Interview with Iftekhar Ahmed from iftiseo

Hello guys, with me today is Iftekhar Ahmed, the founder of iftiseo, a problogger and also a SEO consultant. He is a young dazzling blogger and a mastermind in the blogosphere that has really impacted into the minds of other bloggers.

Hi Iftekhar, hope you are feeling good with us. In this interview section, we would be asking you questions that relates to your blogging carrier and we would appreciate your accuracy to the answers of the questions being generated by the panels.

First off- We would love if you'd tell us little about yourself? Also include your hobby.

Firstly, I would like to thank Chinonso for giving me this opportunity. Well, I’m Iftekhar Ahmed from Bhopal, India. Currently I’m pursuing my engineering in Computer Science. Besides studies I’m also a part time blogger owning many blogs on different niches.

Coming to iftiSEO.com, this is my main blog which I started in Nov 2013. Here I share many tips and secrets of blogging and online earning. I usually share away all my secret strategies here to help all those who are new to blogging.

What motivated you to start up your own blog?

Right from my school days I was very much into computers and spend hours online trying to find different ways to earn money. I tried many sites but never ever got a single buck out of it. Then one day I came across this word “Blogging”, I searched about it for many days, studied how it works, and then found some top blogs like Mashable, Shoutmeloud, Labnol etc which inspired me a lot. And this was the time I took a step into blogging.

Do you get inspired by books/blog posts?

Yes I do read books and blogs a lot, some of them inspires me a lot. I read mashable, ShoutmeLoud, Quicksprout and Labnol regualarly as they always get something new for me and other bloggers to learn.

Amit Agarwal, Harsh Agarwal and Neil Patel are my inspirations to blogging.

What were the biggest trials you faced when you started up your blog and how did you overawed them?

First off when I started my blog I faced a lot of difficulties like I had ran out of post ideas, I didn’t knew SEO well etc. Such things are very much common with every new blogger.

So to overcome them firstly I tried to approach some established bloggers but unfortunately it didn’t help me much as most of them asked for money which for me was a little hard to invest. Then I started doing some research on Google and YouTube and believe me, it worked out as a charm. The tutorials out there on YouTube helped me a lot to learn SEO.

What is the best advice you've ever been given in your blogging career?

I’ve got many advices by some top bloggers, but the best would be

“Focus on your content rather than focusing on your traffic”

How do you make money blogging?

There are 100s of ways to earn money blogging and I’m trying to learn all of them.

IftiSEO is not very much into earning but yes my niche blogs are working well. Currently, I earn via Adsense and other ad networks, Affiliate marketing, sponsored posts and some direct ads.

As a pro-blogger, we would be pleased if you do tell your monthly blog income

It will be wrong if you call me a pro-blogger. I believe I’m still new to the industry and there’s a lot to be learned.

I will be pleased to answer this question after a 6 months or a year.

What are your top tips for writing a successful blog post?

I strongly believe that content is the key to run a successful blog. So I try to focus on all aspects while writing posts.

I will list down some tips:

·         Try to write long posts (1000+ words), it really helps a lot.

·         Focus on ON-PAGE SEO. (It covers many things)

·         Use simple language rather than a complicated one.

·         Ask questions to your readers in your posts.

·         Try to be honest in everything you write.

What are the main sources of traffic to your blog? Advice for the Newbies in geting traffic?

Majority of the sources are from Google (organic). I must say around 70-80%. The rest comes from social media.

My advice to the newbies will be “Don’t get worried if you are not getting organic traffic, it takes even months before you start getting good traffic from google. So till then try get traffic from Social networks, and by social networks I just don’t mean Facebook, Twitter. There are many networks out there from where you can drive huge traffic to your posts.”

What are the Link Building techniques you'd apply in your blog?

For my Main blog I usually don’t focus much on Link building. But Yes, I do blog commenting which helps me in building my links.

To build links you can refer this article of mine:Trick to get High quality backlinks to your site

What SEO or SMO strategies you applied in your blog?

Since my blog iftiSEO is still on blogger platform, I have to do all SEO manually. I usually focus more on On-Page SEO. Internal linking, well formatted paragraphs, a perfect Meta description of the post etc are some basics that I do in my posts.

What is the basic concept of blogging?

Obviously the basic concept of blogging is to share knowledge may it be any niche. But since past 2 years or so I’ve seen that most of the people including the newbies are coming into blogging just for the sake of making money. Yes blogging does helps in making money but it’s not an easy task and moreover if you focus on only making money through it then I must say that you are off the track.

This article may help you: HeyBloggers!! Is Your Blog On The Right Track?

What gadgets and plug-ins you'd use when blogging?

As I said earlier I’m still on blogger platform so there is no plug-ins I use. Talking about gadgets, well my laptop and my mobile is all what I use for blogging.

Tell us few apps/service you can't do without in your blogging carrier?

I’ve already tried to keep everything simple so there aren’t any services that I really need.

What advice would you give to the Newbies towards being a successful blogger?

My advice to the newbies will be “Just focus on the content what you write, try to come up with new things, tricks, ideas etc. through your blog posts, Your blog will then surely make some progress and you will start earning money as well through it.”

One more thing, try to gain as much knowledge as you can. Read different blog posts related to your interests and niche, it will again help you come up with new ideas.

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Interview with Iftekhar Ahmed from iftiseo

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