Introduction

Blogging is a great side gig to earn revenue. People create blogs for various reasons. They may do it as a hobby to spread information on a particular subject. Some people can use their effective writing skills to form blog posts.

Sometimes, people tend to promote their businesses through blogs. A study shows that 53% of people use blogging to market their contacts.

So, blogging is a piece of information on a particular subject. It is aimed towards a target audience.  Knowing the right procedure to initiate a blog serves as a pathway. By walking on this pathway, you can easily achieve great success.

However, not knowing how to start a blog correctly will lead you down the river of myths. Various myths are associated with blogging.

First of all, people think that blogging is aimed at all the people out there in the market. But satisfying each individual is technically not possible.

People have different wants, requirements, and preferences. So, the bloggers must research their target audience before creating a blog. The content should be able to satisfy the requirements of the target audience.

For example, let’s say you want to start a blog in a sports niche. You should research the target audience and then start blogging. Your target audience includes all the sports fans. You should keep their interests and requirements in mind before creating the content.

The second myth instilled in the minds of the people is related to the quantity of the blog content. Bloggers tend to make a mistake while deciding to create blogs. They give more importance to the number of blogs than to their quality.

However, consistency, along with the quality of the content, is crucial in blogging. This article will explain in detail how to start a blog.

You can learn how to make money from blogging through a step by step procedure. But before that, let us know what the purpose of creating a blog is.

Purpose to Start a Blog

You should always have an incentive to do something. Without an incentive, you cannot indulge in a field for very long. So, before creating your blogs, you should know the purpose behind them.

The purpose of formulating blogs can be known by answering the following questions:

• How can blogging help you in the future?
• What is an interesting topic on which you can write?
• Do you want to practice blogging to earn money?
• Will blogging serve as a catalyst to market your brand?

There are various purposes for which an individual can create blogs. Let us have a look at them.

1. Blogging Disseminate Information

Blogging is one of the finest ways to share your information with the public. This information can relate to your brand, business, any topic, or a field you love.

You can share information through your blogs in various ways. Construct your information in the form of a step-by-step guide or promotional content. 

To share your information in the best possible way, you should know various skills. With a dash of practical communication skills and creative imagination, a blogger can create great blogs.

For example, you are a traveler. You can publish your blogs in a variety of locations.The blogs will serve as a guide for tourists.

On the other hand, you may have your own business. Here, the blogs will help you to market your products and brand and, hence, increase its outreach.

2. Update the Content

This is the era of digitalization and technological innovations. Technology poses dynamic trends in the environment. Numerous things can change even when you sleep at night.

This compels the bloggers to update their content periodically and create a successful blog. 

Old content will keep you at a disadvantage against your adversaries. The target audience requires fresh content, which can help them in their functions.

For example, you may create a guide for prospective students to pursue a profession. However, with time, the rules and regulations related to the career changed.

In such situations, you should always update your information. No one will go through your blog in case the information is outdated. This will tarnish your professionalism for future blogs as well.

3. Content for Others

Blogging does not only mean content for yourself but also content for others. This means you can reach others by creating a blog with appropriate blogging platform for them. This will help to market your brand and boost your ranking.

For example, you may create content for a company. This company can be a law firm, a travel agency, a digital marketing agency, etc.

4. Develop a Relationship

Blogging helps you communicate with your target audience. When you share similar ideas or opinions, your target audience tends to relate to you.

Communication is a two-way process. The comment section on the blogs helps the target audience to communicate with the bloggers. They can add their queries, doubts, or ways by which you can improve your content through the feedback.

Thus, blogging helps people improve their decision-making capabilities of people.

A good communication process also fosters credibility and trust between the blogger and the audience. When you share information free of charge with the audience, it helps them. 

For example, a travel guide helps people decide their destinations. A step-by-step procedure for becoming a software developer helps them pursue their career. This article itself serves as a guide for people to learn how to set up a blog.

Good quality content attracts a larger target audience. This further leads to a good ranking for your content. This is known as the compounding effect. Research shows that 67% of the blogs earn greater leads, and 97% of them have inbound links.

5. Monetize Your Business

One of the most effective reasons for creating a blog is to monetize your business. Blogging helps you share information to promote your brand.

For example, let us assume that you are a digital marketer. You can create blogs that exhibit your brand’s name and work experiences. This will help the clients learn about your business. In the case of good content, they can connect with you and acquire your services.

Blogs serve as one of the most credible ways to exhibit your knowledge in a field. Besides enhancing your resume, it gives you an advantage during the interview procedure.

According to a study, approximately 53% of the blogs serve to enhance content marketing. Another study shows that 67% of blogs can attract more leads.

This technological era has transformed bloggers into digital nomads. This means that they roam digitally to find business and provide the required blogs.

To monetize your business effectively through blogging, you should pay attention to certain points.

First of all, bloggers should understand the demand and supply levels. This means they should know the demand level of the various blogs. Accordingly, they can arrange the supply of content.

There is another way to monetize the business through blogging. Bloggers can promote affiliate products through their blogs. Promoting affiliate products through interlinks improves the brand’s image by enticing a larger target audience.

6. Portfolio

A blog on a specific topic shows your interest in it. It can be an effective portfolio during job opportunities. You can pursue your career in blogging as a side gig. This helps you in various ways.

First of all, you can earn security in terms of income.

Secondly, blogging in a field helps to refine your knowledge in that field. This serves as a plus point for you in the interview procedure. Thirdly, a blog is more credible and enhances your CV or resume. It exhibits your professionalism in the field.

