How to Start a Blog
Hi there, Hope you are doing well, me too! If you came across this blog, I know that you are going to do something special with your magic words. Welcome to the Blogging World, this is the right time to start, if I talk about myself then I just start writing the blogs, and I am going to tell you some most important points if you are just a beginner. This blog is completely all about how to start a blog channel with a step by step process and helps a ton to become a professional blogger.
So read carefully every single point, don’t miss that at all! After completing any blog post you have to make sure if it is SEO Friendly Content so that it will get indexed on the first page of Google. Check out the below link;
How To Write SEO Friendly Blog Posts
If you want to run a free domain website, just to share with your own audience, not for money then you should watch the below video, this will complete a guide on how you can create a cool website along with a free domain. This video will explain to you the step by step process;
Before you start following your passion or making it your profession, the first question, which comes out WHY & HOW? So ask yourself WHY do you want to do it and How will you start it? As there could be many reasons like you want to express your experience, share your learning, passive income/making money, or else. So, without further delay, let’s learn HOW you can start a blog right away.
Table of Contents
WHAT’S YOUR NICHE
If you are a beginner and going with an aim to be a successful blogger then I would suggest you write on a specific niche. In a blogging world, Niche is a specific topic type or a category! Make sure you must have a perfect niche for your blog channel – the one you are more passionate about and have interested in.
That way you will follow your passion and enjoy your blogging journey. Also, you must pick a niche that has enough audience interest. So write about what people have an interest in. Before running a blog channel, you must write down all the topics you are going to write about.
In blogging, the most important things which you need to remember are your niche length, competitors, and analyze how profitable is your niche. If you want to know how to start a blog channel then you must have something special in your niche otherwise, why would people subscribe to your channel and read your content.
You will only write on something when you have an interest in something, so choose what you love and share your words with the world.
WHAT’S YOUR BLOGGING PLATFORM
You got your niche, now you need a platform, where you can create your blogs. There are many platforms, but most of the bloggers start blogging on the WordPress platform and it is the most user friendly. So, you should certainly go with WordPress.
Here is an interesting fact: In 2020, over 455 million websites use WordPress.com. This means that the WordPress market share is 35% of all websites in the world as per the report! Now you can imagine why people love to choose the WordPress platform.
CHOOSE DOMAIN NAME TO CREATE YOUR BLOG
This is the first step that comes when you start your journey as a Blogger, choose a channel name with an attractive domain name. A domain name is the URL of a website that a visitor will use to open a blog or about yourself within it like I have www.passionofi.com.
Keep it simple and catchy so that people can found you easy in the future. It’s your brand name, which represents you, now you can imagine, why it’s so important and how you want to see your brand among people.
Choose your domain, which represents your channel, whether it’s Travel, Fashion, Technology, Food, etc. If possible don’t keep your name in that, because most of the people have used their name, so you won’t be getting that sort of URL easily.
It should not be too long, up to 10-12 characters will be fine, like I have 10 characters on my blog website passionofi.
PURCHASE THE HOSTING PACKAGE TO START THE BLOG
In a simple language, a Cake is a domain, and hosting is a Refrigerator, where you keep it safe and fresh and you are the only one who has the key. Now you have the cake (domain), and you need a refrigerator to store it safely so that you can have it, whenever you want.
Some popular web hosting and domain providers are GoDaddy, HostGator, SiteGround, etc. The best part is when you buy web hosting, you get a free domain within it. Hosting is the company that puts your website up on the internet so that everyone else can see it.
Every data of your website will be saved on there, like Google Drive, where you save your docs and pictures. Don’t go with a cheap one, choose some good hosting providers, who can help you anytime.
Web-hosting is where you will install WordPress. This is one of the best ones as its server stays online 24*7 and all your future blog images, your blog design, and everything will be stored on this server (hosting) as I mentioned earlier.
TIME TO SETUP YOUR BLOG
It’s time to set up our blog channel, as we already chose WordPress for our blogging platform. It is not only a free platform that contains many themes and the most advanced plugins, and it’s a user friendly too.
You can refer to comprehensive instructions for installing WordPress on your new blog here. Once you’ve completed that, you can officially log into your blog and make it more stunning by doing some necessary changes.
PUT YOUR SITE IN UNDER CONSTRUCTION MODE
Now you know how to start a blog channel and having a domain name, web hosting, as well as a WordPress platform. Once your dashboard opens, go and install the “WP Maintenance Mode” plugin like in the below image;
While working on your blog’s appearance, you might want to put up an “under construction” sign, because you don’t want your clients or readers to Google your name and find an ugly unconstructed home page. When you’re ready to share your website with the world, simply deactivate and delete the plugin. Now you are ready to show your magical words to the world.
DESIGN YOUR WEBSITE BY THEME
It’s time to beautify your Blog page with some colorful themes, it will represent your website to viewers. As an impression of your brand, in WordPress you get a wide range of ready-made themes design for all of your pages like; About, Contact, Home, etc. So go with a good one because a good design will ensure that your visitors will love your blog.
You should understand that no one likes to see a complicated or tricky website, and they especially hate websites that need a NASA degree to navigate. Make it easy for them. Remember, your blog’s design should reflect both you and your personality, but also what the blog is all about. There’s no point having a travel-orientated theme if your blog is about food, get it?
HOW TO START A BLOG THEN SELECT WIDGETS & MENUS
Widgets are the additional features that you can add to your webpage like; Overall Hits On Your Webpage By Users, Calendar, Clock, Social Media Page, etc. Menus are like pages menu on top of your webpage. In that you can use your social media links so that people can follow you there, also you can customize it accordingly by clicking on “Manage With Live Preview”. In a single line; as much you use it you will learn it and create a better one for you. I AM SURE!
