Want to start a blog?
Looking for some tips to help you improve and optimize your chances of blogging success?
If you need inspiration on starting a blog, this post is an ultimate guide and a perfect place for you to get started.
Whether you want to start a blog to promote your business or just to share your thoughts on a subject you love with others, this post will show you all the steps you need to take on starting a blog successfully.
So, make yourself a coffee and get ready to start a blog today.
Starting a Blog:
This is a list of top 20 tips and advice that can help you to start blogging today.1. Choose a perfect blog topic:
“The journey of thousand miles starts with one step”Similarly your blogging journey starts with the right topic selection and choosing the perfect topic for your blog will decide whether you fail or succeed online.
People will only read your blog If you write quality and useful articles in a specific topic that serves their needs, so how could you write a quality article on a topic you don’t have any knowledge on.
Read my guide on choosing a perfect topic for your blog to avoid choosing wrong topic and get ideas on some of the money making topics on that post to give you better idea about present bogging scenario.
2. Choose a good domain name:
A good domain name is the first and most important step of being a successful blogger.Domain name plays a huge role in your internet presence and It is the key to success in blogging or any other online business.
Forget yourname.blogspot.com or yourname.wordpress.com. Get your own personal domain name for your blog that must be brandable, SEO friendly and user friendly.
3. Get a hosting:
If you’ve registered a good domain name for your blog, now you need to find a best web hosting service.There are millions of web hosting companies on the internet offering different packages according to the needs of the customer.
It is very daunting task for a newbie to find a perfect web hosting service because there are a lot of things to consider before choosing a web hosting service.
4. Choose a blogging platform:
When It comes to blogging platforms, the most common questions comes in everyone’s mind is “Blogger or WordPress?”.If you want to be a successful blogger and willing to make money blogging than you need to think about the right blogging platform.
A couple of months ago I discussed about this topic briefly on which blogging platform to choose which can help you through the process of choosing the right blogging platform.
5. Set up WordPress:
If you’ve read my post on which blogging platform to choose, you’ll know that why I’m in love with WordPress blogging platform.WordPress powers the 22% of all websites worldwide and as of 2o13 is the most popular blog software.
I’ve also shared some tips on how to install a WordPress from Cpanel on your hosting on that post, so now the next step is to set up a WordPress blog after install.
Now If you’ve registered a domain name and selected the best hosting service, It’s time to read my post on how to set up WordPress blog after install.
6. Choose a WordPress Theme:
Selecting of a perfect WordPress theme is a frustrating process for almost every newbie blogger.When It comes to WordPress themes, there are two types of WordPress themes: free WordPress themes and premium WordPress themes.
The first process is to decide you want to use a free theme or premium theme.
Free themes are really great just because they’re FREE, so If you want to consider your blog as a business and you want to make money from your blog than you need to spend money on premium themes.
If you’re having trouble on choosing a theme for your blog, you probably want to read my guide on how to choose a WordPress theme.
7. Install Wordpres plugins:
There are approximately 22,801 plugins in WordPress plugins directory at a time of writing this which makes it quite difficult to discover the beneficial addition to your blog.WordPress has proven Itself a dependable bogging platform due to It’s easy to use and install, that is the reason I’m madly in love with WordPress.
If you’ve just started a blog with WordPress and you aren’t familiar with useful WordPress plugins to use, then I’ve written a post on top 20 must have WordPress plugins to help your blog perform like a charm.
The plugins I share in that post are the ones that I’m using on my own blog and I know those plugins won’t slow down your blog and your blog will be performing like a charm.
8. Secure your WordPress blog:
It scares everyone If someone hacked their blog, especially when they spent hours on building their blog.What If your blog was a target of a rookie hacker, honing his skills to make it to the big league? All of the hard work you put on your bog, hundreds of hours you spent on building your blog, growing your traffic and readership would be lost forever.
If you want to run a serious blog than you must however take the security of your blog very seriously. With that keeping in mind I’ve written about some WordPress security tips to help you secure your blog.
9. Start writing and improve your writing:
Write the best articles you can. It is no doubt that an effective writing is a blessing for a blogger and people will love to read your content If they life your writing style.You need to engage your readers, encourage conversations, make them enjoy and keep them interested with your writing skills. If you’re going to say what everyone else is saying, don’t bother saying it because, you’ll sound stale and trite. Read my post on how to improve writing skills.
Keep in mind that great content matters so much and every new visitor to your blog will subscribe If they see your content is useful, so share your experience and know-how and publish it.
10. Include images in your posts:
Images gives the reader a chance to click through that post even If they don’t want to and having an image to your blog posts will improve the look and design of your blog and make it more appealing, so always find a good and catchy images in your blog posts.
11. Do basic things to improve your blog:
Now If you’ve started a blog, now you need to do some basic things to improve your blog and those things are:- Allow visitors to subscribe via email: Let your visitors subscribe to your blog via email and for newbies Feedburner may be great option, but many people still don’t know how to use it. Email is preferred way to subscribe to content, so make sure not to neglect it.
- Sign up for Google Analytics: Google analytics will help you to track your visitors check the traffic stats of your blog. Analytics offer a wealth of data that can improve your blog.
- Verify your blog in Google webmaster tools: Verify your blog in Google webmaster tools and let Google send traffic to your blog and tell you what to improve on your blog.
