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17 Things to do to your blog posts before you hit publish

You’re done writing your next blog post, time to hit the Publish-button!…. Or, maybe not yet?!

After spending hours on writing your next blog post, you’re finally done! You only need to hit that Publish-button, and then it’s time to sit back and relax!

But before you hit publish and share your post with the world, you might want to wait a little bit longer… I mean, don’t you want to be sure that you’re providing your readers with amazing, top-notch, flawless content?

If so, I advise you to read this blog post first. I have compiled a list for you with all the things you need to do before you press Publish. I use this list for all of my blog posts, as well, and it helps me a lot! Hopefully, it will be helpful to you, too. 

And to create some extra order in the mayhem of all your blogging tasks, I also created a printable checklist for you, which is waiting for you at the end of this post. Don’t forget to grab your copy before you leave!

Also interesting to read: 10 Reasons why you should start a blog and 6 reasons why you shouldn’t

Disclaimer: This blog post contains affiliate links. I may earn a small commission to fund my coffee drinking habit if you use these links to make a purchase. You will not be charged extra. So it’s a win for everyone! Please note that I won’t link any products I don’t believe in or don’t resonate with my blog site. Thank you!

Don’t be like me; correct your mistakes before you press publish, not after 😉

As a blogger, we have numerous different tasks to remember! And I know that I always forget to remember at least one of all these tasks if I don’t go over this checklist before publishing. It’s just so tempting to publish your posts too fast, right?…

I mean, we’re bloggers, we have the urgent desire to share! It’s in our blood!

But when you don’t take the time to check your posts thoroughly, chances are you’ll later discover the dumbest typos or a layout that looks a bit sloppy, or you find yourself to be stuck on a permalink that you can’t change anymore. Such a waste! So, please, be smart and use my checklist! :)) You’ll thank yourself later!

1. Catchy title

The most important part of your blog post

The title may well be the most important part of your total blog post. It is the reason why people decide to click on your post (or not) when it appears in the search results. Use it to convince potential readers to read your post! Ask yourself if you would click on this title if you were looking for similar information.

Tip: Use the Heading Analyzer Tool to check your headline quality!  

2. Clear introduction

This is your moment to make your readers curious about the rest of the post

The beginning of your post is the perfect moment to grab the attention of your readers. Therefore, make sure you have a clear, not overly long introduction that answers the following questions:

  • Which topic are you discussing in this post?
  • Why did you choose to write about this topic?
  • What can your readers expect to read in this post?
  • What problem do you solve for your readers?

3. Optimize for SEO

What is SEO?

To receive organic traffic to your blog, you need your website to be optimized for SEO, which is short for Search Engine Optimization. 

In a nutshell: SEO basically means: to design and configure your website in such a way the search engines will like your site and rank your posts in the search results of the search engines. And this results in free blog traffic! 

For a detailed explanation of SEO, please read my beginner’s guide to search engine optimization. 

How do you optimize blog posts for the search engines?

 You can optimize blog posts by: 

  • Using keywords
  • Adding descriptions to the alt tags of your images
  • Dividing your text into paragraphs and headers
  • Using keywords in the URL of your website and (sub)headers

When you’re done writing, adding keywords, and breaking up your content in small easy-to-read paragraphs, headers, and subheaders, you can check your on-page SEO-score with Yoast: a plugin that is every blogger’s best friend! It shows you the SEO-readiness of your post and where you need to improve. 

I also recommend using Semrush to use their free backlinks tool to track your backlinks, do an overall SEO audit of your website, and to pump up your rank with the position tracking tool!

4. Slug

What does your permalink look like?

Have you already adjusted the slug of your blog post? If you haven’t, WordPress will automatically use the title of your post. And the title of your post is pretty much always too long to serve as a slug. The slug is the part of the URL that comes after the domain name. For example she-can-blog.com/start-a-blog. 

Don’t forget to use your keywords in the slug as well!

You can change the slug in your WordPress dashboard:

  • Go to Posts
  • Go to All Posts
  • Click Quick Edit 
  • Change the slug 
  • Click Update

Or:

When you’re editing your post in Elementor and have RankMath installed: 

  • Go to the SEO tab
  • Go to Edit Snippet
  • Add the desired slug at Permalink 
Example Slug Permalink Elementor

Make sure to edit the slug correctly, because if you need to edit it later, you need to use redirects, and Google is not a big fan of too much redirecting on a website. So make sure that the slug:

  • Is as short as possible
  • Includes your keywords
  • Is as short and clear as possible  

5. Meta Description

Did you add a description to the meta tag?

The meta description is the text you see in the search results in Google. This tiny piece of text determines, together with your title, whether the searcher will click on your link – or on someone else’s link for that matter. That is why it’s important always to add a description to your meta tags. To add a meta-description in Elementor:

  • Go to the SEO-tab in Elementor
  • Click on Edit Snippet
  • Enter your meta-description at Description
  • Ensure the score is green; if the text is too short, you don’t give enough information to your potential visitors. And if the text is too long, the part after the 1st 160 characters will be cut-off in the search results.
  • Briefly and clearly describe what the post is about in the meta-description
  • Use a call to action to encourage the user to click on your link
  • Use your keywords! Again? Yep, again! The better you use your keywords, the more likely it is for your post to be correctly indexed and appear in the search results
Example Meta tag description Permalink Elementor

6. Internal and external links

Have you linked to other content on your website and valuable content on other people’s websites in your post?

Pointing to other internal content and external websites with a high Domain Authority is good for your SEO-score. Linking to other content: 

  • Adds value to your readers
  • Shows to your readers that you know what you’re talking about and that you know who the big players are in your niche
  • Shows that your priority is to help your readers, regardless if this requires linking to other (better/bigger/more popular) websites than your own, and that you are not just interested in making money on them
  • Helps your users to navigate your blog more easily 
  • Helps to get more eyes on your old content

Please note: Never link to spam sites. Doing so can harm your domain authority.

7. Grammar and spelling errors

Are you sure you’ve corrected all the typos?

We don’t have to be perfect; your readers will forgive you for a small spelling mistake, but you often become blind to your own mistakes during the writing process.

Take a little break from your blog post when you’re finished with the writing process. Get some rest. When you’re focusing on other things for a while and allowing your eyes to rest a bit, you’ll find more errors in your content than if you go over it immediately after you wrote it.

This is why you should ALWAYS perform a spelling check. You can use tools like Grammarly and Hemingway to check your text for spelling, grammar, and style errors. 

Other tips for flawless blog posts:

  • Ask someone to proofread for you. Maybe you can agree with another blogger to check each other’s posts. Ask your partner, your daughter, a good friend, your neighbor, or a friend.
  • I’m still looking for a blogger to proofread my posts! Especially because English is not my mother tongue. I will gladly return the favor to you. So if you’re interested, send a message to [email protected].
  • Hire a proofreader on Fiverr.

A flawless blog post helps to gain your reader’s trust in you, and it shows that you’re a true professional. So, never skip this step in your writing process. I know it’s tempting to skip it, and I also know you’re probably a fantastic author, but when you are so focused on the same thing for a long time, it’s so easy to overlook your own mistakes. 

