this.Reviews, as discussed above.Off-topic posts. This is where you get to connect with your audience more broadly, by sharing something that’s not related to weight loss, yet still relevant to you as a real person.“Ask the readers.” This is where you ask a question and your readers respond through comments. Then you can round up the most interesting answers and publish them in another blog post. You have to have a big enough audience to make this work, though.

Now it’s your turn. What do you think about using a blog as a way to document your weight loss story? Are you a weight loss blogger? What tips and advice can you share?

Karol K. teaches how to save on the popular Flex Belt, and discusses the basics of TRX training (learn more). He contributes articles on fitness training, working out, and losing weight in general. He also enjoys writing occasionally for WeightLossTriumph. He’s a fan of healthy living and being in shape no matter what. In his personal life, he proves that one doesn’t have to struggle to be healthy.

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How I Use Data Mining to Grow My Weight Loss Blog

I’ve been learning how SEO works to grow my weight loss blog for some time now till the point that I’m starting to obsess over it; and I have good reasons for that too.

We all know that traffic is one major factor that determines the failure or success of any blog. Without the right amount of traffic you’re going nowhere and you’re in the same boat without the right kind of traffic too.

I have contemplated using various traffic generation tactics to grow my weight loss blog, and I have even tested some. My eventual discovery is that SEO is currently the best source of traffic online…and it will probably be for a long time to come.

The problem, however, is that most people find it difficult to generate SEO traffic and the majority of tips out there is either outdated or ineffective for the little blogger. Based on my experience with data mining I’ll be sharing a few tips with you below and how to use it to grow your blog too.

Quality or Quantity

As someone who has experience with getting SEO traffic I’d like you to know that there’s a huge difference between quality traffic and quantity. Most people believe any SEO traffic will work for them when in reality the only thing that matters is whether people are discovering your blog through the right keywords.

For example, if you want to get people to read and probably take action on one of your posts on affiliate marketing you will have no success if you start getting visitors who came through iPhone related keywords. Same goes for my blog too, I will not have any success with getting people interested in marketing to land on a weight loss article on my blog.

In other words, not just any keyword traffic from the search engines will do; only targeted traffic from people interested in what you do will make a difference.

The question now is how do you get this kind of targeted traffic without having to overstress yourself? How do you get as much targeted traffic as you want without the big marketing budgets most of the big companies dominating the search engines have?

The Answer is…”Long tail”

If you’re already familiar with SEO you’d have read a lot and know the difference between ordinary keywords and long tail keywords. An ordinary keyword is a generic keyword like “weight loss” or “weight loss blog” while a long tail keyword is something like “how to lose weight in 2 weeks”. Just take a look at the three examples given and you will notice that the first two examples are very generic while the other one is from someone who specifically wants to lose weight in two weeks. In other words, if you’re able to dominate the rankings for the long tail keyword you will have an increased chance of ranking.

Targeting long tail keywords is not that easy, though, so we have to be smart with our approach. The first step to take is look for a simple short tail keyword (3 phrases or less), try to rank for it and start observing other keyword traffic to it. Once you’ve done this we’re ready to go into the basics of data mining.

How to Use Data Mining to Grow Your Blog

Data mining is the process of determining new patterns from a large data set. In other words, as far as SEO is concerned it can be referred to as the process of determining new long tail keywords from short tail keywords.

For example, one keyword I’m trying to rank for is best weight loss programs; based on analytics from my blog I have noticed that I not only get traffic from that keyword, I also get traffic from other related keywords like.

Best weight loss programs for womenBest weight loss programs for menFree online weight loss programsBest weight loss programs for women over 40

If you were to compare the traffic these variation keywords generate it will be insignificant compared to my original keyword, but getting ranked for that keyword can make a whole lot of difference in my campaign for one major reason; it is really targeted traffic. Keywords like these are also easy to rank for because I’m already ranking for them so all I need to do is work on increasing my rankings. I might not be on page one for them, but the fact that I’m already getting traffic as a result of those keywords means I only need to make an effort to get ranked #1 for those keywords.

In a nutshell, data mining is the process of analyzing your analytics to see patterns among keywords. Monitor the short tail keywords sending traffic to a pillar page on your blog and try to observe other smaller keywords sending traffic. Instead of restricting yourself to the short tail keywords only, start optimizing your blog to rank for the long tail keywords also.

It’s that Simple!

The process looks like this: Target short tail keywords >> Observe traffic from other long tail keywords >> Work on getting yourself ranked for the long tail keywords.

The process looks very simple but I can tell you from experience that it is very effective. I’d also like you to know that the method outlined might not send you thousands of visitors. A single variation keyword will only send you a fraction of traffic you get from a major keyword, but when you combine around 20 – 40 of these keywords you are on your way to tripling the traffic you get to a particular page while at the same time ensuring you get more targeted traffic. If used well this tactic can add tens of thousands of visitors to your blog and thousands of dollars to your pocket, use it wisely!

John Smith is an expert blogger and writer that helps people discover Medifast coupon codes and eDiets promo codes.

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