How To Start A Blog : The Ultimate Guide For You

 

What is blogging

In general, blogging is a way of sharing information and knowledge on the internet in the format of words. In most cases, blogs will be concentrated on a specific topic and written in reverse chronological order.  

Some blogs will be featuring the links of other websites, and others will be personal blogs that are presenting the author’s daily life and their ideas. Most bloggers write and update consistently. 

Why is Blogging Popular?

Blogging is getting popular day by day. The widespread use of the internet is the main reason for blogs getting popular. Now, blogging has become the best platform to promote a product or a service. So, many people started using blogs to expand their business. You can learn and earn spontaneously through blogging. This is another factor for the popularity of blogs. 

As you can connect with more people and share knowledge, this has become a big platform. Many people have started to refer to a blog before buying a product. Different blogs have helped people to choose the right product. Most blogs are written in a reader-friendly manner with proper research. This helps the audience to get the knowledge of what they searched.

Why Should You Start Blogging?

If you are interested in writing and sharing knowledge, then blogging is a good option for you to develop yourself and earn money. Let’s discuss some of the reasons to start blogging.

Improve your Quality of Writing

Surely, an experienced blog writer will always be having the ability to write quality content. While writing the blogs, your creativity will also increase along with the writing skill. After writing some blogs, you may start developing your unique style of writing. This uniqueness makes you different from other writers. You can also check some tips for content writing.

Generate an Income

When you seriously make blogging as your profession, you can earn a good amount through this sector. But this is not as easy as you expected. A lot of hard work and commitment are required for the success of your blog. If you are reviewing products through your blog, then you may receive some amount from the sponsors. For bloggers, advertisements are the best way to make money. 

Makes you a Better Person

Having a blog brings many personal developments to you. Blogging can improve your communication skills as well as writing skills. While working on blogs, you may do a lot of research on different topics. This will increase your knowledge and make you a better person.

Attract the Audience

Blogging helps you to connect with billions of people who use the internet. You can promote yourself or your business through blogging. Through creating a blog, you can create the audience and gradually convert them as your customers or partners. In many cases, bloggers are linked to each other. Thus there is a lovely sense between the bloggers.

Gain Confidence and Remove the Fear

Blogging is one of the best ways to break out your shells and express your feelings. Different people start a blog for various reasons. Writing on a fearful topic helps you to gain confidence and remove your fear. Blogging is the place where you can shout out your ideas and thoughts without any fear.   

 

Steps to create blog

1. Choose your niche to start blogging

What Is Niche ?

The blog niche is the topic on which you are building the blog. In other words, choosing the niche is a way of answering the questions.    

Some bloggers will write on whatever that comes to their mind. But this is not the right way for long term success. If you are aiming to generate an income through your blog, then choosing the right niche is the key factor to success. So, you need to pick a clear topic that you are going to focus on your entire content.

 

Niche Status 

Niche Research

Before selecting the niche, it’s essential to do market research. This research helps you to analyze whether the niche is profitable or not. 

For example, if swimming is one of your hobbies, and you want to start a blog about it. Now, you want to look at whether the topic has enough audience or not for its success.  

Select a Topic that you Enjoy

While selecting the topic for your blog, ensure that the topic you are choosing is enjoyable for you and your audience. Many people will suggest different topics, but you should always confirm your comfort. Before starting the blog, you should have minimum knowledge on the subject that you have selected. If so, it will reflect a quality blog.

Make sure it’s Profitable 

For earning good revenue, it’s essential to choose a profitable niche. Proper research can sort out a profitable niche for your blog. Many people are making a huge amount through their blogs. So, before starting your blog, refer to these types of bloggers and analyze the tricks that they are following.

Here are some of the profitable niches with proof. 

Importance of Niche in Blogs

Finding the right niche is one of the most important factors of writing a blog that often gets overlooked. If you are not choosing the right niche, you may have to face many challenges. Without a proper niche, marketing and monetization will be harder for you. Sometimes it may affect your identity too.   

Some Profitable Niches of 2020

Here are some of the most profitable niches on which you can start building your blogs.