When you create blogs, prospective employers know your passion and dedication in the respective field. They can verify your skills through blogs.

For example, you may be a content writer. In order to get a job opportunity with a company, you can exhibit your portfolio. Blogs serve as the best portfolio. You can show various types of blogs you’ve written earlier.

There are different types of topics on which you may have written content. These topics include travel and tourism, employment and HR, marketing and promotion, etc.

7. Personal Branding

Blogs help to build your personal brand. Personal branding serves as an effective way to show your professionalism. There are various ways to build a personal brand.

You can create your personal brand through social media platforms. These social media platforms can include LinkedIn, Twitter, etc. But, blogging is the best way to build a brand around yourself.

Learn How To Start a Blog and Make Money in 2023

Step 1: Type of Blog Niche

A niche refers to the topic around which your content revolves. It is the deciding factor for the success of your blogs. Hence, choosing a suitable niche will help you in your career in blogging.

There are various things that you should know before deciding on a niche. In the absence of these features, you will lose your target audience. Most importantly, a blogger should assess the supply-demand level of different topics.

In the event that the supply does not coincide with the demand, they should act accordingly. There can be two situations when the demand and supply levels do not align.

In the first situation, the supply can be greater than the demand. In this case, the bloggers should not create a blog on a particular topic. This is because it will not reap them additional benefits due to low demand.

In the alternative, supply could be less than demand. This situation requires bloggers to create blogs to match up with the demand. The requirement of the blogs will be met, and the gap between demand and supply will be maintained.

You should pay heed to the following points before deciding your niche:

1. Interesting Topic

Various bloggers tend to start writing blogs but lose interest gradually. This is because they do not have enough interest in the niche.

So, you should choose a topic that interests you to start your blog. However, your interest should not be short-term. A short-term interest will stop you from writing blogs in the future.

Research shows that a significant percentage of bloggers create blogs in the IT sector. Seeing this report, a person from an arts background starts writing blogs in the IT field.

Initially, he or she conducts extensive research and writes articles. But later, the topic becomes monotonous and does not interest the blogger. So, you should choose your topic very carefully.

To choose an interesting topic, look at the following tips:

Create a List

First of all, you should make a list. This list should contain all the topics that interest you. It can include as many topics as you like. But, make sure you have long-term interest in these topics.

For example, your topics can include:

1. Personal finance

2. Investment or stock market

3. Digital platforms

4. Games

5. Photography

6. Sightseeing, tours, travel, and hotels

2. Books and Magazines

Reading is an extensive topic. It can be further broken down into various subtopics. While creating a new blog, you can focus on the books and magazines you have read. The categories of these novels help you identify your favourite topic.

For example, you may have read the novels Harry Potter, Divergent, Insurgent, and Allegiant. This shows that your interest is more in drama and fiction. In this case, you can create blogs where you review such novels.

3. Past Jobs or Experiences

While deciding your topic, you should go back down the Memory Lane. This will help you remember your past jobs and experiences. These jobs will help you determine your skills and interests in a particular field.

For example, you may have been a technical content writer in your past jobs. In such cases, you can focus on a niche in the related field. This means you can take up software development and technology as your topic.

4. Accomplishments

Accomplishments help you gain experience and expertise in a particular field. You can easily write about your accomplishments. This is because you have undergone the same situation and successfully come out of it.

For example:

1. You have won many awards in photography.

2. The procedure you conducted to gain weight or lose weight.

3. The way you successfully fought with your acne problems.

Step 2: Conduct Research

After choosing an interesting topic, you should conduct extensive research. The research helps you in various ways.

First of all, you can know the long-term benefits of your topic through research. Knowing this information is crucial to earning money over a longer period of time through your blogs.

For example, you should not write blogs on current topics like:

• Latest technology in 2023

• Useful apps of 2023

• Elections of 2023

Second, the research informs you about the industry’s competitive topics. For example, you may like to write on the topic of cricket. But this topic has competition from influential websites.

On the other hand, you can write on the topic of German Shepherds or Bulldogs. Such topics have low competition. The target audience of dog lovers would love to read blogs on these topics.

To conduct research, you should use Google Trends. It helps you search for various key terms. According to the key terms, it shows you the interest of the audience in a topic.

The interest may be constant, increasing, or decreasing. You should avoid writing about a topic that has decreasing interest. Such a topic does not have demand.

As a result, it will allow you to earn a small amount of money from your blog. So, focus on writing about a topic with stable or increasing interest.

Step 3: Specific Niche

Writing for all the people out there in the market is not possible. If not all, then writing for a broader target audience is also not a good idea. So, the bloggers should aim to decide on a specific niche for their new blog post.

A broader topic will pose greater harm than benefit. It will increase your competition among the industry’s million bloggers.

For example:

• You may want to write on the topic of dogs. But this is a broad topic and increases the competition for you. So, you can make your topic more specific. Do this by writing about a specific breed of dog, like a bulldog.

• Instead of writing on human health, you can choose various specific topics. These topics may be related to: How to gain weight? How to reduce your weight? Healthy eating, yoga, meditation, etc.

• In the topic of dance, you can choose various subtopics. These sub-topics may include contemporary dance, hip-hop dance, breakdance, etc.

The best way to choose a specific topic for blog theme is by using the Google search engine. First of all, search for your broader key term on Google.

After you get the results, go to the bottom of the page. This is the window where various similar results appear. These synonymous outcomes are a sub-topic of your main topic.

