How to Create a Blog from Scratch: A Step-by-Step Guide

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Getting Started

Before we get started on the technical stuff, let’s look at why you might want to start a blog, what the important things to consider and what are the steps involved in starting a blog.

Why Start a Blog?

If you are reading this, then you might already have decided that you want to start a blog and would have your reasons.

If not, and you only clicked on this to see what its all about, then let’s take a took at a few reasons to start a blog and what each one entails.

Just For Fun

You may have started a new hobby and want to share your experience with others or document your journey.

Maybe you have an immense amount of knowledge about a particular subject and just want to share your knowledge and experience with others.

In any case, and there are many other examples of instances where this could be the case, you can start a blog for fun without any expectations from it aside from your personal enjoyment and satisfaction from the process.

Build a Personal Profile/Brand

You can also start a blog to build up your personal profile or personal brand.

This would be a great way to promote yourself if you are a freelancer, consultant, motivational speaker, coach of some kind, fitness instructor, etc.

Your goal would most likely be to get people to interact with you through your blog and ultimately buy or use your products or services.

Promote a Business

A blog is also an extremely effective way to promote a business and attract new clients or customers.

Similarly, your goal would probably be to get people to interact with your business through the content on your blog and to ultimately buy or use your products or services.

Make Money

Lastly, and by far not the last reason (but that’s all I’ll cover for now), you might want to start a blog to earn extra money or potentially make enough money to turn your blog into a full-time job or business.

YES, this is entirely possible and not as hard as you might think.

I’ve laid out most of the steps in this guide to help you get started, and if you follow through with the steps, work hard, be patient, and don’t give up, you can get there sooner than you think.

Important Things To Know Before Starting a Blog

Here are some essential things to know before starting your first blog:

  • It takes time. Building up a successful blog takes time, and there’s no way around that. It takes time for Google to trust new blogs and articles take, on average, up to a year to rank as high as they can and settle in their most likely permanent positions in the Google search results (SERP). So be prepared to put in the time and energy now and only reap the reward after at least 1 year.
  • Consistency. Consistency is vital in gaining the right amount of traction with Google to set your new blog on the path to success. You will need to get into a posting schedule of consistently posting new content to your new blog—1-2 posts per week, at least.
  • Quality over quantity. You need to be producing the highest quality content you possibly can. No trick can help you rank in Google’s search results better than creating high quality, thoughtful, helpful, value-adding content. Outsourcing the writing to $5 writers on Fiverr might not be the best option for your new blog.

Steps to Starting Your First Blog

Here are the basic steps in setting up a blog, laid out in what I like to call “The 13 Steps To Thriving with Your Blog”:

  1. Choosing/Finding a Niche
  2. Getting a Domain & Hosting
  3. Installing WordPress
  4. Install Useful Plugins
  5. Some Important Technical Stuff
  6. Picking a Theme
  7. Creating a Brand Identity for Your Blog
  8. Choosing Topics to Write About
  9. Writing Posts
  10. Adding Images
  11. Analyzing the Data
  12. Monetizing Your Blog
  13. The Business Side of Things

1. Choosing/Finding a Niche

The very first thing you need to decide is the main topic of your blog.

What will your blog be about?

This is what is called a niche.

There are many many different niches, sub-niches, sub-sub-niches, etc. to choose from.

Fitness would be an example of a niche. Fitness for men would then be a sub-niche. Fitness for men over 50 would then be a sub-sub-niche. And fitness for men over 50 with deviated septums would be a sub-sub-sub-niche.

In general, main niches would be way too competitive and nearly impossible to break into, whereas going too deep into the sub-sub-sub-sub-niches might be too obscure and would never bring in enough traffic for your blog to succeed.

The idea would be to find a sub or sub-sub-niche broad enough to bring a lot of traffic, but specific enough that isn’t a lot of competition in it, making it easier for your posts to rank.

Where to Get Ideas from?

If you don’t already have an idea of what your blog is going to be about, here are a few ways to get some niche ideas for your blog.

Your Passions and Interests

A good place to start is yourself.

What are your passions? What are you interested in? What do you know enough about that you could write about? What is something that you’ve always wanted to try, like a hobby, sport, or skill?

Write them down on a list.

Our Top 100 Niche Ideas for 2021

Feel free to download our Top 100 Niche Ideas for 2021 here by subscribing to our newsletter. (COMING SOON!)

Google

Google is good place to head to next for more niche ideas.

Go to http://Google.com and type in “popular blog topics” or “blog topic ideas” and search.

Go through the results and make notes of the niches that interest you.

Amazon

Amazon is another place where you could find some niche ideas if you haven’t found any yet.

Click on the menu button to expand the menu and scroll down to “Full Store Directory” option.

Browse through the store directory and write down the ideas that interest you.

Magazines

Another option is to browse through magazines at your local magazine stand or supermarket.

Also, if there’s a magazine on a topic, it usually means that there are enough people interested in that topic.

Simply browse through the magazines and add the ideas to your list, which should be quite long by now.

Important Things To Consider When Selecting a Niche

Before we get to the next sections, which will deal with how broad you should go with your niche and how to know whether your niche will work or not, there are a few things to consider when selecting your niche that will influence your decision.

As frustrating as this might be, considering these few things might make you erase a few of the ideas from your list at this point, so be prepared.