• Health and fitness
• Finance
• Parenting blog
• Make money online
• Food
• Lifestyle
• Travel
• Sewing
• Beauty and fashion

2. Find a Name and the get Domain

After choosing the niche for your blog, the next step is to find a name for your blog. If you are blogging on a specific topic, then it is better to include the topic on your blog name. A blog domain cannot have the spaces between the words. So it should be ensured. While doing a personal blog, you can add your name as the blog name with some variations.

Things to know while Choosing the Blog Name

There are some factors to check while choosing the right name for your blog. The blog name should reflect the vision of your blog. The blog name should always be memorable and well optimized. It should also be unique from other domain names. These factors will make your blog name awesome.

Unique 

If your blog name is similar to other blogs, then it may lead to confused identity. To avoid this, get a unique domain name and get distinguished from other titles. People will remember your blog using the blog name. So always keep it short and straightforward.    

Memorable 

While naming your blog, it’s better to keep it short. So that your audience can easily remember it. Long names may keep put off the readers, and sometimes they may not come back. So, while naming your blog, think from your user’s side and name it.   

Keyword Optimized

Having the keyword in your domain name is an advantage, but it should be optimized appropriately. It helps your audience to analyze what you are speaking. Thus it’s always better to have a keyword-optimized domain name.   

 

3. Buy a Hosting Package

What is Web Hosting?

In general, we can say that web hosting is the process of renting or buying a space to build a website on the world wide web. If you are trying to create an online presence, then web hosting is essential. Nowadays, several web hosting service providers have servers and associated services to host the websites.

Things to know while Choosing the Hosting Package

While choosing the hosting service provider, there are some factors to be checked. Only select the provider after proper research. Firstly, you need to verify that the company that you selected is capable of supporting your business and doesn’t create any issues on your website. 

The below-mentioned factors are some of the things to be checked while choosing the website hosting provider. 

Pricing           

Nowadays, several hosting providers are providing their services at various prices. Many factors are determining their services. 

If you are hosting a simple web page that does not require a lot of traffic, then it’s better to select the cheapest service. If you are hosting a more complicated website, then you can go ahead with the services offering more services.    

Technical Support

One of the crucial factors to be checked is the technical support that the company offers to you. You should be able to speak with a real person 24*7 and discuss the issue. Before selecting a hosting provider, check the reputation for their customer support. 

You should make sure that your provider has made customer support a priority.

Hardware

Once you choose the hosting provider, you should have a basic idea of the device that your provider uses. For better performance, your provider should have a quality server. Many small providers use used equipment and cheap products. These types of servers cannot be a guarantee that your site always works as expected.

If your hosting company has not mentioned anything about their hardware, then you need to ask about the hardware that they are using because the hardware can affect the performance of your website.   

Email Services

Email service is one of the other features to be considered. You must check what email feature does the provider guarantee to you. Do they provide spam protection? Is your site protected from malware and viruses? These all are the questions to be asked to your provider.

Many providers are offering unlimited message forwarding and auto-responding services. So it’s better to make sure that your providers also provide all these mentioned services. 

 

4. Install WordPress

What is WordPress?

Nowadays, WordPress is the most popular tool for creating websites. WordPress can create any type of website, i.e., from an ordinary blog to a featured business website. Even an online store can be created using WordPress.  

If you haven’t created a website yet, it’s not a problem. That’s not a problem! While using WordPress, you don’t need any coding or design skills to create a website. 

With the help of WordPress, it’s easy for you to create a website without writing a single line of code. 

Reasons to Choose WordPress

Many expert studies revealed that more than 30% of websites are using WordPress. These statistics are increasing day by day. There are many reasons for people to choose WordPress. Some of the purposes mentioned below will convince you. 

Easy to Use

As WordPress website doesn’t need any coding and designing skills, it’s easy to use. WordPress notifies you when there is any update of the new version. So you can update your website by simply clicking on the button. Even for building a complex website, no coding knowledge is required. 

