7 Do’s and Don’ts to Start a Blog

Do's and Don'ts to Start a Blog

Last updated - February 21, 2022

Creating a blog for the first time must be an exhilarating experience but, at the same time, a bit scary. You always want to do everything according to your intention and avoid mistakes so that your blog can be successful. 

If you are going to start a blog, stop for a moment. And follow our advice on do’s and don’ts to start a blog and go for it!

7 Dos to start a blog

First, let’s see the seven dos we should follow to start our blogs.

Decide on the right platform

Use a free platform if you want to make a blog as a hobby and not make money from your blog. But if you want to make money from blogging, you’d better avoid using free blogging platforms. 

Many people start with popular free blogging platforms like Blogger, Medium, or WordPress.com, but these blogging platforms are all limited. You won’t want to waste your time there if you are serious about blogging.

First, you will be subject to the terms and conditions of these platforms, and they reserve the right to close your blog without prior notice. Also, there is no guarantee that you will export your content if they shut down your blog.

You can only use the features available on their platform, which is very limited. Most free platforms also restrict you from monetizing your blog.

However, WordPress.org gives you the freedom and complete control over your blog. You can add features, earn money or do whatever you like. WordPress powers more than 31% of all websites on the internet.

Custom the domain name

The domain name is the primary address of the website. That’s what people will type to go directly to your website. A domain name should be the same or as close to your brand name as possible. If the .com domain extension for the name you want is not available, you can think of other alternatives or change the name slightly to be easy for people to remember.

You can buy a domain name of your own, but in most cases, you can buy a domain name promotion combo when you use the hosting service.

Use paid web hosting

Blog services that offer free hosting like Blogger, TypePad, etc., can provide a pretty good foundation. However, it is not flexible enough to install Plugins, Themes, and other extensions you want for better SEO results.

All you should do is register your domain name, buy inexpensive hosting. If you don’t have a lot of money to shop, you shouldn’t spend more than $50 for the whole year.

It may cost a little more money per month to help you manage your entire website, but the power of being independent can reap great rewards as your blogging business grows.

Build unique blog identity

Do's and Don'ts to Start a Blog

When we talk about brand identity, many people tend to think of its logo, but identity goes much further than that. It goes far beyond visual identity (colors, shapes, typeface) but has to do with all the elements that allow a brand to be identified. That is, from the logo, tone of voice, design of its blog, etc.

The logo is the reference image that our audience will associate with us, so it is essential to have a designer who can generate not only the most aesthetically attractive image but also has a foundation that helps build the identity we seek. DesignEvo logo maker provides 10,000+ professionally designed logo templates to help you make a custom logo for your blog easily. You can also find inspiration from them and start your creation from scratch. 

The typography that we use for the posts and the blog’s design has to be identifiable but, above all, easily legible: nothing to get excited about a font that can be super original but that nobody would tolerate reading more than three lines of running. 

The colors have to accompany the palette that we have chosen for our brand. Although it seems like a minor piece of information (no, I wasn’t going to say “a color piece of information” even if it was elementary), those details make up an image. You may also learn that all competing brands use the same color palette for all their designs.

Backup regularly

Usually, users don’t think about backups until it’s too late. I chose a very popular cheap web hosting provider in the early days, and they had a hardware failure. I lost my entire website because I didn’t have a backup.

Many hosting companies offer limited backup. However, these backups are not guaranteed, and hardware failure can cause you to lose data and backups.

Backups are your first step in protecting against website attacks, hacking, and data theft. They are the first step to improving your WordPress security and keeping your site safe.

Many reliable WordPress backup plugins allow you to schedule automatic backups and store them in locations like Google Drive, Dropbox, Amazon S3, etc.  

Understand your audience

Before you start writing blog posts, you need to have a clear understanding of your target audience.

Find out what information they want to know? What will attract them? Find out about their interests and personalities. From there, you will come up with desirable topics suitable for your readers. For example, your reader is someone who wants to start a business.

You probably don’t need to give them information about getting it started on social media. Most of them will ignore this information. Instead, you can develop the article in the direction of how to do an effective online business? New business models in the world or steps to start an online business, etc.

Quality content

Surely when blogging or doing content in SEO, you are all very familiar with the lesson: “Invest in quality content, content is King.”

