Many readers ask me to offer blog tips for beginners. What are the basic steps to create a good blog, what are readers looking for and more? These are the basic questions that beginners ask. Not only that, but the primary question is also how do I get into action and stop the loop of beginners’ syndrome. I noticed that many of you have stuck without progress.
Before I give you blog tips for beginners, there are few things I should raise including a precondition for blogging. This blog tips for beginners are the basics. You have options, in every step, and you need to take action.
What is a Blog?
A blog is a platform that solves people’s problems.
Really?
Yes. Let’s forget the technical jargon and let’s focus on why a blog is. This is an important step. Because without understanding why a blog, getting blog tips for beginners, or for the advanced is useless.
Some years back, creating a blog for the sake of blogging was acceptable. Any kid in his parent’s house could create a blog to document their daily life. Or to talk whatever they want.
These personal type websites used to be loved by many. Now, due to the high number of blogs on any topic and the appearance of social media such as Instagram, everything evolved.
Readers visit the internet with a question in their mind. And if that question is worth a business, then you need to focus and specialize.
This means a blog is no more about you, it is about the reader. It is about solving their problems. If you don’t offer value, there is no reason they should come back to a website of a kid that lives in his parent’s basement.
While writing this blog tips for beginners, I have in mind that you have found a problem that people have. Focus on that specific problem and start your blog in it.
Here, I will discuss five basic questions often asked and that often confuse beginners. This is a list of blog tips for beginners.
Should I Use WordPress or another platform?
I would not advise you to go for the free platforms, especially if you are going professional. The free platforms will help you understand the industry. However, the free platform will not be the best option if your end goal is creating a brandable product.
If you want to go for free, here are the top options.
- Blogger– Blogger is Google’s products that offer you both free and paid service. If you go for the free account, you can create yourdomainname.blogger.com type URL website.
- WordPress.com is another platform where you create a free account. Like a blogger, you will get yourdomainname.wordpress.com type blog. You can always create a self-hosted WordPress account as discussed below.
- Tumblr is a microblogging site that allows you to post short texts and images and videos. This is a better choice for hobby bloggers.
- Medium is another option that you can use for free. They even offer a host on their server. This is better for company bloggers and for article posting.
WordPress is one of the best blogging platforms out there. A third of all blogs in the world are hosted on WordPress. Not only that WordPress has the best directory of resources and users and you will get help on the forum.
But if you are looking for WordPress alternative paid service try squarespace and wix.
Blog Tips for Beginners #1- wordpress.org is the best CMS on the market. If you are going in as a professional, and planning to make money, then go for WordPress. If you want no Hussle in the background work, then go for wix or squarespace.
Blog Tips for Beginners #1- Which Plugins should I use on WordPress blog?
Depending on what you are looking for, you will find hundreds and thousands of plugins on WordPress. But hare the basic WordPress plugins that you need on your blog.
- Contact 7- create contact forms on your blog.
- Antispam plugins and antivirus plugins
- SEO plugins such as Yoast, and Rank math
- Social sharing plugins
- Image compressing plugins such as smush
- Cache plugins such as total cache
Go inside the WordPress plugin section and search for plugins using keywords. You will surely find many plugins for a specific function. For example, for a search ‘antivirus’ you probably will find more than 10 top plugins. Compare and choose one.
- Don’t overuse plugins. Too many plugins mean slow blog.
- Don’t use more than one plugin for a specific function. You only need one image compression plugin, or you need only one cache plugin.
Blog Tips for Beginners #2- Use the basic plugins specified above. If you plan to add more, make sure you really need that plugin. This helps you manage the speed of your website.
What Should I Blog About?
This is an important question. In the world of millions of blogs, it is rather hard to decide what to blog about. In the past when only few blogs existed, lifestyle bogging was the way. This means bloggers could blog about their life without specific topic.
A mother of four used to write about her daily life, happiness, and sad times, her children, being a wife, cooking and everything left.
