Starting A Blog

When starting a blog for the first time you will want to do a bit of research to make sure to avoid some common mistakes - mistakes I made when I was new that I cannot correct now. I came up with these 10 steps to give you a basic outline of what I think you need to start a blog.

You could just go to Blogger or WordPress and within 5 minutes have a basic blog in place but preparing just a bit by using these steps will help you avoid mistakes in the future. Some mistakes like picking your topic, blog title or blog URL aren't that easy to fix later.

If you are just setting up a blog for fun then just go ahead and throw it up because it doesn't matter. You are doing it for fun. But if you want to start a blog to drive traffic to your business website or you want to start a blog so you can make the blog your business you will want to plan your blog carefully.


Step 1: Pick your blog's topic - what is your blog about?

Multiple Topics
If you are starting a blog for fun then your blog could be about a variety of topics. You may attract readers for various reasons because you will be writing about various topics. In time, however, you may upset some readers each time you change a topic. They found you because of a specific thing you were writing about and then you change in a totally different direction. Other readers may not mind.

Single Theme
If you are setting up a blog for business purposes then your blog should have one overall theme or topic. This way you can optimize the posts and keywords you want to rank for on the SERPs (search engine results pages). Your readers will be much happier because you won't be all over the place. They come to your blog for a specific reason - because you are an expert, or are at least knowledgeable, about certain things. They search for a topic, they find you, you give them answers on their topic, everyone is happy!

This doesn't mean that you have to write about one thing every time you write a blog post. It means that the topics all fit within a common theme. Think of your posts like a book. The book is about one specific theme but each chapter in that book is about slightly different topics that all fit together nicely within the book's theme. Of course, we hope your book will be about one subject and not a novel (personal blog).

I wrote a long post on picking your blog's topic you might want to read.

Step 2: What kind of blog will you run? Social? Search Engine?

There are really 2 very distinct types of blogs - social blogs and search engine blogs. However, that doesn't mean that a blog can't be both.

A social blog is a blog that attracts readers that make comments and stick around to see what you will say next. You are writing content that solves a problem for your reader, makes them laugh, encourages them to be social or maybe creates a sense of community. You will spend a lot of time writing to make your readers happy, using social networking sites like Facebook or Twitter to get more people to read your blog, commenting on other blogs to leave a trail for people to follow back to your blog, and generally interacting with your readers. You are the expert and your readers are coming to you for various reasons.

A search engine blog is a blog that is written to attract search engine visitors and not loyal readers. People who use search engines are looking to solve a problem. They ask the search engine a question and it comes back with results. When they visit a blog or website they are hoping to solve their problem by reading the information that is found on that blog or website. The best thing you can do is to NOT solve their problem. You should give them good information but let the ads you place on your site solve the problem. They will click the ads and are on their merry way, leaving you with a nice fat paycheck at the end of the month.


Social and Search Engine blog
You attract readers who like what you say and stick around to read more. They come all of the time and hang on your every word (one can hope can't they?). Every once and awhile they click on an ad that is relevant to them.

You also attract people who have no use for what you write about, don't like your "butt ugly" blog design, maybe are offended by what you say and leave by clicking on your ads, thus helping you to earn some money. This is an example of a social blog that also can be a search engine blog. It attracts search engine visitors because you are ranking for specific keywords, those visitors don't find the answer they need and they move on to the next site, hopefully through your ads.

I think most blogs are a combination of both social and search engine.

Step 3: Pick a Blogging System

When starting a blog you will want to figure out what blogging system best suits your personality. Do you want to use Blogger which is owned by Google, hosts all of your blog files and domain name for free? Do you want to use WordPress and pay for monthly hosting and have better template options? Then there is also TypePad, Drupal, and many more. Each blogging system has something different to offer so you should do some research to figure out which system has what you need.

Step 4: Pick your Blog's URL

Even though this is step 4 in starting your blog it really should be step 2 because after picking your topic this is the next most important part of starting a blog. And, if you pick the wrong URL you can't change it. You can setup a new blog and start over but why not put some thought in what your URL should be and get it right the first time.

Your URL (Universal Resource Locator) is the address people will use to find your blog. In previous articles I talked about the difference in using a free blog URL or buying your own domain name. I said that most of the time people probably don't type your domain name into the browser's address bar. One of my other blogs is getting quite popular and I have been watching the statistics along the way to find out how people are getting to my blog. I was totally surprised to find that 30% of them are actually typing the URL in the browser's address bar. That means that owning a domain name is more important than I originally thought.

