How to start a blog: Set-up, SEO, and topics that sell

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Blogging can be fun. It can also be a lucrative side hustle or a great resource to increase brand trust, authority, drive traffic, and add that extra spark to boost your existing business. However, starting a blog doesn’t guarantee people will find it. In fact, if you simply just start writing without a plan, the time, effort, and often emotional investment in creating your blog’s content can lead to a disheartening sting of disappointment when your blog doesn’t get the attention it deserves.

With the average reader spending just 97 seconds reading a blog post, starting your blog the right way, the first time, is essential, especially if you plan to monetize your blog. Did you know that close to 50% of marketers say they’d start over focusing on blogging? Whatever your reason for wanting to start a blog now, this guide will show you everything, from finding your niche to writing articles that readers will love to share.

Step. 1 Planning

What should you write about? What platform should you use? How should your blog look? All these questions and more need answering before you even think about writing your first article. The good news is that if you follow the steps below, you’ll end up with a blog that shows up in search results, retains readers, and opens the doors to new opportunities.

1.1   Choose your niche.

Blogs can simply be a collection of thoughts, but with over 600 million blogs in the world in 2023 and 7.5 million new blog posts published every day, if you’re hoping to find your audience or monetize your writing through ads, affiliate links, or by attaching it to your business, it’s best to choose a niche. That’s a single topic or theme that your blog will cover. Generally, the more specific your niche choice, the better. It’s best to choose something you’re passionate about, knowledgeable about, or if your blog will be linked to your business, a topic related to your industry.

1.2 Choose your platform

There are several platforms available for bloggers, each with their own benefits and drawbacks.

If you are simply writing for fun or to share your thoughts, then using sites like WordPress or Blogger that are optimised for blogging and allow you to create your blog for free are good places to start. You can always upgrade to a paid account later when your blog gains traction and monetization becomes more viable.

If you already have a business website, then you might already have the ability to add a blog directly to your site. This is great for driving traffic, backlinking, and trust building with your audience.

If you don’t already have a website and plan to monetize your blog, you might want to choose a paid plan and domain name right away, you’ll need to choose your hosting, but the good news is that with platforms like WordPress, Wix, and Squarespace will take you through the process when you set up your account with them. The downside of these platforms is that you’ll need to do all the web design and building yourself. Even if you use a template, it’s very easy to end up with incorrect graphic formats and unused code that slow your site down and cost you more than a few readers. 1 in 4 visitors will abandon a website that takes more than 4 seconds to load.

Alternatively, you can choose a more personalized approach from an independent website builder. I know what you’re thinking: That sound’s expensive, but you’d be surprised at the affordable options available if you know where to find them. Independent builders offer a tailored experience without the risk of slow loading speeds and pixelated graphics faced by many DIY website builders and often include benefits like business email that improve brand trust and save you the hassle of linking several services.

If you’re looking for an affordable, independent alternative to the big website platforms, I recommend Bizdorks.

1.3 Choose your blog name

There are a few things to consider when choosing your blog name. Beyond being catchy and sparking interest, your blog name can also increase your online visibility and appeal.

• Make sure your title relates to your niche and communicates what kind of content readers can expect.

• Make sure your title reflects your brand voice. If you’re running a personal blog or brand, then this should be fairly easy. For businesses, it will take a little more thought.

• Make sure to include keywords that relate to your niche or that your target audience is likely to include in their searches. You can do this by looking at other blogs with similar themes, using the keyword research already conducted for your business, or use this free keyword generator.

• Make sure your blog title is available and can be used as a domain name. “.com” is always the preferred extension, followed closely by “.co.” Although you can use others like. org or. net if .com is unavailable, they are not as trusted among consumers.

The name of your blog is the first thing readers will see and is arguably one of the most important choices you will make when creating your blog. If your title doesn’t spark interest, readers won’t click, and it won’t matter how great your blog’s content is because nobody will ever see it.

1.4 Chose your look

Before you build your blog or start working with a web designer, it’s important to have a clear branding outline. If you’re linking to a business, then your branding should stay the same for better brand recognition and recall. Many independent blog owners skip the branding step. Don’t! Branding is essential to any business and treating your blog as a business now will open the doors to more opportunity in the future. Learn how to give your brand identity more depth by reading Energising your brand: The power of non-visual branding.

Customising your blog’s visual elements can be as simple as choosing two colours for your template theme and applying them, or you can go as in depth as choosing fonts and even creating your own logo. Remember to take your time in choosing your blog’s visual elements. Your visual branding is as important as your blog’s non-visual branding and one should reflect the other. I.e. if your blog is a collection of short mystery stories, then you’ll want to choose darker, more muted tones and serious fonts. If you’re sharing kids baking recipes, then go rainbow all the way.

In general, the more memorable the look of your blog is, the better. Ask yourself what feelings and themes do you want to instantly convey when a new reader finds your posts?

Step. 2 Writing

The jury is still hung on how often you should post to your blog, but the favored post frequency among bloggers is three to six times a month. Ideally, post often enough to make your blog relevant and memorable, but not so frequently that you struggle to find the time and end up with low-quality content. Follow the steps below to create your first blog post and every one that follows:

2.1 Choose your topic

Fiction writers will be familiar with the first rule of writing, “Just write.” That notion still holds true for fiction blogs. It’s a good idea to include a short introduction using relevant keywords on your blog’s homepage but for your stories - Just write.

For all other blogs, my favorite keyword generator is also a great tool for generating topics for your blog, but you can also just use google. Start with an interrogative term, such as ‘what’ or ‘how’ and then a word relating to your niche. Click enter or let Google autofill with popular questions. Choose a question you can answer and you have your first blog post topic.

