How to Start a Blog from Scratch in 2024? [A Comprehensive Guide for Beginners]

Welcome to The Beginners' Guide on How To Create A Blog From Scratch. In this guide, you will learn how to start a blog in 2023 and make money online, step by step.

I have tried to make this guide as simple as possible so that anyone with no prior experience can have a blog up and running in no time by following easy instructions contained in this guide.

Follow all the steps mentioned here and you will have an active blog ready under 30 minutes.

You'll also earn how to scale your blog like a real business to grow it quickly to maximize your earnings.

This is your ultimate guide to create a WordPress blog with all the resources you need to make it happen and make money from it.

Let's get started.

Note: This article contains affiliate links. When you click an affiliate link and make a purchase, we get a small compensation at no cost to you. See our Privacy Policy and Disclaimer for more info.

This guide is  approx. 15 minutes read (4000+ words).

It's a bit lengthy, but I have covered everything a new blogger should know for starting a blog in 2023.

In this guide, you will learn:

• How to select a domain name,
• How to buy hosting & register your domain name
• How to install WordPress
• How to install WordPress theme and plugins
• Common WordPress setup
• How to monetize a WordPress blog

Types of Blogs

If you are a novice blogger who  wants to start a blog for the first time, it's important for you to know what are the different types of blogs.

Let's get started.

1. Personal Blog

Personal blogs offer a platform for individuals to share their unique perspectives, experiences, and interests with a global audience. Unlike niche blogs that cater to a specific topic or audience, personal blogs are diverse and cater to a wide range of interests.

Whether it's sharing a hobby, writing about a passion, or advocating for a social cause, personal blogs offer readers a glimpse into the author's world.

With no set rules or expectations, personal blogs allow writers to freely express their ideas, feelings, and experiences to a global online audience.

Ultimately, the content of a personal blog is entirely up to its author, making each one a distinct and valuable addition to the blogging community.

2. Personal Brand Blog

These types of blogs are related to personality development, coaching, consulting, spirituality, etc. They offer some programs that you can join to enhance your skills or improve your personality or improve your spiritual health.

They focus on building strong relationships with their audience. Why? Because strong relationship brings more customers for them.

How they build a strong relationship? They do so by offering some freebies by providing free content like guides, checklist, or eBooks on their sites.

3. Niche Blog

Niche blogging is the act of creating a blog to focus on a particular topic and target a specific audience or age group.

It's important to select the topic that you're passionate about after identifying your target audience. You don’t want your niche to be too small or too big.

Some popular niche topics are Fashion, Lifestyle, WordPress, Movies, Books, Cars, Bikes, Sports, Finance, Food, Writing, Travel, Fashion, Pets, Parenting, Entertainment and others.

4. Affiliate Blog

These are blogs that are created to promote other's products to earn affiliate commissions.

Bloggers have to join affiliate programs or affiliate networks like ShareASale, Clickbank, and others to promote a product.

After joining an affiliate program, a unique affiliate link is provided to an affiliate to track clicks and sales.

Promotion are done by writing product reviews on the blog and encouraging visitors to purchase the product using your affiliate link. Thus, when anyone buys a product, you earn a commission.

If you want to learn more, check this article - What is Affiliate Marketing.

How to Start a Blog in 2023?

If you want to create a blog to make money, it may be for different reasons.

• To quit your 9-5 full-time job
• To save money for your future expenses
• To spend more time with your family
• To buy your dream house or car
• To save for your foreign vacation

The biggest challenge in creating a successful blog is identifying the profitable niche that can transform your life into financial independence.

While many professional bloggers will tell you to select a niche that you're passionate about as it helps you devise your content strategy for the longer term.

They will also tell you that blogging is considered an intersection of passion, skills, and experience. But they miss an important component, that is monetization.

If you have identified a monetization model for your blog, you're truly on the right path to creating a perfect blog for yourself.

Money itself will drive passion in you to create content to help your audience.

Below I have mentioned six important steps that is essential in creating a successful blog in 2023.

Step 1: Identify Your Blog Niche

Many bloggers quit blogging within the first year of their blogging journey when they don't see any significant earnings from their blog.

You know, what is the reason behind it?

Because most bloggers choose a niche based on their passions, skills, and experiences, but they fail to identify the monetization model that can make them good money.