Search Engine Friendly

 While building your website, your dream will be to rank your website on the search engine. WordPress is designed in an SEO friendly manner. So it’s easy to rank in search engines. By using WordPress, your website becomes more attractive to the search engine. Using this platform, you can assign each unique page keywords, allowing more precise search optimization. These factors help you to rank your website quickly on the search engine and bring more traffic.

 Plugins and Themes

WordPress includes many plugins, which are both paid and free. Here, you can also view the last update of the plugin. These plugins help you to reduce your complicated issues quickly. Using the themes and plugins, WordPress is easy to customize.

In the case of the themes, WordPress themes are easy to customize as most of them come with the option to change its color, background, upload images, and so on. All these alterations can be done without writing a single code. 

Like themes, thousands of free and paid plugins are available in WordPress. You can get the one that is needed for your website.

WordPress is Free

WordPress is free software. So you are free to download, install, and use as per your needs. You can build any type of website using WordPress. While WordPress is free, you need to have a domain and hosting service to install it. WordPress also provides thousands of free themes and plugins along with some paid ones. You can choose the one that your website needs.  

Security

WordPress is developed in a highly secure manner, which is very safe to run a website. It is essential to protect the content from spam attacks. For the safety of your data, WordPress has introduced many options that can protect your data from spam and other issues.

Before installing the plugins on your website, make sure that you read the considerations and reviews before installing them.  

Community Support

Many people are using WordPress to create their website. Thus different blogs and websites are describing WordPress. Different bloggers describe every step in WordPress. Theme installation and plugin reviews are also discussed through different websites.

WordPress has a vast supporting community that can give you excellent support.    

Benefits on SEO

WordPress is built in an SEO friendly manner. So it helps you to create an SEO friendly website that may boost your ranking. Using SEO plugins like Yoast SEO may help you to rank your website and bring more engagements. 

WordPress also allows you to create SEO friendly URLs that contain keywords. Google will analyze those keywords from your URL and rank for those keywords. Therefore, it is crucial to know what is web address and how to create correct URL to best serve your SEO needs. Site loading speed has a significant role in ranking your website. Here in WordPress, some plugins allow you to compress the images without losing its clarity. Thus you can save the disk space and boost the loading speed of your site.

These WordPress SEO benefits provide you the opportunity to build an SEO friendly website. It may be the most significant advantage of using WordPress.  

5. Select a Good Theme

Importance of a Good Theme

The theme plays a significant role in creating your website. It makes your website simply attractive. Here in WordPress, you can get the theme according to your business. So you don’t need to take extra effort to optimize it.

A good theme brings many benefits like ease of access, better website, easy to deal, social media-friendly, and so on. For the site to be active, it needs to be attractive and easy to access. Thus a good theme is necessary for your website.  

Things to know while Choosing the Theme

Finding a website theme is not a simple task. Several providers are providing many templates and claiming that their products are customizable in just two clicks. In many cases, it will not be accurate.

Looks and Affect

Make sure that the look of your theme is suitable for your users. Select a vibrant theme, if your field is entertainment or any other related one. Also, it needs to be gorgeous if it is a fashion industry. 

Try to know the capabilities of the theme and analyze whether it’s suitable for your niche.

Responsiveness

I am sure that you know the importance of your site is responsive. As per the research, most people will be visiting the websites through mobile phones. So it’s essential to check the responsiveness on both handheld devices and pc.    

SEO Friendly

Here, you can use different plugins that can be installed on your website to make it SEO friendly. Along with these plugins, some themes come pre-built with these features. For better ranking and engagement, confirm that the theme you selected is SEO friendly.

Ease of Customization

The theme that you are selecting should be easy to customize. Changing the background, uploading the logo, which you can create with the logo maker, and adding images and videos shouldn’t be tough.. The theme should be fully customizable from the WordPress dashboard.

Speed

Do you stand on the page that takes a huge loading time? The present users want everything instantly; otherwise, they will go somewhere else to get it. So you should be very smart in choosing a theme for your site. You can clear many issues related to the loading speed by selecting a good template.

Updates

Like other platforms, WordPress also gets updated by its developers. So, when a new WordPress version is available, you need to update it accordingly.