For example, you may search for blogs on Google. In such cases, these results can include- the ways to create a blog, how to earn through a blog, how to monetise your blog, etc.

The second way to choose your specific niche is by using the AdWords keyword planner. You can put the search term in the planner. It helps you to check the average monthly searches and the competition level of the topic. 

The three types of competition levels are low, medium, and high. You can choose a topic with a good search ranking and low competition.

For example, a good topic may have 5000–10,000 searches per month. It also has a low level of competition.

Profitable Niche to Make Money Blogging

You should find out if the brands advertise for your blog topic. If they do, then your topic is profitable. You can monetize and make money from your blog through Adsense ads.

There is another way to choose a profitable topic. It suggests that your topic should be able to sell affiliate products. Amazon’s affiliate product program pays bloggers a 10% commission.

For example, you could write a blog about popular men’s sports shoes.In this blog, you can add affiliate links and sell Amazon affiliate products. This way, you can monetize your blog.

Step 4: Choose a Domain Name

A domain is the name of the blog, or the name of the website. It is one of the crucial attributes of setting up your blog. You should choose a domain name for your blog after keeping various points in mind.

Changing the domain later is a hectic process. It includes transferring your website from the old domain to the new domain.

Before creating a domain, make sure to satisfy the following points.

Keywords

A domain should have keywords related to your topic. This will improve your blog’s ranking in the Google search engine. A domain with the required keywords also gives an idea to the users. This idea relates to the topic of your blogs.

Use “.com”

.com is the oldest and most extensively used phrase of a domain. It helps to build the credibility of your brand. However, nowadays, there are various other phrases like .org, .blog, .ninja, .net etc.

You should avoid using such phrases. The less knowledgeable audience always tends to type .com in a domain. So, it is likely to increase the target audience visiting your website.

For example, Your domain name may be “efa.ninja.” A person who has less knowledge of the field may search your website.

He or she may type “efa.ninja.com.” This name will direct users to an error page. Hence, you can lose your prospective customers or leads.

No Hyphens

Do not put hyphens in the domain. Generally, domains with hyphens are spam or contain malware. Second, a domain with hyphens may result in user typos.

It becomes difficult to type the domain name. Sometimes, the users may also type the name of the site without the hyphen. In such cases, they may land up on your competitors’ website or a similar website.

For example, your domain name may be “bestt-shirts.com.” A competitor in your industry may use the name “besttshirts.com.” Due to confusion, users may land on the competitor’s blog site.

Length

Make sure to keep your domain short and crisp. It is better to keep it below 15 characters. A long domain is difficult to remember, and the users may commit typos while searching for it.

Extensive

Do not make your domain specific to a particular topic. This will inhibit your growth in the long term. For example, you may be operating an e-commerce website. The domain name of the website may be “kidsshoes.com.”

In the future, you may sell kids’ clothes along with shoes. So, this domain name is likely to contradict your future performance. You can rather keep the domain name as “kidsproducts.com.”

Easy and Unique

A domain should be easy to pronounce and spell. Such a domain can easily be shared orally. Also, it is easy for users to memorize.

You should also create a catchy and unique domain. Make sure that it is not a trademark. A unique domain entices users. Hence, it creates a permanent image in the audience’s mind.

No Double Letters

Double letters in the domain can lead to typos. Hence, it will reduce the traffic visiting your website. For example, you should avoid using a domain like “dresssimple.com”.

Name Generators

Research shows that there are more than 360 million registered domain names. Hence, you may think that all the unique names have already been allotted to various websites. In such cases, you can create a domain name using a name generator.

Step 5: Choosing a Hosting

Once you have decided the domain name of your website, choosing the blog hosting is the next step.

Integrating the services of the right web hosting company is very crucial. The services are affected by various factors, like the fact that initially you may not need more horsepower.

There is intense competition in this field. So, you can receive good quality at a low price. Make sure to choose a host with a good track record. Such a host helps you create a credible site with high engagement.

Making the wrong choices may lead to various issues. These include security problems, blog crashing, and slow speed. Additionally, switching to another host is a daunting task.

Certain features can help you choose the right web hosting service. Here are some quantifiable attributes of good hosting.

1. Performance

The users give preference to a fast website. Research verifies this fact. It shows that a business already loses 25% of the prospective customers if its websites take 3 to 4 seconds to load. Excellent performance means that the hosting should have a minimum uptime of 99.94%.

2. Offers

Hosting services should provide various offers to users. Such offers relate to excellent customer support. The hosting companies can include various WordPress experts in their team.

They may, on the other hand, integrate excellent hosting services and provide 24 hour customer support.

3. Price

Generally, people who initiate their career in blogging do not want to break the bank. As a result, you should look for a web host that offers high-quality services at a low cost.

Many hosting services have cheap starting plans. These plans help people publish their small or medium-sized blogs. Hence, they are perfect for starters.

Some of The Best Hosting Services for Building a Blog

1. Bluehost

Bluehost is an excellent hosting service recommended by WordPress. It has an uptime of 99.99% and an easy-to-use interface.

The service provides excellent customer service that is available 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Due to its partnership with Block Tyrant, there is a 60% discount on the services.

Features:

• One of the special attributes of Bluehost is its 30-day money-back guarantee. The service is credible and affordable.
• Bluehost has more than two million websites globally.
• Bluehost’s average loading time is 461 milliseconds.
• Another advantage is the pre-installed WordPress feature of the service.
• It also provides free web migration. This means that the user can switch from another hosting company to Bluehost without incurring additional expenses.
• The cost of hosting is $2.75 per month.