If your niche is something that can't make you money, you would eventually quit. And that's why most blogs fail.

That is why you must choose a niche that has the potential to earn you money consistently for a longer period.

Thus the key to identifying a perfect niche boils down to:

1. Your skill, knowledge, and experience (it is still important)
2. Your target audience
3. Monetization potential (most important)

Let's check out all three points in detail.

Your skill, knowledge, and experience

Ask yourself, do you have the necessary skill, knowledge, and experience that will allow you to write content consistently for the longer term.

To assess this, you can do a simple exercise.

Note down all your topics of interest in a paper. Now evaluate your topics to see whether you can write at least 50 or 100 articles.

Once you identify the topic based on the above criteria, move on to our second criteria.

Your target audience

Your blog niche should not be too small or too big. A small niche doesn't worth your time and investment, as it wouldn't be very profitable in the longer term.

On the other hand, a big niche would be too broad to cover all the topics.

Thus, your niche should target a specific audience.

How to find whether there're people looking for the content you're planning to create?

It's easy. To find whether there is enough audience, you need to open Google and type in your niche.

Check all the sites on the first page of Google.

Now try to assess whether these are big or small sites. If there are sites with thousands of visitors every day, then you have selected the right niche.

You can validate it further.

Do a quick search for "Best blog about + Your niche" on Google to see the list of blogs on your niche.

If this search also throws up some website names with good traffic, it's a clear indication that you have the right audience for your selected topic.

Another thing to consider here is whether your niche can solve the pain points of your end-users.

Once you know what your audience challenges are, you can offer them exactly the right solution.

Consider my example.

When I started building blogs, I faced many challenges starting from choosing the right niche, right blogging platform, themes, monetization option, website speed, website security, and so on.

These are also the pain points of many upcoming bloggers.

To solve their problems, I have created this blog. To guide them in taking the right approach to start a blog.

So in my case, my target audience would be like:

• People in the age group of 20 - 35 years old
• People looking to leave their regular 9-5 job by creating an alternate career in the form of blogging
• People wanting to make passive income in addition to their regular salary

Similarly, you can identify the pain points of your target audience and help them in solving them.

Once you identify your target audience, now its time to assess the monetization potential.

Monetization potential

After identifying your target audience, the next crucial step is to check how much your audience is willing to spend to solve their pain points.

This step will help you to understand the revenue potential of your selected blog niche.

To better understand the revenue potential of your target niche, let's do a small exercise.

Note down 5-10 queries that you have searched for in Google in the last few days. For example, the following are some queries that people often search for in Google.

• How to earn money online?
• How to lose weight naturally?
• How to cook biryani?
• How to increase concentration?
• How to create a blog? (this post :-))

People often look up to search engines like Google to search for sites to solve their pain points.

So your blog niche has to provide a solution to the problems of your target audience.

Now the next step is to list out all the monetization possibilities of this niche.

If your blog is about losing weight, how are you going to monetize it?

Below I have mentioned some of the monetization options that can be used to make money from a blog:

• Advertisements
• Paid or sponsorship reviews
• Affiliate Marketing
• Brand collaboration

If you do not come up with any monetization ideas, you can look up to similar blogs in your niche and identify their monetization model.

This will help you understand if the blog niche you've selected is right for you or not.

Below I have mentioned some of the popular niches with a specific target audience with good earning potential.

These are some of the money-making niches. If you work hard in these niches, you're sure to make money from your blog.

After selecting profitable niche for your blog, let's move on to the next step and choose a domain name for your blog.

Step 2: Choose A Good Domain Name

What exactly is a Domain Name?

A domain name is your website name. It is this name that your users type in a browser to visit your site.

In simple terms, a domain name is the address where users on internet can access your website.

For example, technicalwall.com is the domain name of my website.

I would advise you to always choose a Top Level Domain (TLD) for your blog. 

A top-level domain (TLD) is the part of a domain that comes after the dot, for example, .com or .org. Always try to buy a .com domain.

Why choose a top level domain? Because Google Search Engine indexes these domains well in search results and has world wide acceptability.

However, choosing a domain can be a very time consuming process. Earlier in the past, it was possible to get exact-match keyword domain names. But today, it's much more difficult.

You may find that all the possible domain name (.com or .org) of your choice has already been taken.

So, what is the solution?

