How to Create a Blog on WordPress (2023)

Are you new to blogging and looking into ways to create a blog? Creating a blog may seem overwhelming to a person with no experience and skillset in the niche. However, it is not as difficult as you may think. Platforms like WordPress make the task a lot easier, as you don’t need to write code and build your website from scratch. All you need to do is study how WordPress functions in order to set up your blog. We give you this instructive article to help you along the way. So, take a deep breath and carefully go through the 10 steps below.

Why Are You Creating a Blog?

Define Your Niche

Why are you creating a blog? This question looks rather straightforward but requires dedicated thinking and attention. A number of reasons could be powering your decision, such as making money or sharing personal experiences. Or why not both? Depending on your current expertise or hobby, you should choose a niche that you are passionate about. Passion means inspiration, and you should feel inspired while working on your new project. What’s the point in doing something you are NOT enthusiastic about, anyway? However, passion and inspiration are not enough. Your blog niche and the topics you will write about should be intriguing to your audience. You should research the topics and check whether they are traffic-worthy. Yes, traffic volume is certainly a keyword in the successful blog-making process! You should also carefully consider whether you want to make money out of advertising. In such a case, aim for a broader niche that will attract a larger traffic volume. Of course, there is no absolute truth, and the only sure thing here is that you need to research in-depth before initiating the process.

Follow these beginner's tips

We have some other helpful tips to share with you at the very start of your blogging journey:

• Consider your knowledge, experience, and expertise. It may be smarter to use your current knowledge as the base of your project. This way, what you have as experience will be put into practice and you will have room for further development as you move ahead. You can also set the site to generate revenue by expanding your horizon while doing something you enjoy.
• Consider the possibility that you may want to sell your site in the future. Sites with a good domain name and clear purpose go from hundreds to thousands of dollars. You may want to analyze the demand and hence the likelihood of someone buying your blog. This means analyzing the topic for trends that will be popular in the future, such as virtual reality, nano-tech, electric vehicles, IoT (Internet of Things), etc.
• Consider selecting a profitable niche for your blog. Selecting the niche for your site is a very important subject. According to the “Scope of Penetration” marketing model, targeting a newer and more undeveloped niche means an easier penetration, and hence it may be easier to succeed. Also, you have a much better chance of staying on top of Google results.
• What are you willing to invest to create a blog? It is a very vital step to have a clear idea of what you are willing to pay for your site. And we are not talking only about funds, but time invested as well. If your site is improving every month, then you should keep investing time and money in it because these are strong indicators for future success.

Choose WordPress as Your CMS Platform

Despite the fact that there are a lot of content management systems (CMSs), we highly recommend using WordPress. After all, it is the most popular and widely adopted platform. According to W3Techs statistics, the WP CMS is used by 62.7% of all websites with known CMS. This makes 35.9% of all websites on the web. WordPress version 5, in particular, is used by 72.5% of all the websites that use the platform. The historical trend also shows that the deployment of the CMS is growing steadily and that the platform is used by more websites when compared to Joomla and Drupal. The choice comes with another important decision that will shape your future blogging experience.

Should You Go with WordPress.com or WordPress.org?

What is the difference between WordPress.com and WordPress.org? The WP CMS platform is one of the most popular software platforms for building blogs and websites. Being free and open-source makes it easy for both experienced and inexperienced bloggers to modify it according to their needs. The core software package is available to anyone at WordPress.org, and can also be installed as part of a package from a Web hosting provider. WordPress.com also supports the core software. A company called Automattic, created by one of the founders of WordPress made the.COM domain for hosting WP-based websites. Remember that if you go with .com, you won’t have to install the software as it is already included. If the end result is the same, you might ask “Why would it matter which of the two I choose”? The answer is that it matters A LOT because it will define the control you have over your site or blog. Our advice is that you go for the self-hosted WordPress.org platform because it gives you all the freedom you need. Note that having a self-hosted website is just like owning your own home. Self-hosting a site means you have access to all files related to a website. The advantage is that you can do it any time, any way you see fit. A self-hosted website has its own domain name and is hosted by a provider that has a specific space reserved for such self-hosted sites. You can customize your site at any time. Long story short, WordPress.com is a prime example of a hosted platform that runs on the aforementioned WordPress software, but WordPress.org offers a WordPress site package available for download so you can run it on a self-hosting site.

WordPress.com and WordPress.org Features

Themes

Every WordPress site out there tries to be unique. Themes are the one thing that can change a site’s looks in an instant by selecting one from a list of pre-made ones. You are stuck with WordPress created themes if you don’t pay for Premium. If you pay for it, you can also select a theme made outside of WordPress. WordPress.org gives users the freedom to install and customize themes however they please, and themes can come from outside sources as well. Free themes as well as premium ones can be modified via the administrator dashboard, or experienced designers can directly tamper with the files for deeper customization. Premium themes have more features than the free ones which make them preferable in most cases.

