Blog Checklist Quick Guide to starting a blog

Starting Out

1. Blog name and Domain: Brainstorm some ideas. Keep it short with no complicated spellings.

2, Choose a blogging platform and hosting provider: I recommend wordpress.org for your blogging platform. It is free and you can easily upgrade when you need to. There are many hosting services you can choose so you may need to do some research or find some recommendations.

3. Theme and Design: Now you need to design your website. You want your theme to look nice and be easy to navigate. 

4. Find your niche: Niche it down, this will help to give your blog a focus.

Designing a blog

1. Home page: Your home page is the page people may land first. You can decide what you want to include on this page.

2.Blog page: This is the page most of your visitors will go to so presentation is key.

3. Freebie page / resource page: This is not a must, but I personally feel that this is what helps to drive traffic to your website and help grow your email list.

4. About page: Your about page, tells people who you are. This is a good place to include a photo of yourself to show there is a real person behind the blog.

5. Contact Page: People will use your contact page to collaborate. Adding a contact form makes it easy for your visitors to contact you. The easiest way to build a contact form is to use the WPForms plugin.

Writing a blog post

Draft and edit: Draft and come back to it the next day then publish. You will never get your post super perfect so don’t over think it but ensure it reads well and is formatted correctly.

Pictures: Pictures are really important. Visitors are drawn to pictures before reading the content. Think about what pictures can draw your visitors to read your post.

Optimize your blog for search: Optimize your blog posts for search. Be sure to include your keywords in the title and URL.

Check it is SEO ready: If you are using wordpress then before hitting publish you need to see that your posts are Green! Check out the Yoast plugin.