8. (Featured) image(s)

The manual of your fridge is more entertaining than a blog post without any images!

A blog post without images is what I would call a study book. And study books are usually rather dull. This is precisely what a blog shouldn’t be! Blogs should be colorful, fun, and interactive.

When readers read your blogs, they want to be entertained. They want to see easy-to-understand, engaging content, with a beautiful, stylish design and some eye-catching images every now and then. 

That’s why you should always add a Featured image to your posts. This is the image that appears at the top of your blog post. Add additional images to make your post even more engaging, to add contrast, and use informational images, such as print screens or self-created infographics.

You can download stock photos to use on your blog and edit them with Canva. Which I will talk more about later in this post.

Don’t have any (stock) photos, yet? Then read my post with a list of the best websites for elegant free & paid stock photos as well! 

9. Create pinnable images

Are you going to promote your blog posts on Pinterest? Then you need to make ‘Pinnable’ images.

In case you’re not planning to promote your posts on this awesome platform, I want to ask you; why not? If there’s one easy way to promote your blog posts and get free traffic to your blog quickly, it’s with Pinterest.

So, go on, and create a business account, read my blogs about Pinterest, and claim a piece of that Pinterest pie, too! Potential visitors are really up for grabs here. 

Did I convince you to give Pinterest a chance? Perfect! I explain exactly how to start with Pinterest in the posts below. Just follow the instructions, and you’re good to go!

Already have a (fully optimized) Pinterest Business account?

Start creating pinnable images that your readers can use to pin your blog post to their boards. Use different colors and titles so that your readers have some options to choose from. 

Tip: Pinterest automatically uses the Alt-tag description as the Pin-description. And this is not the text you want your readers to add to their pins when they pin your pins to their boards. The best option is to change the Pin-description yourself, which you can do with the WP Tasty plugin. 

This plugin costs $29, but it ensures you that the pins that are pinned directly from your site have the correct SEO-description added to them. Furthermore, this plugin allows you to upload images to your post that only appear as a pinnable image when a visitor starts sharing your post to Pinterest. This way, your posts don’t need extra time to load all the images, and you prevent your posts from appearing messy and cluttered due to an overload of images. 

You can create and edit beautiful images with Canva. This tool works much simpler compared to Photoshop or Illustrator. Believe me; it’s so easy. Anyone can become a designer with Canva! It has a free version and a Pro version, but the free version is sufficient to create stunning images for your blog. Plus, you can find stunning Pinterest templates in Canva, which is really helpful when you’re new to Pinterest. However, if you plan to pin regularly to Pinterest, I recommend the Pro version of Canva, which offers a wider variety of design options.

After editing your images, it’s time to resize and optimize them with a plugin, like WP Smush or ShortPixel. This helps to prevent unnecessary long loading times.

10. Add a description to the Alt-tags of your images

Search engines also crawl image names and alt-tag descriptions

You can change this when you edit an image in WordPress. Adding a description to the Alt-tag of your images has a positive effect on your SEO. Alt-tags are important because: 

  • This way, Google can understand your images. With the description of the alt-tag and the name you give to your image, you tell Google what the image is about.
  • So, if you post a picture of a horse, but you name it “Cat” and the alt-tag description reads “ginger cat”, Google will think there’s a cat on the picture. You should use this knowledge to your benefit because it’s another opportunity to tell the search engines what this post is about.
  • Images can be crawled and indexed correctly

11. Check the layout

Did you check your posts’ layout? Is your post divided into short paragraphs, headers, and subheaders?

Website visitors oftentimes already know what they are looking for, and they are not always interested in reading your entire post. And when they do intend to read the entire post, it just reads so much easier when the layout is well-organized. 

Search engines also love blog posts that contain headers and text that is broken down into bite-sized chunks. Use bold or Italic to highlight important words, and use bullet-point lists, so readers can quickly scan through your content to find what they’re looking for. 

Tip: When you create headers, remember that H1 is only meant for the title. After that, you can use H2 for the paragraphs and H3, H4, etc. for the subheaders.

12. Check for plagiarism

Don’t worry; I’m not accusing you of stealing other people’s content

I know you don’t do this. Stealing content is not cool! And no real blogger gets any pride out of that. Unfortunately, content gets stolen a lot. I read many messages about people stealing others’ content in the blogging groups I’m in. So, it is something to be aware of and something to protect yourself from. You can use the WP Content Copy Protection plugin to protect yourself from this. This plugin blocks the right-mouse click on your website, making it more difficult for thieves to copy-paste your content. 

Back to the plagiarism check: the reason I added this part is because 4.4 million new blog posts are published daily worldwide. Imagine the number of blog posts that are published in a week, or even in a year! Chances are that some of your brilliantly crafted sentences have already been brilliantly crafted by someone else. 🙂 And if there are too many sentences in your content that aren’t original, search engines could start flagging your website as plagiarism. You – do – not – want – this. And certainly not if you didn’t commit the crime! So, just do the check!

>> Click here to do a plagiarism check at Grammarly <<

If it turns out that your content contains too many sentences that aren’t unique, you can now still modify them before your blog post is indexed.

13. Conclusion & Call to Action

Did you write a killer ending?

You started your post with an intro, and to round off your post completely, you need to write the conclusion. Write a good ending to your post in which you answer the following questions: 

  • What is the conclusion?
  • What is your advice?
  • Ask your readers a question that encourages them to respond in the comments.
  • Ask your readers to share your post on social media
  • Offer a ‘content upgrade’; like as a checklist (like my checklist in this post!), a template, or a relevant product that you promote or sell. This way, you offer your readers something useful to them, and it allows you to gain new subscribers for your newsletter and turn a one-time visitor into a loyal reader! And when you start to promote your new blog post, you can use your content upgrade to draw more readers to your post!

14. Affiliate Disclosure

Did you inform your readers about the affiliate links in your post?

If you promote products with affiliate links, the FTC Guidelines require you to inform your readers about that. You have an obligation to tell your readers that you’ll earn a commission for referring them if they click on one of your affiliate links and buy that product.

You can do this by adding an affiliate disclosure. Do not forget this step to avoid legal problems later on. You can do this with the help of a plugin, but I don’t recommend it. I used a plugin for my affiliate disclosure before, but the disclosure somehow disappeared several times. And that’s not a risk I want to take. To be sure this won’t happen again, I add a text block myself with my affiliate disclosure in it. Another reason to add the disclosure yourself is that plugins can really slow down your website, and this way, you save yourself an extra plugin as well!

15. Check the Preview of your post, and re-read everything one more time!

You’re almost there! It’s time for the finishing touch!