The answer is Domain Name Generators.

Two tools that may help you in selecting a top level domain name for your blog is instantdomainsearch.com and leandomainsearch.

Visit either of these website and enter your probable domain name and select Search button.

It will come up with number of combinations (with prefixes as well as suffixes) for your domain name.

Note down the domain name which you think is perfect for your blog.

See the image below in which I have entered Blogging as domain name and it has come up with so many results. You can do the same.

You can try different combinations until you get your desired domain name.

Tips for a choosing a good domain name:

1. Use your blog keyword in the domain name. Though it is not mandatory. Your domain name should be related to your blog niche.

2. Your blog domain name must not be more than two words. Short domain names are easier to remember.

3. Do not use -, _, /, or any other special characters or numbers in your domain name. Users will find it difficult to remember the domain name.

If you want to learn more, you can visit this article - How to select a good domain name.

Now that you have chosen domain name of your choice, now, it's time to purchase your domain name.

To register your domain name, you have the following options:

• Buy from a Domain Registrar like Namecheap, GoDaddy or Domain.com
• Buy from your hosting provider

If you are creating multiple websites then buying domain names from the domain registrar makes sense as it allows you to manage all your domains at a single place. It typically cost around $10 for a year per domain name.

However, if you have planned to create only a single website for yourself, I would recommend you to buy the domain name from your hosting provider. It would cost you around $10 - $15 per year for a single domain name.

Some web hosting provider also offers free domain name when you buy hosting with them. Also read: I bought a domain name now what.

If you buy a hosting plan with DreamHost web hosting, you would also get a free domain name for the first year.

Get started with DreamHost for just $2.59/month (and get 63% off your hosting plan), use my link below:

Step 3: Get Hosting & Register Your Domain

To make your website live on internet you need to buy hosting for your website from a web hosting provider.

What is a Web Host?

A web hosting company provides space on their server to host your website so that anyone can access your website on the internet.

Thus, basically you buy a space for your website from the web hosting provider to host your website files (images, databases, post, pages, etc.).

A good web hosting company should have the following features:

Which hosting do I recommend?

A good web host must have all the features as mentioned above. I recommend the following web host to my users looking to create their first blog-

DreamHost - For users looking for affordable and reliable hosting solution. It is one of the best shared hosting service provider in the industry.

It has also been listed on the WordPress.org hosting page as the recommended WordPress hosting providers. 

Need more proof?

At TrustPilot.com, DreamHost has excellent ratings (4.7 out of 5) from real customers.

DreamHost - 4.7 rating out of 1309 users rating.

A great reason to start your first blog with a hosting provider that people trust.

How To Purchase Hosting From DreamHost?

Step 1: Click here to visit DreamHost.com and Activate 63% Special Discount.

You will redirected to DreamHost website. Now select Shared Website Hosting under Hosting.

Step 2: Choose Your Web Hosting Plan

As you're a beginner, I would recommend you to start with Shared Starter plan that will cost you just $2.59 per month.

Shared Starter is the most affordable shared hosting plan offered by Dreamhost.

At only $2.59 per month, you get a free domain name, free SSL certificate, fast SSD storage, unlimited traffic and host of other important features.

Select Sign Up Now under Shared Starter plan.

Step 3: Enter Your Domain Name

You have already selected your domain name earlier. Select Register a new domain and Enter your domain name and select search. Select Add for $0.00. You get your domain name for free for the first year.

If you have not decided upon your domain name, don't worry, you can always proceed to sign-up and choose your domain later. Just select Choose a domain later.

Step 4. Select Payment Method & Enter Account Information

Select your preferred payment method - Credit Card or Paypal.

Create your account by entering your email address and name, or sign up with Google. 

Make sure to uncheck all the additional option to buy DreamShield Protection and DreamHost Email. For beginners it is not necessary at this moment. Once your blog grows big and start getting meaningful traffic then you can consider upgrading to the above products.

Select Submit Order, make payment and that's it. You have successfully purchase your hosting plan at DreamHost.

Ready to start your blog? Get started for just $2.59/month (63% off your hosting plan) with my link below:

Recommended reading: Shared hosting is a type of web hosting where multiple websites are hosted on a single server. This means that the server's resources are shared among multiple websites, including CPU usage, RAM, and disk space. As a result, shared hosting is typically more affordable than other forms of web hosting, such as dedicated hosting or VPS hosting. 