Today, this type of writing may not bring you much traffic unless you are already known. You can prove this only by visiting Instagram.
On Instagram, everyone is trying to influence everyone. Everyone is acting as a celebrity, with thin figure, and thick makeups. How can you compete in that environment?
So, acting a celebrity, or creating a diary may not work, unless you have a very unique and interesting life.
So, the choice is passion or money? Both are useful. You cannot create something and sustain it without a passion. SO yes, go a passion. But ask does it make me money? Collecting a stone, and blogging about may make you money. But how much does it take someone to go out and collect it themselves? The market is very narrow.
But there are markets that you can be passionate about and also pay you a big deal. Weight loss is one of them. Here are Niches that pay you big.
Blog Tips for Beginners # 3- The best practice is to find out what people are looking for and giving the solution.
What Should I Name my Blog?
Have you ever thought about your name? What if your name was Dave, or Alicia or Mary? What would that change? Does your name have any direct or indirect effect on your current life?
Well, May be. But as much as other things in your life has affected you, surely.
It is same for your blog name. No matter what you use for your blog, as long as you have a good content, it works.
The problem is when a good blog name exists with a bad content blog.
But does this mean you don’t have to worry about your blog domain name? No. You should care. In fact, your domain name is what people see first. But you as well should equally worry about the content too.
How do you name your blog? Follow these guidelines.
- Make it short. Not more than 10 letters if possible.
- Easy to read and easy to write.
- No numbers and symbols
- Use only .com extensions
- If possible, indicate what your blog is about like techcrunch (which is about tech), politico (about politics)
- Use brandable names such as google.
Use these tools to come up with a good domain name.
- Bustaname– I love this tool because you can easily use synonyms and antonyms to create double words. Not only that you can place a single word in one category and words in another to see if these mix with your first category to give unregistered domain.
- Leandomainserach– is an automatic tool that gives you double keyword adding words on your given word.
- Deleted domains– this tool provides you deleted and expired domains. This happens when owners drop their domains for any reason. You can research and register one before someone does.
Blog Tips for Beginners # 4- choose short and easy to write a name that has no number and symbols?
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What Are The Principles For A Good Blog Content?
Your blog content is probably one of the most important part of your blog. This is the life of a blog. You must worry to create a great, moreover, helpful content. Here are the best practices of writing blog content.
- Write something you know about. Uttering without a value is easily distinguished. Readers can easily know that you have no idea about what you are talking about. And once they do, they will leave you for good.
- Write long posts. This will help you rank better on search engines. Not only that it differentiates the serious blogger from the rest. Recently, the blog entrée cost goes very low to a few dollars. This attracted many bad bloggers who are looking for a short cut. Write longer and important posts and get a better rank.
- Use short paragraphs- not more than 5 sentences in a paragraph
- Support your facts with data. Don’t just talk about something without supporting it.
- Don’t talk about yourself a lot. People are not there to hear your story most of the time. They are there to solve their problems. Unless your problem is related to their problem, better not to talk about it.
- Promise something and offer it. When you write a post, in the begging tell your reader what they will get from the post. Then give them a good step by step or a simple guide content. Don’t hide your solution in your article. Instead, show it in the first few paragraphs.
- There is a different type of posts. You can create any of these and get traffic. These are interview post where you interview a professional in your niche. List articles are a list of things such as 100 top schools in the world. The third is how to blog posts. These show you how to do something. How to change your life in three days, is an example of how to how to post. Infographics are interesting posts. These are image-based blog posts.
- Then call to action. Every article should invite readers to subscribe or download something or even comment.
- Publish regularly. Create a schedule and stick with it.
- Write for SEO. This is very important. Don’t start writing without knowing what people are looking for. Use google keyword planner or ubersuggest to find out what people are looking for. Not only that, go for low competition keywords at the beginning. Avoid keyword competitions by going for longtail keywords.
- Avoid keyword stuffing– this means never use too much of a keyword in a single article. Only use one keyword in a single article.
