The Complete Guide On How to start a successful blog

Blogging has become the craze of the day. Everybody wants to become a successful blogger and gain incredible fame and limitless money through it. However, before jumping into the ocean one should know how to swim.

To hold a dream is truly not a bad thing but the first and an unavoidable step to start a venture. To be true, blogging isn’t everybody’s cup of tea. But at the same time, it is also true that the people who excel in blogging also have the same human brain that everyone owns. The primary key to changing your dream into reality is simply have a strong affirmation, steadiness, and trust in yourself.

Another point, If you are passionate about a subject, then you should know that the internet is the best way to share your passion with others. You may choose to create a blog for this purpose which will be your way to publish your articles and share your knowledge.

Okay, let’s come to the point. Now, if you are a person and want to start blogging, you are at the right place to get the basic guidelines about how to start blogging.

Is doesn’t matter whether you are doing blogging for a long time or have just started thinking about, you will find here a huge amount of help. I have created this amazing guide to give youngsters a snappy, secure manual for starting a blog, without learning HTML or waste your time in learning codes etc. This guide is to support people who would like to learn how to start a good blog and for that what steps they need to follow. The guide will be divided into nine sections to make it easier to understand. Know it again even if you are a beginner, you can still build your blog because all the necessary information will be provided in this guide in a simple way.

There are nine essential steps you have to follow with the ultimate objective to start a blog. If you read this guide keenly, you will have your own blog set up in 3 hours or less.

Step 1 – Select a Perfect Niche to Start Your Blog

Starting a successful blog is not an easy thing, it requires effort and regularity. Before reading this guide the first important thing is to know which subject or niche you should make your blog about. Therefore, you must select a perfect niche to start your blog. I think this is the most fundamental thing that portrays your blog. Your niche is your foundation. Picking your niche will be the starting step for your blog.

You have to make your blog on a subject you can manage ideally and about which you have to say something.

You should ensure that there is an adequate substance in this niche. You should also have the ability to write more and more about it frequently. The people shall find something new in your blog. This will make them return your blog repeatedly.

If you don’t pick your niche properly, you are basically setting yourself up for disappointment. So it is imperative to do proper research on your niche. You have to live and breathe with it as you develop your blog after some time. If your foundation is strong, there is no force to destroy your building.

Please don’t worry, starting a blog doesn’t require a major financial investment. I am going to show you all the steps you need to take so that you have all the odds on your side to make your blog achieve success.

Step 2 – Choice of Content Management System

A Content Management System or CMS is a tool that lets you easily set up your website base. You can set up a blog with a few clicks, and start posting posts.
There are several CMS with WordPress, Joomla or Dotclear, Stacey being the most common.

Also Read: Basics of CMS

I work with WordPress in my case, as it has a very wide community and helps me to do whatever I want. So I’ll be using WordPress for this tutorial and you’ll probably consider using this CMS. It is very simple to use, very easy to understand, it offers important (including SEO) plugins and very complete. You can download it from the official website.

However, I will be presenting a web host in the next part of this guide which has an option to install WordPress automatically. In general, you should be mindful that most of the experts suggest WordPress. You don’t need experience of languages like PHP or HTML to understand how it works since you’ll be able to publish all the content you want in just a few clicks with its interface. You can also find out about other CMS, but I would highly recommend choosing WordPress.

Step 3 –  Hosting:

Your website hosting is an important item you should remember. In reality, you have to select a hosting according to your financial means but also take into account the efficiency and options that the hosting provider provides. I suggest the hosting company A2Hosting that provides a bundle starting at $3.95 a month, great if you don’t have a big budget. Similarly, A2Hosting provides really good output to make your blog quicker, which is a real plus. This will allow your visitors to have greater comfort but also to have better SEO as speed is a parameter that search engines take into account. Similarly, it has a “1-Click WordPress” option which will allow you to easily install WordPress. For your host, you have to choose your blog’s domain name. This is the web address visitors can enter to access your site. In connection with your blog theme, I encourage you to select a domain name which is a short and easy name to remember if possible. Also, prefer to take the domain name with .com extension because it is globally used and is SEO friendly than other extensions. Once you’ve signed up for the hoster’s offer, you can install WordPress by clicking on the button.

You’ll be able to access your newly built blog. We will see the basic configuration in the next section which I recommend.

You’ll be able to access your newly built blog. We will see the basic configuration in the next section which I recommend.

 Step 4 – Configuration and Plugins and Theme

WordPress is easy to set up and helps you to do a lot of things. Once you have your WordPress blog installed, you’ll need to make some simple settings. I’ll present the settings I’m making on each of my blogs to make them more effective, more comfortable and more SEO friendly. First, you must enable the URL structure. For this, go to Settings-> Permalinks and I recommend you to use “Post name” as the structure. This will make the URL more user-friendly and better suited for SEO.

Then, I advise you to install Google Analytics on your blog to evaluate the traffic to your site. To do so, simply go to Google Analytics’ official website, build an account, and install the code that will be issued. This will allow you to know the source of your visitors, the more pages visited, the average duration of sessions and other related information.

WordPress is a CMS that lets you install functionality-enhancing plugins. I encourage you to install the two best plugins: Yoast SEO, and Contact Form 7.

No doubt Yoast SEO is the most powerful plugin for SEO. It will help you to make your blog and its articles are optimized for SEO. Yoast base settings are appropriate, but you can adjust them by going to the “SEO” section which will appear once the plugin is installed.

Contact Form 7 is a plugin that allows you to attach contact forms so that your visitors can contact you if needed. This is very significant and will give your visitors trust. To install a plugin, go to the Plugins section-> Add New, and then check for the plugin you’d like to install. Plugins are enabled with just a few taps, everything shows on the screen, self guides and that is really simple to do.