Step 4: Add WordPress to Blog

Now that you have bought your domain and hosting plan, now its time to load WordPress into it, which is a fairly simple process.

Please note that we are talking about WordPress.org not WordPress.com. Many people get confused between the two.

Also Read: WordPress vs Blogger

Why WordPress.org?

75 million websites around the world uses WordPress.org to manage their websites. It is free to install, deploy, and upgrade. It is also very user friendly.

Thousands of plugins and themes power a flexible and simple interface, which reduces development costs and deployment time.

Features of WordPress.org

• It is open-source and 100% free for anyone to use.
• Gives you the ability to customize your blog design with ease.
• Thousands of plugins to add powerful features to your blog. 
• You own your website and all its data.
• Run your own ads without sharing revenue with anyone.
• Powerful SEO features to increase site visibility/
• Create your own online stores to sell digital or physical products directly from your website.
• Let you use powerful tools like Google Analytics to track your website visitors.

To start using WordPress, all you need is a domain name and web hosting. This is why it is also referred to as self-hosted WordPress.

You can easily and quickly install WordPress from cPanel offered by your hosting provider.

Log in to your hosting account, select cPanel Login button to launch the cPanel.

Under cPanel, choose WordPress.

Now, in the Choose Installation URL enter the name of your blog (i.e. domain name).

For example, my blog is technicalwall.com so I will enter the same in this field.

Then enter your site name and a little description about your blog (see the image given below).

Now comes the important part.

Enter the Admin username and Admin password.

Store this information safely. You will need this credential later to login into the WordPress dashboard. 

Now, select the Install button (See the image given below). Within a few minutes WordPress will be installed and loaded into your domain.

Congrats! you have successfully installed WordPress on your blog.

After WordPress has been successfully installed, your URL to login into the WordPress Dashboard would be like this:

https://yourdomainname.com/wp-admin/

Replace yourdomainname.com with your domain name.

Please note that if you have purchased your domain and hosting both from Dreamhost, then you can instantly access your WordPress Dashboard.

However, if you have purchased your domain name from domain registrars like Namecheap or Godaddy or Domain.com then you need to complete an additional step to make your blog live.

Don’t worry it’s a very easy step. Check out the link below to connect your domain to your hosting account.

How to connect Domain to Hosting

After completing the above process, enter the URL https://yourdomainname.com/wp-admin/ in address bar of Chrome Browser.

You will be asked to enter your WordPress Username and Password.

After entering Username and Password, select Log In. Now, you will now be taken to the WordPress Dashboard.

WordPress Dashboard is the place where you will be writing, customizing, and publishing your blog posts.

Ready to start your blog? Get started at DreamHost for just $2.59/month (63% off your hosting plan) with my link below:

Step 5: Add WordPress Theme

After you login to the WordPress Dashboard, the next thing you would want to do is to install a theme for your blog.

If you have noticed, your blog already has a free WordPress theme set up by default.

What is a theme in WordPress?

A theme is a collection of templates and stylesheets used to define the appearance and display of a WordPress powered website.

They can be changed, managed, and added from the WordPress Dashboard.

Please Note: Many new bloggers while starting their blogging journey go for free themes. Though there are a number of free themes available on the internet and even in WordPress but I will advise you to use an SEO-friendly premium theme.

Why?

Free themes doesn't look appealing to the users and it lacks many functionality and are prone to hacking.

And one of the main issue with free themes is that they are not updated regularly. After a year or two you will not get any new updates for it and the theme may get incompatible with the latest WordPress version.

On the other hand premium themes are regularly updated by their developer to fix any bugs in the theme, if any, and regularly add new features and functionality.

Due to regular update by its developer, premium theme always remain compatible with the latest WordPress version.

Because premium themes are not resource heavy. They are very light weight and hence, does not consume whole lot of your resources.

While choosing a premium theme you should look for the following features:

• Optimized for speed and performance
• SEO optimized
• Responsive design
• Customizable
• Free and regular updates for life
• Compatible with all modern-day browsers
• Good Support

My Recommendation

I am using GeneratePress and Astra Pro on my websites. Both these themes are SEO-friendly, very light weight and easy to customize.

GeneratePress and Astra Pro are among the largest used themes on the WordPress platform.