CREATE YOUR WEBSITE PAGES
While creating a website, the pages are the most important part because it contains information about your website and the archives you have saved so far. If you are a beginner, create some simple pages like Contact, About, Terms & Conditions, Disclaimer, etc. Whatsoever information you put inside that reflect who you are and your content all about.
HOME
This is the main page of your website called Homepage, so make it simple if you are just a beginner, it must look more catchy and attractive to your users.
CONTACT
You want your readers to be able to get in touch with you, so write some happy-to-talk text along with your contact details, like email address, phone number, etc so that people will reach out to you easily.
ABOUT
Write something about your channel, you are a blogger then write something about yourself that who you are, what you like to write about, what’s your passion all about, etc. Be genuine about what you are writing, otherwise, people will judge you easily and no longer your subscriber.
BLOGS
You want your readers to see all of your blogs, correct? Then you’ll need a contact page like a library. This will be your archive page where all your blogs will get saved. Don’t forget to create this page.
LEARNED HOW TO START A BLOG THEN INSTALL PLUGINS
In a simple language, you just bought a house and now you need some appliances, furniture, security system, etc. Once you are ready with your website you must need some essential advanced plugins for your website. So that it will look more cool and attractive and secure from dangerous spam and hackers.
If you are a beginner, you can install these plugins without single thought because all these you must require for your blog channel. Few most important plugins like;
YOAST SEO
This will help to write better content and have a fully optimized WordPress site using the Yoast SEO plugin. This will help you to write the best and well manner content that appeals to the users so that your content will index on top in the Google search engine fastly.
SMUSH
WP Smush is a WordPress plugin that allows you to optimize images without losing its quality. WP Smush is the most convenient plugin to use, and you can optimize your images on the fly as you upload them to your WordPress site.
W3 Total Cache
The simplest and fastest way to improve the SEO and user experience of your website by increasing website performance and reducing load times. It is easy to customize as per your need and the total performance solution for optimizing your WordPress Website.
UPDRAFTPLUS WORDPRESS BACKUP PLUGIN
It makes backup and restoration easier. You can take the complete backup manually or you can schedule it accordingly.
SITE KIT BY GOOGLE
You will definitely need it, it’s like a scorecard of your blogs. You can see the traffic in different types of graphs, also you can manage AdSense, Search Console, Analytics, PageSpeed Insights, etc. all in one plugin.
SASSY SOCIAL SHARE
Slickest, Simplest, and Optimized Share buttons like; Facebook, Twitter, Reddit, Pinterest, WhatsApp, and many more social share options.
EASY TABLE OF CONTENTS
This is a user friendly and fully automatic way to create and display a table of contents generated from the page content so that users can easily go to the page directly where they want to go instead of scrolling the mouse.
AKISMET ANTI-SPAM
This plugin will check and reduce the numbers of spam comments and save your site from malicious content.
ONESIGNAL PUSH NOTIFICATIONS
Free web push notifications, means this will help your user to get the notification automatically once you publish your blog.
LIMIT LOGIN ATTEMPTS RELOADED
This will help you whenever someone tries to access your account, will lock their IP address after attempting multiple times.
LAST BUT NOT LEAST,
JETPACK BY WORDPRESS.COM
Jetpack enables you to connect with your blog to a WordPress.com account to use the powerful features normally only available to WordPress.com users, which is the best plugin feature you get with Jetpack.
HIT YOUR FIRST BLOG ONCE YOU START BLOGGING
I know you have learned about how to start blogging and now it’s time to write your first blog. Before that, I’ll give some tips, as a newbie usually makes those mistakes, but you won’t for sure;
Go with a routine, if possible. Set a calendar that you are publishing that much of content in a week or month accordingly, It makes a good impression on Google that you are consistent with your writing. For a better practice, write some content in advance before you launch your website, save them in drafts. Once you are ready with your website, publish them twice or thrice a week.
Make sure you cover all the aspects in your content you are writing about and keep the content length up to 700 plus words at least. Your content should look like content, not just some random Facebook post!
Why would anyone read your blog until they won’t relate it personally, so use it with “I” and “You” in every second sentence, see you have read almost 2000 words, didn’t get bored! Write your blog into the break-up text format along with bullet points and sub-headers, so that reader will not get irritated by just seeing it.
If possible, use your own pictures and videos so that people can relate to it better and don’t copy the pictures directly from Google, rather than use the free media library for pictures only. You can also embed videos from YouTube, Dailymotion, Personal Media, and many other platforms you get.
KEEP SEO IN MIND! I know you have installed the Yoast SEO plugin, so before publishing your post make sure you have written an SEO-friendly blog otherwise, you can go through this video you will be able to correct all of them. Otherwise, I am writing a blog on the same topic will publish it soon, don’t worry at all!
PROMOTE YOUR CHANNEL SOCIALLY
If you have followed all the above points, now it’s time to flare your flag to the world. You have started writing the blogs, it’s time to get readers, so start promoting your channel as much as you can. Initially, you will get the traffic from your own friends, family, and people who are connected to you. Later you must get the organic traffic (direct from google users) but you have to promote yourself first.
Social media is one and only the best option you have, promote your page on some big platforms like; Facebook, WhatsApp, Linkedin, Quora, etc. Also in the social media comment section, you can embed your page link, wherever it is necessary. Again, there’s no point embedding a soccer-orientated post if your blog is about travel. I know you will not do that, just saying! That looks more creepy and unprofessional, so share it wisely. Now you know the answer to how to start a blog?
Congratulations, you’ve now officially started your own blog channel and become a blogger as well. Guess it’s time to spread the magic with your words!