Overview About The Article
Ever wanted to use a keyboard to express your emotions, share your knowledge, and even write about your experiences? Then you should probably start a blog. Good thing, we can help you with that. This article will show you how to start a blog. Especially if you are a beginner or completely know nothing about this kind of stuff.
Actually, blogging could also be a source of passive income. Most digital nomads travel the world and share their experiences through blogging, and surely earn from it. Making money online through blogging is one thing. You need to consider and learn a lot of things. For now, let’s focus first on how to start a blog. Mostly, the basic stepping stones if you consider yourself a beginner.
Once you are able to start your own website or blog, you can then learn how to create content that pays. One of the most complicated but must need if you wanted your blog post to gain traffic is learning about Search Engine Optimization or SEO.
Before anything else, we would want to inform you that creating a blog or website is not free. There are some things that you need to purchase like your web builder and web host. Some other plugins, especially if you are using WordPress, are also needed to improve your blog posts.
So to give you a brief overview of how to start a blog, there are seven basic steps that you need to follow.
Steps on How to Start a Blog
1. Determine The Niche of your Website
The niche of your blog will determine your target market. When we say niche, it is a more focused type. It is marketed to a specific type of people. This follows what category your website will fall under.
There are actually a lot of website niche ideas for you. Here are some of them:
- Fashion
- Makeup
- Cooking
- Technical
- Reviews
- Gaming
- Online Tools and Apps
To know more, read our Best Niche Site Ideas article.
The problem of most people who are planning to start a blog is really determining the niche. You cannot just pick one and then change it the day after. When you are serious about something, you should really go for it.
Choosing your blog niche should be a combination of your passion, knowledge, skills, and experience. Your passion will determine what you really want to do, teach, and share on your blog. For example, if you are fond of cooking, you can start there. Your skill and knowledge should come next. You cannot share something that you really don’t know. Most people look on the internet the things that they are not familiar with, and hopefully, your blog will give them what they are looking for. Experience is one important thing to consider yourself reliable. People would like to read things from real people. Sharing your experience to help people is a good way to determine your blog niche.
2. Think of Your Website Domain Name and Choose A Web Host
Your domain name can be anything. This is the name of your website. You can think of something from your niche, use your own name, or anything under the sun. But the best thing to do is think of something that really makes sense and has a connection to what content you are planning to write.
On the other hand, you can choose a web host of your preference. Each one of them provides similar and unique features. It is better if you choose based on your web needs and preferences. Most people would choose based on prices, but end up choosing not the best for them.
Here are some of the best web hosts you can choose from:
There are more from where they came from. To help you pick which web host is best for you, read The 30 Best Web Hosting Services.
3. Choose a Web Builder
It is no secret that WordPress is by far the most popular web builder, especially for blogging. Based on experience, WordPress is easy to use and has great features and functions. But we are not promoting it. It is good to say that we are suggesting using WordPress if you are a beginner in blogging. But to make it clear, you can still choose which web builder you preferred to.
Here are some web builders for you:
For more options, read The List of Best Web Builder to Use on Your Website.
4. Choose a Theme for your Website
Before anything else, here is a guide on how to create a website for you to be more familiar with the things to consider.
Let’s say you chose WordPress for blogging. One of the steps on how to start blogging is choosing a perfect theme for your website. Of course, you could choose any themes you’d like. But it is better to have a nice color scheme.
You can have free themes, but they have limited features. However, there are paid ones with better designs and styles. Here are some websites where you can but themes for WordPress:
- StudioPress
- ThemeForest
- Envato Elements
- ThemeIsle
How to CHoose a Theme on your WordPress website
1. Log in to your WordPress account. Go to yourdomainname.com/wp-admin
2. Scroll down and click Appearance
3. Select Themes
4. For free themes offered by WordPress, click on Add New.
5. You can now see the free themes option offered by WordPress.
5. Use WordPress Plugins
Plugins are used to improve your web features. Your need for plugins depends upon your website. Most plugins cost more than others. This will be part of your investment to create a better website. Although this will take an extra cost, here are some of the basic plugins that should not be absent on your website:
Yoast SEO
This is used to optimize your SEO. You can manage your meta description, page title, site map, and robots.txt.
Elementor
The elementor plugin is the WordPress landing page. You can create a home page and about page if you will step up your game and upgrade to Elementor Pro.
WordPress Rocket
Used for:
- Minifying (Javascripts; HTML; CSS)
- Minimizing the bloating of the whole database
- CDN integrating
6. Start Writing For Your Blog
You are now near the end of how to start a blog. In this portion, you are now actually doing the blogging. Please take note that it is better to have quality content that will appear on search engines when people search for a keyword.
For Search Engine Optimization, here is the article, SEO for Beginners, to easily understand and be guided on what to do to optimize your content.
You can also use SEO tools like Semrush, Moz, Ahrefs, etc. to help you analyze your keywords, traffic, competitors, and SEO.
In order to produce good quality content with correct grammar, consider using Grammarly and other grammar-checking tools.
Writing Tips:
- Quality is the number one key. Make sure your content makes sense and your readers will surely get something from it.
- Correct formatting of H2, H3, etc. Is a must.
- Create posts that readers can relate
- Technicality-wise, the simpler the better.
7. Promote Your Website and Your Content
To gain more traffic for your website, your content should be marketed. Here are some of the ways to promote them:
Guest posts
If you happen to have an affiliate or a blogger friend who has their own website, you can ask them if you can do a guest post. You will write your own content and post it on their website. Make sure to put links going to your website in most portions of the post. This will give you good backlinks and promotions for your blog.
Backlinks
The best way to promote your blog and to gain traffic is by placing backlinks on websites like Reddit and Quora. Look for conversations with the same topic as your post and put the links. Make sure that your post on these websites won’t look too spammy so that people will actually notice them.
Executive Summary
There are seven steps on how to start a blog. They are as follows:
- 1. Determine The Niche of your Website
- 2. Think of your website domain name and choose a web host
- 3. Choose a web builder
- 4. Select a theme for your website
- 5. Use Plugins
- 6. Start writing
- 7. Promote your blog
Final Words
We hope that this article was able to help you learn how to start a blog.
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