Checklist for Starting a Blog on WordPress

So you have made up your mind to start a blog, you followed the instructions from my previous blog post about How to Start a Blog, and you have a domain name and a new WordPress site. Congratulations! It is now time to get started then!

You can now start a WordPress blog and are officially a blogger now  🙂 You can now start making passive income per year. 

In fact, you need now to do many things to start a blog by the best recommendations for SEO, usability, design, and structure. I made a checklist for starting a blog which reflects the best practices for 2022.

As soon as you installed WordPress and set up web hosting, follow this checklist to make sure your site has no issues in the future because you missed something important at the starting point.

If you missed the part of setting up your web hosting and WordPress blog, get back to my blog post on how to start a blog before reading this checklist.

This is part 3 of 4 of the How to Start a Blog With WordPress series.
1. How to Start a Blog in 10 Minutes
2. How to Choose a Domain Name 
3. Checklist for Starting a Blog on WordPress (10 essential details most newbies forget!)
4. How to Make Money Blogging

Ready to start a blog? Good news is I have the perfect checklist to make it easy for you!

Get started now! 

This blog post contains affiliate links. For more information, see my disclosures here.

Get Started: What is a blog?

If we are going for the classic definition, A blog, short for “weblog,” is an online journal or a source of online useful information that may be updated at any time. A blog is an excellent venue for writers to publish their work, as well as for business owners to market their company and/or goods.
A blog’s material often consists of text, images, videos, animated GIFs, artwork, infographics, and more! A blog is an ideal platform for discussing anything and everything – from controversial major subjects to keeping a personal journal of your daily life. The length of a post is entirely determined by the owner—it might be brief and casual or long and professional.

Since 2019, there are over 600 million blogs from around the world and over 31 million active bloggers posting at least once per month. And yes, bloggers are still increasing in count per year. So this means that blogging is still a very competitive activity out there and no, it is not too late to start blogging!

Purpose and benefits of a blog 

A blog’s principal function is to link you with your audience. It acts as a platform for you to share information about yourself or your company. Blogging may help you expand your writing portfolio for personal use, especially if you are a student or entrepreneur. 

For a personal blog, it could be a safe space for you to share your thoughts where your friends and family can read. 

For business purposes, blogging may help you communicate more information about your products and services with your audience and customers. It can also assist you to attract potential clients or leads to your main website, online course, online shop, and other places.
Blogging is an excellent tool for establishing a strong community and gaining the confidence of your readers. Consistent blogging and the development of high-quality content and material will make your business appear more respectable, and people will begin to turn to your blog for advice, product/service suggestions, and more.

In a nutshell, you can build awareness and credibility towards your business, product, or cause through blogging as you are free to share more detailed information about your brand. 

Why should you start a WordPress blog?

I personally blog with WordPress because it is one of the blogging platforms that is very easy to understand and navigate. But there are also other blogging platforms out there like Wix or Squarespace, but I would just like to focus on WordPress for now.

There are numerous arguments I could offer you as to why you should start a WordPress blog. But the most important reason is that you should definitely start a blog if you want a passive income stream, you should start a blog right now.

Blogging provides us new avenues for earning money while working from home and doing what you enjoy. And if you are a business, then this is also a terrific method to develop your brand and create brand awareness and recognition as well as prospective clients.

If you enjoy writing and assisting others with their difficulties, then writing blog entries might be ideal for you.

If you manage a service-based business like a virtual assistant business or life coaching, then writing blog posts is one way for your potential clients to know who you are and more about you! 

Now, you may ask yourself: “How might creating a blog or writing many blog posts earn me money?” Makes sense because you might think that blogging is dead now, right?

But no, blogging is definitely more profitable now since everyone (even businesses) are going online!

A profitable blog may make money from advertisements, promotions, website visitors, purchases, and more!

Trust me, blogging is simply the first step in developing your online profile as a business owner or influencer. Your hard work will pay off. Now, it’s time to get started and start a WordPress blog!

Step 1. Set up the permalink structure

 By permalink, we mean the URL structure for all your posts and pages. If you go to Settings > Permalinks, check what the default permalink setting is.

If it’s set either to ‘date and name’, or ‘month and name’, I’d rather change it to another option. From SEO positions, this is not the best URL structure because you can’t use your keywords in the URL.