- Use long-tail keywords. Long-tail keywords have longer lengths. Instead of just ‘coffee’, longtail keyword is something like ‘how to make coffee’. The second one may have a lower volume of search, but it surely has lower competition. And lower keyword competition is higher ranking.
- Create a great title. A post without a good title may not attract many users. Use a title that explains what the article is about. Make it very short. Include your keyword in your title as well.
Blog Tips for Beginners # 4- create longer posts that people need
How To Get A Traffic To Your Blog?
You write your post, created a good blog. Then, you wait for a visitor. Imagine no one visits your website. Where do you get readers? Where are they? How can I call them to my website?
Getting a traffic has two options: paid and free. The paid one is a way that you should follow if you have the budget. If not, you should rank organically.
- Use social media– Facebook and Instagram are not as important as they were some years back for your blog. Instead use Pinterest, YouTube, and Facebook groups to get free traffic.
- Use Forums and even Quora– In fact, I have a student who started from Quora and got hundreds of email lists even before starting his blog.
- Optimize your images and post them for SEO.
- Guest posting– Writing on other’s blogs has been around for a long time. Many new bloggers write on older websites to get a backlink and even traffic. Search ‘your niche + guest post’ and you will find blogs that need a guest post. Next, follow the page and fill a form they provided or send them a message mentioning you have an article they could be interested in.
- Link building– is a link back to your blog from other websites. The more websites mention your blog, the better you will rank.
Blog Tips For Beginners # 6- Use Search engines and social?
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I Have Traffic, Now What?
Any traffic should go unnoticed. You should record the email of any reader for future communication. You should collect email of readers since the beginning. With this you create relationship with your readers. Create a funnel- ask people to download something, and they should enter their email in exchange.
When you create a list, make sure all emails are genuinely entered by readers. You can easily buy millions of lists on the internet. But this has more challenge than an advantage. Readers don’t read an article they don’t subscribe to. Not only that, they know what spam is from afar.
Start making money from Ads, sponsored posts and affiliate sales. Google AdSense, and media.net are for beginners. They don’t pay much but you still can make enough if you have traffic.
Follow your traffic. Install google analytics to understand how your posts are doing. Google analytics tells you best performing posts, source of traffic by geography, age of readers, medium they used and much more.
Summary, Blog Tips For Beginners
This basic blog tips for beginners is meant to give you a general guideline for how to create a blog that gives value to readers and make you money. A good blog has valuable content and it solves a problem. A good blog is not a diary of your life anymore. In fact, it is not about you, it is about the readers.
When your blog is about diabetes, sharing your story is a useful strategy. But You should know that readers are there to solve their problems. Give them what they need rather than writing what you want.
If you can’t decide what to blog about read this manual and just choose your topic. Wealth, health, and relationship are evergreen niches with high demand. These are also high competition. You need to enter your big game or you will not win.
Once you decide on your topic, find your domain name and register it fast. Find a good hosting. Bluehost is the best hosting on the market.
Next, design your blog, and start posting your content. This is an important step on your blog. Without valuable content your blog won’t go fat. Then do keyword research, find out low competition high demand words, and create your content.
Then market your content on Pinterest, Facebook groups, YouTube, and on Quora and Medium. These are effective sources of traffic.
Once you start getting traffic, continue monetizing your blog and analysing your traffic as well. Collect your reader’s email and communicate with them consistently. Solve their problems. And offer a value more than you get.
This is the best tips for beginners we could offer you. That is offer a value. And make money from the process.
Related: Blog Tips For Beginners
- Blog Hosting: The Principles and Best option
- A simple (but best) guide How to Pick a Domain Name
- SEO: How to Build Links Easy for 2020 and Beyond and blog tips for beginners
- The Basics of SEO: Beginner’s Guide to SEO Success and blog tips for beginners
- How To Increase Blog Traffic: 8 Repeatable Steps to Reach Thousands