2. A2 hosting

A2 Hosting is an easy-to-use web hosting service. It was founded in 2001 by Brian Huthig. Initially, the name of the hosting service was Iniquinet.

Later in 2003, it was named A2 hosting. After Anna Arbour, Michigan, the new name was retained. This is the place where the company operated.

Features:

• Besides being WordPress-optimized, the hosting service provides free site migration.
• It promises 20 times faster speed.
• With excellent performance, the service also provides good security to the users.
• The shared hosting plans even have Turbo servers.
• A2 Hosting has received many awards, and it offers 99.9% uptime.
• The support team of the hosting service is known as “Group Crew.” This team is available 24 by 7 for the customers.
• The hosting also provides unlimited data storage and sharing capacity to the users.
• You can enjoy free solid-state drives.
• The monthly fee is $3.9.
• There is a 30-day money-back guarantee for this hosting service.
• Since 2007, it has been 100 percent carbon neutral.

3. HostGator

HostGator is the leader in providing web hosting services. It ensures maximum security for the users. This is done by providing SSL certificates. These certificates contain credential information about the users.

Another specialty of the hosting service is its affordability. Plans begin at $2.75 per month. You can choose any plan according to the type of hosting you want. Apart from the monthly hosting, you can also get 36 months in advance.

HostGator has an easy-to-use interface. You can quickly set up your website in a few minutes. It is possible that you may face issues while using the hosting service.

In such cases, HostGator has excellent customer support. This service is available all around the clock. You can have a word with the experts over a call, email, or text.

HostGator has a special attribute that keeps it at an advantage over its competitors. They provide a 45-day money-back guarantee to their customers.

So, there is no problem even if you are not satisfied with their services. They can give you a refund within 45 days. HostGator is a reliable web hosting platform. WordPress also recommends it to users.

4. Dreamhost

This web hosting company Dreamhost is based in Los Angeles. It was founded by New Dream Network, LLC, on April 10, 1996. The company started hosting in 1997. Today, more than 1.5 million websites hire the services of this web hosting company.

The hosting services provide unlimited storage to users. In case of any doubt, you can seek customer support. The customer service is available 24 by 7. Sometimes, you can even have a live chat with experts.

Dreamhost maintains the credibility of the users’ information. For this, they provide SSL certificates to the users. The web hosting service is easy to operate and understand. You can run all the functions from the left sidebar of the home screen.

The facility of preparing backups is also accessible to the users. All such features are available at very affordable costs. The single-site plan is of $3.5 per month. The unlimited site plan is $9.95 per month.

You can even get cloud hosting services at this cost. DreamHost offers a 97-day money-back guarantee, which is better than any other host. So, you can get a refund in case you do not resonate with their services.

5. Siteground

Siteground has been in the hosting industry for more than 10 years. It can help you with WordPress and WooCommerce hosting. More than two million sites are hosted on this platform.

This hosting service has a solid-state drive (SSD). It also uses the content delivery network (CDN). Both of these features help the website load faster.

The web hosting company started its backup feature in 2015. It also provides unlimited data storage to users.

But the benefits of hosting services do not halt here. You can even procure additional security features. These features, however, come at an additional cost.

Siteground is built on Linux containers. You can seek expert advice if you have any problems with the usage. Customer service is available 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

The high performance of the service is verified by its uptime guarantee. Siteground guarantees a minimum uptime of 99.99%.

6. Hostinger

Hostinger provides web hosting services with many features. The special attribute of this service is that it is very cost-efficient. Other services offer the same features, but at a higher cost.

• The entry-level plan costs $0.99 per month.
• The premium level plan, on the other hand, costs $2.89 per month.
• VPS hosting is $3.95 per month.

The web hosting service is very fast due to the cache manager. It guarantees you an uptime of 99.9%. You can contact customer service if you face any problems while operating it.

Responsive support is available all day and night. The speed is facilitated due to the presence of the content delivery network (CDN).

The cloud hosting plan offers many benefits to users. You can get a free daily backup with this plan. By procuring cloud hosting, the users get free SSL for life. This SSL ensures the security of the users’ data.

7. WP Engine

WP Engine, a reliable web hosting service, was founded in 2010. The headquarters of the company are located in the United States.

It was founded by Ben Metcalfe, Cullen Wilson, and Jason Cohen. This web hosting company is privately held. It ensures maximum speed to the users.

You can verify the credibility of the company. It is a large scale company with more than 500,000 customers in over 120 countries.

The three data centers of the company are located in different places. These places include Tokyo, London, and the Midwest of the United States.

WP Engine has powerful security and responsive customer support. It is best for WordPress websites. The users can perform daily backups and get free site migration facilities.

Other special attributes of the WP engine include:

• CDN (content delivery network) usage to provide faster loading times.
• facilities for daily backups. This ensures the security of the data.
• WP Engine updates your WP plugins.
• Provides SSL certificates to the users to ensure the security of their data.

• Users are entitled to a 60-day money-back guarantee.

You can reap the advantages of these features. All you need to do is get a hosting plan. The cheapest WordPress hosting plan comes in at $35 per month.

8. Cloudways

Cloudways is one of the best web hosting services. The web hosting service was founded in 2009. The headquarters of this web hosting platform are located in Europe. Aaqib Gadit, Uzair Gadit, and Pere Hospital founded the platform.

Cloudways offers excellent cloud-based web hosting services. The headquarters of the web hosting company are located in Spain and Dubai.

