Vincent D'Eletto
Are you looking to build brand awareness and improve online visibility for your vegan business?
A quick search on Google Trends reveals that interest in veganism reached an all-time high in 2020, scoring a 96 out of 100 for peak popularity. And while this rise to mainstream prominence has certainly been a net positive for the movement as a philosophy, the hard truth is that many vegan businesses are struggling to effectively reach their target audiences in this saturated market.
If this sounds like you, don’t fear - blogging will soon become your secret weapon.
If you don’t yet have a blog for your vegan business, the time is now to start one. With the ability to improve leads by as much as 67%, consistent blogging is one of the most effective ways to raise your company profile, increase engagement, and drive traffic to every page of your website.
But before you can begin sharing your knowledge and industry expertise with the masses, you need to put in some prep work to start your blog. In a few simple steps, you can get your blog up, running, and ranking in no time.
Choose Blog Topic and Purpose
The first - and most important - step to beginning your vegan blog is to clearly define your blog’s area of focus.
You can do this by asking yourself the following questions:
- What is the purpose of my company?
- What story do I want to tell?
- Who shares my passion for this story?
The goal is to arrive at an area of focus that is specific to your vegan business but broad enough to allow you to produce bulk content. Some topic examples from the vegan niche include:
- Vegan recipes
- Vegan lifestyle guides
- Vegan activism
A helpful exercise is to identify some of your competitors and engage in a content analysis of their blogs using an online tool such as SEMrush or Open Site Explorer by Moz. Using one of these tools, you can easily determine what your competitors are talking about, their popularity (via domain scores and backlinks), and any potential gaps in content.
Here are some vegan blogs with high domain authority that you should pay close attention to:
Register and Host Your Blog
With a clearly defined purpose in hand, it’s time to register and host your blog. This is a two-part process. First, you will need to fully understand the structure of your website, as well as where you will place your blog within that structure. Second, you will need to select a company with whom to host your blog.
Website Structure
Before registering and hosting your blog, it’s important to understand the basics of website structure.
You can divide most websites into three parts:
- Domain name
- Subdomains
- Subdirectories
Your domain name is the text of the URL that will identify your website. For example, WordAgents’ domain name is wordagents.com.
A subdomain is a part of your root domain that helps you organize your content. You will use a subdomain if portions of your site are large enough that they need a separate hierarchy (i.e., support.google.com).
Lastly, a subdirectory is a pathway within your site that lives on the domain but represents unique page for the site. For example, a subdirectory that will take you to one of our blog posts is wordagents.com/fluff-in-writing/.
You will need to decide where to store your blog content - a subdirectory or a subdomain. One thing to keep in mind - your website's structure will significantly impact your organic search performance, including your ability to generate link equity. As such, we suggest reading up on potential use scenarios and how they could help or hinder your blog’s performance.
For more information that can help guide you on the topic, check out these great resources from HubSpot and SEMrush.
Blog Hosting
Once you have settled on where to place your blog, you will need to select a host to register with. When it comes to selecting a host, ideally, you want one that’s affordable, performs well (i.e., minimum uptime of 99.5%), and provides you with excellent customer support.
Selecting the right hosting service is key for the future success of your blog. The wrong service provider can result in security issues, slow loading times, and potentially crash your blog. For these reasons it’s important to make the right choice when starting your blog.
Some great options for hosting your blog include:
You may decide to go with a bargain brand - I advise you to tread carefully.
The internet has enough hosting horror stories to last it a lifetime. Dirt cheap prices often mean poor reliability and low-quality customer service. Look to contract with a respectable hosting service (like the ones listed above) even if the cost is higher upfront. Trust me when I tell you that you will save big in the long run.
Design Your Blog
Once you have decided on a hosting provider, it’s time to focus on design.
Although it’s often an afterthought, your blog’s design has the potential to give you a powerful competitive advantage.
Let’s face it - no one wants to read a blog that looks like it was designed by a five-year-old. And while good design doesn’t necessarily mean that a blog has good content, an elegantly designed and easy to navigate blog will entice your readers to pay more attention to your vegan content.
Aim for simplicity, prioritize responsiveness, and consider any plugins that you may want to use. Here are some great theme repositories that include both free and and paid themes:
Remember, when in doubt, keep it simple, readable, and clean.
Write Compelling and Value-Driven Content
When it comes to organic visibility for your vegan business, content is king.
If you fail to produce compelling and useful content, there’s a good chance that your blog will fail. Value-driven content will provide your readers with actionable insights into whatever the vegan topic at hand is - from vegan city guides to animal-free clothing to the best vegan cheeses.
Remember, good content will both build your traffic and improve engagement. An engaged audience results in buy-in, and buy-in means more conversions and leads for your vegan business.
Beyond actionable insights, there are three additional basic pillars of great content that you will need to keep in mind as you write:
- Keyword research
- Topical relevance
- Grammar
Keyword Research
Keyword research is the process of finding and evaluating search terms and phrases relevant to your specific industry. The goal is to find words that users are searching for on Google and other major search engines. These will be terms that relate to the vegan products or services you offer.
For example, if you want to increase organic visibility for your vegan business through the article “best vegan protein powder,” you will need to develop a list of appropriate keywords. Thanks to advances in technology, there are many online SEO tools that can help you streamline the process. Some great tools include:
To learn more about keyword research, check out this keyword research guide from our preferred SEO/keyword research tool, Ahrefs.
Topical Relevance
Once you have a robust list of keywords in hand, you will need to be aware of the impact of topical relevance.
Topical relevance refers to the relationship that your blog content has to a particular topic or keyword phrase. A search engine such as Google will assign your website a score that reflects how relevant it is with respect to a specific search query.
The more relevant your content, the more likely you are to rank for it.
Search engines will base their score on several factors, including (but not limited to) content depth, backlinks, and keywords. Websites with great topical relevance will adhere to a specific set of best practices when developing their content - from the building of topic clusters to the use of anchor texts.
While there is no one-size-fits-all approach to topical relevance, it is absolutely essential for building a successful blog in 2021. It’s so important, in fact, that we put together a topical relevance guide to assist our readers in their blog-building efforts.
Take a look, and pay close attention to the section on strategies for building topical authority.
Spelling and Grammar
Finally, great content requires great grammar.
As the most highly visible section of your website, your blog intimately represents your vegan vision. The truth is, about 99.9% of the people who read your website have never met you and never will. The content that goes on your blog is the best opportunity you have to demonstrate to the world the values that you and your business hold to be true.
Do you really want a prospective customer’s first impression to be a misplaced comma or a run-on sentence?
Maybe you aren’t a grammar expert - no problem!
Like with much of content development, there are several great tools that can help you keep your grammar on point.
Our favorite tool is the free online writing assistant, Grammarly. Driven by artificial intelligence, Grammarly will take care of the grammar basics and empower you to focus your time and energy on what matters most - creating compelling content.
Position Your Vegan Blog for Sustained Success
While it may be tempting to start producing blog content immediately for your vegan business, it’s absolutely essential to have a holistic blog strategy in place before you begin. This is especially true for a niche as popular/competitive as the vegan landscape.
We recommend that you take the time to give each strategy outlined above some thought. Remember, from free tools to templates to guides, there are countless resources available to help you on your journey as you look to develop organic visibility for your vegan business.
Hey, I'm Vin. Founder and CEO of WordAgents.com. I create content that ranks really well on search engines for our clients. I'm also deeply involved with the SEO community; maintaining a portfolio of successful, profitable affiliate websites. You can find me playing guitar, drinking scotch, and hanging out with my German Shorthaired Pointer when I'm not working!