Blogs on both these themes load very fast and are recommended by top bloggers of the world.

In this blog i.e. technicalwall.com I am using the theme by GeneratePress.

You can see that my site is very minimal in design yet very attractive and loads within a couple of seconds. If you want to learn more, check out my review on GeneratePress.

GeneratePress also has a free version but it is very limited in terms of features.

If you want all the premium features like Site Library with developer support, you will have to purchase the premium version. You can buy GeneratePress theme at only $59 and use it on 500 websites.

Not to forget their amazing support team and forum where you would get help for almost any theme related issues.

Once you have purchased the theme, you will get a link to download it. On download you get the theme in a zip file.

Follow the below steps to install a theme on your blog.

In your WordPress Dashboard go to Appearance then Themes and then select Add New button.

Now select Upload Theme >> Choose File. Select the downloaded zip file and select Install Now.

Once the theme is loaded successfully, it will ask to activate it.

Select Activate. Now your theme has been installed and activated on your blog.

Let's check our progress in this how to start a blog guide.

• You’ve selected your blog's niche.
• You've chosen your blog's name.
• You picked your hosting plan and registered your domain name.
• You installed a theme on your blog.

It's been a wonderful progress so far.

In the next step, we will install some essential WordPress plugins and perform some basic but important blog setup.

Let's get started.

Step 6: Install Essential Plugins

WordPress are powered by plugins. Plugins enhances and extends a website's features and functionality.

What is a Plugin?

A plugin is a piece of software containing a group of functions that can be added to a WordPress website.

Plugins can extend functionality or add new features to your WordPress websites.

There are thousands of plugins in WordPress.org repository that performs variety of functions that includes SEO, Woo Commerce integration, security, backup, image compression, and others.

However, it is not recommended to install hundreds of these plugins on your site as they will slow down your site. Need help installing plugins on your site, check out our guide on how to install WordPress plugins.

So, out of so many plugins, which ones should you install?

I have compiled a list of some essential plugins that you can install on your site to enhance its functionality.

1. RankMath: SEO Plugin

RankMath plugin helps you in your search engine optimization (SEO) efforts. 

You can set titles and meta descriptions, set your targeted keywords, and track how often you're using them, generate sitemaps, manage SEO redirects, control index settings and much more.

It is one of the best and most popular SEO plugin in the world. Moreover, it is completely free to use. If you want to learn more, check out my RankMath review.

Get started with RankMath below.

2. Thrive Architect: Page Builder

It is a powerful live drag and drop landing page builder. It allows you to easily create custom WordPress layouts even if you have no coding knowledge. 

With this plugin you don't need to work on the back-end. You make changes in the front-end and see your work LIVE instantly.

Thrive Architect plugin provides live design & inline editing feature so the whole process of writing and designing is done directly on the page, with no need to press update or go to preview mode. It also works perfectly with or without Gutenberg. If you want to learn more, check out my Thrive Architect review.

3. WPRocket: Speed Booster Plugin

It is a speed optimization plugin for WordPress which helps in implementing a variety of speed-boosting features to your WordPress site.

It has the following features - Page Caching, Cache Preloading, GZip Compression, Minification of CSS, HTML & JavaScript, CDN Integration, Lazy Loading, Images on Request, Developer Friendly, etc.

Check out the WP Rocket review to learn more about it.

4. BlogVault: Backup Plugin

A website is prone external threats like hacking and malware injection. Having a proper backup solution allows you to concentrate on producing great content without worrying about your site.

BlogVault is one of the best WordPress backup plugins I have used so far. It is very easy to use. Once you install and activate this plugin, it automatically takes backup of your site everyday.

The backup contains 90 days archive to recover from any mistake. It has the ability to perform full restore even if your website is offline.

If something bad happens to your blog the backup will help you in restoring your WordPress site back to normal.

5. Social Snap: Social Share Plugin

SocialSnap is the leading WordPress social sharing plugin that helps you drive more traffic and increase engagement by leveraging the power of social media.

This plugin is light weight i.e. it will not slow down your blog.

With this plugin, users can easily share your contents on social channels like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest, etc. Check out the Social Snap review to know more about this social share plugin.

Some important features of this plugin are:

• Social share buttons to share your content,
• Share count to show how many times your content has been shared, follow button,
• Statistics to see how your content is performing and which content is generating the most shares on social media.