Plugins

WordPress.com has limited options when it comes to plugins. Plugins for social media sharing, limited Google Analytics, Contact Forms, and other basic ones are available by default and come with every plan. However, you cannot install any other plugins. The Self-hosted WordPress.org is the better option in that regard as it comes with powerful Google Analytics, and you can install any plugin you want, without limitations. WordPress community developers have also added some of their code designs to further add specific functions that are not available in WordPress.com. Plugins are used for a variety of features:

• Contact form creation;
• Online store building;
• Adding a gallery;
• Adding a Captcha.

So, in the end, if you want a quick setup that works, requires next to no maintenance, and is easy to configure, you should choose WordPress.com. On the other hand, if you want the freedom of choice, deeper customization, better Analytics, and to tinker with the site more, then you should definitely stick with WordPress.org. Hopefully, this post has been informative enough for you to be able to make a simpler decision on which one to go with. Either way, WordPress is so popular and big that whatever of the two platforms you choose with, you still have options to make every site you take up, in your truly own colors. You can learn more about both versions of WP in our dedicated article WordPress.com Vs .org.

How to Create a Blog: Initial Steps

How Choose the Right Domain Name

Choosing a domain name for your first site can be both entertaining and challenging. Since this is going to be the name by which you will be known and discovered online, you need to choose carefully. You will own this name for as long as you continue paying the annual fee. You should be aware that the most competitive domain names end with the ".com" extension, and they may not be available or could be quite expensive. Nonetheless, this shouldn’t discourage you as there more than 450 domain extensions at your disposal. In fact, the domain name of your website can be country- or niche-specific. Whatever you do, you should think in an SEO-friendly way.

Think SEO

Stuffing your most wanted keywords in your domain name is something that doesn’t work. In other words, if your domain name contains (a lot of) keywords, this won’t be of any help to your blog from an SEO perspective. Building a keyword list and strategy is a separate task (and a topic for another tutorial, for that matter). So, what domain should you go for? If you’re starting a personal blog, you can always use your own name. In any other case, it should be catchy and easy-to-remember. The best-case scenario is choosing a domain name that is both self-explanatory and memorable. Here are some tips you can follow; they are valid in nearly all situations:

• The domain name should be short;
• The domain name should be easy-to-remember;
• You may want to go for words that are easy to spell;
• You may want to choose a “brandable” domain;
• Make a domain history check to be sure that it’s clean;
• The domain name can be related to your specific blogging niche.

So, let’s elaborate a bit on some of the above points.

How To Check if a Website Is Using WordPress?

The easiest way to find if a web site is based on Wordpress CMS is to use our Check Wordpress Tool that can do this work for you. You will be able to analyse any competitor site and understand what plugins and theme its use.

What Is a Brandable Domain?

Depending on your overall strategy, you can go for a brandable domain. As explained by Novanym, “brandable domain names are web addresses which have been created and registered but are not yet used as company websites. These domain names have been designed with distinctiveness, catchiness, and imagination in mind, ready to be adopted by a suitable brand. Most crucially, it already exists, even though its namesake business doesn’t.”

Why Should You Choose a Domain That Is Easy to Spell?

If you are going to create and sustain a blog, you will definitely discover that there are three main types of traffic through which people get to a website:

• Search traffic, which comes from search engines such as Google, Bing, and DuckDuckGo;
• Referral traffic, which comes from clicking on links to your blog;
• Type-in traffic, which is when a user types your domain name in the search bar of their browser.

Typo Traffic

Type-in traffic, however, is especially attractive to website and blog owners. It means that users know your site by name. However, this type of traffic comes with the risk of typos, including missing dots and missing letters, and transposed letters and “next letters”. By mistyping the name of your blog, the visitor is a lost cause. But this is not even the worst that could happen as your competitors could be forwarding the mistyped names to their own blogs. Or the typos could be forwarding your potential visitor to a malware of a phishing website. How can you avoid all these bad scenarios? The so-called “typo traffic” can be circumvented if you decide to invest a bit more money and time to gather the most common typos related to your domain name. After you discover them, you can register them as well, and then apply free domain forwarding to redirect typo traffic to your correct domain name. As for the domain name relevant to your niche, we believe this is self-explanatory. You want your readers to associate the domain name of your site with its content.

