Starting a blog in 2024 should be something to get excited about. However, starting a blog requires commitment. You need to be dedicated to consistently delivering value to your target audience. Blogging is a rewarding business that can pay you for your efforts for years into the future.
Below we show you the steps to start your blog and the tools you will need to get started.
Select a Blog Topic Register for the Right of Web Hosting Install a WordPress theme Install the Right Plugins Setup Your Email Marketing Software Writing Blog Posts
Select a Blog Topic
This stage is where people often get stuck. There is a lot of debate online about whether to choose something you love or a topic that is profitable. Of course, the perfect answer is both. However, love and profits don’t always intersect.
My advice is to list the things that you love to do, the things that you are good at, or have some experience in, list the clubs or associations you are a member of. Another great way to choose a blog topic is to think of the last few books that you read.
Believe me, somewhere in there is an opportunity for starting a blog. However, once you decide on a topic, you must do market research to ensure there is enough demand for the blog topic that you choose.
Choose a Blog Platform
When it comes to blog Platforms, there are numerous free, Opensource options including WordPress, Ghost, Jekyll, and many others. Our platform of choice is WordPress not because it is the most popular blog and website builder, but because:
Many hosting companies are dedicated to hosting WordPress blogs
Many website developers are experts at customizing WordPress
There are many great themes available for WordPress
There are lots of plugins to extend WordPress
The Right of Blog Hosting
Think of hosting as the computer that stores your website files. Many hosting companies range widely in features and price. The best WordPress web hosting for small to intermediate blogs is WPX hosting.
Managed WordPress Hosting
WPX is dedicated WordPress hosting that also comes with email hosting, so you can set up your professional email addresses. Unfortunately, some managed WordPress hosting companies do not offer email hosting, so you must use third-party email hosting separately.
Our best pick for mid-range WordPress hosting is WPX because their hosting support is absolutely brilliant, and the blog security is solid. One of the most important features that WPX boasts is its hosting speed.
Hosting speed relates to the speed of the server in responding to a request from a browser (to access the website) and how quickly the site pages load. Since using WPX hosting, our website speed is very fast.
Read our full WPX Hosting Review.
Advanced Blog Hosting
If you have a high-volume site and are an advanced WordPress user, the best managed WordPress hosting is with Kinsta. You can read our full Kinsta hosting review.
Install WordPress
Installing WordPress can be done manually by uploading the files to the server via FTP and configuring the installation using the installation wizard.
You can also install WordPress through the 1-click WordPress installation that many hosting companies provide. However, be warned that some WordPress installers can leave WordPress installations insecure.
The one-click WordPress installation that WPX Hosting provides has brilliant security. You can install your WordPress blog almost instantly. With quality WordPress hosting, you know WPX will be there to help you with their fantastic support if you get stuck.
Install a WordPress Theme
WordPress Theme for Experienced Users
We use the Newspaper theme by TagDiv, which has excellent features that allow us to maintain consistency and professionalism in our blog. However, with the features comes a learning curve. Therefore, I don’t recommend this theme for beginners.
WordPress Theme for Beginners
The best WordPress theme for beginners would be Astra. This theme has many great features. For example, it is fast loading due to its lightweight construction and minimal code approach. However, what is most impressive about this popular WordPress theme is the pre-built templates Astra has that look incredibly professional. Astra has far more pre-built blogs than Newspaper.
The other great thing about Astra is that it has free WordPress theme options to get you started.
Install the Essential WordPress Plugins
SEO
I recommend installing RankMath in WordPress. This incredible WordPress SEO plugin shows you exactly how to optimize your website for search engines. RankMath has a free and a paid version to ensure that everyone’s needs are met. You can opt for the more basic version of the plugin if this is all you need, but if you know that you will require something a little more advanced for your blog, RankMath has got you covered.
Check out RankMath.
However, this is not the only option on the market and you should go through the choices to ensure that you are making the right decision. The last thing that you want is to find out if there is a different Plugin that would work better for the blog that you are creating.
Caching
Have you given much thought to the steps such as caching yet? The answer is likely not, but W3 Total Cache has everything that you need. It is so popular it has been dubbed one of the best caching plugins for WordPress websites. The goal of this tool is to improve user experience by improving the parts such as your server performance and caching all the different aspects of your site.
Caching will help you significantly with the load in your database, as well as protect it from crashing during peak times. It’s an important step for any person who is seeking to start a blog, so make sure that you look carefully at this suggestion.
Optimize
Autoptimize will compress and optimize the Javascript and CSS files on your website. The purpose of this is speed. When you are clicking through and looking for a site to read, how long are you going to wait until you click off and find another? The answer is that you won’t wait long, and neither will anyone else. This is where you need to be able to optimize your blog. It’s important to keep people flocking to your new blog and make sure that they maintain their enthusiasm for the blog. The only way that this is going to happen is if you are constantly ensuring that you are checking those load times and getting them as low as possible.
It can also significantly reduce the size of the theme by disabling some of the features that are rarely used. When you reduce the size of the theme, it means that the blog itself should be able to lead faster, leading to lower load times.
Setup Your Email Marketing Software
You cannot send all of the emails that you need to send, manually. It’s for this reason that there were special pieces of software invented just for this sole purpose. Email marketing is an important part of building and maintaining relationships with the people that you are providing for, and it is certainly something that you should never give up on even if it looks like it isn’t working right now.
ActiveCampaign is our email marketing software of choice. We love ActiveCampaign because it is a visual email sequence builder that is very easy to use. If you are looking for a tool that is safe and easy to use, then ActiveCampaign could be the one for you. Setting it up is simple you purchase the software and then add it to your blog email account, letting it work the wonders it was made for, keeping people interested in your blog.
Set Up Google Accounts
Before registering for Google Analytics or Google Search Console, you will need to create a Google Account. You don’t want to use what you use for your account, as you ideally want to keep these two things separate. You might indeed write about the things that you know, and the things that you are interested in, but at the end of the day it is still just a job to do and you have to be as professional as you can about this. That’s where a Google Account comes in. You also need to be able to access Google Analytics.
Google Analytics
Google Analytics is a tool that is used by many to keep track of their website activity. This is going to include things such as traffic to and from the website. Essentially, it will help you to figure out what is going on with your blog, what people’s patterns are and why.
It can do so much, and you are going to need all of this data to get the absolute most out of your blog.
Google Search Console
If you want to keep a close eye on someone or something, you have to make sure you have the means to do so. Google Search Console will allow you to view how well your blog is doing, and optimize your visibility. You are going to want to track all of the information when it comes to your blog so that you can keep your eye on it, even when it’s rough. If you use the data correctly, you should be able to use it to benefit your blog and push yourself further than ever before.
We hope that you have found this article, and now have a better idea as to some of the things that you should do when starting the blog. It’s going to be a long road, so you need to ensure that you are not missing out on any steps, or it could be catastrophic for you.
Writing Blog Posts
Just as you had to do market research about your blog topic (or niche), it pays to do research before writing blog topics. You can do this with search engine optimization software. We use SE Ranking, which shows you opportunities with phrases that people search for. By researching, you will find a blog topic that you know that people are searching for. There is nothing worse than writing a blog post that nobody wants to read, and you will know that this is happening when your views drop right down. Try to pay attention to the posts that get the most engagement and activity, as these are the types you should be posting wherever possible.s
Just as you had to do market research about your blog topic (or niche), it pays to do research before writing blog topics. You can do this with search engine optimization software. We use SE Ranking, which shows you opportunities with phrases that people search for. By researching, you will find a blog topic that you know that people are searching for. There is nothing worse than writing a blog post that nobody wants to read.
