Make no mistake, a successful blog can take a lot of time and effort, but it’s one of the best tools to grow your business – and it’s free! Raise your hand if you want more website visitors. Yeah, me too! Here’s where a blog comes in: every blog post is a chance for people to find you on Google.

Having a yoga blog can also help you build a deeper relationship with your existing clients and establish you as an expert. Through your blog you give your students a chance to learn more and get to know you a bit more.

And it’s a lot of fun!

So how do you get started? Here are 10 steps to start a yoga blog:

#1 Find your niche

You’ve probably already heard that you should define a niche for your business, something that you are known for. This is also true for blogging!

For best results, narrow your focus and only blog about a certain topic and not a bunch of different things. For example, if you are known for pre-natal yoga, don’t blog about vegan recipes but choose topics related to your niche.

You get the chance to stand out as an expert in YOUR topic and become the go-to site for information on this topic.

Here are some examples for yoga niches:

• Yoga sequences and videos, tutorials and tips especially for beginners….
• Meditation guides and tips for stressed out millennials…
• The spiritual side of yoga explained for the modern world…
• The yoga of food: yoga diet, recipes, health tips…

#2 Set up your blog on your website

To get the most out of the added traffic you get from blog posts, you want your blog to be part of your website, not on a different domain. This is better for your Google ranking and also gives you the chance to direct your new readers to your other pages.

I recommend that you use “Blog” in your menu, to make it as easy as possible for your visitors. So not “Journal”, or “Thoughts”, or anything like this. Keep it simple – Blog is what people know and they know what to expect.

#3 Write at least 3 major “pillar” articles

A pillar article is usually a tutorial style article aimed to teach your audience something. It should be longer than 1000 words, offer real value and insights, have lots of very practical tips or advice and be time-less.

Pillar articles can help you bring in a rush of new readers and back-links (other sites linking to your blog) and will continue to do so over time.

#4 Be extremely useful

Choose to write about topics that will solve your readers problems and help them achieve something they always wanted to achieve. The more practical your tips, the better.

For example, it’s not enough to say that the keys to losing weight are eating less and exercising more. Give the reader extremely useful ways of doing those things, and you’ve created a resource.

#5 Add personality

I see this all the times, blog posts with long blocks of text with facts, facts, and some more facts. You want to educate your readers, but you definitely don’t want to sound like a Wikipedia article.

Instead add your perspective to a topic. Share your experience, insights, story or infuse personality through referencing art, movies or music. There aren’t a lot of topics that haven’t been written about already, it’s YOUR take on it is what matters to your readers.

#6 Write clickable headlines

Once you’ve got a useful topic, crystalize your main point in a catchy headline. The few words that make up the headline are the most important words in your post.

Your headline should tell the reader what the post is about and spell out the benefit for him. If the headline is catchy, they’ll read more. If it’s not, you’ve might just lost a reader.

Here are some examples for catchy headlines:

• Everything You Need to Know Before Starting Hormone Therapy
• What Happens to Your Brain When You Meditate
• 4 Reasons Being Kind Is Good for Your Health

#7 Add images that are shareable

Your post should include images that are shareable on social media. That means You’ll need a horizontal image for Facebook and a vertical image for Pinterest. Recommended image sizes are 1200 x 628 pixel for Facebook and 600 x 900 pixel for Pinterest. Pinterest is an excellent way to drive traffic to your blog 8click here to learn how to get started on Pinterest), so you’ll want to have an image that can be pinned and shared.

#8 Add a call-to-action

A call-to-action tells your readers what they should do next after reading your blog post. It could be for example a link to your next workshop or to another blog post for more information on this topic. Adding a question at the end of your post can also help increase engagement and create a connection between you and your audience.

#9 Optimize your posts for search

Choose a long-tail keyword for every post and use that key word and variations in your headline, sub headlines, text, image alt-tags and title and meta description. Yoast SEO is a great free plugin to help you with that. It can take some time before Google catches up (be patient!), but when they do a blog post that’s ranking high on Google can bring you traffic for years to come.

#10 Focus on quality, not quantity

Writing short, mediocre posts just to get something up on your blog isn’t going to get you anywhere. If you want your blog to be successful, you need to provide quality content that’s helpful and valuable to your readers.

If your content is not of a good quality, it doesn’t matter how much you publish. This also means that you don’t have to publish so much content, as long as it’s good quality. That’s good to hear, isn’t it?

And there you have it, 10 tips to start a yoga blog. I hope you’ll love blogging as much as I do!