Interview with Sumit Sao – Iām happy to connect you all with yet another young blogging spirit, Sumit Sao who helps plenty of start-ups through his blog, Blogging Lift, and Facebook group. Anything about blogging, online marketing, andĀ Ā SEOĀ ā he writes from his experience and hence, builds such a huge readership.
By the way, he has got a remarkable space in most of the popular bloggerās good books. As a part-time blogger spending 8 to 9 hours on blogging is quite inspiring. Besides all, he is more popular for the Facebook community he has built with 22k+ followers. In this interview, letās explore more exciting things like his blogging experience, social community and even more.
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Interview With Sumit Sao ā Blogging Lift
Next to Adam Connellās interview, letās include Sumitās interview to the series. Sure, this is going to be a motivational post for beginner level bloggers and inspirational one for all.
Before that, letās thank him for accepting our request and sharing his responses in detail.
Come, letās get started!
#1. Tell us about your inspiration and passion for blogging.
Hi Sathish, Thanks for inviting me to this awesome interview series.
Hey Traffic Crow readers, Iām Sumit Sao, 26 years old passionate blogger from India and founder of BloggingLift.com, where I try to provide helpful guides related to Blogging, SEO, and Affiliate Marketing.
Apart from this, Iām also running a Facebook group, āBlogging Lift VIP Group,ā which is joined by 28,700+ bloggers all around the world.
These days Iām working 8-9 hours daily – 1 hour in planning, 2 hours in learning something new related to blogging to improve my skill and 5-6 hours in writing articles, interviews, and helping other bloggers on social media.
#2. In what way do you think your experience from the 3 unsuccessful blogs help you successfully start and run BloggingLift?
I started my blogging journey in October 2016. During the first 9 months, I made lots of mistakes like:
1. I was publishing thin contents
2. Avoiding SEO & Link Building
3. I used to write my articles without doing keyword research
4. And I didnāt try to convert my readers into my audience.
So, after my 3 unsuccessful blogs, I took 2 months break to understand what I was doing wrong, and I also spend 3-4 hour daily in my learning.
And then I started Blogging Lift, which is now a well-known blog.
#3. As a part-time blogger, how do you manage your blogging chores, build a network, make money, and so on?
Iām a part-time blogger; thatās why itās challenging to manage time for blogging.
But the good news is that Books like āEat That Frog,ā āThe one thing,ā and many other productivity books helped me manage time for blogging.
Now, Iām planning to leave my job to do full-time blogging.
#4. What difference your blog makes to attract more visitors to it?
My blog design and quality content are helping me to attract more visitors.
We all know that whenever people visit any blog, the first thing they see is the blog design. Even if youāve written an awesome piece of content, but if your blog design is not good, then the user may click on the back button immediately.
Thatās why I always try to improve my blog design to enhance the UX, and I also try to provide high-quality content.
I believe that my blog design and high-quality content helped me attract more visitors.
#5. What do you say as the best things you made to uplift your blog?
In my opinion, my Facebook community (28,700+ members) helped me a lot to take my blog to the next level. It helped me to connect with like-minded bloggers.
#6. Describe your content strategy from choosing a topic to publishing and its promotions. How often you publish new posts and update the older ones?
I follow these simple steps:
STEP 1: I mainly use Quora to find blog posts topics ideas.
STEP 2: Then I find the Low KD long-tail keywords and some LSI keywords.
STEP 3: I enter my target keyword on Google to check the average word count and heading structure of these top 10 ranking articles.
STEP 4: After checking the top 10 ranking articles, I try to find what is missing in these articles. And then, I prepare my article layout so that my article will be more helpful and informative than the top 10 ranking articles.
STEP 5: I also enter the link top 5 ranking article in SEMrush to steal their long-tail keywords.
STEP 6: Then I collect and compress all the screenshots Iām going to use in my article.
STEP 7: After that, I write my articles with proper on-page SEO optimization.
And after publishing my article, I share it on my Facebook group, Twitter Sand, some other social media to get traffic.
I publish 3-4 high-quality articles every month and update my old articles once a month.
#7. Noticed somewhere that you spend less time on social media. In such a case, what efforts you put to grow your Facebook group?