You’re so done with this post, right now… I know! You just want to publish that post, already! But please, just go over your post just one more time before you hit publish. Chances are, you’re going to discover a mistake so retarded you won’t be able to forgive yourself if your readers would see it. 😉

Check what your post looks like on other devices as well; so, make sure your post is responsive. In Elementor, you can easily do this by clicking on Responsive mode at the bottom of the screen, and then you can toggle between tablet, desktop, and mobile. You probably write your posts on your laptop / PC, while blogs are most often viewed on mobile and tablet. For this reason, you should always check if your posts still look the same on different devices.

16. Categorize your post and assign tags

Have you already added categories (or more) and tags to your post?

This will make it much easier for your readers to navigate your blog. And this is also another opportunity to help the search engines better understand your website and index it properly. 

You can install a tag cloud to your blog’s sidebar. Go to Appearance in your WordPress dashboard and click on Widgets. Drag and drop the tag cloud to the sidebar. When visitors are on your website, they will see the tag cloud in the sidebar, and they can click on interesting tags to learn more about that topic.

You can see an example of my tag-cloud below. You can also see it in the sidebar, by the way 😉 

Tag Cloud WordPress Sidebar Example

17. Publish

Your blog post is ready to be published! You can finally click on that Publish-button now!! Go ahead; you deserve it! Time to sit back and enjoy your new, perfected blog post that you can now share with the world. 🙂

Done relaxing and recovering? Then you can start promoting your new blog post. Click here to learn how to do that!

Don’t forget to grab your copy of my “Before You Hit Publish” Blog Post Checklist!

You can download your copy of my Before You Hit Publish-Checklist here and use it for all your future blog posts!

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Conclusion

When you are finished writing your blog post, your post is far from ready. There is so much to think about before you hit publish, and it’s not easy to remember everything you need to do. I hope this post helps you to remember all the steps you need to take before publishing your future posts and to publish them without any embarrassing mistakes or corrections that you need to make afterward.

Do you have any comments or suggestions? Or do you have another pre-publish tip you’d like to share? Let me know in the comments below!

And don’t forget to share this post on social media –> Sharing is caring!

X Angie

The 15 best stylish & elegant WordPress themes for bloggers

What you need to know before you buy a WordPress theme

So, you started your own blog! Congratulations!

If you don’t have a blog, yet – read this step-by-step guide for beginning bloggers first. 

You’ve registered your domain name, you’ve found yourself the perfect, reliable hosting provider, WordPress is installed, and now you are faced with the next blogging decision to make: your WordPress theme (the layout of a website).

But which theme should you pick from this never-ending selection of WordPress themes? Are you opting for a free or premium theme? And where can you find the best elegant WordPress themes that are so trending among bloggers today?

In this post I’ll explain to you why I eventually decided to go for a premium theme and why I should have done this from the beginning of my blogging journey. In this article you’ll also find a list my favorite stylish, and elegant WordPress themes. If only I could use them all at the same time! I’m in love with each one them, really! 😉

Let’s see which one’s are your favorites!

Disclaimer: This blog post contains affiliate links. I may earn a small commission to fund my coffee drinking habit if you use these links to make a purchase. You will not be charged extra. So it’s a win for everyone! Please note that I won’t link any products I don’t believe in or don’t resonate with my blog site. Thank you!

Why should you buy a premium theme while there are so many free themes to choose from?

If you blog just for fun, there’s nothing wrong with a free WordPress theme. Then, please, don’t invest in a premium one. But… if you intent to make your blog more than just a hobby, and want to make it a professional business, a premium WordPress theme is definitely not a superfluous luxury to invest your money in. This small investment will pay for itself easily if this is the case for you. For instance, free WordPress themes are not updated frequently. And this can result in a website that’s quickly outdated and lagging behind the latest developments.

How long do you usually stick around on a sloppy looking and outdated website?

I almost instantly click away from websites like that. Yes, it doesn’t necessarily mean the content there is not of top notch quality; but the eye needs a little pleasure as well. Anyway, who’s got time to find out what the quality of the content is like. We know that bad looking websites almost always come with bad content anyways.

Like it or not: a blog’s design plays a huge role in its success. Humans are visually oriented beings and the design, together with the speed of your blog, are the first parts of the user experience you’re giving to your visitors and these parts will make them either to click away or to stick around for more. 

A premium theme gives your website that extra sauce that you need to stand out from the crowd and it gives your website a professional look. Other benefits of premium WordPress themes are:

  • After sales support: with a free WordPress theme you need to do everything by yourself and there is no customer support to fall back on
  • Better secured: free themes are more likely to have security problems, because no one invests in them
  • Fewer plugins: you will often need to install a lot of extra plugins when using a free theme, and plugins can significantly slow your blog down 
  • Premium themes have more features, so you don’t need to install, code and figure everything out yourself
  • Premium themes will pay themselves back in the that time you don’t need to spend on tweaking your website
  • Premium themes are updated regularly
  • Free WordPress themes are downloaded by some many people. Premium themes are downloaded a lot less, and they are way more customizable, which makes your website unique. It’s much easier to stand out from the crowd with a premium theme. Fun fact: Just to give you an idea of the crowd I’m referring to: over 4 million blog posts are published every day!! 

Why I switched to a premium WordPress theme

I used a free WordPress theme in the beginning, which was fine for the time being. I never had any problems with my free theme, but as my blogging hobby started to get more serious, I quickly discovered I lacked quite some options to customize it to my taste and needs.

I hopped from free theme to free theme, but with each free theme I stumbled upon another element that I was unable to customize the way I wanted. And after lots of struggling and messing with my code, I thought: f… this, I’ll just pay for it 😉 I could’ve bought a $1.000 theme for all that time I spent on trying to make the free themes work for me! 😉

I chose the Responsive Blogily theme in the end. A theme that I am still very happy with. But now that I’m writing this post, I see so many other amazing, drop-dead gorgeous themes that make my blogger’s heart beat faster, too. But well, the grass is always greener on the other side of the fence, right? 🙂

Anyway, you haven’t made your choice yet, so hopefully I can at least help you make the right choice for your blog!

When purchasing a WordPress theme, what should you pay attention to?

Before you buy a premium theme, you should take a few things into consideration to make sure you won’t regret your purchase later. Make sure the theme of your choice is a high quality WordPress theme and make sure you won’t be stuck with a slow or poorly coded website.

Tip: preview the Demo-version before you purchase a theme. This way you can check if all the features you are looking for are included in the theme, and you can see what your blog is going to look like.

Pay close attention to the following aspects when deciding on a premium WordPress theme:

  • What type of website are you going to create? You’ll need different functionalities for a beauty or lifestyle blog compared to a food blog.
  • Which features does this theme have? This will prevent you from having to install too many additional plugins later on.
  • Does this theme come with good customer support and with adequate documentation?
  • Is it a responsive design; that is, is it mobile/tablet-friendly? Does the theme adapt itself so it can be viewed on all different types of devices?
  • Can you fully customize the theme? You want to be able to customize the website in such a way that it reflects your brand identity on all fronts. If you use a free theme, you will quickly discover that you are faced with some designing limitations, such as; no option to upload your logo, no option to change all the colors to your brand colors, no option to customize the header or not having enough space for widgets in the sidebars/footer.
  • Do you need the Genesis Framework as the framework for this theme? Pay close attention to this, because many themes run on this framework and it costs $59.95 on top of the price of your theme. Make sure you don’t get any unpleasant financial surprises afterwards. 
  • Most themes are made for self-hosted WordPress.org websites. If you have another CMS, for example WordPress.com or Wix, you cannot install these themes on your website. Need to switch to WordPress.org? Check this tutorial on Kinsta.com.