It is a good hosting service to launch your website. It has a staff of more than 30 members. The staff has launched more than 25,000 web applications on 12,000 servers.

It provides effective speed and performance. Your data gets full security from Cloudways. You can even sign up for a free 3-day trial. The plan for this web hosting service starts at $10 per month.

Step 6: Choosing a Theme

The entire blog theme describes the appearance and presentation of your WordPress website. So, a relatable theme can attract the target audience to your site.

There are two types of themes: free and paid. You can find free themes in the theme directory.

Changing themes is very easy. All you need to do is open the WordPress admin area and click on “Appearance.” From there, you can choose the “themes” option. Select any of them according to your site’s requirements and the topic of the blog.

WordPress theme options even has some specific themes or blog designs for a particular subject. For example, photography themes.

So, design your blog accordingly.

The themes have images and JavaScript files. Apart from this, the themes also include three parts. These parts include the WordPress templates, style.css files, and functions.php files.

You can modify your themes by making changes in the functions.php files. All you need to do is integrate different codes into the file. The differences in the themes are due to different style.css files.

Choosing the right theme has a direct impact on your website.

Take care of the following points before choosing a theme:

1. Requirements

The theme depends on your niche and its requirements. For example, simple blogs will require themes with less design and pictures. But, other blogs may require themes with vibrant animations and pictures.

2. Support

The paid themes should have customer support facilities for the users. These facilities help the users interact with the specialists.

They can communicate with them if there are any problems with the theme. Support services can help customers using various guides or emails.

The support provided to users will be less in the case of free themes. Themes should also have regular updates. This helps the websites to align with the modified trends of the environment.

3. Code Quality

Poor quality codes and standards affect the performance of the website. They may fill your database with junk or facilitate the entry of malware. A website will also run slower if the coding is of poor quality.

There are two ways to combat the issue of bad quality standards.

The first process helps to get good code quality in the paid themes. The users should ensure that they acquire the themes from credible providers.

The second way relates to free themes. In such cases, the users should only download the themes if they have thousands of downloads.

4. Other Attributes

The bloggers may also make sure to see the other attributes according to their requirements. The theme should be 100 percent responsive to mobile phones.

Lots of research shows that mobile phone usage has increased. So, a website that can be operated easily on mobile phones has a greater target audience. As a result, it gives you an advantage over your competitors.

Secondly, the website theme should be customizable. It helps the user change the color and look of the homepage. He or she may do it according to the content and topic of the blog.

Step 7: Keyword, Topic and Content Strategy

Creating websites and blogs should not be the sole aim of any blogger. After making your blog, you should invite the audience to read it. You can do this through effective content marketing strategies.

Research shows the importance of a content marketing strategy in the blogging journey. 60% of the organizations with written content marketing strategies are doing effectively in this field whereas only 32% of the organizations with verbal content marketing strategies are doing so effectively in the field.

So, a written content marketing strategy offers many benefits. First of all, it prevents you from making the wrong investments.

Wrong investments lead to additional expenses for the company. Secondly, a content marketing strategy helps you choose the most suitable topic. Hence, a content marketing strategy serves as a guide for individuals.

You can create a content marketing strategy by taking the following steps:

1. Determine Your Goals

Before creating a content strategy, know your objectives. The goals and aim will help you to write blog posts accordingly.

Various types of goals which an individual may have are:

• generate leads or increase sales

• drive greater traffic towards the blogs

• build your business’s brand

• educate the users through appropriate information

For example, let us assume your goal is to educate the users. In this case, you will not try to integrate numerous keywords into the content. Rather, your focus will be to provide as much information as possible.

2. Conduct Extensive Research

Bloggers create blogs for their target audience. So, the content should satisfy the needs and requirements of the audience. In an alternative case, the audience will not read it. To satisfy the thirst for knowledge of the audience, you should first start by knowing them.

You can know your target audience by conducting research about them. First of all, you should know the various social media platforms that your audience uses.

Secondly, research is needed to know the type of content enjoyed by the users. You should know about the age, interests, and demographics of your target audience. This will help you mold the content accordingly as your blog grows.

3. Content Calendar

A content calendar helps you create content in an organized way. Through the content calendar, you can make updates and publish the content on time.

It also allows you to publish blogs on a regular basis and at the optimal time.Some content calendars may have additional features.

For example, the software Trello, it helps to know the people working on different tasks. The notifications remind you of the deadlines and pending tasks. Another tool that can help you create a content calendar is the Google calendar.

4. Right Keywords and Topics

In this era of digitalization, almost every individual owns a smartphone. With the help of a device, they can surf through the website and social media.

Moreover, as we all know, the coronavirus posed challenges for people worldwide. People are trying to reduce the harmful impact on their businesses.

They have increased their use of digital platforms to accomplish this. Many people are searching for information on the web.

The bloggers can reap the benefits of this opportunity. They can know the words that the users search for. These words are known as “keywords.”

For example, the users may search for a particular movie, the weather, a destination, etc. in the search engines. The keywords help the users get information on a particular topic.

Effect of Keywords on The Content

The keywords help you answer the questions of the users. Thus, you can integrate keywords into your content. This will facilitate giving the right knowledge to the target audience.

The keywords tend to increase the organic traffic to your website. This will help you rank higher on the search engines, and then, after a certain point, you can start making money online.

5. Finding Keywords

Now you know the importance of keywords for running a blog. But how do you know which keywords are suitable for your content?

There are various tools out there on the market. They help you search for suitable keywords according to your needs.