I highly recommend you to choose the ‘post name’ or the Custom structure. The last one allows you to add also the category to the URL, this maintaining the structure of the site in the URLs, but you don’t have to do so.

I chose to keep categories in my blog, many bloggers prefer to leave just the ‘post name’.

Step 2. Delete the “Hello World” post and the sample page

Any WordPress blog by default has published “hello world” post and a sample page. These are just examples for you to see how your posts and pages will look like, but it’s better to delete them at the day one.

All you need to do for this step 2 is to click on Trash and then find these two items in the trash folder to remove them from your site forever.

If you are looking for an affordable web hosting provider or WordPress hosting company to start a blog, I recommend you Bluehost which I use for this blog. 

When you use my link to Bluehost, I receive a commission, and you get web hosting + free domain name + free SSL certificate (https) for just $3.95 per month (basic plan). For more information, see my disclosures here.

You can use this handy Bluehost’s tool to check whether the domain name you are thinking about is available. They also have a live chat in case you need assistance. 

How to choose a domain name

Here’s the time where you think about your blog identity. This step is an important part in blog making.

If you want to start a blog, you must have a domain name. But what is a domain name, you ask? To put it simply, A domain name is just the name of your website. A domain name is intended to be a unique and easy-to-remember name that is used to visit a website.

For instance, “facebook.com,” “youtube.com,” and others. In my situation, anastasiablogger.com is the domain name or blog name for my website.

If your website does not have a domain name, then you and other users will have to type in the IP address to be able to go to your website which is a series of numbers. For example: 192.168.1.1. And let’s be real, who has time to memorize all of that, right? 

When thinking of a domain name, you should ask yourself: What do you want to portray? Make sure your readers know what they will expect on your blog through your domain name the second they go on it.

Your domain name can either be a play of your real name. Heck, it can even just be your name, plain and simple. Mine is anastasiablogger.com and is pretty direct to the point if you ask me.

Thinking of a domain name will be fairly easy if you already have a niche or goal in mind. 

I wouldn’t recommend going for a free domain name like (yoururl.wordpress.com) since a free domain blog does not really help you earn money that much since you won’t have control or access to your display ads and such.

Step 3. Install the most important plugins

When you start a blog, you probably already know that WordPress is so cool partly because it has tons of free or premium plugins, constantly updating and making your life so much easier!

Plugins are additional functions of your WordPress blog, which you can add with a simple upload and install process without having to code anything on your own.

On the one hand, plugins will set you free from difficult coding, on the other hand, plugins make your blog more “heavy” from the coding point of view, which means the site speed can be significantly reduced if you have too many plugins or third-party plugins.

You could also face a security risk due to plugins because when the bad guys want to find a breach, they target plugins first.

However, you can’t entirely avoid using plugins. It simply makes no sense. Just make sure that for each important feature you use the best plugin offered on the market.

I’ll give you the names of several WordPress plugins, which I consider absolute must-haves for anyone who wants to start a blog.

1. Antispam Bee – blocks spam comments and trackbacks efficiently and without captchas. It is free of charge, ad-free and compliant with European data privacy standards (doesn’t store the IP addresses of your users). You can only use it with default WordPress comments, not with plugins like Disqus Comments or Jetpack.

You can choose a setting there, once a commenter has been approved, his other comments will be automatically accepted without review.

2. Yoast SEO – this is a plugin that helps you take care of SEO (Search Engine Optimization) standards in every post and on your WordPress blog in general. SEO is essential for your blog in the long-run because it ensures that users searching on Google will be able to find your posts somewhere around top results for the relevant keywords.

3. UpdraftPlus – it’s currently the highest-ranking backup plugin on wordpress.org, has a free version. Backup into the cloud (Amazon S3 (or compatible), Dropbox, Google Drive, Rackspace Cloud, DreamObjects, FTP, OpenStack Swift, UpdraftPlus Vault and email) and restore with a single click.

4. Grow plugin by Mediavine, which I’m using on my blog to add social media buttons to every post. It’s highly customizable, and I recommend you to get the paid version because it allows you to recover your social sharing data if you lost if after switching the plugins, and it allows you to set a Pinterest-optimized pin description with hashtags, which will be automatically applied to all the images on your page. Grow is one of the best blogging tools on my list.

5. GDPR Cookie Consent Plugin. Every WordPress blog websites use cookies. If you are using an affiliate link, you will be serving cookies to your users.