Interest

Interest is important when you are creating a blog. Not only interest from people reading your posts, but your interest in the subject that you are writing about.

When you are choosing a niche for your blog, make sure it is something that you have some interest in. It doesn’t necessarily have to be your passion, but you need to have some form of interest in the subject.

Remember that you are going to be creating an immense amount of content around that subject and, if it is something that you will lose interest in quickly, it could end deter you from consistently creating content, and you could end up abandoning the blog altogether.

Competition

Some niches are just too competitive to even get into at this point.

Fitness, finance, making money online, and a few others are just too hard to break into as a new blog, and I’d advise choosing something different.

YMYL

There’s a term that exists within the blogging world called YMYL (Your Money Your Life), which is Google’s way of reserving the search results of articles and topics relating to things about your money or your health, to certified professionals in that field or to people that Google has identified as being qualified to give advice on.

Here are the YMYL examples from Google:

That’s why you would generally get search results from medical websites and doctors when searching for medical-related queries etc.

Unless you are qualified or a professional in one of these fields, I’d advise exploring your other ideas first before getting into these areas.

How Broad Should You Go with Your Niche?

As I mentioned earlier, main niches would be way too competitive and nearly impossible to break into. Whereas going too deep into sub-sub-sub-sub-niches might be too obscure and would never bring in enough traffic for your blog to succeed.

The idea would be to find a sub or sub-sub-niche broad enough to bring a lot of traffic, but specific enough that isn’t a lot of competition in it, making it easier for your posts to rank.

A great tip that I can give you, and one that I personally always use when creating my own blogs, is to keep your domain name as broad as possible, but then to create content on more sub-sub-niche topics. This allows you to broaden your content later or to switch over to another sub-sub-niche under the same topic.

For example, if I had to create a site around meditation and niche down to “meditation for pregnant women over 30”, instead of “meditationfornewmomsover30.com”, I’d choose a domain like “mymeditationjourney.com.”

This will allow me to expand to “meditation for pregnant women in general” later or change direction if I find another area that works better like “meditation for kids under 7,” for example. All of which would still work under a broader domain like “mymeditationjourney.com.”

How To Know If The Your Niche Will Work?

It is very difficult to determine whether a niche is good to get into and whether you will succeed in it. That being said, there are a few places where we can look at a few things and some data that could help us evaluate whether a niche idea could work.

Google Trends

First place would be Google Trends.

Google Trends is a tool developed by Google that shows us the search trends over time for specific terms, topics, places, people, etc.

Generally, if your niche idea is trending up over time, instead of down, that is a good sign.

Let’s see how it works.

First step is to head over to trends.google.com/trends/.

Then enter your niche or blog’s main topic in the search bar. For this example, I’ve used “Meditation.”

Once the trend results are shown, you’ll see that it displays the trend for that term over the “past 12 months”.

You’ll want to change this to “2004 – present”.

This will give you a better idea of whether your niche or blog’s topic is trending up or down.

You can also change the country to “worldwide” if you want, but as mentioned before, it’s better to write to an American audience if you intend to make money with your blog.

Now you have the results for your topic from 2004 to the present day.

What you want to look for is something similar to the above example of an upward trend.

If your topic or niche idea is trending downward and has been trending downward consistently over time, it might not be a good long term investment to get into that specific topic.

You can also scroll down to the “related queries” section where the top trending related queries are shown.

These can sometimes make for good categories of your blog.

You can simply right click on them and open them in a new tab to see their trends over time.

In this case, you can see that “kids meditation” and “guided meditation sleep” are both trending upward with a huge spike in recent times, which would be great categories to add and topics to find to write about on your blog in this example.

Other Sites in the Same Space

Another place to look for signs that your niche could work is to look at other websites in the same space.

Look at how many sites are in the same space, covering the same kinds of topics you are planning to write about, the number of people engaging with those sites, the social media channels of those sites, and the types of and amount of engagement they are getting, etc.

YouTube

YouTube is also a great place to look because you can get some valuable data from it.

Simply head over to YouTube and enter your niche or blog’s main topic in the search bar.

Go through the results and look at the number of recent videos that come up along with the number of views the videos have.

This should give you an indication of whether it’s a topic that people are interested in and often consume content of or not.

2. Getting a Domain & Hosting

Once you have decided on your niche or topic of your blog, it’s time to get a domain and hosting.

There are countless options of domain registrars and hosting providers, some better than others, but I would highly recommend that you get your domain and hosting for your blog from Bluehost.

I’ve personally used Bluehost (Ultimate Brand Bible is hosted on Bluehost) for quite some time now and extremely happy with them.

I have multiple blogs (more than 15) all hosted on Bluehost and aside from the ease of setting up them up, they all perform exceptionally well in terms of speed.

So let’s get your domain and hosting set up now so you can get your blog up and running

Disclaimer: I am an affiliate partner of Bluehost and do receive a small commission if you sign up through my link.

Head over to bluehost.com and click on “GET STARTED” to select your plan.

You can read through the options and select the one that you feel suits your needs the best, but my general recommendation is to go for the “Choice Plus” plan as it gives you by far the best value for money.

Once you have selected your plan, it’s time to choose a domain for your blog.

If you already have a domain you want to use, you can enter the domain in the “Use a domain you own” box, and you’ll be all set to use that domain. You might need to point your domain to Bluehost, but your current domain registrar can help you with that.