Extra tip: download the Elementor plugin directly, if you pick any theme except for Divi. This is a visual website drag and drop builder which makes designing your pages much easier. 

And now, presenting: the most stylish and elegant WordPress themes

You now know what to pay attention to when buying a premium WordPress theme, so it’s time for what you came for; the elegant WordPress themes themselves! I’ve listed the themes with the best functionality, design, customer support and documentation for you.

Just one more important last tip I would like to give you before purchasing a theme; I’m sorry to inform you about this, but the photos you see with the themes are not included with the theme. 🙁

Superbthemes

You will need to add your own images to your website. Don’t have any and no time/talent to take your own photos? Then you can use stock photos. Click here to read what stock photos are and where to download them. 

Responsive Blogily Thema – Superbthemes

WordPress-thema Responsive Blogily

Let’s kick off with the premium theme I use for this blog: the Responsive Blogily Premium theme. The price for this theme is $29 (this is currently a promotional price, normally this theme costs $ 35) for 1 domain. As the name of the theme suggest, it is a responsive design. Plus, the Responsive Blogily theme is optimized for SEO and it comes with 1 month of Premium theme support. If you want access to future updates – which I highly recommend – then you can go for a Business subscription, which costs $89 annually (promotional price at the moment is $67 annually).

Features:

  • Custom header logo or text
  • Fully optmizied for SEO
  • Widget Recent posts
  • Google Fonts
  • Change copyright text
  • Customizing colors
  • Elementor Compatible
  • Theme support

Bluchic

Bluchic is the absolute pinnacle of premium WordPress theme websites when it comes to stylish, feminine, elegant WordPress themes. Here you’ll find a wide selection of themes designed for the female entrepreneur. Unfortunately, I didn’t know Bluchic when I bought my theme, otherwise I think I would’ve chosen a theme here!

The Bluchic themes are designed by this amazing creative duo, Kathie and Andrew! She takes care of the design and he takes care of the code, which appears to be a brilliant combination. All of their themes have a demo version that you can view before you buy and the prices vary between $79 and $347. They’re not the cheapest themes but you get a lot for it in return!

Features:

  • All themes are SEO-friendly
  • Responsive design 
  • You can customize fonts, colors and add the logo of your brand in order to give it the look and feel of your brand 
  • All future updates are included
  • Access to the Bluchic helpcenter and tutorials 
  • No prior coding experience needed 
  • You can hire them to install the theme for you 
  • They also sell beautiful landing pages!

Bluchic – ChicServe Theme

Features:

  • Theme designed for female entrepreneurs who want to run a service-oriented business and need personal branding 
  • Stylish
  • Flexible
  • Customizable
  • Also available as Divi-theme 
  • Compatible with the Elementor drag and drop plugin 
  • Responsive design
  • WooCommerce-ready

Bluchic – Chicboss theme – New theme August 2020!!

Bluchic - ChicBoss theme

Features:

  • Lifetime updates
  • Compatible with the Elementor drag and drop plugin 
  • Brand Style Guide Canva Template
  • The photos from the demo are included!
  • SEO-friendly
  • Responsive design
  • WooCommers-ready
  • Newsletter opt-in form
  • Announcementbar

Restored 316

Again, the same applies for the themes on this website… if only I had known about this website before! I’m a big fan of all of Lauren’s elegant, feminine themes! The themes you find here are so beautiful. Soft, soothing, sweet, fresh, and light are the words I’d use to describe all of the themes on this website.

Prices for the themes here range from $75 to $99 plus an additional $59.95 for the Genesis Framework that is needed to run the Restored316 themes on your website.

Features: 

  • All future updates for the theme you buy and 6 months of customer support.
  • You may also opt for the annual subscription, which gives you access to all the themes of Restored 316. You”ll have access to updates as long as your subscription is running and customer support throughout the year.
  • Features vary by theme, but overall they all have a responsive design and you can customize them to your brand. All features are clearly listed per theme on the website. 

Restored316 – Sprinkle Pro Theme

Features:

  • Gorgeous, colorful design
  • Unique design
  • Automatic plugin installation 
  • Instagram page template
  • WooCommerce-ready
  • Responsive design
  • Upload your brand logo
  • Optimized for Gutenberg
  • Newsletter opt-in form
  • Announcementbar
  • Customize colors
  • Styled for ConvertKit
  • Excl. Genesis Framework

Restored316 – Beloved

Beloved Theme

Features:

  • Lifetime theme updates
  • 2 homepage design options
  • 6 months customer support 
  • Optimized for Gutenberg
  • Sales page template
  • Category index
  • Custom Instagram page template
  • Customize colors
  • You can buy the demo’s stock photos 
  • Automatic plugin installation
  • Excl. Genesis Framework

Elegant Themes

Elegant Themes – Divi

The Divi theme is not just a theme, it is a theme ánd an all-round visual website builder in one. Divi replaces the traditional WordPress editor with a visual drag-and-drop editor. If you know Elementor you can compare it a bit to that. But with a lot more features. Since the design possibilities are literally endless and because it allows you to build a site which is 100% unique, Divi has become a real craze among bloggers. It does require a little more knowledge than for the ready-made themes though. 

There are over 800 pre-made website layouts in Divi that you can use and customize to your liking and you can download free royalty-free images that you can use for your blog! And last but not least, given the SEO requirements, perhaps the most important one; the Divi theme is very fast! 

Creative Market

Creative Market is – as the name already implies – an online marketplace where you can buy all kinds of digital products made by creative companies and individual creatives. From templates, to stock photos, to complete WordPress themes.

You can find great themes on Creative Market, but please keep in mind that also small creators offer their products here. This means that the products here are not all necessarily of great quality. Therefore, please pay close attention to the return policy, the product’s popularity and do not purchase a product that has not been purchased before. The prices for a theme here range from $2 to $ 350. By the way, don’t go for a $2 theme. If you don’t have the budget for a theme it’s better to go for a free, commonly used theme. At least you know they’re reliable.

Creative Market – Sasha Rose theme

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Powered by Creative Market

Features:

  • Theme for female bloggers
  • Runs on the Genesis Framework
  • Incl. Snowflake font 
  • Instructions
  • Responsive design
  • Customizable header
  • Customize colors
  • Dropdown menu
  • Read More button
  • Social media icons
  • Wishlist 
  • Hire the designer to install the theme for you!

