2013 Blog Goals
My 2012 blog goals last year started off very clearly but quickly went haywire. I had a specific page view per day number in mind and made a SEO change that pretty much cost me half the year. Yep, I changed my permalink structure but didn’t realize I had to do redirects.
Sounds like Greek? To me too! Result: I spent the better part of the year going through all my posts to correct back-end bits and pieces to improve my SEO. I have over 1000 posts. Going through them all — not Once, not Twice, BUT FOUR TIMES took about 6 months working feverishly day and night. I definitely don’t want to spend 2013 doing this.
2012 was my year of Google SEO (Search Engine Optimization) improvement. I learned a lot but at the end of the day, I realize now that IT IS IMPOSSIBLE TO KEEP UP WITH GOOGLE. It’s kind of like baby parenting advice. If you read advice from 10 years ago, it conflicts with advice now. But advice from 30 years ago starts to sound modern again. It’s just crazy trying to keep up. An endless hamster wheel of frustration.
I did do a few other things in 2012 besides go through all my posts to fix them over and over again. I switched blog themes last year (thanks Timo!) and I really like this new one (that has too much coding for Google to love). I cleaned up my header and avatar (thanks Vanita!). I went to BlogHer. I discovered my deep love for Pinterest. I met great education bloggers through the Kids Blogger Network. And I did eventually hit my page view goal, albeit painfully.
Pinterest is one of my biggest referral sources. Somedays, it will even been Google traffic. I’m going to focus on Pinterest for 2013, Google + and Sulia.
My blog goals for 2013 will be very different I think:
- My blog cover education, parenting and children’s books. It’s a wide swath so I need to narrow things down.
- I want to focus on some themes: financial literacy for kids, getting kids to love reading, helping kids discover their passion, art projects for kids, and life skills for kids.
- Education: I want to cover STEM (Science Technology Engineering Math) to STEAM (Science Technology Engineering Art Math) and find ways to make math, science and technology exciting for kids. I want to explore Art as part of STEM … through art projects that explore math and science.
- Parenting: If you do what you love, you’ll never work a day in your life. I want to help kids discover what their passion is. I think there is likely a creative component to this.
- Children’s Books. I simply want to read more.
- I want to figure out Instagram this year and Sulia. And please, dear god, not any more new technology, social media platforms, or apps. I am too tired to figure out more. My brain hurts.
- For current social media platforms, I’ll be spending more time on Pinterest and Google +.
- I want to edit my posts more carefully.
- Simplify and Zen Out. I need to declutter my virtual world. I am going to cut back to 4 posts a week on PragmaticMom. 3 posts a week on my local blog, ILoveNewton and 1 post a week on my Asian American blog, JadeLuckClub. I wanted to do this last year = 7 posts a week, but I just didn’t. I posted 6 time a week on PragmaticMom. 4 times a week on I Love Newton. And ignored JadeLuckClub for 6 months. Not much balance there!
How about you? What are your goals for 2013? I’ll keep you posted on how I do for January and I’d love your input on what topics you’d like me to cover that would be helpful to you!
p.s. Thank you to Mama Smiles for getting my goals back on track!
p.p.s. Related posts:
How To Get Your Book Noticed: Marketing for Authors
Bloggiesta Update and Other News
17 Easy Tips to Grow Your Blog Traffic
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My books:
Amazon / Signed or Inscribed by Me
Amazon / Signed or Inscribed by Me
Food for the Future: Sustainable Farms Around the World
- Junior Library Guild Gold selection
- Massachusetts Book Award Long List
- Selected as one of 100 Outstanding Picture Books of 2023 by dPICTUS and featured at the Bologna Children’s Book Fair
- Starred review from School Library Journal
- Chicago Library’s Best of the Best
- 2023 INDIES Book of the Year Awards Finalist
- Green Earth Book Award Long List
- Imagination Soup’s 35 Best Nonfiction Books of 2023 for Kids
Amazon / Barefoot Books / Signed or Inscribed by Me
Amazon / Scholastic / Signed or Inscribed by Me
Sounds like great goals! I have not started Instagram yet, as I am with you with all the social media, platforms etc. I plan to look into instagram, and then try and just join more crafting groups and challenges and enjoy it. Happy New Year!
Hi Winnie,
How is your greeting card business going? You should be on Pinterest before Instagram. There are lots of crafters there and your work is so visual that it would really stand out. What is your Pinterest? I’ll follow you!
I like the narrowing down – I like reading blogs dedicated to a subject (or a few of them – but not trying to cover EVERYTHING). I think you will do great 🙂
Unfortunately I am not that professional yet and don’t set some goals (if so, maybe for a month, not year :P) and I am always happy to see more flow/followers on my blog. I am still at this first happiness stage, I guess! 🙂
Hi Alexandra,
The more I blog, the more I realize that narrowing down just makes more sense. I think I am going to try to do monthly blogging goals to meander my way into a more narrowed topic list. It’s hard for me to stay focused I am noticing as I blog away. I like your focus — Family Mobile Apps — it has range yet is very specific.
Great goals! I, too, want to edit my posts more carefully. It’s so good to read what I feel all the time, that we can’t keep up with Google. You’ve inspired me to try to come up with specific goals for Spanish Playground. Thanks!