Important Things to Consider When Choosing a Domain

  1. .com. In general, I always prefer and highly recommend to go for a .com domain. It is most commonly used and also the most trusted among consumers.
  2. Clear. Try to keep your domain as short as possible. I know this can be difficult because of the sheer number of domains that are all taken already if you spend the time looking under all the rocks, you just might be surprised at what you can find.
  3. Short. Try to make your domain name as clear and obvious as possible as it related to describing what your blog is all about.
  4. Copyright. Be careful not to infringe on someone’s copyright. Using trademarked names in your domain name can cause you to get into legal trouble and should be avoided. Check out my article on “Is Your Brand Name Taken? Here’s How to Check (and What To Do)” to check if your name is trademarked or not.

Fill out your information that your Bluehost account will be associated with.

Enter your credit card information for the payment.

Agree to all the terms of service stuff.

Select your package details.

You’ll have the option to select your plan and pay for 1 year, 2 years or 3 years. I usually recommend going for the 3-year plan as, again, it gives you the best value for money, and you don’t have to worry about renewals for a few years.

From the “package extras” box, I usually only include “Domain Privacy Protection” so that people can’t see your personal details when trying to find information about your domain.

You can add “sitelock” and “codegaurd” options if you want, but I usually don’t include them.

Now it’s time to create your password for your Bluehost account.

Choose a strong password and something that’ll be hard to guess.

Now you’re all set and ready to start setting up your new exciting blog!

Log in to your Bluehost account by entering the domain name that you chose earlier along with the strong password you chose for your Bluehost account.

3. Installing WordPress

Once you have your domain and hosting sorted with Bluehost, it’s time to install WordPress.

Now there are many other platforms you can use to build your blog on, by WordPress is by far the most popular and I would highly recommend not to use anything except WordPress.

WordPress is free and your Bluehost account’s cPanel, similar to most other hosting companies in this regard, has a one-click-install option for WordPress.

Once you’re inside your Bluehost account, click on the “Advanced” tab at the bottom of the left sidebar to enter your cPanel.

Once you’re inside your cPanel, scroll down to the “Software” section and click on “Softcalculous Apps Installer”.

Look for the big blue and white circular logo with the “W” for WordPress and click “Install”.

Under “Choose installation URL”, make sure to select the “https://” option as your Bluehost account comes with free SSL on all of your sites.

Also select the domain name on the right that you want your blog to be installed on, if you have more than one domain in your Bluehost account..

Enter the following info for your site as shown above.

  1. Site Name – Your blog’s name
  2. Site Description – Your blog’s short description or slogan
  3. Admin Username – this will be your WordPress administrator login username
  4. Admin Password – this will be your WordPress administrator login password
  5. Admin Email – this will be your WordPress administrator login email

Scroll down and click “Install”.

Once installed, you will see the success screen with your “administrative URL” that is your domain name with “wp-admin” at the end of it.

Click on the link to access the WordPress backend of your blog.

This will be where you can log in to the WordPress backend of your blog in the future as well, by entering the same URL in your browser.

yourawesomedomain.com/wp-admin for example

Once you’ve clicked on that link or entered the link into your browser and entered your admin username and password, you’ll find yourself inside of the WordPress backend of your blog.

4. Install Useful Plugins

Once you have WordPress installed, it’s time to delete some unused plugins and install some that will enhance your blog.

Deleting Unused Plugins

From the initial installation, there might be some plugins in your WordPress backend that you don’t need.

I usually delete them, as plugins tend to slow down your site and there’s no need to keep unnecessary plugins.

Follow the following steps to first deactivate plugins that are not needed:

  1. Go to Plugins on the left sidebar of your WordPress backend
  2. Click on “Installed Plugins”
  3. One by one, click on “deactivate” under each plugin to deactivate them

Now that you’ve deactivated the plugins that you don’t need, you now need to delete them one by one.

You can do that by clicking “delete” under each plugin and selecting “ok” under the pop-up box asking if you are sure that you want to delete them.

Really Simple SSL

An essential plugin that you need to install is Really Simple SSL, which will activate your SSL certificate on your site.

Under Plugins, click on “Add New” to add new plugins.

  1. Head over to the search tab at the top right
  2. Enter “really simple ssl” in the search tab
  3. Once the result appear, you will see “Really Simple SSL” with the yellow and grey logo of a lock drawing
  4. Click on “Install Now”

Once installed, click on the blue “Activate” box to activate Really Simple SSL.

After activation, you will be redirected to a box prompting you to activate SSL on your blog.

Click on the blue box “Go ahead, activate SSL”.

That’s it. You have successfully activated SSL on your blog.

Now let’s move on to the next ones.

Shortpixel Image Optimizer

This is not necessarily an essential plugin, but one that I would highly recommend.

Shortpixel Image Optimizer is a plugin that automatically optimizes all the images on your site, thereby reducing their size and increasing the performance of your blog.

WP Fastest Cache

WP Fastest Cache is a free caching plugin, with additional features in the paid version, that caches your website’s pages and thereby decreases your page load times for visitors.

Yoast SEO

Yoast SEO is a great plugin to optimize your blog for SEO and increase your chances of getting picked up by Google to show your content in search results.

Monster Insights

Monster insights is a great plugin that manages your Google Analytics data in your WordPress backend.