Cookies are text files that get downloaded on a user’s device when they visit a website which includes their personal information (aka every signup/sign-in process).

Cookies are placed on browsers to retain login information and to identify customers/visitors. 

It is important you place a cookie consent policy on your website as it shows respect for your users’ privacy and you are following a practice that is used globally.

The GDPR Cookie Consent can be installed and activated on your WordPress plugin search. You can easily customize their banners, placement, and text. 

The paid version is $30/year for one site and has a great discount for 5 sites if you run several blogs. 

How many WordPress plugins can I install on a blog?

That’s a difficult question because there is no recommended limit, but one thing is positive – the more plugins you have, the slower your site works.

Page loading time is a very important performance metric of the site. Not only the users can get frustrated and leave your blog before the page completely loads, but also search engines, Google, in particular, evaluate this characteristic and add it into the mix of factors that affect a site’s rankings.

When you are choosing plugins to install, always make research beforehand, because for any feature you need, there are at least 10 plugins available, and you need to choose the one that has frequent updates, has excellent user evaluation, and preferably, a community of people who use this plugin and can answer your questions if you need help.

More blogging resources that could help your WordPress blog:

1. Canva. If you’re someone who is not that creative and is having a hard time thinking of layouts and design ideas (like me), Canva will help you with so-so much.

They have beautiful ready-made templates in ALL categories, and that includes a Pinterest template! Honestly, Canva saves you time and energy because you don’t have to spend hours and hours experimenting with edits and layout designs. 

This way, you won’t have to spend much time on coming up with eye-catching designs that could take you the whole day and instead focus on further improving your WordPress blog.

Start your forever-free Canva account here.

2. Grammarly. If you are not a skilled writer and you know that you usually get grammatical errors in your blog posts, don’t worry. That’s perfectly normal.

Grammarly is a lifesaver, and I am not even exaggerating. This plugin can correct your grammatical errors and spelling, and even suggest better words and phrases! 

3. Google Analytics. In general, Google Analytics tracks how many people visit your website. But they also give you more than that. Google Analytics also gives you the duration your audience spends browsing your blog and their demographics (e.g countries they’re from, gender, etc.).

This is a really must-have tool to see if your website is doing well and should you need to change any plans on your strategies. 

4. Pinterest. Once you have your website and a fair amount of content posted, you would want to post it on ALL social media sites, which is not wrong. I do suggest you already make a Facebook page and Instagram and Twitter account for your website in case someone makes the same name as yours.

However, I don’t recommend focusing on every social media site when you are just starting because it will confuse you and tire you out. And sometimes, you have to spend a lot on Facebook on Instagram if you want to promote your posts.

Pinterest is the main platform for bloggers and content creators when you want to gain readers and free traffic. Make a pinned post about your content, and upload it on Pinterest. And it’s free, too!

Pinterest is not just a social networking platform, but also a search engine site so you can say that the people on there are searching for something. Most likely, one of your posts will give them the answer they’re looking for. Remember to use pleasing images and font style when you make your pins!

5. Google Drive. Save yourself the stress of having your files corrupted when you save it on your desktop. I list all my topic ideas in Google Sheets and write content on Google Docs all stored in my Google Drive. You won’t need to worry about losing your written content once you use Google Docs because it automatically saves your progress. Aside from this, you can bulk download files from your Google Drive to your desktop in a zip file.

Having a Google Drive can also free some space from your laptop since you can upload images and videos on your drive as well.

Step 4. Every blog needs a Title & Description

This is one of the main SEO recommendations which so many new bloggers forget about. It is quite easy to set it, but people sometimes run a blog for months, and only then do they notice that in Google results they have some default text from WordPress next to their site’s link.

When you think about the title and description tags for your blog, don’t forget to add some keywords, which help users and Google understand the main topic of your site.

To can set up your blog title, head to Settings – General, and on this page first thing you see is the blog title. You can set this as well in the SEO plugin if you are using Yoast SEO, find the Titles & Metas section and head to the Homepage tab.

Step 5. Check the commenting settings

The nature of blogging implies that your readers will want to communicate with you via comments under posts and ask you questions. I wouldn’t recommend disabling comments in your blog, but some restrictions for commentators are necessary because you can’t afford to have tons of spam, which often comes in between genuine comments, and you can’t afford 24 hours monitoring your comments to delete spam.

