The concept of blogging is one of the in-demand activities people do online. If you are one of those who start building a blog website, you are not alone.
Despite the fame it has nowadays, not everyone has become successful in this venture. One of the reasons is that some want to blog on websites, but they don’t have the passion for this niche.
While blog websites are a potential source of income, having the heart in words is essential. Building a blog website shouldn’t just be about generating profit. You have to have the mindset about helping people.
One way to become successful in this venture is to care for your target readers by giving them what they need. Regardless if it’s information, marketing strategy, or entertainment, readers rely on these blogs for various reasons. And that should be our priority.
If you think you have what it takes to build a blog website, this article is for you.
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How to Start Building a Blog Website
Some platforms allow first-timers for free for those who want to start building a blog website from scratch.
As you go along, bloggers have to have their domain name to be more established.
Once the platform is okay, it is now time to get on to blogging.
Here are some steps to ensure success in building a blog website.
- Developing a blog strategy
Creating a detailed strategy is a not-so-secret, even in doing blog content. Consider the following in developing a blog strategy:
- Outline the purpose: What do you look forward to achieving?
- Think through the target audience: Who will be my readers?
- Plan how often to publish and who will be part of the process: who will be the key members of my blogging team?
Read: Blogging as a Side Hustle
- Conducting keyword research
Another essential step as you start building a blog website is to know the importance of keywords and how to use it.
The blog plays a critical role in search engine optimization (SEO) efforts, so keywords are needed to maximize it.
Here, the objective is to build up various keywords applicable to the organization, goods, or service.
Keyword research is an intricate cycle. Besides discovering the keywords that the intended interest group is utilizing to find the same organizations, another thing is the hunt volume and rivalry for those watchwords.
For example, if you’re contending with more influential organizations that have a lot bigger SEO financial plans, at that point, you’ll need to zero in on key phrases that are less competitive.
- Generating topics and creating a content calendar
After generating keywords, it is now time to create topics from it and put these on a content calendar.
Even though SEO keywords are significant, ensuring that the issues benefit the reader is also essential.
It means that topics should tackle both the strengths and struggles of its visitors.
Meanwhile, the content calendar is essential in planning the content earlier. Furthermore, it also helps the blogger keep track if the content is regularly published.
Some parts of the content calendar include:
- Topic
- Keyword to focus
- Content description
- Assigned person
- Deadline
- Date published
- Creating the blog content
The next step to start building a blog website is to make the blog content come to life. This can be done by working along with a team of writers or consider affiliate content marketing.
Another thing to consider is the visual elements like texts, graphics, and photos to bring more perspective to the content.
Also, infographics and videos are more elements that give a more profound understanding of the content.
- Publishing the content
After creating, editing, and proofreading, the content is now ready to publish.
While transferring the substance to your site, focus on significant SEO factors like titles, subheadings, and meta descriptions. These subtleties help search engines better comprehend your blog content to show it to the correct SEO users.
As soon as the blog is posted on the website, promoting it to various channels is next. You can begin by presenting links on the substance on your web-based media pages.
Numerous organizations additionally use email marketing to spread the news about new blog content. There must be a connection to important blog content in any new websites created.
This encourages more improvement in SEO while adding more value for website guests who are keen on discovering more about the point.
What is a Blog?
Before heading to building a blog website, let’s identify what a blog is all about. A blog is an informational website that focuses on its content.
Blog posts are made by either a single individual or group of people aiming to provide information in a conversational style.
Besides conversationally providing information, bloggers can also create engagements and connections to their readers by the comment section posted below the blog post.
Here, the readers can freely share their thoughts and ask questions related to the topic as well. It is different from traditional websites that persuade its audience to a particular call to action (CTA).
Read: Blogging Ideas That Make Money
What is a Website?
Meanwhile, websites are the most critical element in the internet world. These are publicly accessible web pages that share a single domain name.
Like blogs, websites are created by a single person, group, or organization for various purposes.
Some popular types of websites are:
- Archive website- it keeps some of the other website’s records. A great example of this is the Internet Archive.
- Business or corporate website- it is created to give account information and access to its potential customers.
- Content website- this website contains relevant content for particular topics.
- Dating website- a website created for those interested to meet other people and look for potential relationships.
- E-commerce website- a website created to buy and sell goods and services digitally
Blog and Website: What is the Difference?
One misconception in building a blog website is that the blog and website are the same.
A blog is another type of website. Compared to other websites, blogs are required to have regular content about a particular topic.
Moreover, these contents are usually presented in chronological order. It means that the latest posts are found first.
In addition, blog posts have the potential to be part of other website types.
For instance, business websites have blog sections where they post business-related topics for their customers.
To sum it up, it can be assumed that all blogs can be part of a website. However, not all websites can be considered blogs.
Considering the Platform You Want To Put Your Blog
The Best Platform is on WordPress
WordPress is the best platform for putting your blog.
You will want a self-hosted option, so you have complete control over your website and take advantage of multiple monetization strategies.
The best way to get on WordPress is to not go their directly. Find a hosting company like Bluehost to provide web hosting for you.
If you choose a platform like Bluehost, you will be able to take advantage of their one click set up.