These days Iām less active on social media. But I want to make my Facebook group active, thatās why I always schedule 5-6 posts in advance.
#8. How good are you in web/graphic designing? At which point do you think SEO correlates with User Experience?
Iām not very good at graphics designing. Iām still learning it.
Now, letās talk about User Experience. According to me, User Experience is also an important ranking factor. If UX of your site is not good, users may click on the back button immediately. Itāll increase your bounce rate and decrease the ranking.
#9. What are your tips, ideas, or messages to share with start-up bloggers or newbies, especially in this competitive ābloggingā niche?
Here are some tips for newbie bloggers:
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- Focus on building your email list from day-1.
- Target Low KD long-tail keywords.
- Use premium theme and a good Webhosting
- Donāt publish thin content.
- Update your articles regularly.
- If you are doing affiliate marketing, then you must write Black Friday Deals type articles like A2 hosting Black Friday Deal,
- SiteGround Black Friday deals, etc. because youāll get higher conversion in these types of articles.
- Spend at least 3-4 hours daily to learn blogging, SEO & affiliate marketing.
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#10. What are your favorite link building methods and strategies? How do you help (with ideas) to gain a backlink on authority sites?
These are my favorite link building methods:
1. Giving testimonial to other bloggers (easiest way)
2. HARO
3. Guest Posting
4. Broken link building
5. Interviews and roundups
You can get a backlink from high authority sites through guest posting. But Iāll recommend you first submit a guest post on a low authority site because theyāll accept guest posts easily. Then contact higher authority sites and send them your previous guest post link to show the quality of your guest post. Then again, contact more top sites and repeat the process. In this way, you can earn a high-quality backlink from a high authority site through guest posting.
#11. Are there any bloggers you wanted to build a relationship with or any blogs you wish to get featured on? And whatās your action plan?
I want to get featured on the top authority sites, and for this, Iām working hard to build blogging Lift as a brand so that they invite me for the interview.
Apart from this, to get a backlink from the high authority sites, my action plan is the same as I mentioned in the previous answer.
#12. What is your future plan in promoting your blog as well as FB group? Donāt you wish to explore other social platforms like LinkedIn or Twitter?
I donāt have any new plans. Currently, Iām promoting my blog on social media.
And Iām promoting my Facebook group in the following places:
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- My website homepage,
- In my blog sidebar and menu.
- High traffic pages.
- In my email list.
- In my guest posts and interviews
- Quora answer
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These days Iām trying to build my audience in other social media like Instagram, Telegram, YouTube, Twitter, & LinkedIn.
#13. You have planned to start a YouTube channel. What is progress?
A few months back, I started my YouTube channel āSumit Sao,ā where Iām trying to provide as much value as possible. Youāll get blogging & SEO related videos on this channel.
I always try to do something different. Thatās why I invited 10+ professional bloggers on my YouTube channel to share their views on āHow to drive traffic to a new site both with and without SEO,ā and this video helped me a lot to get a good amount of subscribers.
#14. Finally, share your opinion about the Traffic Crow blog or if any suggestions.
Traffic Crow is one of the best blogs to learn blogging and SEO. Only one suggestion for you that add more screenshots and graphics in your articles.
Conclusion
I hope you found this interview more helpful and exciting. Sumit proves in real-time, how building a network can boost oneās online credibility. Blogging is all about helping one another sharing their own experiences and knowledge. Learning from his 3 big failures, he finds the right path for blogging success. Thatās great!
Share your views about this interview with Sumit Sao in the comments section.
Hey Sathish,
Thanks for sharing this interview. Sumit always amazing to his blogging buddies and audience. He is a brother minded guy and very helpful to everyone.
Thanks Sumit! You have shared some amazing tips and tricks here.
Regards,
Sayem Ibn Kashem
Sayem,
You are right. So that he could earn such a big community of social followers too. Thanks for commenting here, as well.
Good interview with Sumit. I have been part of his blogging lift Facebook group. The guy who helps all the community members by answering them instantly on Facebook chat message or via blogs. Happy to see that he has been feature on your blog my big thumbs up for him.
Yes, Sumit is of course a dedicated blogger who loves helping blogger-to-be’s and blogging enthusiasts, Shameem.