5. Some Important Technical Stuff

Once you have some or all of the plugins installed that I just covered, it’s time to get some technical things sorted before we get into the fun blogging stuff.

WordPress Settings

Firstly, there’s a WordPress setting that we need to go and change, Permalinks.

Permalinks

The Permalink settings will change the way your blog posts’ URL’s appear. The best way of doing this is only to have your domain name / your post title.

Here are the steps to change the permalink settings of your blog:

  1. Go to Settings
  2. Click on Permalinks
  3. Select “Post name”
  4. Save Changes

Google Analytics

Google Analytics is an important tool for keeping track of visitor data regarding your blog. How many people visited your blog every month/day/week/year, from which devices, countries, at which times, how long they stayed on your blog, on which pages, etc.

To set up your site for tracking on Google Analytics, head over to analytics.google.com. You’ll be prompted to sign in to your Google account.

Enter your Google account email and password and click “Next”.

You’ll then see a screen welcoming you to Google Analytics.

Click on “Start measuring”.

Fill in an account name for yourself.

Select “Web” as you want to be tracking the data from your blog.

Click “Next”.

Fill in your Website name for your reference.

Fill in your web address (URL). Just remember to change the beginning part to httpS:// if you have an SSL certificate installed on your site, which you should have for free with your Bluehost account.

Then click “Create”.

Check the boxes and click “I Accept”.

You can either check the boxes if you want to get emails from Google regarding the points mentioned or simply leave the boxes unchecked and click “Save.”

You will then end up at a screen with your property create and your tracking ID displayed. Just take a note of this ID in case you need it later.

Google Search Console

Google Search Console is the other useful tool from Google that we use to track your organic search appearances and how people behave when engaging with your posts as they appear in the search results. (SERP)

Go to search.google.com, and you should see a window pop up asking you to add a property.

Go to the “URL prefix” box and put in your domain name. You have to use the full URL, including the “https://” prefix.

Click continue.

Click the “HTML tag” box and copy the text in the white box that starts with “<meta name.”

Head back over to your WordPress backend and install a plugin called “Header Footer Code Manager.”

“Activate” the plugin once installed.

Look for the HFCM icon in the bottom left of your WordPress backend and click on “Add New.”

Keep all the settings as is, just fill in the box under “Snippet Name” at the top.

I usually name it “Google,” but it’s up to you what you want to name it as it is just for your own reference.

Then paste that code you copied from Search Console under the “HTML Tag” box into the “Snippet / Code” box at the bottom and then click “Save.”

Head back to Search Console, and under the code you copied in the “HTML Tag” box, click “VERIFY.”

Your blog should now be verified and added to your Search Console as a property, ready to receive data from Google.

6. Picking a Theme

Now that you’ve picked your niche, gotten your domain, installed WordPress, and worked your way from some tedious technical stuff, it’s time to pick a theme for your blog.

The theme is what gives your blog its look and feel, so pick something that you feel suits your brand the best.

There is, however, another thing to consider when choosing a theme for your blog, which is performance.

You want to find the right balance between a theme that looks good but is also fast and performs exceptionally well.

Here are some suggestions for paid and free themes, and also where you can get them from.

Paid Themes

There are countless options for where to get WordPress themes from for your blog, but here are my recommendations for the best places to get paid themes at great prices.

Disclaimer: I am an affiliate partner of Envato Market, Envato Elements, & Acabado by Income School, and do receive a small commission if you sign up through my links.

Themeforest – Envato Market

Themeforest on Envato Market is my number 1 go-to place for WordPress themes and plugins.

Here are some themes on Themeforest worth checking out:

  1. Newspaper
  2. Soledad
  3. Pixwell – Modern Magazine
  4. Sitka – Modern WordPress Blog Theme
  5. X | The Theme

Envato Elements

Envato Elements is another great go-to source for me for WordPress themes, especially since I don’t have to pay for the themes individually, but can download as many as I want under my monthly subscription of around $30 per month.

Here are some themes on Envato Elements worth checking out:

  1. Blogosphere – Multipurpose Blogging Theme
  2. Maaya Blog – Travel Blog, Personal Blog
  3. Marcell – Personal Blog & Magazine WordPress Theme
  4. Springbook – Blog Travel Photography WP Theme
  5. JNews – WordPress Newspaper Magazine Blog Theme

Acabado by Income School

Acabado by Income School is the theme I am running on Ultimate Brand Bible and many of my other blogs.

Although it has some limitations in the customizability of the theme, it does a great job of what I need from a blog theme, and it’s extremely well optimized for blogging and SEO.

It might not be suited for everyone, but feel free to check it out. I personally use it and highly recommend it for blogging.

Other

Some other paid themes worth checking out:

  1. Kadence
  2. Astra
  3. OceanWP
  4. Divi

Free Themes

If you don’t want to spend any money on a theme, that’s perfectly fine cause there are many places to get free themes as well that will work just fine for starting your first blog.

WordPress

The first place to look is in your WordPress backend.

Here are the steps to access the free themes: (as per above picture)

  1. Go to Appearance
  2. Click on Themes
  3. Click Add New

Once you’ve clicked on “Add New”, you’ll see loads of theme appear.

Go through the themes or use the filter or search functions to find something more specific.

Once you found a theme you want, click “Install” and then “Activate” to install and activate the theme you want.