So, because of this, you need to think long and hard about the right domain name for your blog. Your blog's domain name should be easy to remember and it also should have your blog's topic or main keyword in it. The topic of your blog, the domain name for your blog, and the keywords you use when you write posts will all work together to help drive traffic from search engines. These 3 components are the most important factors when starting a blog if you want to get it right the first time.

Step 5: Picking a Blog Template

What do you want your blog to look like? We have seen that it really doesn't matter if you are starting a blog for search engine results. If you want to start a blog for social reasons then you might want to be more concerned about what your blog looks like.

If you have a business and you are using your blog to drive traffic to your business website or to teach your customers about your product or service you will want to brand the look of your blog to match the look of your website. You should use the same colors, fonts, and logo if possible. You can do this without paying for a blog designer to design a custom template. There are many good templates available for free that only require a minimal amount of tweaking to change colors and upload a header. You might have a logo or header on your website that you can use on your blog.

If you think you are going to become a social blogger then you might want to consider your template more carefully. You will want to find a blog template that can be customized as you go along. Maybe your blog will become a business and you will want to brand it a certain way. The more recognizable your blog can become the easier it will be for people to remember you.

Step 6: Your Blog's Title

The title of your blog is very important. It is what shows up on the browser tab or title bar. It is used by the search engine to help place you in the SERPs and it should match your URL, if possible, and have some of the same keywords you will be using throughout your blog posts.

Step 7: Your Blog's Post Titles

Once you have figured out what you are going to write about on your blog (your blog's topic), have picked your blog's domain name (URL), have setup your blog using your favorite blogging system, and have picked your blog's template you are ready to start writing.

One of the MOST important part of your posts will be the title. You only get a certain amount of characters to use in your post title before the URL is cut off. I really do not know the exact number but I think it might be somewhere around 34 characters. That means that the first 2 to 4 words of your blog's post title should contain the keywords you want to target in the post. Those keywords don't have to be the very first word in the title but it should be within those first 4 words if possible. If the words are too long they might get cutoff so plan wisely.

When Google and other search engines crawl your blog they look at your blog's title first and then start moving down the page looking at your post title, label names (topics or categories), images (if you use the ALT tag properly), words within the posts, and anything else you have on a blog page. The more similarities the search engine bot finds the more likely you are to get ranked for your blog's topic and the more targeted ads will be placed on your blog.

Step 8: Blog Posts

When writing a blog post you should consider using the keyword or keyword phrase you want to get ranked for 5 to 10 times throughout the post. This will help the search engine to add up all of those similarities I talked about to figure out exactly what your blog and/or post is about. That, in turn, will help you get a better ranking for that keyword or phrase.

Step 9: Image Tags

How many times have you added a picture, graphic, or photograph into your blog post and didn't add anything to the ALT tag?

What is an ALT tag? ALT stands for Alternate Text.

Why do I want to use an ALT tag for images? You want the search engine to look at ALL of the elements of your blog and after comparing everything it finds to add those elements together to come up with an idea of what your blog is about. If the search engine comes to the image in your post and doesn't see an ALT tag attached it will just ignore it. That is okay if you put the image there JUST for your readers but WHY wouldn't you add alternative text to do both things at once - spice up your blog post and help out the search engine?

An image in HTML looks something like this?

{img src="boat.gif" alt="Big Boat"}

Use the keyword you are targeting in your post as the alternate text for the image. It is just another way to help the search engines put 2 and 2 together.

If you want to read more about HTML and images visit the W3Schools site.

Step 10: Backlinks

The last, but very, very important step, is getting backlinks. Once you have your blog setup the way you want and are writing posts on a regular basis you should search out people to exchange links with.

You want other bloggers and websites owners to link to your site USING YOUR KEYWORD OR KEYWORD PHRASE!

This site is called the Business Blogging Guide but when I try to get people to link to me from their site I DON'T USE THOSE WORDS. How many people do you think actually type business blogging guide in the search engines to find my site? Not too many.

So, I use keyword phrases like business blogging, learn how to blog, blog marketing, etc. Those are phrases people are more likely to use to find me.

Figure out what keyword or keyword phrases people may type to find your blog and get people to link to your site using those words. Have them place the links directly within the content of their site, like within a blog post.

If you want to trade backlinks feel free to email me and put the word BACKLINKS in the subject of your email. I have a lot of blogs and can always use more backlinks.

These are some of the top things I think you need to do to have a successful blog and to help you not make the mistakes I did when I was first starting out. A little planning in the beginning when you are starting a blog will help you become more successful faster!

Source: http://www.businessbloggingguide.com/2008/12/search-engine-optimized-blogging-in-5.html