In my blog, I always receive comments for moderation and manually approve each one to be published under my posts. Of course, it takes some time as well, but at least, I can dedicate some 20 min a day to comments and not worry that my blog is under spammers’ attack at any time of the day.

Just scroll down the Discussion settings and choose the boxes according to your preferences.

Step 6. Make your blog pretty with a WordPress theme

After you registered your domain name and your blog on a web hosting company or WordPress hosting (I already mentioned perhaps, that I use Bluehost for my blog and have a step-by-step guide on the installation process), and set up WordPress basics, it comes the time to choose a WordPress theme or web design, which will make you blog pretty.

You probably noticed that your newborn blog looks like a template site; it has a default WordPress theme that is pretty boring. It’s not pretty and doesn’t reflect your personality or blog topic, right?

Well, that’s because now it’s time for the next step – choosing a blog WordPress theme and web design. Honestly, the blog design part is my favorite part in setting up any personal blog. There are free themes and paid themes for WordPress that do not require you to have coding skills.

And if you think it is hard, then do not worry because some themes have a setup wizard feature to assist you with everything. 

The default free WordPress theme on your site is not something you want your blog to live on for a long time. Sure, some WordPress themes are free and nice to look at, but these free themes do not work well on search engines because search engines don’t rank high sites which have nothing original and look like a mere copy of millions of other sites.

Also, having a premium (paid) WordPress theme than a free theme solves for you many money-making tasks because they usually have a structure and features that help you in generating revenue from your content.

So, what could you start with? There is a platform highly appreciated by most bloggers, from first-time bloggers to professionals – it’s Genesis Framework. To explain to you what is it, I’ll use the analogy of a Barbie doll. Genesis framework is the plastic body of the toy – the foundation, and then you can choose any kind of clothes to make your doll look pretty – these are the Child Themes.

Genesis Framework was developed by a company called StudioPress, they also offer their own child themes, and if you like them, I can share with you a nice hack: when you buy WordPress themes in a pack with Genesis Framework, you get a good discount. 

I wouldn’t recommend you the premium themes from StudioPress if I weren’t sure that they offer a reliable product with professionally written code. If you later decide to make any changes to your blog, customization will not be too complicated.

Once you downloaded a WordPress theme, the installation is quite simple. Head to Appearance > Themes.

Step 7. Add Google Analytics tracking code

It’s one of my favorite activities related to blogging – checking the charts and numbers, analyzing which posts work the best for my audience, which buttons on the site are more clickable.

You can track almost everything! How many visitors come to your site, where are they located, which traffic source they are coming from? And it’s so exciting to see the traffic growth over time! This is why you really should set up Google Analytics code on your blog as soon as possible.

Google Analytics is a free and the most powerful tool in the market, so set up an account here and get your tracking code. Google has clear instructions on where to paste their code, but to make it shorter, you just need to paste it before the closing <head> tag.

Step 8. Add the most important pages

I would start with this specific order. About page, in my opinion, should be present on your blog from day one. Because it’s the primary place where your audience gets a proper acquaintance with you and makes a decision, to come back to this blog every again or not.

About Page

Don’t be shy and be yourself! Honest bloggers who don’t pretend to be something different from who they really are, always attract more attention. People feel the real story right away, they tend to follow you and your updates. I encourage everyone to be genuine from day one and change their about page along the way.
Avoid the following mistakes:

1. Writing it in the third person, this is not a Wikipedia article about you.
2. Making the About page too generic and impersonal.
3. Having just a long text with no images or photos.

Disclosure and Privacy Policy Pages

If you are serious about blogging, you just can’t ignore or forget about these pages.
Affiliate networks, Google Adsense, and other advertising monetization partners all have requirements by the law and their rules that bloggers must disclose it clear that they are making money from links, banners, posts, etc.

Ad companies like Newor Media will actually assist you with keeping your site regulated. They offer a consent management platform and have a team ready to help with any other questions you might have.

My disclosure and privacy policy can be found here. It’s not the only place where I mention the disclosure, I include a note about affiliate links or sponsorships every time I use them, usually somewhere at the beginning of the blog post.

I know that putting these pages together can be quite boring and confusing. Don’t spend too much time on them, they should be pretty generic. Of course, you should put them in your own words, but here is a disclosure policy generator you might find useful at disclosurepolicy.org.

Step 9. Setup an opt-in form and build your email list!