6. Akismet: Anti-Spam Plugin 

It checks your comments and contact form submissions against its global database of spam to prevent your site from publishing malicious content.

It automatically checks all comments and filters out the ones that look like spam.

7. Easy Table of Contents: Table of Content Plugin

This popular plugin allows you to easily add a Table of Contents into any page or post.

It automatically generate a table of contents for your posts, pages and custom post types by parsing its contents for headers H1, H2, H3, and others.

It is compatible with editors like Classic Editor, Gutenberg, Divi, Elementor, WPBakery Page Builder, and others.

8. GDPR Cookie Consent: Cookie Display Plugin

Use this plugin to make your site GDPR compliant. It displays a subtle cookie banner to your website either in the header or footer so you can show your compliance status regarding the new GDPR law.

9. OptinMonster: Opt-in Form Plugin

It is one of the best popup builder and email opt-in plugin. By adding OptinMonster plugin on your blog, you can get more email subscribers, increase sales, and grow your business.

You can take the help of popular eBook creators to create eBooks in PDF format and you can offer it as a lead magnet in your OptinMonster opt-in form. It will help you to build an email list and grow it quickly.

Use this plugin to turn your abandoning website visitors into subscribers and customers.

10. ShortPixel: Image Compression Plugin

This plugin compresses all the images on your website so the size of the image files becomes smaller that ultimately makes your site faster to load.

It can also compress all your past images and PDF documents with ease.

All the images are resized & rescaled, and optimized automatically in the background.

Tips: Don't install plugins which are not updated regularly by its developers. Such plugins are vulnerable to security threats.

How to install and activate plugins?

Adding plugins from WordPress Dashboard is fairly simple.

• In the WordPress Dashboard select Plugins → Add New
  
• Then you can select required plugins from Recommended tab, Popular tab or Featured tab and you can even search for your plugin if it is not there in the list. 
• Once you are in the plugin page click on the Install Now button.
• After installation, click on the Activate button to activate it. That's it, now your plugin has been installed and activated also.

Step 7: Important Settings

1. Activate SSL certificate

Enabling SSL certificate on your site allows you to activate the padlock and the HTTPS protocol that allows secure connection from the web server to your user's browser.

Thus, SSL certificates ensures that activities such as credit card transactions and logins on your site are secured.

Another important reason to secure your site with an SSL certificate is ranking. Going HTTPS/SSL gives your site ranking benefit on search engines like Google.

Which means that not having an SSL certificate will hurt your rankings on search results.

Many popular hosting platform provide SSL certificate for free with their hosting plans.

If you have purchased hosting plan from DreamHost, you're already covered with a free SSL certificate.

2. Connect Your Blog With Google Analytics

Google Analytics is a free service that allows you to analyze your visitors activities on your website. You can gain valuable insights from its data to shape the success strategy of your site.

So, if you have a website, you should be using Google Analytics.

Some of the benefits of using Google Analytics are:

• You can track how your audiences are interacting with your website.
• Which are your popular articles/post.
• Track bounce rate of your site.
• What is the Average session duration.
• And many other features

Adding Google Analytics just require you to add a tracking code to your website.

Here is a helpful resource that will help you to sign up for Google Analytics, get tracking code and add it on your site - How to add Google Analytics.

3. Add Your Site to Google Search Console

Google Search Console is another free service by Google that provides actionable reports, tools, and learning resources to rank your site higher on search results. 

Following are the features of Google Search Console:

• Track which articles are driving more clicks and impression
• Track keyword positions on Google search results
• Track average Click-through-Rate (CTR) 
• Help you resolve server errors, site load issues, and security issues
• Queries that drive traffic to your website
• See stats related to your keywords position in Google search results
• And many other features

Check out this guide on how to add a website to Google Search Console.

4. Set Up Permalink Structure

A permalink is the web address (URL) used to link to your content.

These are the permanent URLs to your individual web pages and blog posts.

It's a permanent link, hence it is named permalink.

When you create a content, WordPress automatically generates a permalink for each post or page in the following format:

yourdomainname.com/?p=123

This type of permalink structure looks unattractive and also not considered good from an SEO point of view.

So make sure to set up a specific permalink structure before you publish your first post.

To set up your preferred permalink structure, go to WordPress Dashboard >> Settings >> Permalinks.

