Have you ever wanted to create your own blog? Or you have one but have no idea how to get it to the next level? If your answer is YES, then you are in the right place. It’s important to know the basics of creating a blog, starting with a domain and ending with building Instagram templates for promoting your blog on social media.
To create a blog and become a blog-writer, you will need to choose the right niche for it. A three-step process for verifying your blog’s success: check the niche size, analyze your competitors, find the potential for monetization. This activity can help you gain a clear understanding of the reasons to proceed.
Setting up a Blog from scratch
When starting your own blog, first of all, you need to choose a domain name and a web hosting account. The domain is the name of your site. It is not something physical that you can touch or see, it’s a set of characters that give your site a personality like the title of a book or a place. Your domain “tells” your visitors which blog they are visiting.
The wrong web hosting can cause a lot of problems with your new blog. Your web host is really important while creating a blog that is well-functioning. Obviously, you must choose a reliable provider.
Then you need to update the DNS record at the domain registrar to point to your web host’s servers. DNS stands for Domain Name System and is used to direct any incoming user to the server’s IP address. When the user enters “WebHostingSecretRevealed.net”, the DNS records will get the IP address of my web host and serve the site to the user.
Choosing where to start your blog is the 1st thing you need to do. WordPress is one of the largest platforms for blogging in the world with countless plugins as well as an almost infinite number of ways to create and layout your blog.
Whichever hosting company you will choose, just make sure they have one-click install options for blogging platforms like WP. This will greatly simplify the setup process. To start blogging with WP, you need to install the system on your web host. This can be done manually or automatically using the one-click install app. Both methods are quite simple and can be done easily.
Designing the look of your Blog
Now that you have a WordPress (or other blogging platforms) account, you need to select a theme. The WordPress themes are the collections of templates, files, and style sheets that define the look and feel of your WP website. In the theme editor, you can customize:
- Site properties – your blog/company name, logo, and other navigation elements
- Home page settings – choose what to display on the blog home page: a static page or recent posts
- Colors – choose colors for fonts, buttons, blocks, and other elements
- Additional styles – it’s where you can place your own CSS
- Menu – edit the location of your menu navigation
Use the popular free WordPress themes on the market. And best of all, you can install any of them with one click. Go through the list and find what really suits your business and the main purpose of your new blog. Once you see a theme you like, you can install it on your blog by clicking “install” next to the theme name and then “activate”.
Even though the WordPress theme you will choose to use already has a certain pre-configured design, you can still change parts of it as you want. Since you probably already have your site’s title and slogan, you’re going to add your company logo and icon.
To add your logo, simply click the “select logo” button. WP will tell you which graphics are suitable for logos. After uploading your logo, you should see it in the preview window. To add your own icon, click the button labeled “select Image” in the “site icon” section: the process is very similar here WordPress will tell you which image it needs.
Some themes allow you to set a basic background for your entire site. Most often, these options allow you to set your own image or a solid color as the background. In any way, you can get some pretty interesting effects if you experiment with it.
Keep in mind: While WordPress offers many features, it lacks some important ones. These features can be added via plugins. WordPress lacks these features to make it lightweight.
Creating and optimizing content
If you are building a blog, you will probably need at least some of the following pages:
- Blog – WP creates this section for you automatically. By default, all of your recent blog-posts will be listed right on the home page
- About – tell visitors what the blog is about and who is behind it
- Services – to list your products and/or services and tell people why they should buy them
- Contact – so people can contact you directly
- Testimonials – from your previous clients
The process for creating a new page in WordPress is the same no matter what page it is. To do this, go to your WP dashboard and then select “pages” and “add new”. Be careful with choosing topics for your articles and write them using proper grammar and vocabulary.
Optimize your content for search engines. SEO (Search Engine Optimization) is the process that website owners use to bring traffic to their web pages from search engines (such as Google or Yahoo). SEO includes a lot of different techniques and tactics. You, as a blogger, will have to familiarize yourself with them.
No talking about any complex processes here. As a minimum, you will need to do the following for each blog post or each page you publish on your own blog: perform keyword optimization and add SEO meta-tags to all pages.
After all these activities start informing your friends, family, and colleagues about your new blog. Basically, you should inform anyone who might be interested in reading your content. Enjoy your new job as a blogger!