Lastly, it might be you want to customize your blog design. For this, you need to go to the section Appearance-> Themes-> Add new. You can then view the available templates, and install one that best fits you.

These steps are very significant, not only enabling you to customize your blog to suit what you want in your blog as much as possible but also making it useful for your visitors as well as search engines. It is very important to carefully customize it to start a good blog.

 Step 5 – Importance of Content & tips for writing articles

The content is the most critical aspect of a website. That’s why you should be particularly careful while writing articles on your blog. It is recommended that there shall be at least 600 to 700 words in an article. WordPress provides a word tracker to let you know how many words you have in your post. I suggest you follow the guidelines of the “Yoast” plugin, which are shown at the bottom of the article page. You will be able to see the things you need to improve the post to make it as good as possible.

You have to make sure that every blog post deals with a different subject so that you cover as many keywords as possible (which is called Long Tail). If possible, you should have an article with a keyword. You will have all the chances for the material you write in the search engines to be rated highest.

Another significant thing about writing articles is regularity. You should periodically publish articles, whether it is an article a week, an article every two weeks, etc. Visitors and search engines love it when a blog includes new content, so feel free to post content. But the material that you post should be of high quality, with images and videos if possible, to make the material even more appealing. So I urge you to follow the plugin’s “Yoast” suggestions to get your articles published on a strong basis. You may use a tool like Kontent Machine to assist with this.

Step 6 – Competitors & Keywords & Backlinks:

Backlinks are very important to SEO. They allow your blog to gain popularity and hence to rank in search engines. Similarly, you have to identify the keywords on which you want your blog to rank. You can use a tool like SEMrush (tutorial) to help you find keywords, which will let you see your competitors’ keywords and give you ideas. You can build an Excel file, for example, in which you list the keywords that you will be working on.

There are many approaches to acquiring backlinks. Next, you should know that the backlinks should be standard ones from the websites with the same or related niche as yours, if possible. In order to get them, you can contact the blog webmasters in your niche and offer them to write articles for them and, in exchange, put a backlink to your website in the posts. This approach is called “Guest Blogging” You may also submit your blog to the repositories, but be careful that only those with specific editorial guidelines are selected and published. You can also make your blog promotion on forums. You can also use the tools to help you build backlinks like GSA Search Engine Ranker. I’ve written an article which gives you the best way to get backlinks. The opponents can also be spied on to discover what their best backlinks are. To do so, you can use resources like SemRush (tutorial).

Step 7 – Importance of social networks and newsletters:

  Step 7 – Importance of social networks and newsletters:

Social networks are gaining really much importance these days. Nearly every Internet user uses at least one social network, whether Facebook or Twitter or Pinterest. That means you need to create a Facebook profile for your blog and a Twitter account. These social networks can be used not only to spread the posts but also to build a group. This will allow you to ensure consistent traffic and create a valuable relationship with your visitors by building a Group. You should advertise your new posts on social networks but also share some special benefits with your fans to encourage your visitors to join you on social networks.

The newsletter is also another really critical element. You’ll need to set up a newsletter once you open your blog. There are apps that are really inexpensive and you’ll collect your visitors’ emails to send out your news. For examples, you have Aweber which is undeniably the most popular newsletter service to handle. You can set up a small form on your blog that lets visitors enter their email address to receive your news. You will know that the newsletter has a high open-rate to distribute your best posts, and you can enjoy that. Please note that you do not annoy your customers, I recommend that you give them your newsletter once a week at the latest. If you are looking to start a successful blog, then you should not avoid the social networks and the newsletter.

 Step 8 – Monetization:

Once you get visitors to your blog, you can monetize it and make money with your website. There are many options to monetize a blog, and it depends heavily on the blog’s style. For example, you can select a platform that will pay you per click, i.e. you’ll receive money any time one of your visitors clicks on one of your ads. Google Adsense is a well-known advertising agency for the monetization of a blog. Simply sign up online, and you get a code to show ads on your accounts. There are many other advertising agencies like Media.net, Infolinks etc but no one parallels to Adsense.

CPA (Cost per Action) also occurs as a form of monetization. Which ensures you receive a fee when a person clicks on an ad on your blog and then conducts a certain activity as a register on the goal website. For example, you can use Payment Junction which is an advertisement company for monetization in CPA.

You may also use the method of affiliation, that is to say, you receive a fee each time a guest goes through your links to purchase a product. You have Amazon which operates an associate program and is really lucrative.

You should change the monetization mode based on your blog niche and depending on your traffic. You should visit your competitors’ sites to see how they monetize their blogs.

 Step 9 – Goals:

Finally, before you start a good blog you have to set goals according to your expectations and according to your blog’s niche. That is a very critical aspect because you are going to have to work according to your goals. The tougher they are, the more you’ll need to focus on your blog. The easiest approach is to create a spreadsheet in which you can list your targets and update this spreadsheet on the basis of achieving those goals.

 Content Marketing Benefits

Content marketing is one of the most effective means to increase website traffic, generating quality leads and conversions, boosting SEO ranking, and building website visitor engagement. These amazing benefits are why 76 per cent of B2B businesses use blogging as a direct content marketing tactic. However, starting a new blog that actually gains traction is a monumental task that isn‘t always easy to accomplish.

Conclusion of the guide

  Conclusion of the guide

As we have seen in this guide, it’s not difficult to start a successful blog. It takes effort and dedication which everyone can use. To place the odds on your side you have to follow all the steps. I wanted to write this tutorial guide, so that the largest number of people, beginner or not, could understand it. Should you need advice or have any questions please feel free to email us or ask in the contact form, I will respond as best I can. Bear in mind that developing a blog is a long-term undertaking, you’ve got to practice to get results. You shouldn’t be frustrated and persevered, it is the key to success on the internet.