If you check some of the popular high-ranking blogs you will find that they follow Post name or Custom permalink structure.

Whatever permalink structure you choose for your blog post or pages, please keep in mind that you may not want to change it later.

Why? Because all the backlinks pointing to your blog post will loose the link juice and it may also result in a 404 error if not carefully done.

5. Install RankMath SEO Plugin

RankMath is probably one of the best WordPress SEO plugins that help you make your content SEO-friendly and rank it higher on search engines.

There are other SEO plugins like YoastSEO but RankMath becomes an automatic choice for many bloggers due to the fact that it is completely free for beginners.

Unlike YoastSEO where you need to subscribe to the paid plan to use some of its advanced features, RankMath allows you to use the same features for free.

Also, On-page SEO becomes much easier by having an SEO plugin like RankMath on your blog.

Some essential features of RankMath are:

• Setup wizard sets up SEO for your WordPress blog seamlessly
• Easily integrates Google Schema Markup (Rich Snippets)
• Optimize keywords
• Integrates with Google Search Console
• LSI keyword tool to give multiple keyword variations of your focus keyword
• Redirection manager
• Display SEO optimized Breadcrumbs
• And many more features

Get started with RankMath today.

Step 8: Publish Your First Post

Congratulations, in Step 6 and 7, you completed your blog set up successfully.

Now you can start writing some awesome post or articles. To write an article we use Post in WordPress.

Log in to your WordPress Dashboard. Go to Posts >> Add New.

In the Post page, add the Title of the post and set your Permalink and Categories. After that you can start writing the content of your post.

Once you finish writing your content, you can hit the Publish button to make it LIVE.

Please remember that readers like to engage with an article that provides best possible answer to their queries.

So, if your articles are providing the best answer that your users are seeking then your content is worth publishing. Google will also like it and rank your article higher in search results.

Thus, always try to write articles keeping in mind your end users.

Remember that the length of the post should not be very short. Try to write a post containing at-least 1000 or more words. The longer the better.

How to Add Keywords into Your Blog Posts?

Try to add your main keyword as well as different variations of your main keywords 4 to 5 times in the post. Don't over add it as it will have negative effect in Google Search Result.

Here are some basic checklist you need to follow every time you write a blog posts-

• Add your main keyword in your URL
• Add keyword in the Title
• Add keyword in the meta blog description
• Add keyword in the Headings (H1, H2, H3, etc.)
• Add keyword in the first and last paragraph.
• Depending on the length of the posts add some more variation of your keyword inside your content.

Try to keep 1% keyword density in your content. It means that your keyword is included once for every 100 words. But try to stuff your content with too many keywords. It will have a negative effects on your SEO.

How to make Blog Posts more interactive and engaging?

Interactive content is the key to your blogging success. Competition is fierce across all blogging niches. Your content must stand out among all.

That is why It becomes all the more important to optimize your content so that your users gets immersive experience reading your content.

A good interactive content allows:

• your readers to keep looking for more such valuable and engaging content, 
• reduce bounce rate of your site and 
• rank your content higher on search results.

So how do you actually achieve it?

• Add images and infographics
• Add videos
• Add charts or graphs, if required
• Add polls or surveys
  

Now, let's see how we can earn from our blog and what are the different sources of monetization.

Step 9: Monetize Your Blog

Before thinking about monetizing your blog try to add at least 20 to 30 post and optimize your articles to get organic traffic from Google.

Focus on adding more quality contents before looking to monetize your blog.

Once you start getting decent traffic from search engines, you can use any of the following monetization options to make money from your blog. 

Google Adsense

It is one of the most sought after option for bloggers looking for monetization.

Earlier it was quite easy to get approved by Google Adsense. But now a days, it has become very difficult for new websites to get easy approval.

Before applying to Adsense, you must ensure that your site is complies with its terms and conditions.

Once you're approved, you can add ad codes on your site to display advertisements. If you're not getting approved, you can check below the Google Adsense alternatives mentioned below.

Ezoic.com

Ezoic is my favorite monetization option. I am using this ad network on my other websites to display ads. According to my experience you see a jump of 25 to 50% jump in revenue as compared with Adsense.

So, if you have an Adsense account, you can join Ezoic to see whether it can enhance your income.