Creative Market – Ella

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Powered by Creative Market

Features:

  • Feminine WordPress theme
  • Minimalistic, but colorful design
  • Customize colors
  • Runs on the Genesis Framework, which you need to by seperately
  • Lifetime support
  • Lifetime access to documentation 
  • Optimized for Gutenberg
  • Translation-ready
  • Responsive design
  • Upload your logo
  • Post carousel
  • Space for widgets

Creative Market – Miss Blush

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Powered by Creative Market

Features:

  • Bright, elegant theme 
  • WooCommerce-ready
  • Runs on the Genesis framework, which you need to buy separately
  • Color customizer
  • Responsive design
  • Share buttons
  • Space for widgets
  • In-between posts widget-space
  • 3 layout options

Creative Market – Harlow James (Pix&Hue)

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Powered by Creative Market

Features:

  • Chic en sophisticated, feminine design
  • Gutenberg support
  • Responsive design
  • WooCommerce-ready
  • For multilingual websites
  • Add your logo
  • Social media icons in the header
  • 5 different blog layouts
  • Customize all colors 
  • Contact form 
  • Sidebar widgets: About Me, Recent Posts and Instagram
  • Lifetime updates
  • 6 months customer support

Creative Market – Isabelle

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Powered by Creative Market

Features:

  • Multifunction, feminine WordPress theme 
  • Customizable Front page, portfolio, shop, recipes, gallery, contact and About me pages
  • Add your own logo
  • Customize colors 
  • Gutenberg-ready
  • Landing page template
  • WooCommerce-ready
  • Recipes
  • Instructions

Creative Market – Blush Co.

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Powered by Creative Market

Features:

  • Responsive design
  • Stylish, feminine WordPress theme
  • For Fashion, Beauty and Lifestyle bloggers
  • 100% customizable
  • Setup wizard
  • 500+ layouts to choose from 
  • Optimized for SEO
  • WooCommerce-ready
  • Shop the Post Feature
  • Carousel widget
  • YouTube widget

Creative Market – Storybook

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Powered by Creative Market

Features:

  • Lightweight and clean WordPress theme
  • Ideal as blog, shop or portfolio
  • Customize colors 
  • Carousel
  • Sliders
  • 6 blog styles
  • 5 post styles
  • 3 header styles
  • Responsive design
  • Optimized for SEO
  • Sticky menu and sidebar
  • For multilingual blogs
  • WooCommerce-support
  • Instagram feed
  • Social share buttons
  • MailChimp mailing list

StudioPress

The StudioPress themes are all built on the Genesis Framework. The Genesis Framework is a product of StudioPress which means you can buy your theme and framework at the same time! They sell many beautiful, reliable WordPress themes here as well. All StudioPress themes are known for their SEO-friendliness, security and fast website speed!

StudioPress – Niche Pro

Features:

  • Incl. Genesis Framework
  • For lifestyle blogs
  • Choose from multiple Page templates 
  • Styled for WooCommerce
  • Real time customizing of theme settings, colors and content  
  • Space for widgets
  • Customizable header
  • Responsive design
  • Landing page

StudioPress – Brunch Pro (for Foodbloggers)

Features:

  • Customize theme setting, colors and background images in real-time
  • Space for widgets 
  • Customizable header
  • Responsive design
  • 3 layout options
  • Recipe-index
  • Inc. Genesis Framework

Didn’t find the right theme for your blog yet? Take this test on the Restored316 website to see which theme fits you best!

How to install a WordPress theme?

Found the perfect WordPress theme for your website? Congratulations! Now it’s time to install your theme:

  • Go to your WordPress dashboard 
  • Go to Appearance → Themes
  • Click ‘Add New’
  • Click ‘Upload Theme’
  • Choose the .zip-file that you received with your purchase
  • Click ‘Activate’

That’s all! :)) 

Let’s connect!

Are you going to invest in a Premium WordPress theme? Or will you opt for a free theme? I would love to know what your favorite themes are! Leave a comment in the comment section below! 🙂 

Don’t forget to share this post on social media! Sharing = caring! 

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A beginner’s guide to SEO: The best Google SEO tips for 2020

The S-word most bloggers rather avoid 😉

As a blogger you come across the term SEO everywhere. Even though everyone seems to be talking about SEO this term is still kind of vague  for most bloggers. It’s a topic that many bloggers try to avoid. Which is a pity, because a little knowledge about SEO is essential in order to create a successful blog with lots of web traffic.

I totally understand that – as a blogger – you want to spend all your time writing new blogs, instead of spending time on dead boring SEO tasks. That’s not why you started blogging in the first place, right?

For me, the concept of SEO and its necessity really needed some time to sink in before I started to understand it, and before I started to take it seriously. Something I regret in retrospect. I could have drawn a lot more visitors to my blog if I had had more knowledge about SEO before.

To make this part of your blogger’s life a bit easier, I will explain this topic to you in this beginner’s guide to SEO in Normal Human Language. I’ll explain what SEO stands for, how it works, and the simple improvements you can make to boost your Google SEO fast.

Disclaimer: This blog post contains affiliate links. I may earn a small commission to fund my coffee drinking habit if you use these links to make a purchase. You will not be charged extra. So it’s a win for everyone! Please note that I won’t link any products I don’t believe in or don’t resonate with my blog site. Thank you!

What does SEO stand for?

SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization. In a nutshell; it’s the process of optimizing your blog for the search engines, with the goal to rank higher in the search results, without paying any promotional costs.

Makes perfect sense, right?? Yet, for many bloggers, this term doesn’t make sense at all. This is due to the fact that SEO is quite complex. 

What makes search engine optimization so complicated?

First of all, it is helpful to understand how the search engines index and rank websites. They do this with the help of algorithms. The so-called “web spiders” crawl a site to determine what it has to offer and then decided where that page should rank in the search results, based on the algorithm. 

In the past, these algorithms were mostly checking a post for keywords. This resulted in people “keyword-stuffing” their content: inserting a large number of the same keyword into the content of a page. Luckily, the search engines’ algorithms are much smarter nowadays. They can now recognize you’re using this trick to fool them and for that, your website can be penalized.

Today, the algorithms are getting smarter every day and now they can judge a site on aspects like speed, content quality, keywords, domain age, reliability, and a lot more. All these factors should be taken care of, to obtain a good position in the search results. And this is what makes SEO so complex.

To make this topic a bit easier for you to understand, I will divide SEO into 3 pillars:  authority, content, and technique.

Why is SEO so important for a website?

Your best shot at getting free web traffic comes from the leading search engines Google, Yahoo, Bing, and DuckDuckGo. If you don’t work on optimizing your blog for the search engines, your chances of being ranked at the top of the search results are extremely small, if any at all. Every day millions of new blog posts are published worldwide. And search engines have to decide for all these new and existing pages where to rank them in the search results. So, you have to help them a little with finding and liking your site. 

How does search engine optimization work?

Search engines strive to show only the best search results to their users for each search. Their objective is to present websites that give the most accurate answer to the question that is being asked. Websites with the best answer, content, speed, authority, and security are displayed at the top of the search results. And of course, that’s where you want your webpages to rank too. 

SEO-Tip #1: Keep in mind that the algorithms are subject to constant changes. The SEO techniques you use today may be outdated tomorrow. This is why you should always stay up to date with the latest SEO tips!  

