So you’re thinking of starting a blog? Oh lord, little do you know everything you have in store. It isn’t as easy as we travel bloggers like to make it look; oh no, it requires much more time and effort than that. So here are the top 10 things to consider when you’re starting a blog.
1. Domain Name and Hosting
What’s your name going to be, first and foremost? I’m terrible at coming up with names, but hopefully you’re better. Make a list of different ideas, and then find the one that’s available. I recommend getting a .com domain name as it is the most common, and people will remember it best.
Then you’ve got to get hosting as well. Find the best bang for your buck – but remember, cheapest isn’t always the best.
2. Theme
You’ve got to get that theme just right. Oh god, I’ve spent hours trying out different themes. You need one that you like, but that’s going to call out to your readers as well. There are a ton of free themes available, so have fun digging through them… it may take a while.
3. Logo
A logo is important to keep things consistent across your images and site. If you ever choose to do anything like make a book or market t-shirts, you’ll want this logo as well. A great site for this is Logojoy, with options for everyone – whether you want to design it yourself or have someone else come to the rescue!
4. Social Media Accounts
You’ll want to get these set up right away, as they take quite some time to grow. This is a great place to share your new articles and get viewers – helping you get your traffic up. Plus, people can easily share to their friends who would be interested. Bing! More traffic for you.
5. Start Building that DA!
DA is domain authority, and is scored on a scale of 1-100. The higher, the better. How do you build it? Links, links, links. But you don’t want them all from one place. Take part in collaborative posts other bloggers are doing, or write many (MANY) guest posts for others to get your link into other sites.
6. SEO Optimize
This part is half science, half black magic. There are many ways to SEO optimize, and I won’t go into them all here – you can look them up, and then bang your head against the wall. My apologies. One big thing is finding keywords that have a high search volume, with low competition. There are many tools – free and paid – to do this. Make sure your keyword is in the title, URL, text, meta description, and alt of the images. Confused yet? Welcome to our lives as bloggers.
There are a ton more things to consider, but we won’t overwhelm you at the outset. Keep these things in mind, and you’ll have way less to work on later in the game. Start everything right from the beginning, and you’ll be gold! …but don’t expect to start earning off a blog when you start it. That, my dear friends, can take years. Better get started!