Further, if you have traffic from USA, UK or Australia then you can earn very good revenue from it.

Infolinks

I am also using Infolinks ad network in my other website along with Ezoic.

It's income is not at par to Google Adsense, Ezoic or Media.net but it is providing decent eCPM for its ad impression.

Infolinks is not as strict as Adsense in approving a website. So, if your site is not getting approved by Google Adsense, you can join Infolinks.

For one of my site that gets majority of traffic from India, I am getting on average $0.10 per eCPM. See the earnings snapshot below.

If you have been rejected by Google Adsense several times, then you can try this network to see how it goes for you.

Affiliate Marketing

There are different affiliate program which you can join.

You can join Amazon Associate program to sell amazon products and earn commissions.

You can also try JVZoo and ShareASale.

Sell your own products

If you have your own products and are getting decent traffic on your blog you can try selling it on your blog.

Tips for fast indexing of your website.

Don't forget to submit your website in Google Search Console and verify it. Also try to submit it other search engine like Bing.

Submitting your website to search engine will allow it to index all the web pages of your site to make it visible in Google Search or Bing Search.

Blogging can be a very profitable profession. Be serious about it right from the start.

Take your blog as a long term business. There is a saying, Rome is not built in a day. Thus, add regular and enriching contents which engages your users by solving their problems.

Also, user experience must be your top priority.  Follow the above tips and I am sure you will have a very satisfying and rewarding blogging career.

I hope you like this article - how to create a blog in 2020 from scratch under 30 minutes.

If you have any questions or suggestions please offer your comments below.

There is no limit to how much you could earn from blogging. There is so much potential. It's all depend upon how much effort you are give in your blog.

Whether you are unemployed, employed or a  housewife, anyone can create a blog and make a rewarding career for themselves.

Online earning is a great source of income. You don't have to work under any one. You don't have to work 9-5 at a day job.

Even if you are employed on a regular job, you could start a blog to create a passive income stream for yourself. These extra income could do wonders to your financial life.

FAQ Related To How To Start A Blog In 2023

For those who are going to start a blog in 2023 I have compiled few questions which are frequently asked by newbie bloggers.

You may also have some confusion on how to create a blog, how to start, which platform to use, etc.

I hope that my answer to the Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) would clear most of the confusion.

How much money is needed to start a blog?

To start a blog, you basically need the following two-

1. A web hosting plan and
2. A Domain name

As a beginner you should start your blog with shared hosting plan. If you buy this plan from DreamHost it would cost you $2.59 dollar per month.

A Domain name would cost you around $8 - 10 per year.

To start a blog, you must invest this much amount. Without this investment you would not be able to create a blog for yourself.

See top deals on blogging tools.

Can I start a blog for free in 2023?

Yes, you can start a blog for free in Blogger. If you want to create a personal blog with no intention to earn any money from your blog then you can use Blogger.

If you wish to earn from your blog but starts your blog in free platform like Blogger then you are making a big blogging mistake.

I would advise you to invest some money in buying a hosting plan and a domain name. It doesn't cost much and you can use this platform to make money for yourself.

How do I drive free organic traffic to my blog?

Not getting enough traffic to a blog is the common problem of newbie bloggers.

If your blog is not properly optimized for Search Engine Optimization (SEO) then it would be very difficult to rank your blog higher up in search engine like Google.

So, in order to drive free organic traffic to your blog you must give attention to proper on-page and off-page SEO.

Once you do this properly you will start getting results with in a span of 3-4 months.

How do I promote my blog?

There are many ways in which you can promote your blog and start getting free traffic.

Forums: Be active in forums related to your blog. By being active I mean you should take part in discussions and provide answer to users questions. In between you can also share link to your blog which will bring traffic to your blog.

Facebook Fan Page: Create Facebook fan page for your blog and start posting regular and useful contents. By being consistent you can drive your fan page users to your blog.

Quora: Register yourself at Quora. Start answering to questions posted by others. Like forums, here also while answering questions you can share a link to your website.

Be careful while posting your blog links. If you do it too much, you may be banned by the above platforms.

Wrapping Up

That's it. I have explained all the steps that are essential in starting a blog from scratch.

The steps I have explained above are quite simple and easy to implement. I hope that by going through this guide you can easily create a blog and make money from it.

Best of Luck for your Blogging Journey!!