2.2 Choose your title

Using the method above for choosing your topic should also have thrown out some relating keywords. I like to front-load my title, keeping important keywords at the start with an extension that gives readers more insight. Here is a great article with blog post title templates you can use with your keywords to generate interest in your post.

Some people prefer to wait until after they’ve written their blog post to come up with the title and that’s fine. I totally get it. I do the same thing when writing fiction. However, I recommend having some placeholder text, such as the question you’re aiming to answer at the top of your document to make sure you stay on track.

Shameless plug of my creative writing ⬆️

2.3 Write your article

Fiction or non-fiction, no matter your topics and niche, you should always aim to create entertaining content. Remember how most readers spend just 97 seconds reading the average blog post? Great non-fiction blog posts contain valuable information and insights, but they shouldn’t just be an info dump. Entertainment and emotion is what keeps readers engaged beyond the average time.

• Begin with a short paragraph that defines your article and why it’s important. If you’ve ever used any of my copywriting services, then you’ll know the importance of emotion in keeping readers engaged, begin introducing it here and weave that emotional thread throughout your article. End with a hook that entices people to keep people reading.

• Keep that keyword research you completed earlier handy and include longer keywords and terms once, preferably within the first 150 words to boost your search engine optimisation (SEO) i.e. how likely your post is to show up in relevant online searches.

• Break up your content. The more in-depth your blog post is, the better, but people will skim long paragraphs and give up if it takes too long to find the information they’re looking for. Keep your paragraphs short, use headings and subheadings, define key information with bullet points, use lists, and include images to help people quickly find key information and help them evaluate the value of your content immediately. For extra lengthy posts, you can also include a table of links near the top so people can skip ahead. You’ll need to create anchor points using code in order to do this, but it isn’t as complicated as it sounds. Read my “skip ahead” guide to find out how.

• Remember, branding is essential. Stick to your brand voice throughout. If you want to build a readership or improve brand recognition and recall, your content needs to be easily associated with you, your brand, or your business.

• Include links to other sites and articles. This is called backlinking and it not only improves the credibility of your blog when you share statistics and resources, it also increases the possibility that someone else will backlink your post, improving your SEO.

• If you’re monetizing your blog, don’t forget to add your links with an appropriate call to action and test them. There are also essential legal requirements to adhere to for advertisers and affiliate marketers. Above all, make sure you’re compliant.

• Avoid the pitfalls of AI generated content. Whilst AI has it’s place in the planning and research phases of writing, the technology still has a long way to go. AI generated content is not only easy to spot, it also lacks the understanding of human emotion and cultures that are necessary to keep readers connected and engaged.

• Edit! Most people will forgive a misplaced comma,, but a post riddled with spelling mistakes is hard to read and reduces your positioning as an expert on your topic. You can use tools like spellcheck, grammarly, and pro-writing aid.

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2.4 Connect with your readers

Adding an email subscription option to your blog homepage and posts isn’t essential, but it is a good idea if you want to build your readership and collect audience data for later marketing. Some platforms, such as SquareSpace, offer integrated email marketing and where you can simply drop your subscription form into place. Others, like Wordpress, offer integrations for popular free automated email management platforms such as MailerLite and MailChimp.

2.5 Keep your readers updated

Some platforms will offer the option to automatically let your email subscribers know every time you publish new content. Depending on how often you publish new content, this can be a great automation tool or annoy your readers into unsubscribing. Many bloggers prefer to send bi-weekly or monthly updates with links to all their latest posts. It’s important to ensure that your visual and non-visual branding carry through your emails, but remember that simple is best. Html emails that are heavy on image and video content are often flagged by spam filters and may never make it to your audience's inbox.

Step. 3 Promotion

Promoting your blog is similar to promoting any other online business. If you followed the advice above when creating your blog title and content, you should already have a keyword optimization built in, but SEO alone is not enough to build a successful blog or business. The best marketing and promotional strategies use a combination of promotional methods to reach their target audience.

3.1 Social media

Social media is a great tool for blog promotion. Not only will your friends and followers see your new blog, they can also easily share it with their friends and followers. The big social platforms such as Facebook and Twitter (X) are a great place to start, but one platform often undervalued for its blog boosting abilities is Pinterest. Combine your Pinterest pins with valuable infographics made in Canva to grab attention and get more saves.

Don’t forget to share your social sharing links in your email newsletters, too. Blog posts are 3.5X more likely to be shared on social media by email subscribers.

3.2 Online engagement

If you want people to engage with your blog, you need to engage with the people who read blogs. Look for blogs with similar themes to yours, leave and reply to comments sharing your insights and expertise. Do the same thing on your social media platforms to generate a steady increase in engaged followers, which, increases the effectiveness of your organic social media promotion.

Remember your branding and don’t be critical unless your brand has trolling and sarcasm built into its identity.

3.3 Collaboration

If you’re engaging with other blogs and their audience in a positive manner, then you’re likely to make a few connections along the way. Utilise these connections by approaching bloggers with a similar target audience and of a similar size to your own. By collaborating with other bloggers to promote each others content, you build both of your audiences and improve your backlink network, which is good for your SEO rankings.

Get started

Blogging is rarely a bad investment when done correctly. More than 92% of marketers consider content a valuable asset to invest in and 65% of content marketers say they have a documented content strategy, but with 95% of searchers never going past the first page of google and over half of all clicks going to the top 3 results starting your blog off with considered and consistent branding is more important than ever. Learn more about creating your non-visual branding in this article or get a head start on your blog content with my brand orientated professional copywriting services.

Book a free consultation to get started today.