Because the new version can be:

1. More secure
2. Bug fixed
3. Added with new features

Thus it’s important to update it. Using an older version of WordPress may make your website vulnerable. Also, while choosing the template, try to check the previous update of the theme. If it is updated long ago, it’s better to avoid it and select any latest updated theme. 

Support

I think there is nothing worse than running with bad service. Before choosing the theme or plugins, read through the comments and see what people are talking about technical support. You should make sure that you will receive a quick response and clear the issue as soon as possible. 

 

6. Install The Needed Plugins

What are Plugins?

While using the WordPress websites, plugins are the essential building block for the site. They are a piece of software that contains a group of functions that can be added to your WordPress website. They are written in PHP programming language and combined with WordPress. 

The plugins can help you to add many features to your website in a simple manner, without knowing a single line of code. Now, there are thousands of plugins available in the WordPress plugin directory. Apart from the free plugins, there are several paid plugins from third party companies.

Why should you use Plugins?

As mentioned above, plugins are pre-coded by some developers or other third party companies. So, to avail of a specific feature, you only need to find and install the particular plugin associated with your needs. 

Using plugins in your website is less time-consuming. But, while choosing the plugin, you need to confirm that the particular plugin is getting enough support. When was the last update of the plugin? These factors need to be checked before the installation.

By using these plugins, you can get all the features. You can install it yourself without having a coding background.

Some Important Plugins to be Installed

There are a number of free and paid plugins available in the WordPress plugin directory. Out of these plugins, some are very popular in usage and very helpful. Some of them are mentioned below. I am sure that using these plugins can add many special features to your website. 

Yoast

Whether you are creating a personal blog or any professional website, Yoast plugin has a good role in your website. Yoast SEO can easily make your site search engine friendly. This may increase the chance to rank your website in the SERP. 

Yoast SEO helps you to assign many things like titles, targeted keywords, meta descriptions, and so on. 

Elementor

Elementor is the free WordPress that helps you to create awesome WordPress websites within a short span of time. Elementor comes with a well-designed template library, mobile editing tool set, and a lot more. Using the elementor, you can easily design many complex layouts without the help of a designer.

 

7. Start Writing The Blog

Things to know while Writing the Blog

Attractive Headline

While writing the headline, always make sure that your headline is catchy and attractive. It takes the reader’s attention and makes them think to read or not the best content. Writing a catchy headline that attracts the audience is a special skill. The headline should also describe what the content says.

Supportive Sub-Headline

In most cases, you cannot say everything about the content in 10-12 words of the headline. Here is the role of the sub-headline. You can say more about the content through the sub-headline. You can also add the relevant keywords in this section, which may rank the content.

Proper Punctuation

The use of commas, full spot, and other punctuation can reduce the size of the sentence. If you are not confident in punctuation, then try to keep it short and simple. By gaining experience, you can add punctuation and shorten the sentence. By reducing the size of the sentence, your blog post may become more engaged.

Choose a Fine Font

It is always good to go with big fonts as they can be read easily. Tiny writings are very tough to read, especially online.

Check some of your favorite blog posts and compare the font size they used. Now you can decide what type of fonts are suitable for your audience.   

Tell in a Story Format

It’s a good idea to say your message in a story format. As you know, a story will have three sections, like beginning, middle, and end.

Here you can start with an introduction, then the main content, and at last ending with a proper conclusion.

This will bring a proper format to your content and helps the readers to consume information more easily. 

Use Graphs and Images

If it’s necessary, you can add graphs in your blog posts. A pictorial representation may attract more audiences and increase the chance to share your blog. It also increases the depth of your blog and brings more engagement.

Use a Proper Background

For better reading, the background of your blog should contrast your text color. It’s best to go with a dark text color on a light background. This format helps readers to read the content easily. 

A white background is always a good choice as it avoids distractions.

 

8. Add Proper Images in your Blog

Role of Images in your Blog 

Blogging is not about writing plain text. An excellent article includes text, images, videos, and other multimedia elements. A picture can speak a lot, sometimes more than what the text speaks.

