One of the best decisions you can make in 2024 is to start a blog. A blog provides you with a platform to express your thoughts and share them with the world.
Blogging is also a proven way to make money online. I have been making a decent income from blogging for over four years now.
There are various platforms where you can create a blog such as WordPress, Blogger, Tumblr, and Ghost, etc.
In this article we will focus on blog creation on Blogger, a Google-owned content management system(CMS), which allows you to own a blog on the blogspot.com sub-domain for free.
The steps below will guide you on how to start a blog on Blogger the right way:
Step 1: Decide Your Niche
One of the first decisions you make after deciding you want to start a blog is to figure out what you will blog about. Some new bloggers fall into the trap of writing about everything that comes to mind.
Yes, blogging is about sharing your thoughts, research, and experience, but if you are interested in professional blogging that thought must be targeted at a clearly defined audience.
Your blog should be about your interest and passion. It should be about a topic you are happy discussing.
There are various topics you can write about, for example:
- Travel
- Food
- Lifestyle
- Technology
- Politics
- Business
- Sports
Step 2: How to create free blog on Blogger
Signup for Google account
Similar to other Google products, to use Blogger/Blogspot you must have a Google account. If you already have an account skip this part, if not, signup here.
Sign into your Blogger account
1. Go to Blogger.com, Sign in using your Google account details.
2. Once logged in you will land on a page labelled ‘Choose a name for your blog’. In the ‘Title’ section, enter the name of your blog and click on the next button.
3. Then choose a unique URL for your blog in the page that pops and click next once successful.
4. In the 3rd and final section, choose a name that will be displayed on the posts page, then click finish.
Congratulations! You have successfully created your blog. Next, I will guide you how to customize, optimize and create posts from blogger dashboard.
Step 3: How to customize blogger blog?
Having created your blog splendidly, now, it’s time to tweak its design.
1. The first task should be choosing the template to use on your blog. To achieve this select the theme section on the left-hand side of your blogger dashboard.
2. From this section you will find plenty of free templates provided by Blogger. Contempo is the default template, but you can opt for another one that you feel represents your brand.
3. By clicking the customize button you can tweak various aspects of the template such as colours and fonts.
4. Through the options button next to customize you can be able to back up, restore, access the mobile settings and edit HTML of your template. The restore option allows you to upload a template from your PC.
If the free templates on blogger dashboard are not good enough for you. There also thousands of free and premium BlogSpot templates available online.
Once done applying the template, select the layout section.
You can change the location of a widget by simply dragging and dropping the gadget to your preferred location.
Step 4: How to optimize your Blogger blog?
Do you want your blog to be indexed by search engines? If your answer is yes, with help of the following setups your blog will be visible to search engines.
First of all, from blogger dashboard click on settings. Then scroll down to Meta Tags section.
Meta tags are essentially little content descriptors that help tell search engines what a web page is about. To make it work, simply enable the search description. Then click on search description and type your meta description.
Error and redirects – located below the Meta tags section, provides you an opportunity to create Custom 404, which when a user access your site through a broken URL instructs them what action to take.
Crawlers and indexing – these settings are the most important since they influence where your pages rank on search engines. If keyed in incorrectly they can harm your SERP (Search Engines Page Rank).
Setting error and redirect pages and Crawlers and indexing settings are two extensive topics. Follow the links below for detailed guide on the two issues.
Best Crawler and Indexing Settings For Your Blogger Blog.
Step 5: How to publish an article in blogger blog?
So, I bet you are done customizing your blog. Now it’s time to create and publish content.
1. To create a post, click on a button labelled ‘New Post’ located on the top left corner of your dashboard.
2. The blogger content editor will load. Here's a screenshot of the editor.
3. If you are familiar with MS Word, then it won't be difficult using blogger post editor.
4. On the right side of the editor you can see post settings. When creating content always tag it to a relevant label i.e., if the topic of discussion is 'How to Start a Blog' you can label it 'Blogging'.
5. From the post settings tab you can also customize the articles permalink instead of opting for the automatic and always type a search description.
When creating content, you should keep in mind the following:
- Make sure your content is unique. Be original and avoid copying other people's work.
- The content you create should answer a specific question(s) and should also be easy to understand.
- Incorporate keywords in your content this is for Search engines optimization (SEO).
- Carry out internal linking. Whenever you create new posts link to previous ones to enhance crawlability by search engines.
- Integrate you content with relevant, optimized images.
What else you need to do?
You have created content but that's not the end, you need to market it. No matter how great your content is, it needs an audience. There are various ways to get an audience for your blog.
One of the most common avenues is by integrating your blog with social media. You should open social media accounts for your blog. And with these accounts you share updates of your latest work.
When you have between 300 to 500 people visiting your blog on daily basis and 50 plus original articles published, now you can start making money from your blog by applying for AdSense.
Further Reading: 9 Most Common Ways To Make Money With Your Blog
After creating a blog on blogger, you are provided with a web address on the BlogSpot domain i.e., yourname.blogspot.com. Which is great, but if you want a more professional feel, you can buy your own custom domain name for example yourname.com and integrate it with your blog.
Suggested Reading: Learn How to Integrate Custom Domain With Blogger Blog
Final Word
Success in blogging doesn't arrive overnight but with Patience, Hardwork, Persistence and self-discipline you will get there.
So, if you encounter an obstacle while creating your blog feel free to comment. I will assist you plus any other questions you might have.