As a beginner, probably you’d like to start with a free service. If you choose MailChimp, you will have free tools, including automated campaigns, up to 2000 subscribers! However, I have already migrated to Convertkit, it’s a highly recommended service with the best automation functionality, and it’s a more sophisticated tool than MailChimp.

An important detail – in Convertkit you will find a setting that disables the double opt-in, in MailChimp you can’t avoid it. I noticed that the double opt-in (when the user needs to confirm his subscription upon receiving the first email from me), resulted in the loss of 60% of all my subscribers!

Probably, the confirmation emails were falling into spam folders, or users just didn’t want to make one extra step. This problem is solved for me in Convertkit.

You can also use Moosend instead of ConvertKit, it’s another great option to start with email automation and it allows you to create amazing sign-up forms. The pricing plans on Moosend are way more affordable, the deliverability rates are even a bit higher than with ConvertKit and you can use it completely for free in the first month if you sign up here.

To create forms, I first used free forms from Sumo WordPress Plugin. They are great, the only problem with them was that you can’t make integration to send emails automatically to your lists on MailChimp or Convertkit.

This was also solved after I migrated to Convertkit because now all my forms are created in Convertkit and they automatically send emails to the corresponding lists of subscribers in Convertkit.

Step 10. Add a Sitemap to your blog

For the sake of SEO, all blogs are recommended to have a Sitemap file. This file helps Google search robots better understand your blog’s structure and crawl it more efficiently.

If you followed my previous steps in this blog post, you should already have Yoast SEO plugin installed on your WordPress blog, now you just need to find the Sitemap in plugin settings.

You just need to click on Enabled, and the plugin automatically generates a Sitemap file according to the settings. You can head to Taxonomies Settings to choose whether you want to have categories, tags, etc. as well in your Sitemaps files.

You are not using the Yoast SEO plugin, another helpful plugin is Google XML Sitemaps.

As soon as your file is generated, just go to the Google Webmaster Tools (this is a free tool, if you are not signed up for it, do it asap) and submit your sitemap URL to Google.

You will find it under Crawl – > Sitemaps. A sitemap created by Yoast SEO always has an URL ending on /sitemap_index.xml.

Step 11. Don’t forget the Favicon!

Most of the sites have a little image that appears next to the blog site title in the browser tab. This little image is called a favicon, it can be created from your blog’s logo, or if it doesn’t look nice when decreased to a small square, you can be creative and find something that reflects the topic of your site.

Many bloggers forget about the favicon, and then a default WordPress theme image appears next to their sites, making them all look the same. These sites look so unprofessional because of a little detail, and it’s so easy to completely forget about it!

Favicon is always displayed in the browser tabs and helps users identify and remember your blog site better.

The size of a favicon is 32 px by 32 px, you need to find a way to make your favicon stand out and look good in such a small size. After you created the image, change the file extension to a .ico file.

Then head to WordPress and find a way to upload your favicon under Appearance -> Customize. Depending on your WordPress blog theme, the tab where you can change favicon can have different names. In X-Theme which I currently use, it’s called Site Icons. 

Step 12. Add a contact form

A good blog will always have a contact form for people to contact them.

A contact form is an essential part of your blog especially if you are an entrepreneur or service-based business. Basically, a contact form is a form where your readers or blog site visitors can input their details and ask you a question or inquiry about something or if they need help.

A contact form is also a great way for you to start a conversation and build a community with your readers.

Can you make a living through blogging?

When it comes to earning passive income or earning money through blogging, the sky is the limit.

You can make money by participating in affiliate programs and including affiliate links in your blog posts, selling your own courses or ebooks after establishing a community and a large number of site visitors, making money through website ads, and collaborating with other companies to obtain sponsorships.

Sure, you may have 0 viewers after publishing your first blog post, but once you are consistent in posting and with your marketing strategy, then you will make money in no time. 

If you are a small company owner or you manage an eCommerce store, your blog may help you acquire website traffic, email leads, or sales to your online store.

You can even provide consultancy services in your area of expertise. For example, I provide blogging and Pinterest marketing consultancy, which helps me create my reputation as an expert in the blogging and Pinterest marketing field. 