Essentially Bluehost will integrate automatically with WordPress and get you going.
If you need any help, they have an excellent customer service department. You can go over your questions with them to make it a seamless process.
The Second-Best Platform Is Medium
All your articles will be branded with Medium. Medium already has a following of people.
If you want your can join their Partner Program and make money for every time a Medium reader reads one of your articles.
Look at capturing views into some kind of lead generation give away to collect emails.
Why People Want to Start Building a Blog Website?
Every blogger has their reasons why they are interested in building a blog website.
Some of these motivations are the following:
Personal
- Provides an opportunity to express thoughts and opinions
- Allows to showcase skills and abilities
- Serves as a platform to socialize with like-mindset individuals via online
- Provides another source of income
Business/Professional
- It helps build and connect with leads and customers
- Helps customers become more knowledgeable or solve their problems
- It provides an opportunity to build a community by engagements with visitors
- Helps businesses set apart from its competitors who offer similar products or services
- It boosts the company’s search optimization
- A good quality blog helps develop inbound links
Read: 10 Ways To Make Money by Blogging
What are the Five Types of Bloggers?
Bloggers are individuals who create blogs for a variety of purposes.
Aside from the different types of blogs any blogger can make, there are also diverse bloggers depending on these purposes.
- Part-time professional- this is a blogger who’s building a blog website as another income.
- Hobbyist- this is a blogger who intends to build a blog website as a hobby. Mostly, he/she post personal blogs since he/she does this for fun.
- Full-time professional- this is a blogger who’s building a blog website as a full-time job
- Corporate- Compared to the full-time professional, corporate bloggers do blogs and build blog websites as part of their organization’s duties. They usually do 8% of the blog posts.
- Entrepreneur- Finally, entrepreneur blogs for the company that they own. They typically make 13% of the blogs.
How Building a Blog Website can Generate Profit?
While some bloggers are building blog websites to satisfy their passion for writing, many bloggers see this as a potential income.
So, how can building a blog website can bring profit.
Placing Advertisements on their Sites
The typical way bloggers nowadays can generate income in building a blog website. They can place advertisements on their blogs in two ways:
- Cost-per-click- also known as pay-per-click (PPC), is a banner in your content or sidebar. Bloggers are paid once a reader clicks on the advertisement.
- Cost per 1000 impression- popularly called CPM, bloggers get a fixed pay in here based on the advertisement’s viewers.
On this generating profit, Google Ad Sense is the most famous network.
Selling Private Advertisements
There are instances that when potential advertisers see your website’s traffic, they can contact you to place their ads on your site.
Compared to PPC and CPM, the blogger has the freedom to set their advertisement rates.
These can be done in a variety of ways, like:
- Banners
- Buttons
- Links
- Review about the good or service
- Underwritten posts
Placing affiliate links to the content
Affiliate links are like URLs, and this is another potential profit tool when you start building a blog website.
Here’s how it works:
The advertiser will offer you a commission when a buyer came across the blogger’s website.
The advertiser will provide an affiliate code exclusively for your website. This will help him/her know that the buyer came from the blogger’s site.
The blogger will include the affiliate link on the website, either by blog content or banner ads.
If the reader clicks the link, he/she will be directed to the advertiser’s site. If he/she buys a good or service, the blogger gets a percentage.
Selling digital products
For those who want to outsource as they start building a blog website, another option is to promote and sell digital products.
Some of these digital items can be:
- Ebooks
- Online workshops and courses
- Applications, plugins, or themes
- Images, videos, or other materials that can be used in the website or digital content
One effective way to sell these items is to make sure that the products must be relevant to potential readers.
Blogging as a business’ marketing tool
If any of the earlier options aren’t a good idea, the blog posts themselves can be income sources.
Here, instead of the blogger will use the content to make money, he/she will use his/her blog to market other ventures.
This is practical, especially for those who want to start building a blog website that focuses on the developmental or marketing types.
Mistakes to Avoid in Building a Blog Website
A blog is an extraordinary method to draw in existing customers and associate with new ones when done effectively. However, mistakes and inconsistencies can result in the loss of clients and your standing as a blogger.
Here are some of the mistakes committed as someone start building a blog website and how to avoid it:
- No commitment- some bloggers belittle the effort it takes to make an influential blog. One effective way to resolve this is to publish 2-3 posts from three weeks to six months.
- Failure to create reader-friendly blogs- Long sentences, grammatical mistakes, and generalized paragraphs are some of the readers’ enemies when reading online.
- Blogs that are too formal or too technical- Just because it is a business or technical article, it means it cannot be relevant and persuading.
- Failure to use graphics and videos- Besides creating more opportunities for the blogs, some visual elements can invite more interest to readers because there is so much more in the blog.
- Failure to track the process- Bloggers must encourage their readers to call to action (CTA) after reading the article.
Frequently Asked Questions:
Is writing more than one topic is a good idea or writing about multiple topics?
As potential bloggers start building a blog website, there are a variety of topics for them. It’s okay to write about multiple topics just make sure it’s still targeting the type of reader you want.
What is a domain name, and why is it important?
A domain name is the web address which bloggers can be found on the internet. This is where potential readers can check and visit the blog posts.