Hi Jennifer,
I would be wrong about Google but after a year of chasing Google traffic, I am tired and I’d rather spend time on my blog on less elusive goals. I’m glad it helped you. I’ll try to post monthly just to say what worked and what my new goals are. Might help me stay focused this year. It’s so easy to get distracted with all the barrage of info coming in.
I’m with all of you on the social media platforms. NO MORE! lol I’m on instagram but just using it for fun. I have no time to figure out how to use it more for biz. Although I know it would be really good for my food blog. There is just only so much time in a day and I’d prefer to put that time into google+.
I have business goals but my blogging specific goals are to write a post every day this year. Since I know vacations and such will happen and days I just can’t get online for long I’ve given myself the lee-way that I can write ahead. However, I can not play catch-up. I have to write the posts ahead since I know I’ll be offline.
My not posting regularly really made dips in my income in 2012. Dips that were visible. I’m learning from that I hope.
Hi Val,
Wow, posting daily is huge goal. Good for you! I’d love to figure out how to increase my income from blogging this year as well. I am going to start by putting ads on the bottom of posts that relate to them. I tried Google Adsense when I first started blogging but it never did anything for me. As in $0. But I think I just did it in an ineffective way. I think there is some class for that but I can’t remember what it’s called. A mom blogger has one … will have to find it again.
You are such an inspiration! I am so glad I found Pragmatic Mom! I enjoy your blog and ALWAYS have something to take away! I am so excited for your STEM focused posts, more book lists, and more from Pragmatic Mom’s point of view in 2013.
Definitely get on Instagram. I would love to follow you there too. I get a lot of referrals from Pinterest too but I bet there is more I could be doing there. Also, I will have to find out what Sulia is. And YES, no more social media platforms, PLEASE!
Thanks so much Ann. That really means a lot to me!! Sulia is another socia media platform like a Pinterest … sorry to say that!
what’s Sulia?
blog goals…to actually blog? lol, gotta work on my scheduling goals first!
Hi Vanita,
Sulia is like another form of Pinterest. I know. None of us have time for another platform. Sulia sorts by topic. Not sure if it will take off like Pinterest but is showing some signs of life.
I haven’t done much with Pinterest. Everytime I go there I feel lost and a bit stupid. I guess that’s my goal for the moment – try and work it out and use it more. 🙂
Hi Elle,
It confused me too when I first started. I’d say:
1) Set up your boards first to figure out what you want to pin and what info/image you want to collect.
2) Follow folks whose pins you like. Not too many at first.
3) Set up boards that reflect your own blog categories. It’s a great referral source of traffic but you must have a pinable image on each post.
4) Give yourself 5-10 minutes a day to pin and repin.
Let me know how it goes. I think you will like it once you get your feet wet.
Thanks. I’ll give that a try. I have a lot of blank boards to sort out.
Hi Elle,
Let me know how it goes and if I can be of help!
Thanks for the shout-out!
I would love to see you on instagram!!!
I really need to learn more about SEO from you. Pinterest WAY trumps Google for me. I love my Pinterest love, but I want google to love me a little more. And I loved your comparison of trying to learn SEO for Google to trying read parenting books for babies. So much has changed since I had my first baby nearly 7 years ago!
Your goals are awesome. And a BRAND asked me about Sulia today, so I need to figure it out properly, too.
Congrats Maryanne!
Love that a brand is approaching you for Sulia! So maybe it does have legs!
I watched a great Google Chat thingy the other night with 5 bloggers. My big takeaway is not to put all your traffic eggs in one basket because things change. Look how Facebook now hides posts. Pinerest might do the same kind of thing once they start thinking about monetization.
For SEO:
Use Google Adwords to find key words for your post. Pick high frequency, low competition. Put them in your post titles and H2 headers as well as tag words. Just do that and it will help a lot. My friend Vanita has a great video course on SEO for mommy bloggers if you have time for it. It’s very reasonable.
Loved the article. I cringed when I read the part about permalinks. My intentions this year are to really learn and understand SEO and to “pre-write” some blog posts in advance of their scheduled dates. Wish me luck. Good luck with your list!
Hi C Lee,
Oh god. Such a permalink disaster I had. The upside is that I was forced to learn SEO and fix egregious SEO errors I made for all my posts. A hard lesson to learn but better sooner than later. Good luck with writing posts in advance. Once you start doing that, I think you will find that it becomes a habit.
I had no idea all of that permalinking nonsense was quite that extensive. Oh, and thanks for the loss of the last hour of my life on Sulia. I swore (I think it was just yesterday) that I would ignore any new social media sites I heard about. This is why I don’t make resolutions- no willpower. I can’t WAIT to read about kids and financial smarts and life skills. Bring them on, please. Your goals sound great in general! I want to focus on Pinterest for my Artchoo blog and Facebook and Twitter for Craftwhack. Different beasts need different socila media sites.
Hi Jeanette,
Are you not taking Vanita’s class girl? You should! Sorry about Sulia! My bad. I think Pinterest is the way to go for you too. Maybe we can do some collaborative boards together?! Call me sometime and let’s chat. I would love that!
I took Vanita’s class- did you change all of your permalinks that many times because of that? Yeesh. Yes, let’s do some collaborative boards! I need to get my Pinterest numbers up, up, up!
Hi Jeanette,
I did the permalink snafu before taking Vanita’s class. I wish I had taken it sooner. Yes, let’s do some boards together. Want to email me some ideas or do you want to talk?