For example: longtail keywords helped many bloggers to drive lots of traffic to their sites in the previous years. However, in 2020, this doesn’t work anymore. Longtail keywords are still important, but now they only make up for a small part of the total package of SEO tasks that website owners need to focus on. 

The 3 pillars of SEO

Authority (Linkbuilding)

One of the aspects search engines look at when evaluating your website is authority. A website’s authority is measured by backlinks, domain age, the number of pages and content a website has, and other aspects. 

Domain authority

The domain authority gives an indication of the strength of a domain. This score isn’t an official score acknowledged by Google, by the way. It’s calculated by specialized SEO websites like Semrush to give you an indication of your website’s strength. It’s a score on a 0 to 100 scale and gives an indication of how your website competes with other websites.

I like to check my score every now and then because it’s also a great indicator of how well my website is ranking in the search engines. And if you’re a member of Facebook groups for bloggers, if you want to write guest blogs, or want to exchange links (it’s better to avoid this by the way), the other party will probably take a look at your DA-score.

Page authority

Similar to domain authority, but this score is just rating a single page on a website instead of the entire website.

>> Check your domain and page authority here! <<

This is also a great website to check your scores: 

>> Website SEO Checker <<

Backlinks

Another method to increase the domain authority of your blog is by working on your backlinks. A backlink is a link on another website that points to your website. The more websites that link to your site, the higher your score will be. You can think of it as a vote on your website from another site that says: “hey Google, this is a high-quality website where you can find valuable content”!

Not every backlink is the same, though. A backlink coming from a high DA-website has a heavier weight on your SEO than a backlink coming from a site with a low domain authority. So, the quality of your backlinks matters as well.  

Many website owners collect backlinks by swapping links with other websites, or by buying backlinks. However, the increasingly smarter algorithms are becoming better and better at detecting practices like this. These backlinks are not earned in an honest way and that’s why search engines don’t like them. I strongly advise you not to engage in practices like link exchanging anymore in 2020. Organic backlinks are the type of links you should aim for if you want your blog to be truly successful on the long run.

How to get more backlinks organically?

Make sure you have link-worthy content that people want to share. You can do this by writing in-depth, well-researched articles. Do a fact check to make sure all the information in your blog post is accurate, link to relevant websites with a high domain authority for additional information, create infographics for your readers to share, and write guest blogs for other websites with a high domain authority within your niche.

You can also join Help a reporter out. This is a platform that will send you requests by e-mail from reporters who need information on a certain subject. Write answers to questions in your niche, and wait if your piece is selected. If your piece is selected, it will be posted with a link to your site. Backlink in the pocket!

Start building relationships with other bloggers and influencers. When you’re friends with other bloggers, you can help each other to spread each other’s content on social media. Facebook groups are great for meeting other bloggers! Search for groups for Bloggers on Facebook and sign up for the groups that suit you and your niche best.

SEO tip #2: Don’t forget to add social share buttons to your website! I use Sassy Social Share for the share buttons you see on my site. (It’s free)!

Domain age

The domain age of your website is another factor for SEO. Unfortunately, it’s not something you can influence, but it’s something to remember when you’re wondering why the blog traffic is still not coming. New websites almost never end up a the top of the search results. Probably because Google doesn’t take newer sites really seriously yet. You need to build some credits first.

Experts say an older domain ranks better on a keyword than a newer domain. When a domain has been around for a while, Google knows that this domain is not a spam site, and has a lot of valuable content.

Content quantity

Having a lot of useful content and an easy to link-through website also increases your rankings in the search results. It also helps if you publish new content on a regular basis. When you publish new content, you show the search engines that your site is always updated with the newest information.

So, post as many posts as possible, especially in the beginning. But, if you don’t have a lot of spare time to write posts, remember that quality is still more important than quantity. It’s better to publish one quality post than ten crappy ones. As soon as you have established a solid foundation of posts, you can choose to post a bit less and spend more time on promoting your blog posts.

Content

The second pillar of SEO is about content; titles, meta-descriptions, headers, the actual text, and keywords. 

To check if your posts are SEO-worthy, ask yourself the following questions when writing your posts: 

  • Did you write all your meta-descriptions correctly?
  • Have you included long-tail keywords in your text, in the title, and in the H2 headers?
  • Is the text well-readable on all sorts of devices?
  • Is it a well-researched, in-depth article with lots of valuable information?
  • Is your content unique? 

Layout & Readability

Use headers and don’t forget to include your keywords in the headers as well (H2, H3, H4). Headers give your blog posts a clear structure, which makes them easier to read. Readability is also a factor in the calculation of the SEO score of a website.

Why adding a description to the meta-tags is important for SEO

Web crawlers analyze the smallest details of a website. To get a complete picture of your site, they will look into the descriptions of your meta tags too. Therefore, make it a routine to add text in the meta-descriptions for each blog post you publish. 

The meta-description is the small text the search engines show below a link in the search results. See the image below. The search engines show the search results and then the user chooses the best option based on the meta-descriptions they see there. Based on the meta-description they will either choose to visit your site or your competitor’s site. That’s why you have to choose your words wisely! Describe the subject of the post and include your keywords in this text as well.

Meta-tag - She can blog

Valuable content

I have already pointed out the importance of creating valuable content earlier in this post. But what makes content to be seen as valuable when it comes to SEO?

What makes content valuable?

Very simple; when a website visitor benefits from it. When a problem is solved for the visitor. When you do the research for the reader and summarise the answers in one post. When your reader does not have to do any research by himself/herself.  

To find out which questions your future readers have about the subject you’re writing about, use Google autocomplete or Answer The Public.

Use this question as the main subject of your text and make sure you answer the question well. That way, your readers will actually benefit from your blog and then Google will start to see it as valuable content too. 

Why detailed, long blog posts are good for your Google rankings

Long, detailed blog posts are more likely to rank high for more long-tail keywords at once. Simply, because they have more text to find keywords in.

I’ve been a member of Tailwind – an online community of bloggers where you support each other’s content on Pinterest and Instagram. What struck me there is that many of the blog posts I came across there were so brief.

While the title sets great expectations, those expectations are barely met in the post itself. Posts like that may get clicks, but once, but those visitors will never visit that website again if it’s not interesting enough.

Do some research. Put time and effort into your posts. Put in some effort for your readers, take them seriously, and take your work as a blogger seriously if you want to be a professional blogger. Then your efforts will be rewarded eventually.

By long and detailed I, by the way, mean at least 700 words per post. And if you really want to stand out from the crowd, try to write blogs of at least 2,500-3,000 words.

Link structure

Permalink structure

Permalinks are your permanent url’s. You can change a permalink, but then you have create a redirect for it. Which is something you want to avoid. Make sure you have a good permalink structure from the very start of your website. You should use your keywords in the URL’s as well, but avoid words like “the”, “a”, and numbers and try keeping your permalinks as short and as possible.