What Is Shared Hosting

The term shared hosting refers to a web hosting service where a single physical server hosts multiple websites. Since many users utilize the resources of a single server simultaneously, their costs are low. When a website is built with shared hosting, its files will be kept on a server that hosts the information of a few other websites. This means that the same server will be responsible for serving up the information of all websites hosted on it. Shared servers can host hundreds of users. Each customer of the shared hosting server has access to features like databases, disk space, monthly traffic, FTP accounts, email accounts, and other add-ons depending on its personal plan. How system resources are shared is on-demand and each customer gets a percentage of the RAM and CPU resources. Long story short, shared hosting is the most budget-friendly way to get your site online, since there are many people who contribute to the costs. This type of hosting is really good for a small blogging website that doesn’t require advanced configurations or high bandwidth. You can jump to our specialized article dedicated to the best shared hosting providers in the world. We can also guide you in the process of installing WP on shared hosting.

Choose Your Hosting Locally

If the blog you’re starting is tied to a local business, then you should definitely consider the best hosting option for that specific market. In other words, the very first thing you should know is that depending on whether you’re starting a local or international website, there are different approaches to consider and implement. The first tip is quite logical: look for a server or a data center that is located in that specific country. Location is crucial when it comes to a local audience, as it ensures speed and reliability. It could even improve the SEO of your website. You should also consider the local currency and legal regulations. Each country has its specifics when it comes to laws and regulations, and you should get to know the ones in the country you are looking to grow your business and audience. It is highly important to choose the best option in matters of value for money ratio, support, and additional perks for the customer. After choosing your hosting provider, keep in touch, and seek all the assistance you’ll need – changing DNS settings, uploading and indexing your website, connecting an FTP program. And keep in mind that the initial arrangement of your files is most likely included in the package you’re going to pay for.

How To Find Web Hosting Server Locations?

To find a web hosting server location, you can use a website such as HTH Hosting Finder Tool , which provides detailed information about a web host's network and server locations. You can also use tools such as the Reverse IP Lookup tool from IPLocation.net, which will allow you to search for a web host's server locations based on its IP address. Additionally, you can use the WHOIS lookup tool to find the server location of a domain.

How to Set Up Your Web Hosting and Domain Name?

Shortly explained, a web hosting service allows people just like you to make their website accessible via the web. These companies are created to provide space on a server owned or leased for use by clients, as well as providing Internet connectivity, usually in a data center. Once you have selected and reassured your domain name, comes the moment to choose your hosting service. Remember that the performance of your blog is dependent on the hosting provider, as it is responsible for your site is available at all times. It is also where all your files are stored online. Did you know that most hosting companies provide free domain registration services? Of you course, you can decide to keep your domain name with the registrar company, which means it will be separate from your hosting account. We believe that it is easier to keep everything under one account – the hosting account – for more efficient maintenance and management. If you have decided to go with WordPress.org, then you have to be looking for WordPress hosting. Since the reason you landed on our article is to learn how to start a blog, we safely assume that you are a newbie. Our advice for a new blogger is to choose a budget WordPress hosting , as investing in a more expensive hosting service (VPS, dedicated server, etc.) don’t pay out when you are just starting out. The common price of web hosting is around $10/mo so that the reason why we've given a special price from SiteGround, and you can get the fastest managed WordPress hosting at only $5.99/mo with free SSL, CDN, PHP 8, etc. Note. We want to be sure that you know that the hosting links are affiliate and we get a small commission on every purchase with no additional cost for you. Instead of that, you get the hosting at a special price with a free SSL certificate, CDN, and a 30-day money-back guarantee, so you can feel free to try the hosting for a month. To start hosting your WordPress blog, go to SiteGround and choose your plan. After choosing your hosting plan you need to type your website domain name. Have a clear idea of the site’s domain name. For example, a good tip is to make it short and with focused keywords. Then type in your account and client information in the appropriate fields. When you fill in your information, enter your purchase info like card number, PayPal, etc. You have successfully completed the steps of purchasing SiteGround managed WordPress hosting.

How to Choose Your WP Theme

This step is about choosing your site’s design and layout. This step is as important as the rest. The layout of your site is its face, and you want it to be attractive, user-friendly, and intuitive. You want your visitors to be happy, and the design of your website is key to this happiness. Of course, the information you will be providing is also a key element. However, it’s not only important what you are saying but how you are saying it. You want your visitors to trust you and accept you, so be user-friendly. Once you have installed the platform, start looking for the right theme for your blog. The theme should not only look awesome but it also should be practical, meeting your content needs and being consistent with your niche. Before you select a theme, follow these tips:

• Carefully read the description which will give you a pretty good idea of the theme’s features and functionalities;
• Have a look at the theme’s ratings visible as starts in the preview and under theme details. Opinions (of other bloggers) matter;
• Preview the theme in a demo to see if it clicks with your content’s needs and overall idea; Consider the theme’s responsiveness as a sign of your choice. A good theme has a responsive design that works on both desktop and mobile. This is also important for Google (and you want to please Google).

