Are you looking to launch a WordPress blog to express yourself or share a personal journey? Do you want to be able to establish yourself as a knowledgeable authority in a niche? You might want to build renown by creating content that others can relate to or refer to online.
Blog content creation is the top inbound marketing strategy of 55% of marketers. Many bloggers monetize their blogs through advertising, affiliate marketing, and selling products. Even if you only plan to document your life adventures, blogging is a great way to go about it.
In this guide, you’ll learn how to make your first WordPress blog. If you’re not too tech-savvy, we’ve written it down in a simple and easy-to-follow format. Read on for a detailed step-by-step guide on creating and launching a WordPress blog.
Before you start building your blog, you need to know what you’re going to write about. This will help you decide later on the best approach to building your WordPress blog site. Consistency and passion are what every successful blog needs.
It doesn’t have to be a blog about a very specific topic. You can write about the mom lifestyle as well as the best way to make a Caesar salad. The important thing is that you follow a theme that is meaningful and motivating to you.
Decide on something you are very intent in writing about. If you’re unsure about your main theme or niche, write down post titles you plan on writing in the future. Take the common thread from all those titles and decide your niche from there.
How knowledgeable are you with building a blog site? What blogging goals do you have that align with your content management system? Are you sure that your blogging platform will allow monetization?
WordPress is a popular choice among website creators. After all, it began as a blogging platform that transformed into a developed content management system. In 2018, WordPress powered 30% of all websites across the internet.
It’s no surprise why people choose WordPress either. It’s easy to install and easy to use. Many hosting services allow you to install WordPress with a single click.
The best thing about WordPress is that it has a solid open-source community. If you ever need help with a problem or issue, a simple Google search can help you solve it. If it’s an issue that needs more knowledgeable users, you can always ask people from its community.
Although WordPress is leading the race for the most popular CMS, other CMS are trailing behind. Joomla is another free, open-source CMS that also has a tightknit community. It’s great for creating a social environment if you ever want to engage with visitors.
Wix is a free platform made to build websites. There is also WordPress.com that is a lot like WordPress.org. Although they seem the same at first, their differences lie in the services and finer details.
WordPress beginners won’t have a hard time registering for a domain name and hosting at Host.ie. We’re already optimized for hosting and domain registration.
Now that you have a general theme in mind for your blog, you can write down web addresses for your blog. Since this will be a WordPress blog, the domain name is where you should focus on most. For example, it’s the word ‘host’ in www.host.ie.
If you’re drawing to a blank, use words related to your niche. If you’re blogging about a specific area, you can try to add the name of the place into your domain name. Make sure to prepare more than one in case your first choice is unavailable.
Using WordPress as your blogging site is a good choice because it’s a self-hosting platform. Think of hosting as the place on the internet where everything in your blog gets stored. That means that all your information gets stored within WordPresss.org.
Free blogging platforms will have free hosting which will have limits. If you want cheap web hosting, you can expect that some features will be lacking. It’s smart to invest in your hosting service provider if you’re not using WordPress.
After you have your domain name and hosting service, it’s time to move onto WordPress. Log in and choose a WordPress theme. Install it to your blog.
As a note, it would be smart to choose a theme that matches what your blog is all about. You can choose to install free or premium themes for your WordPress blog. If you’ve got a design in mind that isn’t on the list, commission someone to design it.
If what you want are small customizations, you can add them in yourself under the Customize menu. It’s also possible to add widgets and menus for your blog. Tweak the theme any way you want so it fits your style and makes your blog distinctive.
You can choose to take your time re-designing the theme and/or enhancing it. Make your vision a reality by customizing it to your liking. Remember not to add too much that it slows the blog site’s loading time.
Another thing to note here is to make sure your blog loads fast on mobile. A great majority of people use their smartphones to browse websites on the Internet. Make your blog mobile-friendly so you don’t lose them to other bloggers out there.
Writing blogs can be a tiring process. You’ll need all the help you can get from WordPress to get through the day sometimes. WordPress helps make your life easier by aiding in the organization process.