Link to other sites

Refer your visitors to known websites within your niche on a regular basis. I get that it’s a bit scary to redirect your visitors to sites that are doing much better than yours because… what if your visitor doesn’t come back, right?

And yet, when it comes to search engine optimization, referring to important websites within your niche is incredibly important. By doing this, you tell the search engines that you understand your niche and that you know where to find more useful information on a subject. You’re also showing that your intention is to sincerely help your visitors. Even if referring to additional information on another (better) website is necessary to reach that goal. 

I’m not talking about affiliate links, by the way. Affiliate links, on the other hand, should be marked as sponsored links. You need to let the search engines know you might earn money on them when they are clicked on. You can do this in the WordPress editor or in Elementor when you create the link. There’s a box you can tick in Elementor to indicate that it’s a sponsored link.  

Click on Insert link -> enter your URL -> click the wheel icon to edit the link -> then tick all 3 boxes: ‘open link in new tab’, ‘add rel = “nofollow” ‘, and ‘add rel = “sponsored” ‘.

Elementor printscreen she can blog

Google prefers the “sponsored” tag over the “nofollow” tag, but both are accepted. That’s why I just use them both. After checking this boxes, the Google spiders will know what your relationship is with the site you’re linking to. Linking to interesting content without having any ulterior motives is not the same as linking to a page that you might earn a commission from. Remember to do this, as Google punishes sites that don’t clearly disclose these connections in their posts.

Use Prettylinks for pretty-looking links

You’ve probably already noticed that most affiliate links don’t look so nice. On top of that, your readers can immediately see it’s an affiliate link. Prettylinks lets you create your own link, with your own domain name, cloaking the true link.

User intent

A key factor in SEO in 2020 is user intent. Where search engine optimization used to be all about the right keywords before, it’s now all about the user intent. What is the user looking for? 

I still recommend you to do keyword research and include keywords in your posts. But if you really want to create the type of content that makes the search engines – and of course, your readers – happy – understanding the user intent is a must.  

Once you know what the user’s intention is, you can find the right keywords to match with that. This will help you to increase the relevance of your posts and increase your ranking in the search results. 

Technique

The last pillar of SEO, but definitely not the least! The technical aspect of your SEO strategy, like speed, mobile-friendliness, the infrastructure, sitemap, HTML code, internal links and basically everything else that helps the search engines to crawl and understand your website better.

Speed

Did you know that when it takes more than 3 seconds to load a page on a mobile device, 40% of visitors leave that website? Check out these statistics on Neil Patel’s website if you want to learn more about the importance of fast loading times: Statistics load times 

Your website’s speed is a crucial factor when it comes to attracting more blog traffic, and a greatly underestimated factor by many bloggers, too. Which is a pity, because you can easily find out how fast your website really is and which steps you can take to make it faster with Google’s PageSpeed Insights. This tool is completely free! 

Definitely don’t skip this step, because it’s a ranking factor as well. Google ranks faster websites higher than slower websites.

One thing you can already start with to improve your website’s speed is by optimizing your images with the help of a plugin like ShortPixel.

There are also plugins, like Hummingbird and Autoptimize that speed up your website and improve its performance through compression, by delaying CSS and Javascript, by reducing CSS and Javascripts and through caching. 

Interlinking of pages

Zorg dat je je content aan elkaar linkt, zodat je lezers op hyperlinks kunnen klikken en zo binnen je website makkelijk door kunnen linken naar andere interessante content. Zo maak je je website gebruikersvriendelijk voor je bezoekers en voor de webspiders, waardoor ze je beter kunnen ranken. Wanneer pagina’s niet aan andere pagina’s gelinked zijn, worden ze geen als ‘orphaned pages’ die nergens aan gerelateerd zijn. En dat is niet goed voor de SEO van je website. 

Security

Can your visitors surf your website safely? You’ve probably came across the “this site is not safe” notification when you tried to enter a website. The website then only opens when you choose to proceed to open it anyway. This is what happens when a website doesn’t have an SSL-certificate. An SSL-certificate shows your visitors that your website is secured and can be visited safely. If you don’t have this certificate, you can miss out on a lot of visitors. 

Don’t have an SSL-certificate yet? Click on the Namecheap image below. Their certificates are very affordable! 

Responsive design

Is your website mobile, tablet and desktop friendly?

Since websites are viewed on all kinds of devices, it is important that your website has a responsive design. This means that the design of your website adjusts itself to the format of the device it’s displayed on. Elemtentor is great for websites with a responsive design. You can switch the responsive mode to instantly see how your pages are displayed on different types of devices.  

Optimize for snippets and voice search

Why you should start optimizing your content for Google Voice

About half the searches entered in Google will soon be voice-driven. Therefore, Google looks for answers within content that answers the questions that are being asked via Voice-search as accurately as possible. When you conduct a search in Google, you often see featured snippets at the top. These are the search results that are displayed at the top of the 1st page. You can see that the answer is already displayed and the user doesn’t even need to click a link anymore to get the answer. And a large part of the answers that Google gives to questions that are asked with Voice-search come from these featured snippets that Google has selected.

If you want your content to be eligible to appear as a search result on a voice-based search, you need to make sure your content is customized for it.

How do you qualify for a featured snippet?

Build your content around questions and answers. Place the questions in the headers and answer it in the paragraph that follows. Be clear and concise (use between 40 and 60 words).  Make sure that both the question and the answer are well formulated. And again, make sure the loading speed of the page is optimized.

Too many plugins

WordPress plugins are extremely handy and you really need some of them. Just make sure you don’t install too many plugins. They can slow down your website tremendously. 

Want to learn more about plugins and which plugins you need for an optimized website? Read my blog about the 15 best plugins every blogger needs!

My favorite SEO Tools

As the algorithms of search engines are constantly evolving and are of course not made public, it can be difficult to determine if you’re on the right track with your website’s SEO. Fortunately, there are many SEO tools that make search engine optimization a lot easier for bloggers like you and me. Before I end this post, I’d like to name a few of my favorite SEO tools that I use a lot and really benefit from.

Keyword tools

Even though keywords are no longer the only criteria for a strong SEO, they are still matter for your SEO. That’s why you should always do keyword research with a keyword tool before you start writing your blogs. 

Google Keyword Planner 

This is a free tool, but it does a great job. As a starting blogger you might not want to spend too much on your blog. In that case, I think this tool is the best option. 

SemRush

For me, this is the God of SEO tools. You can use it to do keyword research, but SemRush is actually an all-round SEO tool that you can use for a lot of other things related to improving your SEO. I have to admit that it does come with a price tag, but the good news is that you get a 7-day free trial when you sign up. No strings attached!

Use that to your advantage! Especially if SEO is still a bit complicated to you. SemRush is really straightforward and you don’t need a lot of knowledge to be able to understand this tool.

Google Analytics

Analytics shows you how many people visit your site, what your bounce rate is, the type of audience that visits your site, the duration the visits, and much more. Again for free!

Google Search Console

Search Console gives you insights into your Google rankings and the keywords you rank for. And like all Google tools, Search Console is again for free!