Should You Go With a Free, Premium, or Custom Theme?

This is an excellent question, indeed. The answer depends entirely on your blog’s needs… and your vision. Free themes come at no cost but it is highly likely they won’t meet your visions and expectations. Premium themes, on the other hand, have a wide price range and a lot more to offer and are created by both developers and specialized showcase websites. You could invest in a single-use license starting from $30 up to $300 or higher. Custom themes can be created by freelance developers or agencies. These themes require both coding and design knowledge. For the purpose of creating a custom theme, an existing theme could also be customized. This is definitely an option worth your time, money, and effort, but it may not be the ideal one for a beginner. Your choice is entirely dependent on your budget.

How to Set WordPress on Your Hosting

Setting up WordPress on the SiteGround hosting is very easy to do. SiteGround has optimized its managed WordPress hosting for easy WP installation. That's why we recommend using SiteGround your website. As an initial step goes to your SiteGround's dashboard. Login to your account and then click on "Website". Tap to the "Complete" button as shown below. Select "Start a New Website" and choose WordPress if you are planning to create a blog. If you want to create an online store choose WordPress + WooCommerce. When you choose WordPress as your CMS platform, then you will need to create a new login for your website. When you are done click "Continue". Here you can add some additional features when you are ready click "Finish". After you are already done with all these steps type “yoursitename.com/wp-admin/” in your browser and log-in using the WordPress e-mail and password you created earlier. That's it you are already on your WordPress website which is waiting to be customized. In the next step, you will find how to work with the WP editors, is it necessary to use a website builder. Now, let's move forward!

How to Install WordPress Plugins

After you are ready with the theme installation the next step is to add plugins to your WordPress blog. It is really easy to add them. WordPress has thousands of free plugins and widgets about everything you want. For example, you can add countdown plugins, timer plugins, contact forms, pop up plugins, and whatever shows up on your mind. Adding a WordPress plugin to your blog is similar to the way we added the theme. Go to your WP dashboard “Plugins” “Add New” and search for the plugin you want. Once you choose the plugin you want click “Install Now” and then activate it.

How to Configure the Best WordPress Blog Settings

Up to now, we have created our blog on a fundamental level. You know how to get a domain name, web hosting, install WordPress on your host, choose a theme, and install plugins. Before we start with the page and post creation, there are some basic WordPress setting which we need to configure. Now let's begin!

How to Configure Your Permalink Settings

The permalinks, also knowns as URLs are the web addresses of your website content. It is basically a code through which people can enter your website. There is an option in the WordPress settings which allows you to choose the structure of your permalinks. By default, WordPress set a "Plain" URL structure, which represents some kind of random numbers. This structure is the worst option that you can choose because it doesn't tell the search engines anything about the URL's content. In other words, it isn't good for the SEO of your website. The best option you can choose is "Post Name" with it, the URL will be the same as the name of its content.

Search Engine Visibility

WordPress has an option for private websites or personal portfolios. This option simply discourages the search engines index your content. Make sure you never check this option instead, if you want to have a website for your own.

How to Customize Your HomePage

Having a well-customized homepage is very important for your website UX. WordPress has made it easy by using their customizer. Just go to Appearance --> Customize, and then experiment. Make sure that the default WP customizer has limited opportunities. The best way to get a stunning design of your website is by using a website builder.

How to Create a Navigation Menu

Having a navigation menu on your website is another important feature which must have. It provides quick links to your website's most important content, and it can be customized easily through your theme. If you want to add a navigation menu, go to Appearance --> Menus --> Add a Menu.

Using WordPress Editor to Create a Blog

WordPress is the most used CMS platform when it comes to website building. It offers lots of capabilities and opportunities, but it has one pretty significant downside. The page editors that the platform provides are simple, but counting only on them will revoke the chance of creating a blog with various styles and layouts. The classic WordPress editor has a word processor and allows you to add text, images, codes, and visual modes. You are not in the ability to create whatever you want. However, with the 5.0 version of WordPress, they released a brand new editor - Gutenberg.

Gutenberg Editor vs Classic Editor - The difference

The Gutenberg editor is coming with WordPress by defaut. Unlike the classic editor, with Gutenberg, you have the opportunity to preview what you are creating instantly. You can pretty much do the same with the classic editor by switching from text to visuals, but here comes the problem, sometimes you can create text displacement and sizing problems. With the Gutenberg editor, your content is separated into blocks, which help you with the text customization. In addition to the Gutenberg editor, you have pre-made patterns, like buttons, video blocks, image blocks, etc. The editor allows you to customize every element separately. For example, every paragraph can be in a different content block, making it easy to readjust its size, move it, or just edit it. However, even the Gutenberg editor is a lot more advanced than the classic one, you still have limitations concerning website customization. WordPress is not the most used CMS because of its features and customization option, but because of the variety of plugins, themes, and builders that can work with it.