- Build a sitemap for your blog: Build a sitemap for your blog to allow the search engines to easily find and index your blog archives. Google XML Sitemaps is a great WordPress plugin to build a sitemap for your blog.
12. Network with other bloggers:
I’ve written tons of articles on my blog about the importance of relationship building and why It’s important for bloggers.According to me, It’s one of the best strategy to grow a blog because no matter what niche you’re in, you have to build a community of people related in what you do on your blog.
I’ve making en effort to responding to every comment on my blog because the interaction is what’s important. The long term goal of mine is to build a huge community on my blog, build authority and credibility. It’s time consuming, but It’s a lot of fun too. Below are few ways to network with other bloggers and build relationship with them:
- Get on social media: You want to be where other bloggers and your readers are, these days people are on social media like Twitter, Facebook and few other socializing platforms.
- Comment on other blogs: Commenting on other blogs in your niche is one of the best way to connect and build relationship with them. It can bring in lots of benefits If used widely.
- Join blogging communities: Blogging communities are where all blogging elites hangs out and few of the best blogging platforms which you should join are Blog Engage, BloKube and Bizsugar.
13. Learn SEO Strategies to improve your blog:
You might already know the importance of SEO (search engine optimization). Without having sufficient knowledge about SEO, you cannot be a successful blogger at all.SEO had became a large part of blogger’s lives and If you want to make money out of your blog, than you have to learn the SEO strategies, tips and techniques to get organic traffic on your blog from search engines.
Now a days, Internet itself is a treasure of information about SEO as information are shared widely and most frequently, so you don’t need to go anywhere and to spent money to learn SEO.
I’m also a learner of SEO and I’m still researching and cannot entitle myself as an optimizer, but I know what have worked for me and what haven’t, so I shared them on my post on SEO tips where I’ve written all you need to know about SEO and top 10 SEO optimization tips to get 1st rank on Google.
14. Start guest posting:
Guest posting is one of the best and most effective way of connecting with other bloggers, getting traffic and backlinks from other reputable blogs.Guest posting is when you write an article for another blog in your niche. At first It may seem like volunteering for the competition, but actually helps you both on the long run.
Guest posting will help you get yourself on those circles where the blogging elite hangs out. Practically this is the easiest way to build connections, while allowing others to see you as an expert on the subject.
15. Leave comments on other blogs:
If there’s one piece of advice for building traffic to a blog for
newbie bloggers more than any other, It is about leaving comments on
other blogs.Through commenting on other blogs, you’ll be reaching out to other bloggers in your niche and It is the start of fruitful relationships.
So, whenever you found something interesting to read, leave meaningful comments, bookmark blogs in your niche and revisit them regularly to build relationship with the blog owner.
Leaving comments on other blog has a lot of benefits If used widely.
16. Be open minded:
Be open minded, and always be on the lookout for new things that can help you improve your blog.You need to be experienced in order to take your blog in the right direction, and experience comes by trying, by learning new things and by being open minded.
It’s good to collect as much information as you can collect and increase your knowledge of blogging and your niche.
Read other blogs in your niche, exchange experiences and write guest posts for each other and so on. Always try to be a learner and improve your blog.
17. Come up with blog post ideas:
There are times when bloggers don’t feel of writing and they feel their mind is empty of ideas to write on their blog.Everyone runs out of things to write on their blog and this is one of the biggest challenge every blogger will face.
What to do in this case? Well, what you need is inspiration and you don’t have to force it out.
Read as much as you can, take notes and get inspiration and ideas for your future blog posts.
18. Pay attention to your readers:
Do anything of the blue to acknowledge your readers, show them that you value them, connect with them on social media and highlight them to your other readers.You should strive to build loyal readership for your blog because money comes automatically when you’ve targeted traffic and loyal readers and subscribers on your blog.
Build loyal readership first and than convert those readers in customers and make money from your blog, That is one of the best way to make money blogging.
19. Keep reading Guide and News:
This is one of the best tip of this list. Guide and News is a very cool community of bloggers where I share tips, tricks and strategies to help you grow your blog.I’ve written hundreds of articles on the strategies to help bloggers, so If you’re new here, brew nice cup and read my welcome post.
I’d say that 90% of the good stuff lies in my newsletter and community members, so I urge you join the community If you haven’t yet. You’ll also get my eBook on “Starting a Blog 101″ for free (worth $43).
Further reading to really power up your blog:
- Set up Google authorship
- Secure your WordPress blog
- Learn SEO to get good rankings
- Spice up every blog post you write
- Get Google sitelinks
- Get indexed by Google faster
- Encourage visitors to stay on your blog
- Get your blog on the right track
- Be more productive blogger
- And more.
20. Be patient:
Success in blogging isn’t overnight process and It takes months, even years to become an expert in your niche and take your blog to the next level, so being patient is must in blogging.What now?
I hope that you’ve found the post to be helpful one that has given you complete guide on starting a blog and taking it to the next level.I love blogging and I think It’s the best way to make money online.
But It’s not easy!
Don’t let people tell otherwise.
I’ve given you a complete guide on starting a blog and making money from it which can help you in anyway.
If you have any question, post a quick comment below. I’d love to hear from you and help with any issue you have.
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