One such tool is the Moz Keyword Explorer. There are two ways to look for keywords in this tool. First of all, you can type a term to search for the keywords. Keywords similar to the given phrase will appear on the screen.

Secondly, you can type the name of the website or the page. All the ranking keywords for this website will appear on the screen. To further optimize your search, you can use the “filter” option.

By clicking on “Are you asking?” in the filter options, you can get various phrases. These terms are in the form of questions. The questions help you create content by answering them.

6. Choosing Keywords

You cannot add the whole list of keywords found by you. Instead, should choose some specific keywords according to various requirements.

These requirements are:

1. Target Audience

First of all, you should make a list of your target audience. For example, you may be writing blogs on dogs. So your target audience will consist of dog lovers. You can make the list more detailed. Do this by adding the age, interests, and culture of the target audience.

Then you can align your keywords according to the requirements of the target audience. Comprehensive research will help you in this regard. You can gain a better understanding of the terms searched by the audience by conducting research.

2. Difficulty Score

Multiple phrases and terms have different difficulty scores. You can know the difficulty score of a term using the Keyword Explorer. People usually begin their careers in blogging. So in the beginning, the difficulty score can range from 20 to 30 or even lower.

3. Search Volume

Search volume refers to an estimation of the searches for a keyword. The search volume displays results based on a month. It is good to use keywords with a greater search volume.

But quantity does not equate with the quality of the keywords. So, you can even use the key terms with lower search volumes. But, they should be suitable for the context of your material.

4. Usage of The Keywords

In the past, Google’s algorithms were not very strong. So, the websites could rank easily among the search engines. But now, ranking in the search engine is a daunting task.

You should have keywords in the content. Moreover, these keywords should add value to the information. This means the people should be satisfied with their knowledge of your content.

You should not create a separate page for each specific keyword. A single page can have any number of key terms. Before creating the content, get an idea of how to add these phrases to the text.

The keywords should blend with the content to add value to the information. You can even check the pages of other competitive websites. This will help you understand the usage of the phrases.

Step 8: Creating Content

To further enrich your brand and start a successful blog, you can also hire the services of a content writing team. Such a team has various professionals with great skills in creative writing.

They know how to modify the writing techniques according to the requirements of different clients. The words work like magic to serve the needs of the people and get your blog up and running.

For example, let us say that you have a digital marketing agency. You need to write a blog for your website. This is a promotional blog that will help you get clients and leads. 

The content writers have experience in the writing field. By having knowledge about your business, they can write intriguing information about it. Such information will compel the clients to hire your services.

First of all, content writers conduct extensive research. This research helps them know the needs of the clients. With this research, they can match your experience in the field. They can write about how you helped other similar businesses achieve great heights.

Step 9: Basic On-Page and Off-Page SEO

SEO stands for “search engine optimization.” It helps a blog stand out from the pool of competitors. You must begin by incorporating effective on-page and off-page SEO into your content. This will help to attract greater organic traffic to your website.

Both users and search engines can identify highly optimized content. Thus, SEO serves as a medium of communication between humans and robots.

The target audience searches for a blog for two reasons. First of all, they may want to quench their thirst for knowledge. Secondly, users may want to make a purchase digitally. In both cases, you need to know the importance of optimizing your blog.

Search engine optimization mainly has two types. These two types are on-page SEO and off-page SEO. Let us have a look at both of them.

On-page SEO

As the name suggests, on-page SEO is directly related to a website. It includes several features designed to attract greater traffic to the website. These aspects directly relate to the performance of your website.

The keyword topic and content strategy are explained above. This strategy is helpful for on-page SEO techniques.

Various examples of on-page SEO are:

• An optimized URL and topic of the blog.
• Various interlinks and external links.
• Fonts and text styles like Calibri, Arial, bold, italic, underline, etc.
• A simple to use blog.
• The quick loading speed of the website.
• The website is completely mobile-responsive.
• High-quality content. The content should have suitable keywords. These keywords should not alter the meaning of the information. Rather, they should answer the users’ questions.
• Image Optimization. It includes the name, size, and content of the image.

Off-page SEO

Off-page SEO includes the SEO techniques performed outside of the website. It refers to the various links, shares, mentions, etc. of your blog.

Off-page SEO is considered a passive practice. This is because it does not directly relate to the content of your blog posts. Users are drawn to your blog as word spreads about it.

So, off-page SEO facilitates on-page SEO. It helps in the content marketing strategy of the blog. The SEO practice will aid in increasing the visibility of your blog.This enhanced visibility can facilitate a good ranking for your website.

Off-page SEO and on-page SEO are complementary. The on-page SEO relates to the high-quality content of the blog. It is an active SEO process. In the absence of content, you cannot perform.

The on-page SEO relates to the high-quality content of the blog. It is an active SEO process. In the absence of content, you cannot perform off-page SEO.

But the content is of no use without off-page SEO. In the absence of a marketing strategy, your content will not reach the target audience. Thus, there will be no shares, links, mentions, or visibility of your content on social media.

Moreover, search engine algorithms may change over time. This will affect your on-page SEO strategy. But the off-page SEO strategy remains unaffected by it.

The off-page SEO policy works by sharing the content with the users. It has no relation to the algorithms of the search engine pages.

You can perform off-page SEO using the following features:

1. Social Media

The power of social media is inevitable. High-quality content spreads like wildfire on digital platforms. Google also recognizes the power of social media. It ranks the website according to its social media strength.

Moreover, Google’s algorithms give importance to mentions on social media. They consider these mentions as links. Subscribers, shares, and likes are your assets on a social media platform.