Choose a Website Builder for Your WordPress Blog

Building your WordPress blog without a website builder can become challenging, especially if you want to create a cool looking design on your website. The WordPress built-in editors can give you a pretty solid foundation, but their goal is not to make your website attractive with a mind-blowing design but to give your rich content. If you want to create eye-catchy pages with a humungous design, we recommend using the Divi Builder to create and customize your pages and posts. Of course, you can check out our article with the best website builders, where we have provided reviews of the most famous drag & drop page builders and software. Now that you know the basics of the WordPress builders, it's time to move to the technical part and learn how to create pages and posts on WordPress.

Create Pages on Your WordPress Blog

When it comes to creating pages on WordPress, you have two different options. If you have a blog and posting daily new or articles, you need to create a post. You need to create a page when you create landing pages, or pages like About us, Contacts, or Homepage, for example. Unlike the pages, the posts can be organized into categories and tags.

Pages You Must Have on Your Website

There are a few essential pages that you must have on your website.

Homepage

The homepage is a presentation of your website. It is the first thing which the customers of your website see when they visit it. It might be well customized and organized. It is essential to have the most important stuff on your website. A user-friendly interface is also required for having a better user experience. When you start up your WordPress blog, the platform automatically creates a default homepage with a pretty simple design that needs to be customized. Before you start customizing your homepage, you need to consider a few things. Choose a theme that supports homepage templates: It will save you a lot of time if you use a pre-made homepage supported by your WordPress Theme. Use a drag & drop page builder: If you want to create a cool looking interface, the page builder is the best option you can choose. It will help you create a stunning design for your website. If you choose to use the Astra theme, you can combine it with Elementor. To get a theme and a website builder in one, better consider choosing Divi as your website builder.

About Page

Creating and having an About page is a great way to familiarize your customers and website visitors with your activity. You can describe what they can find on your website and provide some emotional content, for example, your history or, if you are an individual person, something about your life and how you have been inspired to start your enterprise. The About page needs to look good and convince people that they are in the right place.

Contact Page

Having a contact page on your website is of great importance because it is when you receive the essential information about your visitors and make them customers. The best way to create your contact page is to add a contact form where your clients can fill in their email and send you a massage. The best way to create a contact form is by using WPForms. You can use it to add any forms you need on your website.

Create Pages with Classic Editor (Blog Pages)

Creating a page with the classic WordPress editor is a pretty simple task that even a newbie can do. First, go to your WordPress Dashboard, then Pages --> Add New. After you are here, customize your page by adding title and content. You can also use the page attributes to create a link, bold text, add an image, etc. If you are using a specific WordPress theme, you may have a custom template that will look differently. After you are ready with the content creation, the last thing you need to do is to publish your work. You also have the option to preview it before posting it.

Create Pages with Gutenberg (Blog Pages)

Creating a page with the Gutenberg editor can provide better customization opportunities and more fancy design than making it with the classic one. To make this work done, first, you need to activate the Gutenberg plugin and set is a default editor. After that, again go to your Dashboard --> Pages --> Add New. As you can see, there is a significant difference between both editors. With the Gutenberg one, you have a prominent variety of page elements, customization options, content blocks, etc. Here you can add your content by adding content blocks and organize your text in a better way. You can also easily add buttons and video animations. If you activate the Gutenberg editor and don't see your in-page attributes click the "plus sign", and you will see all the attributes, separated into two sections - Blocks and Patterns. Once you fill your page with content, the publishing happens in a way similar to the classic one.

How to Write Your First Post

Writing and creating your first blog post are different things. This step is dedicated to the more technical side of the post creation. Remember that you should have a clear idea of the topic you will cover before writing your blog post. Making it SEO-friendly is also crucial.

Create Your Post with the Classic WordPress Editor

Technically, creating a post with the classic editor on your WordPress blog can be done really easy if you have your content ready to be pasted on the white sheet. First, go to your WP dashboard, then Posts --> Add New. When you are at the "Create a Post" page, you can notice that it has pretty much the same layout as when we were creating our pages with the classic editor. You need to add a title, and under the "Add Title" box, you have the bootstrap menu, through which you can access HTML codes in a faster way only by clicking the icons. If you are ready with your content, you can paste it on the white sheet, customize the titles, and highlight the stuff you want. Also, you can import images and videos by clicking on the "Add Media" icon. For best performance on your website, optimize your images.