Ways to monetize your blog in 2024

If you are just getting started with your brand new blog, then I am sure you are already imagining the days when your blog can help you earn income even while you sleep. And the good news is: Yes, that time will eventually come. But to make things quicker, I have here several strategies on how beginner bloggers and long-term, successful bloggers earn money through their blogs:

I’d simply want to emphasize that if you want to generate money from your blog, you should definitely go for a paid self-hosted WordPress plan. You won’t be allowed to utilize display ads or some widgets if you just go for free domain hosting or web hosting. There are several web hosting companies out there like Bluehost that are highly recommended and famous for bloggers.

If your blog is not self-hosted or a self-hosted WordPress plan, your options for personalizing your blog will be severely limited. You must have your own domain for this.

Display Ads

The simplest approach to begin generating money from your blog is to place advertisements on it. For newbies, Google Adsense and Media.net are great places to start. However, keep in mind that they pay very little, so it will take some time for you to make a respectable living.

The worst thing you can do to make an additional buck a day on advertisements is to litter your site with ad blocks and lose your audience’s confidence. Because of all the advertisements, your website will load extremely slowly.

Maintain a sense of balance and respect.

It’s actually what people ask me about quite often. If you have display ads on your site, can you control on which pages you want to show the ads and where you want to sell affiliate products or your own products? The answer is YES – you totally can turn off display ads even on individual pages.

That’s what I did on all my posts with blogging tips and Pinterest marketing tips. 

Affiliate Marketing

Many bloggers prefer affiliate marketing as a monetization approach because of its simplicity and quick passive revenue. Simply defined, affiliate marketing is when you promote a product or service to your audience through the use of your own unique tracking links. You will receive a referral commission if your viewers purchase something using your link. Easy as that! 

Your Own Products or Services

If you already have your own items or business, you may start selling through your blog right away. You can easily add a Shop or Products/Services page to your blog so that your readers can readily see what you have to offer.

You may sell either physical or digital products such as ebooks, graphic design elements, music, photos, and so on. You may also provide online tutoring, web development, graphic design, and even blogging services as a service!

Sponsors and Partnerships

This monetization technique will highlight the need of including a Contact page on your site. Advertisers, such as corporations or small businesses will approach you via your website’s contact page or email address if they believe you are qualified to market their products or services.

You may set your own pricing for a blog article highlighting them with this. You may either wait for advertisers to approach you or do a comparative study of other bloggers’ advertisers and make them a sales pitch.

Get started: How to start your first blog post

Once you have decided to start a WordPress blog and already finished setting everything up, your next move now will be to start a blog post! 

A blog post is essentially a text piece or article, a picture, an infographic, or a collection of videos that you post or publish on your blog.

It is critical to understand that the more frequently you update or publish, the more likely your viewers will return to your site.

Of course, your postings’ content must be relevant to your brand. It would be inappropriate to publish a piece on vehicles or technology on a fashion blog. Nobody will believe you if you say that.

You should only post on topics in which you have experience and are comfortable speaking.

Pick a profitable niche

Only choose a field of topic that you have great interest on. If you do not like what you are writing, then you will get drained right away and you might end up abandoning your blog. 

Think about what you want your blog to be about. You’re going to be doing this for most of your time, so focus on something you like.

Some profitable blog topics are:

• Lifestyle & Travel
• Beauty and Fashion
• Career
• Finance / Budgeting 
• Food 
• Health & Fitness
• Tech

You can cover a multi-niche like me (lifestyle, career, self-help, blogging) or opt for a more focused niche like budget-friendly travel, organic recipe blog, DIY home decors, pet care, and  more. The sky’s the limit! 

Write about things you love and believe in and your readers will stay engaged and will continue placing trust in your words.

Create a content plan and start writing

It is now time to get started. It is now time to create a blog post.

It is usually advised that you publish at least 10 articles before formally “launching” your blog to the public and beginning to promote it.

Having a particular number of published posts will help you keep users because they have more content and articles to read. To keep your blog posts and ideas structured, I recommend creating a content strategy. I use Google Sheets, which is both free and simple to use.

If you are just getting started, here are some ideas on how to write and structure your blog entries: 

• Tutorials, step by step guide and how-to guides: Explain a difficult activity step by step in an easy-to-follow manner. This instruction you’re reading right now is an excellent example of a tutorial. You can start from step 1 and so on.
• Listicles: Listicles are always among the most shared posts on the internet because they are simple and easy to understand. These listicles can be a roundup of the best recipes, fashion trends, and more.
• Controversial subjects: Talking about controversy may attract some people to your WordPress site, but proceed with caution! Be mindful of the words you use, and try not to express yourself in a spiteful manner.