One way to do this is to create a navigation menu. Go to Appearance > Menus > Create a new menu page. A prompt to specify the menu name will come up. Name and reposition it how you want to and then save.
You can also set up a sidebar or footer. WordPress has widgets that let you customize them and display the content you choose to put in them. They could show recent posts, an email signup box, and more.
All you need to do is navigate over to Appearance > Widgets. There is a list of widgets ready in the left-hand panel. Drag and drop them to any widget-ready area and then you can start customizing their content.
Do you want to sync your WordPress time zone with yours? You can change it to your preference in Settings > General. This way, you have an easier time scheduling your posts in advance.
Another WordPress feature you can use is to allow pingbacks or trackbacks. This is a feature that notifies you whenever other blogs link to you. As a note, most of these are spam so it may be better to disable them.
Want to add some more features to your WordPress blog site? Anyone who is planning to blog with WordPress can be happy for the thousands of plugins from the open source available to install. From analytics trackers to Yoast SEO, you can find everything in there.
WordPress blogging can seem pointless later if you don’t see a rise in visitors. You want to optimize your content with SEO or search engine optimization. The Yoast SEO plugin is one of the best plugins out there that will help drive visitors to your blog.
Want to make the website’s loading speed faster? There are plugins to help make that possible. You can even use security plugins to keep the blog protected.
Are you also an active vlogger or video creator? Want to incorporate your videos into your blog posts? The YouTube plugin will let you embed videos into your posts or blog site.
Do you want to engage your visitors by interacting with you or each other? Get a plugin that allows discussions to take place in a comment section. You could choose to get one that allows comment threads or anonymous reactions.
Do you want a blog that would allow for more photos to get added? WordPress gallery plugins are accessible in WordPress.org. There are also those that let you create compact albums or thumbnail galleries.
As of now, there are over 55,000 plugins available on WordPress for you to use. Pick a handful that will work best for your ideal blog site. Remember not to use too many plugins since they can slow down the site’s performance.
In WordPress, go to Plugins > Add New. Use the search bar to look up a plugin you want to install. Click on the install button, configure the plugin settings, and then activate it.
There will be cases when the plugin you want is not included in the WordPress plugin directory. Often, these will be true with paid WordPress plugins. There is another way to install these plugins onto your site.
Before you start installing these paid plugins, you need to download them from the source. From the admin area, visit Plugins > Add New page again. Click the Upload Plugin button on top of the page and choose the downloaded .zip file of the paid plugin.
WordPress will upload and install the plugin for you. Activate it and configure any of the settings to fit your needs.
And those are the two ways to install WordPress plugins to enhance your WordPress blog.
This is where all the fun writing work starts. The first content you need to worry about is your main pages. These are your About Page, Contact Page, and the like.
Create content that won’t make these pages boring. They may only be the basic pages but they are important as well. Make them as interesting as you want your blog posts to be.
When you’ve finished the main pages, you can start writing your first blog post. It can be about anything and everything. Don’t be afraid to add photos or links to your posts.
You can also spice it up with a logo, a video, or an audio file. Feel free to do whatever; this is your blog!
Studies show the average person’s attention span is eight seconds. Yes, flashy, attention-grabbing content is good but the substance is imperative. What better way to keep your visitors hooked other than with significant topics?
That is our most important point: focus on creating quality content. No matter how pretty your blog is, if the writing is substandard, nobody will stick around long enough to read it. Make a perfect first impression with a blog that feeds not only the eyes but the mind as well.
Here are a few more tips that should help you along as you start blogging more.
Linking helps a lot if you want to get visitors to your site. Internal links are SEO tactics that help get people around your blog. External links are one way to promote reliability by linking to statistics.
You put your time and energy into writing your blog posts but how come nobody looks at it? What you need is to start promoting your blog. Use social media to drive traffic to your WordPress blog site.
If you’re selling products, add a call-to-action or CTA in your post. With a CTA, you encourage readers to avail your products. You generate leads and sales this way.
That’s our in-depth guide to launching your first WordPress blog.
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