Create Your Post with the Gutenberg Editor

After you have already installed and activated the Gutenberg editor, again go to your Dashboard --> Posts --> Add New. You will see a wide variety of options for customizing your content in different ways. The positive thing about Gutenberg is that you can create your content in various content blocks. Create one for every H2 title, images, and buttons if you have any. You don't need any coding knowledge to work with it. To add a block, you need to click on the big blue "+" button, and from there, you will preview all the blocks and patterns you can choose between.

Add Tags and Categories

Adding tags and categories to your WordPress blog is helps you organize your content. Remember that categories are hierarchical structures that organize your content by relevance. For example, you have a blog for healthy food and you write vegan recipes. It will be relevant to add a category - "Vegan Recipes," which can be a subcategory of "Healthy Recipes." Also, in the main category, "Healthy Recipes," you can add "Vegetarian Recipes" and “Low Gluten Recipes” as other subcategories. You can add as many classes and categories as you want in order to hierarchize your website and create relevance within your content. To add categories with the Classic Editor, you need to be on your post. On the right side of the screen, you will see the Categories box. Click "Add New Category", name it, and choose if you want it to be a parent category or a subcategory. In the same way, you can add new tags or choose from the already created ones. Tags are used for describing specific content. By adding them to your posts, you create relevance between the posts with the same tags, which means they have something in common. Be careful with the tags because they can create a big mess on your website if you don't use them properly. Do not overuse them. To add categories and Tags with Gutenberg editor, go to your post page, and click on the "Gear" icon in the upper right to access the menu. Then add your categories and tags, in the same way, as with the classic editor. Once you are ready with your tags, categories, content, and customization, add your final touches and click on the "Publish" button to make your article visible on your website. A good habit before publishing is to preview the whole work and remove any mistakes.

How to Create Your Content Strategy?

Once you have completed the previous technical steps, it is time to provoke your inspiration and imagination! You have arrived at the destination, which will open new doors and possibilities for you and your blog. As you can imagine, content strategy is an endless topic, and SEO experts have written entire books about it. There are, however, some necessary steps you should start with, such as:

1. Defining your goals;
2. Researching the niche (market), you will be targeting;
3. Select the keywords you will be targeting; (Jump to Keyword Research);
4. Researching the competition;
5. Carefully choosing your topic ideas;
6. Start working on your content and its elements.

How to Choose Your Niche/Market (Q&A)

Because finding and choosing a niche is strictly individual for anybody, we have prepared a few questions to help you navigate and find the right business.

What Is Your Budget?

Being aware of how much you can spend on your new project will give you significant clarity. Evaluating your budget will help you split it between the different expenses like web hosting, WordPress theme, website builder, plugins, employees, designers, etc. Depending on your budget, you can variate and make the circle bigger or smaller.

What Do You Want?

Having an idea in your mind of what you want to achieve is the key to success. Clear your mind, take a break, and research the different niches. Taking into account your budget, choose the niche that you will be satisfied to participate.

What Are Your Skills?

Match your skills with your goals. Having skills like programming, marketing, or just basic web knowledge can benefit a lot differently to your progress and how your project is going to start. It is essential to have a knowledge base to build your project on.

What's the Competition?

Before diving into the water, check how deep it is. Research your niche’s competition. Is the cake big enough for everybody? Can you have a piece of it? Once your content strategy is all set, the next step is the search engine optimization of your WordPress Website. SEO's entire goal is to get your website upper in the search engine's rankings, so it gets more visitors and thus more traffic. We will show you how to get started with WordPress SEO and implement your website's best techniques.

Get Started with the WordPress SEO (SEO Techniques)

The best way to get organic traffic is by using search engine optimization. Even though it is not an easy task to SEO-optimize your website, you will get the strongest and the most conversion-friendly traffic if you make it correctly. There are many different approaches to make your website SEO-friendly. We will use the 4 best ones proven that they work. Of course, have in mind that in the different niches, the SEO can take an additional amount of time. And in the more competitive markets, the SEO needs to be very clean. We will take over:

1. On-Page SEO;
2. Keyword Research;
3. Link Building;

On-Page SEO / Internal SEO

One of the best and most useful approaches to rank your website well in Google is the on-page SEO. This SEO method helps you to optimize your website in a Google-friendly way that crawlers can quickly run through it and find the needed information to index fast your web pages and rank them higher in the search results. WordPress allows easier website optimization because of its SEO-friendly, straightforward, and, at the same time, highly-customizable interface. Now let's move into action!

Simple Interface

Try to keep your site's interface as clean and straightforward as you can, of course, it should not be bad looking, but the main idea is not to have too much gingerbread stuff. The mechanics like popups, drop-down menus, and transitions need to smooth and satisfying for the users. Also, the content needs to be very well categorized hierarchically. Everything needs to be smooth and easy to access for the user. The articles ought to be well structured to keep the users on your website. As longer the customers stay on your website, the better for its Google ranking.