You can earn these assets on any social media platform. The choice of platform depends on your target audience. It could be Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, etc.

New subscribers relate to leads or prospective customers. You can build your social media power by following the following tips:

Be Responsive

Communicating with your followers helps to build a relationship with them. It expresses your concern for your target audience. The audience may connect with you for various reasons. They may want to appreciate your work or clarify their queries.

By helping them, you can win their trust. You should respond to the comments on your posts and direct messages.

Strong Connections

The saying “birds of a feather flock together” never gets tarnished. Maintaining strong connections on social media platforms will help your business.

These connections can help spread the word about your brand. The audience is likely to be affected by a good word of mouth referral.

Sometimes the connections can help you learn marketing techniques. Influential people following you will also enhance your brand.

Monitor Your Performance

Your sole aim should not be to create social media accounts. You should monitor your performance on them. For example, check out your mentions and shares daily.

There can be situations when your online presence is not robust. In such cases, you need to alter your off-page SEO techniques.

2. Lead Generation Forms

People can mushroom the business through lead generation forms. The lead generation forms appear on the screen when an individual opens a website. Such forms relate to the brand of the website.

They help provide information relating to the business. Once the individual enters his or her email address, the information is sent through it.

This information can be in the form of a PDF, an ebook, or some special courses. Thus, a blog can serve as a lead magnet for business.

Lead generation forms are also synonymous with the RSS subscription box. RSS stands for Rich Site Summary. These SEO techniques are crucial to gaining regular customers. People who regularly visit your customers are better than an irregular audience.

3. Blog Commenting

Blog commenting is one of the best off-page SEO techniques. It helps to attract organic traffic to your website. However, many people confuse blog commenting with black-hat SEO. Black-hat SEO is an illegal practice.

On the other hand, blog commenting is a legal practice. But it should be done legally. You should use your blog to promote your brand by providing relevant information.

4. Forums Posting

Posting on forums is a good off-page SEO technique. It helps promote your blog and website. There are various forums like Quora, Yahoo, Reddit, etc.

You can provide answers to the questions of the users on such forums. This will help you promote your brand. However, do not overtly promote your blog. Make sure to provide high-quality information. You can gain the trust of your users by responding correctly.

Step 10: Traffic Analysis

Traffic analysis is the next step after publishing your blog. You cannot simply sit after you have published your blog. Analyzing the performance of your work is crucial.

In the case of low performance, you can improve your mistakes. A good performance states that you are walking on the right path.

Traffic analysis is the best procedure to assess the success of your blog. It shows you the amount and type of traffic visiting your website.

This information is helpful in various regards. It lets you know the success of your content marketing strategy and SEO techniques.

Initially, your blog may see four types of traffic. These are:

• Direct traffic: People may search for your website by typing the URL or domain name. These people are in the path of oncoming traffic.

• Organic traffic: organic traffic includes searches from all search engines. People may use various search engines to find information. These search engines include Google, Yahoo, Bing, Yandex, Gibiru, etc.

• Social media traffic: You can promote your blog or website on social media. This is done through off-page SEO. This promotion may drive a large number of people to your website. These people come under the heading of “social media traffic.” You can get the audience from different social media platforms. Instagram, Facebook Email, LinkedIn, Twitter, and other well-known social media applications are examples.

• Referral links: sometimes, other websites may promote your blog or website. They may integrate the link to your website into their blogs. This is known as a referral link. Many people may come to your website through these links. This audience comes under this heading.

Knowledge of the type of audience is crucial. It will help you conduct search engine optimization accordingly. There are various tools that can help you in the process of traffic analysis. The three common tools are as follows:

1. Google Analytics

Google Analytics is one of the most famous and free tools offered by Google. This tool helps you conduct an analysis of your website and blogs. Analytical services are very crucial. They determine the ROI of your marketing strategy.

Google Analytics can give you answers to various questions. These questions may include: “How the users find your website? How do they use it? How often do they visit it?”

Before using Google Analytics, you should give the tool consent to use your blog or web page. This consent will help the tool get information about your website. You can do this by typing the tracking code on the blog pages of your website.

This tracking code helps Google Analytics track data about your website. The data is in the form of a coding language. The language gives information about the activities of users. 

The code also serves another purpose. It creates cookies on the users’ screens. Cookies are used to create an anonymous ID. The ID helps to get information about the activity of the visitors.

Google Analytics helps with the ABC  process. ABC stands for acquisition, behaviour, and conversions.

A-acquisition

The acquisition helps the bloggers know the source of their audience. For example, you may want to know information about organic traffic.

You can learn which search engine provides the most organic traffic to your blog. To know this, click on the “source view.” Similarly, the “reference view” helps you know the reference source of the audience.

B- behaviour

As the name suggests, behaviour helps to know the activity of the users. It can include the average time spent on the website or the bounce rate.

C- conversions

Conversions tell you the number of people who become regular customers. It helps to know the sales generated from the prospective leads.

2. Google Search Console

Google Search Console is another free service from Google. It helps you assess the performance of your site and group. Even without signing up, your website can rank on the search engine pages. Google Search Console helps in various ways.

You can check the visibility of your website using this tool. Other features that you can learn about using Google Search Console include:

• Internal and external links related to your website.

• any issues on your site.

• Set up a domain for free.

• It provides utmost security. You can check for the presence of any malware on your website.

• The traffic appearing on your website.

• The keywords are what direct visitors to your page.