RankMath

The combination of the plugins RankMath SEO and Elementor are golden to me! Elementor is a website builder that allows you to visually design your website with building blocks. Although this doesn’t directly relate to SEO, it does integrate smoothly with Elementor. Elementor allows you to keep track of your RankMath SEO score while working in Elementor, which is great! Many people use the Yoast plugin to track their SEO-scores. True, this plugin is really awesome. However, if you work with Elementor you have to constantly switch between the WordPress editor and Elementor to view your SEO score and to make adjustments. For me that just doesn’t work. RankMath works just as fine and easy, so that’s why I’m not going for the plugin that most bloggers recommend. Also, RankMath is free, whereas Yoast only has a limited free version.

Summary

The short version of this beginner’s guide to SEO: the SEO trend for 2020 is actually quite simple to explain; honest and valuable content published on a reliable, optimized website is the best way to rank high in the search results. The search engines are getting better and better at recognizing valuable, high quality content and if you put your focus on that, you’re on your way to the top of the search results in the future!

Best websites for elegant, styled stock photos for bloggers (Free and Paid)

When it comes to creating an awesome blog with a professional look, you need to do more than just writing engaging content. A great blog post needs some nice visuals as well! Most bloggers use stock photos to give their blog this finishing touch. Stock photos are images made by professional photographers that match your blog’s look and feel.

Don’t have a blog, yet? Please follow my step-by-step guide to create a blog. Don’t forget to Pin or bookmark this page to come back when you can call yourself a blog owner. :)) 

Disclaimer: This blog post contains affiliate links. I may earn a small commission to fund my coffee drinking habit if you use these links to make a purchase. You will not be charged extra. So it’s a win for everyone! Please note that I won’t link any products I don’t believe in or don’t resonate with my blog site. Thank you!

Why bloggers use stock photos

You’re probably thinking right now, “Why not just make a quick search on Google Images to find nice images, right?” 

Well, yeah, you could do that, but… it’s kind of very much illegal 😉 All images are copyrighted, which means that every image you find there is owned by someone. And that also means you can’t just use a picture for your own blogging business. Stock photo websites are the solution to this problem. You can download other people’s photographs there and use them for your blogging business or social media. Each stock photo comes with a license stating precisely what you are and are not allowed to do with this image. 

You’re busy enough already! Let the experts take do the photography part for you!

Stock photography is the perfect solution for us bloggers! As a blogger, you already have a thousand and one tasks on your to-do list to keep up with your blog. If you’re going to take on the role of photographer on you too, you will run short on time for creating new content, which is why you have a blog in the first place. Besides, creating the perfect image by yourself is not so easy as it looks. Taking quality, professional pictures is an art in itself. And most likely, you will just waste a lot of time on taking photos that can’t compete with the images taken by the pros. 

Stock photos are also really useful to promote your blog posts on Pinterest. Since the June 2020 algorithm changes, Pinterest wants you to regularly publish fresh Pins (at least 5x a week, but rather 5 times a day!!). So, next to content creation, you also need to create a whole bunch of new Pins every week, and unless you have a ton of free time, you will not have time to shoot so many photographs on top of that.

To sum things up: stock photos are a tremendous help for most bloggers, and even if you don’t have a (big) budget, you can find plenty of websites where you can download beautifully styled free stock photos. 

Free stock photo’s: The Cons

I want to point out a few cons regarding the usage of free stock photos, though. I’m sorry… 🙁 I also like free stuff and didn’t want to spoil the fun. But, when you want to use free stock photos, it’s important to understand that they can hurt your website. Remember that these photos are downloaded and used a lot. Just like you and me, there are thousands of others out there who like free stuff too. And that makes these free stock photos far from being original. And Pinterest, for example, rewards its users for pinning unique images to the platform. Therefore, if your goal is to rank your Pins high in the search results, it’s always better to opt for paid stock photos.

Many websites offer monthly/yearly subscriptions, and some sites sell stock photos by the piece. You can find great stock photos for nearly every budget!

Hey, by the way, are you already a frequent Pinner on Pinterest? And do you already have a Pinterest Business account? If not, don’t miss out on my blog posts where I explain how to set up and optimize your own Pinterest business account and how to optimize your Pinterest Boards for SEO. 

Below you can see a list of all my favorite stock photo sites for 2020. I know there are plenty of other stock photo sites on the internet, but I find these to be the ones that are currently offering the best, high-quality images. And I know most bloggers will agree with me because these websites are many other big bloggers’ favorites as well. 

The best stock photo sites in 2020

Ivory Mix (Free & Paid)

What type of website is it?

This is a membership website. When you become a free member, you’ll already get access to 550+ free stock photos, and 4 new free photos every month.

Price?

VIP Membership

  • $ 137 per year
  • Access to + 4,500 styled stock photos
  • 100 new stock photos are added monthly. 

Elite Membership

  • $ 52 quarterly
  • A bit more expensive compared to the annual price, but you’re not stuck to it for a full year
  • The same advantages as the VIP Membership 
Ivory Mix Free Stock Photo


Pixi Stock (Free & Paid)

What type of website is it? 

Also a membership website. When you subscribe for the newsletter, you’ll be send some free stock photos directly to your inbox! 25 to be precise. :)) 

Price?

Membership:

  • Annually $ 197
  • Quarterly $ 87
  • Monthly $ 37

Creative Market (Paid)

What type of website is it?

Creative Market is a website where you can find all kinds of digital products, such as stock photos, stock photo bundles, social media bundles, WordPress themes, fond, templates, and a lot more! 

Price?

You pay individually for each product you buy. You can find stock photos from $ 2 a piece and up. And they’re actually beautiful too! 

Feminine desktop with stationery and perfume. Copy space

Girl Boss Stock (Free & Paid)

What type of website is it? 

This is a membership site for styled stock photos. When you subscribe for their newsletter you receive 24 free stock photos! 

Price?

$ 29 monthly or $ 239 annually – access to more than 1,000 stock photos. 

Canva (Free & Paid)

What type of website is it?

Canva is a website that offers great designing tools for bloggers. It’s a lot easier to use than Illustrator/Photoshop, and also waaaay cheaper. I love it! I design my Pinterest Pins in Canva, my logo, buttons, and… Canva comes with thousands of free stock photos as well! 

Price?

Canva Free comes with a lot of free stock photos and design options. If you need more design options and stock photos, you can opt for Canva Pro. This membership costs $ 11,99 per month or $ 107,88 per year. 

Styledstock (Free)

What type of website is it? 

When you subscribe for the newsletter you receive exclusive free styled stock photos in your inbox. You can also find photo bundles here at great prices. 

Prijs?

Differs per package. 

Styledstock stock photo

This was my 2020 list of my favorite stock photo sites! Don’t forget to always check each photo’s license, so you can be assured of what you are allowed/not allowed to do with it. That way you can avoid problems in the future. Each website has a FAQ or License page where you can find these terms and conditions. 

Good luck!

Please let me know what your favorite stock photo sites are, and why! 

XOXO Angie