Internal Linking

Internal linking is another suitable method to get one step further in SEO optimization. The internal linking keeps all your posts connected, and it not only useful for easier navigation, but the various posts you have are giving power to one another. Make sure you have at least 2-3 internal links in every article or post. It can really improve your website SEO.

Create a Sitemap of Your Content

If you are not sure what is a sitemap, here it is: A sitemap is a list of your website's content, mostly containing their URL's. There are two types of sitemaps: HTML sitemap and XML sitemap. HTML sitemap meaning: It is a list of all the important content pages of your website. Adding them to the HTML sitemap, you basically tell Google that this content powerful. The search engine refers to the database and indexes these pages faster and ranks them better. XML sitemap meaning: Unlike the HTML one, the XML sitemap list all your website URLs acting like a connection between your website and the search engines. By having an HTML and XML sitemap, the search engine crawlers can find, index, and rank your content a lot easier, so make sure you use them in your WordPress Blog.

Create a Table of Contents

Implementing a table of content is another good SEO technique, which Google loves. Putting your "H2" and "H3" titles in a similar table will give them the power to rank well as keywords in the search engine.

Use Alt Tags on Your Images

In simple words, alt tags are acting as a translator for Google. They describe the image's meaning and what's on it. Adding alt tags will help boost and optimize your images to rank well in the image search.

Write Quality Content

Quality over quantity! The long, well-written articles are the content Google prefers. Creating a prominent article with useful content will be ranked better than a short and fast written one. Make sure you structure your articles well and observe various relevant topics. If you make it right, for sure, you will rank well.

Install an SEO Plugin

Following all these SEO techniques and approaches can be a tricky task. Installing an SEO plugin aids the faster and easier SEO optimization on your site. We recommend installing the Yoast SEO plugin. It will help you optimize your post and pages. If you want to learn more about Yoast and other SEO plugins, preview the best SEO plugins.

Keyword Research

Researching keywords can help you understand what gets more traffic and is more searched. Using proper keywords for your niche can boost your website in the sky. Every keyword has different competition and hardness to rank on it. As a begginer, it is better to start from the low-competitive keywords and gradually raise the level. Good tools for keyword research are:

• Google Keyword Planner - It is a free tool mostly used by websites using Google Adwords;
• Google Search - The search engine you are using to buy yourself pretty nice shoes can help you research keywords for your site;
• SeoStack - This is a free tool for researching keywords for any search engine and any country. The tool gives you a wide variety of options, and you can search for specific keywords for any country. It can be installed as a Chome extension;
• Ahrefs - It is a tool that is most likely to give any information about your competitor, but at the same time, you have a keyword explorer.

Link Building

Link building is a major Google ranking factor, and the more websites that have linked to yours, the better your website will be ranked on Google. What is link building? It is the process of getting your webpages (posts, articles, etc.) linked by other websites. These types of links are called backlinks. Building a link mass on your website is not easy, and it can't be done fast. Creating backlinks is the same as creating relationships but in the networking space. So, in a relationship, both sites get value. It would help if you found relevant linkers that will provide strong and powerful links to your website. Still, you need to take back the gesture. As bigger a website is, the better your Google ranking if you receive a backlink from it. There are many different methods to start the link building process, and below we will show the most effective ones.

Create Quality Content

As we said in the previous step, high-quality content is essential for ranking, but it is also crucial for building a linking mass. Having meaningful and quality content can easily earn you lots of backlinks. For example, you can write how-to guides and news, which will gather significant amounts of backlinks to your website.

Create Backlinks

There are a few different ways to create backlinks to your website. You can use social media, put your website in your profiles, and share meaningful content on relevant Facebook and Twitter pages. You can also comment on different blogs and directories. You can answer questions in Quora. This method is easy to do, but it cannot serve you an immense amount of backlinks and is not that effective. Still, it is suitable for beginners.

Email Websites

To earn backlinks to your website, you can email other relevant websites to link back to yours. This is the most demanding method up to now, but it can earn you the best backlinks. Ensure you are emailing only relevant websites to yours because if the website content does not apply to yours in terms of relevant content, this may hurt your website and mess your rankings.

Guest blogging

Creating high-quality guest posts for other big websites, and linking yours in the content is one of the best methods to get high-quality backlinks. By using this method, both sides win. On the one side, the host website gets free content, and on the other side, you get featured on a more prominent website and receive a free backlink.