Increase Social Media Shares

Along with making users share your content, it also brings more traffic from some other social media sites. As you know, no users want to look at their social media ugly. If your image is a low quality one or unattractive, then they won’t share it. So, making the images attractive is the main factor for better engagement.

Image Search Engine Traffic

The use of images helps you to bring more traffic from image search engines. For better working, you need to optimize many things like image description and alt text. Images have a huge role in driving traffic. So, use quality images and proper keywords to bring more traffic.

Increase the Length of the Article

By using the images in your blog, the size increases. The search engine always ranks for long content. So using images is a good way to rank your site.

When you are writing a short post, adding the post helps your post to look much better. 

Helps to Understand Complex Information

In many situations, the images can reduce the complexity of the words and make them more reader-friendly. The pictorial format is easy to understand as compared to the text.

If you are writing technical data, the use of screenshots and graphs brings more engagement to the users.

Benefits of adding Images

As discussed above, images have a big role in your blog post. Images can support the points that you are speaking and make your blog memorable. The use of images also adds color vibrancy to your blog. It also improves search engine optimization and helps you to rank your content easily.

What type of Images should be used 

You can use different types of images to describe your content.

They are:

1. Screenshots
2. Hand-drawn images
3. Animations
4. Graphs
5. Info graphics
6. Stock photos

   

9. Use helpful Tools & Optimize

Why Optimization is Important

Optimizing your content is an essential part while creating the blog post. A well-optimized content can be easily readable to your audience. If you are not optimizing the content properly, your blog may not rank in the SERP. SEO optimization is a big ranking factor for your blog. Optimization can increase the SEO value for the blog post and increase the ranking. 

A complete optimization includes text optimization, image optimization, meta tag and meta description optimization, keyword optimization, and so on. So, while optimizing your blog post, check that all these factors are optimized well. 

Benefits of using Tools 

While using the tools, you are getting many advantages. The defects of your blog will be detected by using tools. Tools will help you to check and correct the grammatical errors, find proper keywords, optimize images, and to perform many other features. With the help of tools, you can create a high-quality blog post.

The use of tools on your work is less time consuming and reduces the time complexity. It will also help you to find the best keyword for your blog, and tools have a huge role in ranking your blog post.

Some Helpful Tools

Presently, several tools can be used for your blog. Here are some famous and useful tools that can be used for different purposes.

• Grammarly
• Keyword planner
• Ahref
• Screaming frog

10. Publish your First Blog

After completing your blog, check the errors and resolve them. Ensure that you have completed all the things mentioned above before publishing the blog post. Before publishing the blog, there are some check out factors like images, text, title, description, headline, and so on.

If you have completed all these tasks, then you can publish your blog confidently. After publishing, ask your friends to give the suggestion of your blog. If there are any valuable suggestions, then edit the blog and publish it. 

11. Start Promoting Your Blog

Importance of Promotion

Blog promotion is essential as it can drive more traffic and bring new users to your post. Starting promotions will increase brand awareness, followers, income, connections, and so on. You can double your income through advertisements. 

Ways to Promote your Blog

Nowadays, many promotion ideas can be used to promote your blog. There are both paid and organic ways to promote your blog post. Social media promotion, search engine marketing are some of the promotion ideas to be used. SEO is the best organic way to promote your blog.  

As most of the people are very active in social media, you can go with social media marketing and bring more engagement to your blogpost. There is a huge chance to get more engagement through social media. Before starting the promotion, contact other bloggers and find how they promoted their blog. You can take this as a reference and start the promotion.  

Make Use of the Latest Techniques 

While performing any activities, make sure that you are using the latest techniques to promote. As you know, technology is developing day by day. So, using these latest technologies will increase the chance to bring more traffic and may increase the ranking of your blog. If you are interested in this sector, make sure that you are getting all the updates at the proper time. 

Building a blog and maintaining it is a big process. There are a lot of things to do while creating the blog. Primarily, proper research is required for a quality blog. If you are interested in this sector, then you should confirm that you are getting updated on the latest techniques regularly. 

The steps discussed above will help you to build a quality blog.