Do keyword research

This is probably one of the most important factors you have to consider and learn about if you want to create a blog that is successful. Doing your keyword research will help you get to the Google search result faster.

When users type a certain question or keyword on a search box, for example: “How to start blogging”, and your blog post has that keyword on the title, heading, and body, then you will appear in the search results, and that user will be able to see your blog post! 

There are several free WordPress SEO plugin out there like Yoast SEO to guide you as a first-time blogger. But you can also do your keyword research by simply typing in a keyword or topic and looking at the suggested keywords by Google.

You can then use those keywords or phrases in your blog posts. 

Create a blog post that answers a question

Users will probably visit your blog post because they want their questions answered so it is your job to not disappoint them.

For nice and easy navigation, you can put a table of contents on your blog post. A table of contents at the beginning of your post can help your readers can see the outline of your post and they can jump from headings to headings depending on the answer they are looking for.

Ask others to share your posts

Sure, you can wait for your readers to discover your work, but asking for shares doesn’t hurt.

This could be in the end of the post where you will say “Thanks for sharing” or include a social media plugin where users can click on the social media icon and it will redirect them to the platform to share your blog post.

Start marketing your blog

The 80/20 rule is recommended by well-known and famous bloggers. This implies you devote 20% of your time and efforts to creating content and the remaining 80% to promoting it.

Because, honestly, what’s the purpose of creating all this fantastic information if no one reads it and appreciates it?

Pinterest will be your best friend as a beginner blogger. It is free and functions as a search engine for online users.
Bloggers receive around 100,000+ monthly views only by marketing their blog content on Pinterest!

Simply create a Pinterest business account, create aesthetically stunning vertical pins for your blogs with catchy titles, publish them to Pinterest, and watch your traffic soar.

More ways to share your blog content

Reach out to your email list / Email Marketing

It is said that 95% of your first-time web visitors will not go back to your WordPress site. This means that you have to connect to them and constantly remind them that you and your blog exist. One of the best ways to interact with your audience and encourage them to return to your site is to create an email newsletter.

Sending emails to your readers may help you market your blog in a variety of ways, including driving traffic and backlinks, obtaining press mentions, and offering guest pieces on prominent blogs.

Without a question, email marketing is the most convenient approach to establishing a personal relationship with important people in your field. Aside from this, sending emails is another strategy to earn extra income from your blog.

Do remember not to spam them with merely offers and links. Keep your email messages entertaining and helpful with some recommendations thrown in, and you’ll do well. Keep growing your list as your blog grows and your income will follow right along. 

Work with other bloggers

Reach out to other bloggers or comment on their blog posts. By commenting, your blog can appear on their comment section and other readers can visit your blog.

Your fellow bloggers can also help you earn money through your blog by making you a part of their course affiliate program. These can be in the form of buying their course and asking them to have you become an affiliate. Most course already gives you the option to become an affiliate once you finish the course.

Another is to keep promoting your blog and introducing what your niche is and what you mainly post about. Through this, other bloggers can contact you directly to collaborate and be an affiliate of their course or products. 

Your new blog is all set now!

That’s it, now you can go ahead and set up the ten vital details which will make your way to blogging success shorter!

I wish you to achieve the best results with your new blog and hope this list of things that many new bloggers completely forget about in their first months, will be helpful for you!

HOW I USE PINTEREST FOR MY OWN ONLINE BUSINESS AND MY RESULTS

My WordPress site is just a little over 1 year old, I started with a 0 following Pinterest account and by the 10^thmonth blogging, I reached 172,000 monthly pageviews to my blog, with about 90% of traffic coming from Pinterest.

I started my second blog in Feb 2018, and the new WordPress blog momshealth.co already hit 74,000 monthly pageviews in less than 90 days! And again, almost all the traffic comes from Pinterest. 

If you don’t need to grow fast and don’t mind working at your full time 9-5 job for a lot longer, you can totally keep reading my emails and posts because I also share tons of free advice. It’s just a matter of how FAST you want to grow your blog and income.

Take care, good luck, and happy blogging! 

Thanks for sharing!

Anastasia Blogger

I’m Anastasia and I’m a full-time blogger, online entrepreneur, and Pinterest marketing strategist. I help digital entrepreneurs and bloggers drive targeted traffic from Pinterest either through my online courses or through Pinterest consultancy.

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