How to Promote Your Blog

Promoting your blog is the next step to get popularity and traffic. Even if you have great content, it needs marketing to reach its audience. The fastest and most effective way to achieve the goal of getting traffic is by promoting it. In this step, we have prepared the most powerful ways to promote your blog and get tons of quality traffic:
1. Email Marketing
2. Email Outreach
3. Social Media
4. Focus on Youtube
5. Google AdWords
6. Blog Activity
7. Search Engine Optimization

Email Marketing

Email Marketing is one of the oldest strategies to promote your website, and still, it is one of the most successful ones. Research reveals that 95% of your website users are likely to never return. So, in most cases, you have only one opportunity to make them return - by creating email marketing campaigns. To start these campaigns, you will need your website users' emails. Create a subscription box, email newsletter, or convince your customers to participate in a giveaway. It can be the easiest way to gather their emails. The next step is to choose an email marketing software like Mailchimp. It will allow you to create email campaigns efficiently and promote your blog regularly and continuously.

Email Outreach

Email outreach can be used for promoting your content in a few different ways to drive traffic and backlinks to your WordPress blog. Email outreach is basically one of the easiest methods to promote your blog, and at the same time, it can be very effective. You can create guest posts and advertise your content through influencers by creating an email list to reach all those you want. Advertising through influencers is one of the best ways to get high-quality conversational traffic. Depending on your niche, you can contact those who are famous with relevant to your content.

Social Media

Social media is another powerful strategy you must implement. It is a free and effective way to get traffic to your website. And if you use social media properly, it can even boost your website in the sky. To start with the social medial promoting, first, you need to create profiles on all the popular social media websites like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest, etc. An important one is that you don't need to focus on all your social media profiles. The best approach is to focus on one or two of your profiles and develop them by posting high-quality content consistently. Of course, if you have enough resources, you can frequently post on all of your profiles and develop them simultaneously. Make sure you have optimized your content with a catchy title and summarizing introduction. In this way, when you create a post on social media, the viewers will see the most essential information about your post and what they can find or learn inside. It is imperative to create meaningful content to get positive impressions.

Focus on Youtube

When it comes to promoting your WordPress blog, Youtube can be like a whole new universe, and for sure, one of the best places where you can promote and create your content. It is one of the most challenging ways to promote your website because it demands backbreaking work and many resources. Still, it can become a beast that is even more prominent than your website, bringing you significant revenue. If you start with Youtube, make sure that the phrase: "Quality over Quantity" is always on your mind while making videos. Better create one video per month but make it high quality with a lot of meaningful content and good SEO optimization with an adequate description and title. Try to stay as consistent as you can, and one of the most critical things is to create videos in a way that you will be glad to watch. An interesting fact is that Youtube can convert up to 5 times more than Google in specific spheres.

Google AdWords

The paid Google promotion is the easiest way to get quick traffic on your WordPress blog, but it will cost you significant amounts of money. If you think of starting paying ads to Google, make sure you have optimized your website with meaningful and quality conversion-friendly content. Otherwise, you will lose a lot of money and potential revenues.

Blog Activity

Being active in different blogs, platforms, and social media pages can help you bring traffic to your website. You can answer various questions and post your content there, but not in a spammy way. This approach can't really get you tons of traffic, but it can boost your website, especially if you are just starting with the enterprise to create a WordPress blog.

Search Engine Optimization

We already talked about SEO in the previous step, but we can say that it is the most reliable promotion strategy. It enables your blog to rank on Google and get traffic without posting your content on various places and paying for ads. Get to know more about SEO in the previous step.

How to Monetize Your Blog

Making money with a WordPress blog is the last step of our guide. Make your dream come true and start making money from your hobby. Monetizing your content can bring you a lot of revenue and make blogging your job. There are a few methods and approaches with which you can earn an excellent income. Of course, monetization is not an easy process, but it is definitely easier than binging traffic to your website. Monetizing your WordPress blog is the last step because you need to pass through all the previous steps and start generating at least 300 daily traffic before implementing some of the methods we have prepared. Here are the five most powerful methods for monetization. We have arranged them in a hierarchical order, from those which can bring you less revenue to those which can make you a fortune.
1. Google AdSense
2. Freelancing
3. Sell Products
4. Affiliate Marketing
5. Create a Product

Use Google AdSense

As we said, we start with the easiest way to monetize your blog. You can start to earn money by displaying ads provided by Google from its advertising network called Google AdSense. You can start with this method even if your website is not very popular and does not generate massive amounts of traffic. Also, if you are generating more traffic to your website, you can directly connect to a specific product and advertise them by getting the total ad revenue.

Freelancing

Being a freelancer is a cool job. You work whenever you want and have a lot of free time, but here is a little bit of a different situation. You can use your WordPress blog for advertising your personal skills and make money as a freelancer. This is a great way to attract more traffic and build a relationship with clients. If you have the skills to become a freelancer, make sure you add a "Hire Me" page on y