Some free themes on WordPress worth checking out:

  1. Kadence (free version)
  2. Astra (free version)
  3. OceanWP (free version)

Themeforest – Envato Market

Awesome hack! Themeforest on Envato Market offers a collection of monthly free items, which very often include premium WordPress themes.

Simply sign up for Themeforest on Envato Market and check the first of every month to download your free items.

7. Creating a Brand Identity for Your Blog

Creating a brand identity for your business (yes, your blog is technically a business) is an extremely important part of the process, and something a lot of people often overlook.

For more on the importance of having a logo and good brand identity for your blog, check out my article on “Is It Important For A Blog To Have A Logo?

For an in-depth look at how to create a brand identity, check out my post “How to Create a Brand Identity – Complete Guide with Examples” or download my free ebook by subscribing to our newsletter below.

Creating a brand identity for a new business can be a daunting task and expensive as well. So it would be wise to arm yourself with all the knowledge possible to help navigate your decisions and investment in the right direction to ensure that you achieve the exact end result that your brand, and you, deserve.

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    8. Choosing Topics to Write About

    Once you have your theme installed and your brand identity in the works, it’s time for the most important part of the entire process, choosing the topics to write about that could get you to rank in the SERP and thereby getting loads of page views through organic search results.

    Where to Get Topic Ideas

    Before we can evaluate the topics o determine which ones could perform well, we first need to find a list of possible topics.

    Here are some great places to look:

    Google

    Since blogging and SEO are essentially a byproduct of Google, this would be a great place to start looking for topics to write about on your blog.

    Google’s autocompleting function is a great way to see the topics or queries that people are searching for, relating to a specific keyword or topic.

    Simply enter your topic or query into the search bar of Google (incognito or private mode) and press space bar at the end of it.

    Google will display the autocomplete results of your topic or query.

    You can also scroll down to the “People also ask” section for more topic ideas that people are often searching for.

    You can also scroll down to the bottom of the page and look for the “Searches related to” section for even more topics or queries related to your topic or keywords that you’ve entered into the search bar.

    Remember to write down all the queries you find in a list of topic ideas and queries you can write about on your blog.

    Keyword Sheeter

    Another awesome tool that I often use for topic ideas, is Keywordsheeter, and can easily generate thousand of topic ideas.

    Simply go to keywordsheeter.com and enter your topics or keywords into the search box.

    I typically add words like: Can, May, Would, Is, Should, Will, Best, etc. as you can see in the above example.

    After you’ve entered your keywords, click on “Sheet Keywords”.

    If it does not start automatically, click on “Start Job”.

    Your keywords will now start sheeting and it could take a while as the number of results are typically in the thousands.

    When you feel you have enough queries to make a good first list (maybe after 2000 results or so), simply click on the “EXPORT DATA” button and the results will download to your computer.

    * NOTE. The file format of the download is sometimes a .cvs file, which can’t open in many programs. Simply click on the file to rename it and change the extension to .csv, which will allow you to open it in Microsoft Office’s Excel.

    Go through the list and copy and paste the relevant ones into your list of topics that you have.

    Answer The Public

    Another website you can use to find topic ideas, is Answer The Public.

    Go to https://answerthepublic.com/ and enter your topic or keyword in the search bar. Then press “Search”.

    The result will come up in these visual wheels with loads of queries and phrases that people typically search for.

    You can also click on the “Data” option on the top left to display the results are lists inside boxes like the above example.

    I find this easier to digest and grab some ideas from for topics.

    Once again, add the relevant ones to your list op topics, which should be getting quite long by now.

    Quora

    Quora is also a great place to find topic ideas for your blog.

    Go to https://quora.com and enter your topic or keyword in the search bar and press enter.

    Go through the search results and add all the relevant queries to your list.

    How to Identify Low Competition Topics

    Now that you have a massive list of possible topics to write about on your blog, we need to try and find out which ones would be the easiest to rank well in Google’s search results with.

    There is no guarantee with any of these methods, but it’s a good start and you will get better at it over time.

    Google

    Once again, the best place to start is Google.

    Open a google in incognito mode and put in the the topic ideas, one by one, from your massive topic list.

    The above picture is the results based on an example (are meditation cushions necessary) that I found while looking for topics ideas.

    Simply go through the results and look for the following things:

    • Domain Authority. If none of the domains ranking on the first page are big, authoritative sites in the niche, that’s a good thing.
    • Post Quality. If the posts ranking on the first page don’t really address the question very well and you feel you can create a much more valuable and comprehensive post on that topic, that’s a great thing.
    • Post Length. If the posts ranking on the first page are short, that’s a good thing.

    Keyword Research Tools

    Another option, which majority of people in the blogging world prefer to use, is keyword research tools.

    There are loads of keyword research tools to choose from, but I’ll give you my recommendation here and also include a free option if you don’t want to spend any money on any of these tools.

    KW Finder

    KW Finder by Mangools is the best keyword research tool in my opinion that provides the best value for money.

    Simply go to https://kwfinder.com/ and sign up.

    It is a paid tool and can be on the expensive side, depending on the plan you choose, but you can also sign up for a 10-dat FREE trial.

    Once inside, search for your topic keywords or phrases and you’ll see results appear like the above picture.

