any of us have, had or at least considered having a blog at one point or another. Blogs occupy a huge part of the internet, which has recently been confirmed by a study showing that 77% of the active internet users read them on a regular basis. What makes blogs a preferred option for a lot of the users is the easy management the relatively high search rankings on a low cost.

We decided to stress on the fundamentals of building a blog, which will undoubtedly be of a great use to the newbies out there.

First of all:

1) Define the goals of your blog

Whether you want it to be personal or a company blog, make sure you know how you want it to develop. Are you trying to establishwp_blogger yourself as an expert? Are you making a company page out of it, or are you doing it just for fun? Make sure that you have the vision of it for six months, a year ahead. Pick a target audience (business owners, pet owners, teenagers etc.) and put together a design that will meet their expectations.

2) Decide whether you want to host your blog or not

Your next decision is whether you want to host the blog yourself or with a free blogging service.

With the free service you are never going to pay anything and you will have an easy to use blog platform.

The cons however far outnumber the fact that it is free.

  • You cannot move the blog to your own domain on a later stage. Once you have it there you cannot make your readers follow you on a different address.
  • You will have ads placed on your blog and you will not be getting any profit out of it. You are also forbidden to place your own ads there.
  • You cannot use plugins unless you pay. The plugins make your blog very customizable. There are literally thousands of plugins available to download for free, but you cannot make use of them on a free service.
  • You cannot use custom themes on a free version. You are limited to a design that is used on millions of other blogs.
  • Your blog may get deleted if it violates the Terms and Conditions of the company host.
  • You do not get to choose a name. Your blog’s address will look similar to this “yourblog.wordpress.com”.

Paying few ringgit/dollars a month for your own hosting however takes care of all the above issues and offers much greater administration flexibility. Without prior experience you can 1-click-install your blog from control panel with any of the free blogging software solutions, such as WordPress, Blogger and others. An extra RM50.00/year ($10.45/year) will cost a .com domain name of your choice.

3) Post on a regular basis

A blog is a commitment. If you are seeking regular visitors, you need to provide interesting, relevant to your topic content. Be prepared to post often, this is your brand image and you need to communicate consistently before getting any results. Have in mind blogthat unless you are absolutely unique, your posts tiles and first paragraphs always have to be catchy. Online readers’ attention span is constantly getting shorter.

Also, the search engines will notice your frequent updates and scan your blog more often for content.

4) Use descriptive titles for your posts

Titles are very important not only for the potential visitors, but also for the search engines. A lot of value is placed there when ranking your blog in the organic search engine results. You have to optimize your blog for good search performance. For example, if you are writing an article about dog food it would be a better idea to have a title “How to feed a dog?” rather than “Do you feed your dog as you are supposed to?”. The more a phrase is searched, the better your article will perform.

You can check the search popularity of phrases for Google HERE

5) Stay visible and promote

Use social networks such as Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn to promote your blog. Insert social media buttons so people can share your articles with the masses. Comment on other people’s blogs related to your niche.