We have to admit: building a blog from scratch is a complex, long-term process, and for most beginners, quite confusing at first.

A successful blog involves a lot of work, frequent posts, perseverance, dedication and a lot, a lot of work.

Get ready for the worst: you may work long hours or days on an article, and it won't have readers, views, or comments.

There are tens, hundreds or even thousands of blogs on the Internet, new ones appear every day. There are specialized sites that advise you where to start, what to focus on and where to focus better. And yet, what needs to be done? There is no perfect recipe for a blog, but you can consider a few essential steps for a high success rate of your blog:

1. Find your niche portivita

Do you want to write about food recipes, the latest fashion trends, travel destinations, fitness or any other topic that you are passionate about and you feel with all your heart that you want to write about it?

Do you have so many ideas but you can't decide what will be the theme of your blog? Not sure if your niche is successful?

Do the following experiment:

- do a simple Google search for the niche you thought of (hobbies, topics you prefer to debate, topics you like to read)

- search for blogs with the largest number of subscribers or followers

- if you find at least 5 blogs in your niche, it means that you are on the right path

There are already old blogs that have probably chosen to write about topics in your niche. It seems difficult at first to compete with existing blogs, but if you find a unique approach, you will definitely attract visitors. Focus on a topic that you are passionate about and that you could write dozens of articles about. Once you have chosen the topic, focus on the topic.

2. Choose the platform for creating the blog

The most used blogging platform is WordPress, because it has many advantages:

- It's free and has a lot of predefined themes

- is a friendly platform, easy to use

- the blog will be displayed correctly both on the laptop and on the mobile phones

- there is a huge community that comes to your aid if you have doubts

To better understand the platform, you can read the article " Getting started with WordPress ", where you can find details about settings, adding posts, content or pages, etc.

3. Find a suitable domain name

The name of your blog is very important. It must be clear, concise and to the point. Think hard, then register the perfect domain. This is one of the major choices regarding the future of your blog.

Help: How to choose the right domain name

If you simply can't decide on a name, some sites like Panabee or Wordoid can give you a helping hand with domain name ideas, based on keywords. And if you have doubts or want to make sure you don't infringe any trademark, take a look at the Brandchecker website .

 4. Buy a hosting package for your blog

And not just any one, but one that has generous space and sufficient resources. Because some plugins consume considerable resources, you need to consider a suitable package .

See all ZOOKU HOSTING packages >>>

5. Focus on the image

Depending on how much budget you have for the investment, you can ask for the help of a skilled designer to help you with an elegant design and in step with the trends. The first impact on visitors is a visual one, so the aesthetic part of your blog should not be neglected.

There are platforms that offer free themes with professional design. You need to make sure that your site will have the minimum necessary: ​​search field in the blog, list of recent posts, archive page, newsletter subscription button, etc.

Avoid loading the blog with too many banners or colors at first. New visitors must have a good impression and create a connection between you and the reader.

6. Content, content, content

A successful blog is based on the accuracy of the information, the sequence of posts, the quality of the articles, the attractive topics. In other words, content. Visitors expect to find the information they are interested in: for example, from a humorous blog, they expect to find funny videos, jokes, humorous stories. From a travel blog expect advice on travel, impressions, recommendations, etc.

The main attraction being the content, focus on the main theme of your blog and try to find topics and themes from the same category. Do not deviate too much from the central theme, you risk losing the quality of the blog and implicitly visitors.

Always write, record, film, write down everything you are passionate about. This way, you will have enough material for your articles.

It is also essential to have a routine. Really plan your article posting and stick to the schedule.

It's better to plan a weekly post that you keep, or even write more often than not to write anything for three weeks.

Be honest in your posts and express your personal opinion when approaching a topic.

7. Promote your blog

Being at the beginning of the road, it will take a while until you attract as many of the millions of visitors passionate about blogs. You are part of the program, the posts are up to date, you have good articles, what else could you do to attract visitors?

After searching on Google, social pages are the tools with the highest rate of information distribution and an important source of visitors. The possibilities are many: you can turn to a company that plans a promotion campaign, you can buy promotional packages yourself on Facebook or through Google Adwords.

The most popular online media today are Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Pinterest, Google+. It is advisable to create an account on these channels, and with the help of a plugin you can post the articles on your blog in your accounts. Users can also share their favorite items.

8. SEO

If until now the term seemed familiar to you, Search Engine Optimization (SEO) means to write your blog in such a way that it is easy to display in search results in search engines. The indexing rules change, you don't have to change the whole structure of your blog every time you change the Google algorithm, but there are some simple, universally valid rules that will help you stay in the first results:

- use unique, simple titles for your posts

- confidently use the meta description “description”

- instead of long URLs, use suggestive words

- add a description of the image you upload in the Alt Text field

- build the blog in such a way that it is orderly and easy to navigate

Also, add posts from the same category at the end of your post, navigation buttons through older posts, media buttons (Facebook, Twitter), pagination.

9. Correct use of categories

You will probably have a lot of ideas at the beginning and you want to include them all in the blog. You have to sort the most important ones, because the categories can organically accelerate your advancement in Google search results.

In addition to making it easier to find content, categories help rank and display content, which in turn creates search engine indexing opportunities.

Limit the number of categories. These are often used incorrectly or abusively when posting a new article, by creating a new category when posting each article. You will only have categories with poor content.

For a small to medium blog, it is enough to have 10 - maximum 15 categories.

Select a category for a post. Some bloggers tend to check many or all categories when posting an article. This can lead to duplicate content, which is de-pointed in SEO.

10. Add the option to subscribe to the newsletter

To keep in close touch with your readers, make sure they are constantly up to date with your notes. Add the option to subscribe to your newsletter. You only have advantages:

- you receive more comments, feedback from readers and even new ideas.

- increase the number of readers as well as the distribution of topics on your blog

- sales increase: visitors will always be attracted by new products or promotional prices

- add option to unsubscribe in the newsletter, no one wants to get on a blacklist being marked as a sender of SPAM messages

An email marketing service provides you with tools to increase the number of subscribers in your email lists, after which you can start sending newsletter campaigns in the subscribers' boxes.

11. Add quality plugins

A plugin is the program that makes your life more beautiful on the internet. The best part is that most are free. Below is a list of plugins that you can consider if you start a blog in WordPress:

Akismet - automatically scans and removes SPAM comments

W3 Total Cache - increases the performance of your site and helps to improve SEO

Popup Maker - heavenly hand if you want to put a pop-up on the site, through which to announce promotional offers, invite visitors to subscribe to the newsletter, etc.

Fast secure contact form - a useful plugin with which users can contact you through a contact form.

Yoast SEO - one of the best SEO plugins, which will be a real help in creating articles

12. Security, first of all

Once active on the internet, your site must be well secured. Attacks are unpleasant, costly and time consuming. It is best to ensure a minimum of security for your site:

- constantly updates and uses software and plugins

- uses a strong password for administration. Make a combination of numbers, letters, special symbols

- install security plugins

 13. Analyze visitors

When visitors start reading your articles, it is important to see if their numbers are evolving or which titles have been most accessed each day. These things can be done with the help of a platform that offers solutions for tracking daily visits and other useful statistics in streamlining the activity.

The most popular choice when it comes to such measurement tools is Google Analytics. It can be used for free and contains many features. More details can be found in the article " 7 Tools for analyzing visitors on the website ".

I hope I inspired you to start a successful idea, which will generate substantial income, be it from advertisements, from subscribers, from marketing campaigns.

Good luck!