    From the left box, on the top right, I usually arrange the results by “Keyword Difficulty” (KD) and then look for the lowest competition ones.

    As per the above example “meditation pillow”, you can see the score result is green, 23/100 and “easy”.

    It also shows you the estimates search volume per month, which is almost 10,000 in this case and quite a good volume to go after. Even 1,000 would be good to target as it all adds up in the end!

    Going after these “green” results give you the best chance of ranking for these terms.

    Ubersuggest

    A cool free keyword research tool is Ubersuggest by Neil Patel.

    Go to https://neilpatel.com/ubersuggest/ and search for your topic keywords or phrases similar to KW Finder and other keyword research tools.

    9. Writing Posts

    Now we’ve finally reached the point where you can start writing blog posts.

    But once again, and since this is also a crucial part of the success of any blog, there are loads of things to consider and boxes to check, so let me run through it all with you and get you on to writing your first post.

    Where to Post?

    Firstly, let’s look at how and where you should post your articles on your blog.

    This is done in the WordPress backend of your blog.

    Click on “Posts” in the left sidebar of the WordPress backend of your blog.

    Then click the “Add New” button at the top of the page to add a new post.

    And there you have it. Here is the area where you will put the title, sub headings, body text and pictures that will become your first awesome blog post!

    Post Titles

    Every blog post that you will write needs a title, and a good one while you’re at it!

    The title is important, mainly because it is what will entice the reader to click on your post when it appears in the search results or not.

    It has to be inviting and interesting, but also, to some extent, accurately describe what the article is about.

    But first, let’s look at the technical aspects of placing your title in your post in WordPress.

    To add the title of your post, click inside the “Add Title” box and type in your title.

    And there you have it. Your first post has a title and you can now focus on writing the rest of your first post.

    Things to Keep in Mind When Choosing Titles for Your Posts

    • Keep it short (under 60 characters)
    • Make it interesting and inviting so the reader would want to click on it to read further
    • Don’t mislead the reader just to get a click, it might end up harming your blog in the long run instead

    Post Sub Topics (Sub Headings)

    This would be the “meat” of the blog post.

    What would you write about under your main topic? What are the things that your readers would want to know about the topic of your post? How do you come up with these sub topics?

    Give it Some Thought

    Since you have a basic understanding of the main topic you are writing your post about, you should be able to come up with a few sub topics that are related to the main topic, so just think about it a write them down.

    I usually tend to go through the what, when, where, how, why questions related to the main topic to see which ones would apply.

    There are also some other places where we can find some ideas as to what related things people are interested in, based on your main topic.

    Google

    Once again, back to Google for some more insight.

    “People also ask” and “searches related to” are great places in the Google search results to find sub topics to cover in your posts, but only if they are relevant.

    Go to Google (incognito or private mode) and enter the query that you will be writing about and press enter.

    Scroll down to the “People also ask” section and look for related queries that could fit nicely into your post. Maybe it’s something that a user will think to ask while looking for information on the main search query.

    Clicking on the queries will not only show you a result to that specific query, but also expand the section by adding additional rows of queries.

    Similarly, you can scroll down to the “Searches related to” section and look for related queries that could fit nicely into your post.

    Top Posts

    You can also go through the top search results on the first page of Google and make notes of the topics those top posts cover.

    If you find sub topics that are covered by most of them, it would be good to cover them in your post as well.

    But in general, try to add ones that the top post have missed as this will only add more value to the reader and make your post a more comprehensive resource for that topic or search query.

    EXAMPLE POST

    Based on the examples, here is an example of the post that I would put together on “are meditation cushions necessary.”

    Post Length

    Post length should be judged by the top performing post from the Google search results.

    If the top posts are 500 words, you can write a post with 1500 words by adding more value.

    If the posts are long, comprehensive and covers all related topics very well, then the competition might be too strong to compete.

    But even if the top posts are 1500 words, writing a more comprehensive, 3500 word article could get you on the first page if not number 1.

    Post Structure

    Let’s look at how to structure your blog posts in WordPress.

    Images

    We will get to images in more details a bit later, but let’s take a quick look at how to add an mage to your blog post.

    It is quite common to have a picture at the top of your post, just after your awesome title you have just written, so let’s add the block so long where we can place the image later.

    To add the image block, click inside the “Start writing or type / to choose a block” section.

    After clicking inside the block, click on the + (plus) sign that appears on the right.

    This should bring up a grid of options of various blocks that can be added to your post.

    Select the “Image” block by clicking on it.

    You should now see a grey block like the one in the above example.

    Sub Headings

    Now let’s format your sub headings in WordPress so Google can understand them as well.

    Once again click inside the “Start writing or type / to choose a block” section.

    Now start typing your sub heading.

    After you are done typing your sub heading, click on the “paragraph sign” just above your sub heading.

    Select the “Heading” block by clicking on it.

    WordPress will now automatically format your sub heading to be a heading (H2).

    It is important to structure your post’s headings and sub headings correctly, following the right hierarchical structure.

    All sub headings should be H2.

    Sub sub headings under those H2 Sub headings should be formatted as H3, and sub sub sub headings under those as H4, etc

    To change sub headings to H3, H4, etc, click on the H2 button above the text, as seen in the above example.

    Once the box pops up with heading format options, select the one that applies to your hierarchical structure.

    Above is an example of that.

    Lists

    You can also create lists to make some content easier to understand for the reader.

