And there are so many people in the world who access internet daily to read, just to read about what others have written or posted there.
And, with services like Google Adsense, Yahoo Advertisement, Adbrite etc, bloggers have been earning too. But for all this to be in right place you need to be a lot strategic and wary about a lot of things before you jump into starting a Blog.
So today I will tell you about some Tips 'n' Tricks to start a blog, then How to redesign it to look better and then the most important part, the SEO for your Blog. So you just sit tight, open your mind up, because in next 15-20 minutes, you will know everything about starting a successful blog.
Starting a Blog
1. Choose Topic
Before you start a Blog you must decide the topic for which you wish to dedicate your Blog. You must very well be aware of the area you will be covering with your Blog.
Neither keep the area of coverage to wide (that you are not able to cover it up), nor keep it too narrow (that you do not have too much to write about). And one more important point to keep in mind, never shift topics. If you started with Technology, do not just run into writing about Hollywood all of a sudden.
Neither keep the area of coverage to wide (that you are not able to cover it up), nor keep it too narrow (that you do not have too much to write about). And one more important point to keep in mind, never shift topics. If you started with Technology, do not just run into writing about Hollywood all of a sudden.
2. Choose a service
I will advice you to start your first blog under any on the blog services, providing platform to blog for free. There are many of them, Blogger (by Google), WordPress, LiveJournal, Tumblr etc. All of them are user friendly and simple to use.
I personally use Blogger, because of my utter faith and love for Google. For you i would say, choose any out of WordPress or Blogger. If you are like me, who believes and trusts goolge's services, then go with Blogger else go with WordPress.
I personally use Blogger, because of my utter faith and love for Google. For you i would say, choose any out of WordPress or Blogger. If you are like me, who believes and trusts goolge's services, then go with Blogger else go with WordPress.
Blogger, has an advantage that with it you get free Google Adsense assistance, plus a very simple interface ad Feedburner Service to deliver your newsletter.
WordPress, on the other hand is very stylish and super cool. You can even import your existing Blog to Wordpress, without losing any data and time. You get some super stylish and up-market themes to select one for your Blog. And some great widgets to enhance you blog's interface.
So now its up to you, make your decision wisely.
3. Choose a Domain Name
Initially when you start your blog, you get a subdomains as URL from your blog service.
For eg : myblog.blogger.com or myblog.wordpress.com . But you can very easily shift or transfer your blog to your own new domain, like : myblog.com .
For eg : myblog.blogger.com or myblog.wordpress.com . But you can very easily shift or transfer your blog to your own new domain, like : myblog.com .
Getting a new domain name also has a major affect on your blog's SEO. If you are using blogger you can easily do that by going to settings in you Blogger dashboard, and selecting Blog address and choose to redirect to your new domain name.
You can either register a new Domain name with Google or you can even use any of your already registered domain name. (Google will charge you $10 for it.)
You can either register a new Domain name with Google or you can even use any of your already registered domain name. (Google will charge you $10 for it.)
Customizing your Blog
Once you are done with the starting steps, you have your blog live by now. Now its time to spice things up, and make your blog look better with some cool widgets.
1. Adding CSS and redesigning template
You have a long list of templates (in both Wordpress and Blogger), to choose any one out of them for your blog. And then you can even customize the chosen templates by adding CSS to it. If you do not have a basic knowledge of HTML and CSS, we will advice you to go for Customizing template with help of blogging service.
Do not opt for editing HTML of the Template, because that is not easy task to accomplish.
Do not opt for editing HTML of the Template, because that is not easy task to accomplish.
You can choose colors for heading, sub-heading, text, width of the tempplate, image or icon as logo etc and a lot more in "Customize Template" option.
2. Adding Search Box
Adding a search box to your blog, makes it easier for your users and viewers to search for content on your blog a lot easier.
You can know about adding Search box in a previously written post of ours.
3. Adding a Social Subscription Widget
These days, Social networks are a very helpful in keeping in touch with your viewers. Hence you must have a widget to let people connect with your blog on these Social Networks. Liking your page on Facebook, Following it on Twitter etc.
4. Adding other Widgets to your Sidebar
Blogger provides you with many ready made widgets for your Blog's sidebar. Hence you must have the Newsletter Subscription widget, to allow users to Subscribe to your daily newsletter which is automatically published by FeedBurner (service by Google) whenever you write a new blog post on you Blog.
Also, widget for Popular post is required to let the viewers know about your posts which is most liked by other users.
5. Providing your Posts with social buttons to share them around on internet.
Having Social sharing buttons with every post is also very important, so that viewers can easily share your posts on popular social networks, which will increase traffic to your blog for sure.
6. Comment Pagination
Once your blog starts getting viewers and traffic, you will for sure receive a lot of comments on your blogposts. And sometimes it becomes really difficult for the page to get loaded when the number of comments is very high. Hence we must be prepared for that problem already.
The solution for that is Comments Pagination. That is dividing your blogpost's comments into pages, like 20 comments on each page. Hence initially with the post only the recent 20 comments will be loaded, and if you wish to see others you can simply access them through comment page numbers.
The solution for that is Comments Pagination. That is dividing your blogpost's comments into pages, like 20 comments on each page. Hence initially with the post only the recent 20 comments will be loaded, and if you wish to see others you can simply access them through comment page numbers.
SEO tips for your Blog
As we head towards the finish line, we must take care of this part too. This is one of the most important aspect of a Blog, to be searched and indexed by search engines easily.
SEO - Search Engine Optimization, is obviously a big field, but for our blog, we need to work upon some basic tricks to enhance our visibility over search engines.
SEO - Search Engine Optimization, is obviously a big field, but for our blog, we need to work upon some basic tricks to enhance our visibility over search engines.
1. Unique Content
The best and easiest way of doing so is by adding unique content to your Blog regularly. Do not lose the momentum, keep writing daily for increased traffic and search engines attention.
2. Adding Social Media Buttons
This is again very important for your Blog. So that your blog's posts are mentioned and shared on all the social networks. This again leads to SEO of your Blog.
3. Meta Tags
These are HTML tags, used to describe your blog, and to help search engines access you by matching keywords in you description with the search query. Initially your Blog doesn't have any meta tags and hence is not indexed by search engines appropriately.
Therefore you must add these meta tags to your HTML code for SEO.
Therefore you must add these meta tags to your HTML code for SEO.
4. Changing Title Tags of Blog's post pages.
As default, we have the blogpost title after the Blog's title in the title bar, which leads to unfriendly titles when user searches for any blog post on your blog on any search engines. Hence we must change the title bar to look better. Its a very simple 2 step process.
These are some very basic Tips 'n' Tricks and guidelines for people who wish to start with Blogging. Follow these tips to have a good start with your Blog.
If you have any query or any suggestion , do let us know through your precious comments. We love hearing from you.
© Abhishek Ahlawat