• It helps you check the speed report of your website. You can do this using the Chrome user experience report tool.

The tool was known by a different name until May 20, 2015. It was then called the Google Webmaster.

3. Open Web Analytics (OWA)

This is another piece of open-source software. It helps you assess the visibility of your website. Open Web Analytics was founded by Peter Adams.

The tool is written in PHP. My SQL database’s usage gives it certain benefits. It enables it to work with an AMP solution stack.The software is licensed under the GPL.

It helps to evaluate the data on websites. These websites may run on WordPress and Mediawiki. You can assess the way traffic visits your site.

Open Web Analytics is customizable. This means you can use it according to your requirements. This tool can be used for the following purposes:

• It helps you track your competitors’ growth. With this record, you can modify your strategies.

• It gives you extensive reports, metrics, and dimensions related to your site.

• The tool protects your privacy. It has various privacy controls.

• OWA provides detailed usage of your website. It even tells you how the previous and next web pages were used.

• It helps to know the keywords searched for by the audience. This information is very useful. It helps you optimize your SEO techniques.

Step 11: Improvisation

After you know the performance of your blogs, you can improvise on them. Improvisation means an improvement in the defects and shortcomings of your website. It helps you learn from your mistakes so that you do not repeat them in the future.

This is a technological era. Various updates are made almost every second. So, improvisation also helps you update your blogs.

Updating means making changes to the blog by refining it. These changes are made according to the modified requirements of the target audience.

You can improve your blog using the following tips:

1. Consistency

You should make changes to post fresh content on your blog. This will help you gain more organic traffic. Consistent bloggers are likely to be more successful than inconsistent ones.

Consistency relates to regular blog writing. The importance of consistency has even been verified through research. The research was conducted between two businesses.

Example: Business A posts regular content more than once per week. On the other hand, business B posted content once a month, irregularly. Business A received twice as many subscribers as Business B.

2. Focus and Dedication

You should give full focus to your blog writing. This will help you achieve your goals. Never forget the four-word procedure that helps you to attain success. This strategy aims at “learning, practicing, implementing, and later, improvising.”

You should have a definite purpose, passion, and dedication in your heart. This will help you to reach the zenith of success.

3. Call to Action

It is possible that you do not integrate a call to action into your blog. But the call to action is very important. It helps you convert the leads into regular customers.

Sometimes, users may come to your website. But they may not know what to do next. In such cases, they can leave your website with just a click. So, a call to action serves as a guide or a plan for the users. It helps them communicate with you.

You can incorporate a call to action in your blog. Such a call to action can refer to your LinkedIn account, Twitter ID, or even an email.

The users can communicate with you through these addresses. If they have an interest in your business, they may clear out their queries with you.

4. Avoid Grammatical Mistakes

Grammatical mistakes pose severe consequences for your blogs. First of all, they exhibit bad on-site SEO. This further affects the readability score.

The readability score and grammar/punctuation have a crucial impact on a website. They can affect your ranking on Google’s search engine pages.

Moreover, grammatical errors and typos also exhibit your unprofessionalism. It will have a bad impact on the users. They dislike visiting websites with numerous grammatical errors and mistakes. The reason is that such content is difficult to read and understand.

This is an era of technological upgrades. So, there are many tools that can help you avoid grammatical mistakes.

For example, you may use the Grammarly software. It is free to use. By installing the Grammarly keyboard, you can check for grammatical errors and mistakes. You can also get the premium plan at an additional cost.

There are various websites to check the readability score. One such website is data.yze. This website has certain features. It helps to know the readability of unlimited words. You can even see how many passive voice sentences or difficult words are in it.

5. Right Strategy

The traffic analysis may tell you the weak points of your blogs. In this case, you should alter your strategy. Form a technique that helps you to monetize your business. You can improvise when creating compound articles.

The compounding effect of articles means that you share your content to increase the leads. When you create useful content, it ranks on Google search engines.

The content of a blog serves as the soul of the business. In the absence of good content, the visitors will switch off from the website in a click. However, high-quality and promotional content will lead them to become regular clients. 

So, it is the content that helps the business build an audience. Make sure to keep your content unique. Any plagiarism will decrease your credibility.

6. Giveaways

Giveaways are a special technique to increase your organic traffic. They serve as an incentive for the people. In the case of favourable giveaways, leads can become your clients.

Research shows the importance of giveaways. Giveaways helped a business get 125% more email subscribers.

7. Website Loading Time

You can improve the loading time of your website. For this, check the loading time in different browsers. The different types of browsers are Google Chrome, Mozilla Firefox, etc.

8. Reply to Comments

Many people may come to your website. To make them your regular customers, you should interact with them. The comment section is the best way to communicate with your target audience. So, you should always reply to your customers. Replying will help to clear their queries.

Conclusion

The above details are a guide on how to start a blog. Creating and publishing a blog is not enough. You need to create great strategies to promote it if you want your blog to succeed. 

A good mix of strategies, techniques, and tools will help you blog. Your website’s security and loading time are determined by the tools you use.A hosting service or tool that can provide you with a backup should be preferred over others.

The right domain name determines your target audience. Before creating a blog, decide on an interesting topic. While creating a blog, your sole focus should be on it. Take care of the content, techniques, and other advertisement strategies.

In the end, you can publish your blog. After publishing it, there are other features that you must take care of. Bloggers need to analyze traffic. The performance helps them to improvise and adopt new strategies. A good blogging platform is a great way to make money.

Thinking about starting a blog? Now, it’s time to start, and you are ready to create one! Good Luck!