    To add a list, once again, click on the “Start writing or type / to choose a block” section.

    Then click on the + (plus) sign to add a new block.

    Select the “Lists” option by clicking on it.

    A list with a bullet point will appear.

    Start typing your list.

    You can also change your list format to display numbers instead of bullets.

    Simply click on the numbered list option as seen in the above example.

    You will now have a numbered list.

    Tables

    Sometimes a table is needed to better relay information and make it easier for the reader to understand.

    To add a table, once again, click on the “Start writing or type / to choose a block” section.

    Then click on the + (plus) sign to add a new block.

    Expand the “Formatting” options by clicking on the arrow on the right and then select “Table” from the options by clicking on it.

    Once the table block appears, type in the number of columns and rows you need for your table, and click “Create Table”.

    Your table will appear in your post.

    Click inside the blocks and start filling out the table with your awesome and insightful content.

    And there you have your first table.

    Links

    Another important thing that can really help your blog to grow, is by putting link in your posts that either links to other post on your blog, or to external sources.

    Linking to other posts and/or pages on your blog is great because users stay longer on your site and this gives all the right signals to Google that people are enjoying your blog.

    Linking Outside of Your Blog

    Although it’s better to try and keep people on your blog as long as possible, sometimes there’s a lot of value to the reader to link to an external source or another website.

    If your post is about how to apply for a credit card at a specific bank, you’ll want to link them to the application page on that bank’s website at the end of your post for example.

    To create a link, simply select the text that you want to add the link to. In the above example you can see that I have selected “another site”.

    Click on the “link” button as seen in the above example.

    You will now see a block that appears where you can start typing the url of where you want to link to.

    After typing in the URL, you can select the option for the link to open in a new tab.

    This is highly recommended, otherwise, it will take people away from your post completely.

    Now click on either the “enter” sign at the top right of the block or click on the link (URL) button that appears under the URL you typed.

    Your link has been created.

    Linking to Your Other Posts

    Linking to other posts and/or on your blog is done exactly the same way as above, just copy the URL of the relevant posts and/or pages when inserting the link.

    Embedding Videos in Your Posts

    Embedding videos, specially from YouTube, is another great way to add value to your post for the reader.

    If you don’t have your own videos to add, use a video from someone else’s YouTube channel if it is relevant to your post.

    To do this, once again, click on the + to add a block.

    Look for or search for “video” and select it.

    Then you can either “Upload your own video”, which would make your post very heavy so it’s not recommended, or simply insert a YouTube, or other, URL.

    Clicking on the arrow will then embed the video into your post, where it will play for your reader to enjoy without having to leave your post.

    COMPLETE EXAMPLE POST

    You can check out the complete example post here, or by clicking on the following title: “Are Meditation Cushions Necessary? All You Need to Know!” or one of the below links.

    https://ultimatebrandbible.com/are-meditation-cushions-necessary-all-you-need-to-know/

    Grammarly

    An absolutely fantastic tool to incorporate with your writing is Grammarly.

    If you prefer to write in a Microsoft Word document before pasting it into your “post” in the WordPress backend, you can simply copy and paste the text into the Grammarly app on their website and fix your articles there, before copying it over to WordPress.

    I prefer to write all my posts directly in my WordPress and make use of the Grammarly Chrome extension, which lets me fix anything directly in my WordPress as I am writing my posts.

    I personally have the Grammarly premium version (paid version) and it’s absolutely worth it.

    Feel free to check it out here, sign up for a free account and test it out. Definitely get the Chrome extension. And if you feel it could benefit you, try out the premium version of Grammarly.

    Disclaimer: I am an affiliate partner of Grammarly and do receive a small commission if you sign up through my link.

    Post Schedule

    When it comes to the post schedule for your blog, consistency is absolutely key.

    Usually when you’re just getting started, it’s recommended to post as much as possible, at least 3 posts per week, until you reach about 50 posts I’d say.

    After that, you could scale back to about 1-2 posts per week and maintain that over time.

    This should give your blog the best chance of growing quick enough to bring you some benefits after about 1 year of blogging.

    Obviously there are many factors to consider and not all results are guaranteed, but this is a good estimate of what could be possible for you.

    10. Adding Images

    I’ve already briefly touched on adding images to your post, but let’s look at how to do that in more detail now, along with where you can get images for your blog posts, and how to format them.

    How to Add Images to Your Post

    Let’s look at how to add images to your posts in WordPress.

    To add a table, once again, click on the “Start writing or type / to choose a block” section.

    Then click on the + (plus) sign to add a new block.

    This should bring up a grid of options of various blocks that can be added to your post.

    Select the “Image” block by clicking on it.

    Inside the grey “Image” box, click the “Upload” .button

    Select the image you want to upload from your computer or device and click enter.

    Your picture should now display in your post.

    Format for your images on your blog posts

    Images on your blog should ideally be under 100kb in size in order to not slow down your blog and page loading time.

    You can open the images in Adobe Photoshop and resize them to 1920 x 1080 pixels and then save them as “save for web”, 72dpi and try to get it under 100kb.

    Where to Get Images for Your Blog

    Good images make a huge difference on any website or blog, so having good, high-quality images is something you would want to invest in.

    Let’s look at the different options of where and how (free and paid) you can get good quality images for your blog.