I can’t confirm which element is “King”. But the first touchpoint for users is the content. Just do it well first.

When users visit your article, the content & presentation of the content is the factors that directly interact and positively or negatively influence the reader.

In addition, when you are writing content for the website, you are also doing SEO for the website. Good content will help users stay read longer, increase time on site – this is one of the indicators that Google evaluates. 

Quality content will include the following criteria:

  • The right length
  • The minimalist presentation focused on the reading experience
  • Have an illustration, video, or infographic that helps interpret the content from the text
  • Focus on the main topic & message you want to convey, avoid rambling

7 Don’ts to start a blog

Then, let’s see the seven don’ts we should follow to start our blogs.

Repetition

When you first start blogging, most of you will not know how to write or write. Many of you go to “carry” the content of other websites to bring to your website.

This is a terrible thing for the website because Google hates the problem of copying & duplicating content on the internet environment.

Google will penalize your website out of the top 100 searches or, even worse, make the website fall into a sandbox state, losing all traces of Google’s data.

You can synthesize a lot of articles available online and rewrite them according to your understanding, not copy the article. 

Hurt SEO 

Do's and Don'ts to Start a Blog

Good content is worthless if no one knows about it. No one gets to read and experience it. That’s why you need SEO. To be SEO, you need to optimize your content so that it meets SEO standards. The most important factor is to combine a keyword searched by many people related to the topic, then repeat it repeatedly. 2-3 times throughout your writing.

Hit the publish button directly

Many bloggers make the mistake of not editing a post. This may sound annoying when we all think our blog posts are too perfect for our readers, right?

They are not! It still needs to improve and tweak even a lot.

Everyone needs to edit their posts, even the most experienced bloggers. For the most part, the first draft of a blog post is not perfect. That’s why you should take the time to optimize the content you have written. Correct spelling errors, rearrange sentences as well as presentation errors. Make sure your story has a flow throughout the post.

Post many articles at one time

You’ve probably heard that the more articles you publish, the more traffic you get, which means the more followers and potential customers you will receive using your business’s products and services.

But the point of that statement is that you need to write articles regularly from the start. If you post five posts in a week and then only post 1-2 the next week, it will hardly become a constant habit. 

Businesses that publish quality articles regularly tend to get more traffic and potential conversions. Use a calendar to schedule writing regularly. Or you can even schedule posts in advance at a particular time in the future.

Buy Links

You can get short-term growth by buying links if your site is already popular, but there’s still a risk. Professional Google search engines sometimes flag paid links.

You may be wondering how they will catch you? There are Google bots and a special team at companies that look up cases of link problems every day.

For example, if you pay for several links pointing to your website on the same day, some of the links may be flagged as an unusual type of activity. Links from websites with entirely unrelated topics will be considered suspicious.

Make money too soon 

This is the worst, most egregious blogging mistake most beginners make. Newbies think that monetizing their website is the best thing ever as it will allow them to “Make money by following their passion”.

Well, that’s absolutely true, and that’s why blogging is so amazing! It makes it possible to make tons of money just by writing about something you love.

But, you know, before you can enjoy the fruit and wood of a tree, you first need to plant it, water it every day, nourish it, and provide it with sunshine. And then, finally, as it grows, it brings you unlimited joy.

Same with the blog, first you need to work hard with patience and dedication, make your blog grow, get steady traffic, and only then should you make money from your blog. 

If you don’t get enough traffic, placing ads on your blog doesn’t make sense because no one will click on them, and you won’t earn anything.

And when users click on the ad, they will be distracted from your blog. And you will inevitably lose your most valuable, possibly returning customers.

Giving up too soon

“It does not matter how slowly you go, as long as you don’t stop”. – Confucius

This is possibly the biggest mistake newbies make in the blog world. Your revolutionary idea takes time to kick in, and you start to feel overwhelmed.

My grand plan will never come to fruition, and I will have to go back to the evil boss who fired me two months ago.

It brings us back to the primary importance of having a long-term strategy. Whatever you do, there will be bumps along the way, and you’ll have to overcome them.

The good news is that highs often follow lows – the point is not to succumb to small setbacks.

Further reading

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