    Take Your Own Photos

    The best thing for your blog and brand would be to take your own high quality photos to use in your blog posts.

    Although this would be the best, it might not always be possible and is a time consuming process. It could also be quite expensive if you don’t have any photography equipment already and have to buy it.

    In some cases it just might not be physically possible to take your own photos for your posts. You might require a photo of something that you don’t own, or a place in another country for example.

    There are stock image platforms where you can buy stock images from

    Stock Images

    Here are the stock image platforms I use and highly recommend!

    Disclaimer: I am an affiliate partner of Shutterstock and Envato Elements, and do receive a small commission if you sign up through my link.

    Shutterstock

    I’ve been using Shutterstock for most of my career, either personally or with the agencies, I worked for and ran.

    It’s by far one of the most comprehensive resources for stock images and I have very rarely not found something that I was looking for.

    The only downside to Shutterstock is the pricing as it is on the higher end of the spectrum compared to a lot of other stock image websites, but then again, Shutterstock offers a much bigger variety and higher quality images.

    I would highly recommend Shutterstock as a great stock image investment for your business.

    Feel free to check out my article on “Why is Shutterstock so Expensive?”

    https://shutterstock.com

    Envato Elements

    I have been using Envato Elements for quite some time now and it’s a great resource for all kinds of digital assets.

    Unlimited monthly downloads Graphic Templates, Video Templates, Stock Video Footage, Audio, Sound Effects, Presentation Templates, Fonts, Website Theme Templates, WordPress Themes, Plugins etc, all at an amazingly low monthly or yearly subscription fee.

    Check out my review of Envato Elements here.

    https://elements.envato.com/

    Freepik

    Freepik is one of the many free stock image platforms where you might just find everything you need for your blog.

    But free usually has its limitations, so just keep that in mind.

    Nonetheless, Freepik is a great resource if you don’t want to spend any money on your images.

    https://www.freepik.com/

    11. Analyzing the Data

    Although we’ve already been through the setup of Google Search Console and Analytics, this is not something you should worry too much about for the first few months.

    But I’ll point out the basics for you here so that you are aware of what each one does when you have enough traffic to pay attention to the numbers that they generate.

    Google Search Console

    Google Search Console is a free service offered by Google that helps you monitor, maintain, and troubleshoot your site’s presence in Google Search results. Search Console helps you understand and improve how Google sees your site.

    Source: https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/9128668?hl=en

    Google Analytics

    Google Analytics is a web analytics service offered by Google that tracks and reports website traffic.

    Source: https://marketingplatform.google.com/about/analytics/

    12. Monetizing your Blog

    Although monetization is not something you should worry about in the beginning and really only start looking at once you have enough traffic on your site in terms of monthly page views, I’ll just briefly mention the different ways that you can monetize your site.

    Some of these might require you to build up an email list, which, if that is the case, is something you can start doing immediately once you start your blog.

    Here are some of the most popular monetization methods for blogs that you can add once you have enough traffic on your blog:

    Ads

    The most popular way to monetize your blog is through displaying ads on it.

    You get paid a small fee every time an ad on your blog is displayed to a user.

    Here are a few companies that you can sign up with who will display ads on your blog and in turn pay you for the number of views those ads got on your blog.

    With all of these, your blog needs to fulfill the necessary requirements, each one with their own requirements on terms of number of page views etc, in order to be accepted and start displaying ads on your blog.

    Affiliates

    The basic idea of affiliate marketing is that you become an affiliate partner of companies, products, and/or services that you want to promote to your audience, with the goal of getting them to buy those products and/or services through your recommendations.

    Once they purchase the products and/or services because of your recommendations, you will receive a commission from the company, product and/or service that you are an affiliate partner of.

    For example, if your blog is about Meditation and you write a post about the best meditation cushions to buy, you can then link each product that you mention in your post to a place where your audience can go and buy them—Amazon.com for example. So if your audience clicks on your links where you recommend the cushions on your blog, which takes them to the actual products for sale on Amazon.com through your affiliate links, and they buy those cushions, you will receive a commission from Amazon for every sale.

    Amazon

    I’ve already mentioned Amazon.com in the above example, and the reason for that is that they still have, by far, one of the biggest and most popular affiliate programs on the market today.

    It’s quite easy to sign up for their affiliate program and something you should consider once you have enough traffic on your website.

    Other

    There are countless other affiliate programs out there aside from Amazon. It might be hard to find a company that doesn’t have an affiliate program.

    The best thing is to search for your specific niche and “affiliate programs” in Google search to find them. For example, “meditation affiliate programs”.

    Creating and Selling Info Products

    Another great way of monetizing your blog is to create your own info product and sell it. Courses, ebooks, etc.

    13. The Business Side of Things

    Once your blog gets big enough and starts generating a large amount of monthly income, you need to treat it as a business, which it is.

    You should consider registering it under a business license like a LLC.

    You can hire some assistants and/or other personell to handle the day to day of the blog like editing, formatting for WordPress, managing info product sales, returning emails etc.

    Once you’ve reached this point, I would absolutely love to hear from you about your journey and all your success!

    Conclusion

    Until then, hope you found loads of value in this post and remember to check out for our video course of the same that should be available soon at a very low cost. You might find it easier to follow along a video than a blog post and therefore we are working on getting that done ASAP.

    Until then… peace out.