Define blog niche

Lifestyle blogs can cover just about anything. But besides that, you have to define your niche. Even a broad based category like photography or travel may not work. This is the age of micro niche. Agreed that many people are good at everything. However writing about specific topics will help you to focus. If you are on a writing assignment, understand the blog niche for which you are writing. Many times the blog owner will not clear before giving you an assignment. If required, ask questions.

Choose the right topic

Get the topic right. As a start point it will matter whether your prospective reader will start reading your article or not. Title should be long, it can have numbers and it can be a question also. Too long topics have problem with visibility when shared on messengers or social media. Your SEO plugin will warn you if the topic is too long or if there are any problems. The bottom line to understand is that topic should be clear, to the point and should contain your keyword.

Keyword research

At this point writers should come to terms with the fact that in today’s digital publishing, there is no job for a pure writer. Isolating yourself and then expecting that people will read you stuff, those days are gone. As a writer you should be updated with the latest trends of social media, understand the technical aspects of topic selected and should be able to post the article on any platform. That is just the basic. Anything more will surely get you to the top of the food chain. But first let us understand what is keyword research. For writing an article which are the term that your readers will expect in the article, which concepts you need to explain, what will interest them. All this comes under keyword research. If you are just writing for your blog, then keyword research is an ongoing process. But even if you are writing for some other website, you still need to do keyword research. Sometimes you might get even less than a day to submit the article. That is why selecting a niche is important because then you can keep track of just your niche and become an expert on that subject.

Master the SEO plugin

Whichever WordPress plugin you are using for SEO, it has a technical part and a writing part. Understand both and get maximum scores for your article. As a writer one does find hesitation and difficulty in the technical aspects of blogging and vice-versa for SEO and Digital Marketing experts. But as a single person webmaster or blogger, you have to don both the roles. The SEO plugin will give you a fair insight into your writing skills as well.

Master the language

Few years back, English was the primary language of the internet and content writers were grammar junkies. But now thanks to the penetration of smartphones all over the world, the three primary languages are become Hindi, Chinese and Arabic. Bloggers need to have a good command over the written language. Be grammatically correct and keep sentences to the point. Use simple words and break down long sentences into shorter ones. Do not use too many clichés.

300 words or 600 words

Two most popular SEO plugins on WordPress gives an article a minimum of 300 to 600 words. Rank Math SEO plugin asks us to write a 600 word article. Authors then report to filling up the article with unnecessary sentences. The paragraph goes on and on. If readers lost interest, they will simply close the page and leading to an increase in bounce rate. In classical terms it is called beating around the bush. If a post is just an announcement or some news to share, it can be less than 100 words too. Just don’t over do it for the sake of SEO compliance.

Structure the article

A post should be like a full size burger. Introduction like the top bun, lustrous and sprinkled with sesame seeds. One look at the introduction should entice anyone reading it to go on. Next comes the fresh and crunchy veggies. Bring out something interesting. A fact or two which no one is aware. Some unique points or even controversial points can do. Next comes the meat and cheese or the patty. Put all details here and break it down to minor points if required. Finally the bottom bun which supports the whole thing and finishes the structure. In case of a restaurant review it can include points like would you visit again or what will be the lasting memories of the place.

Make use of sufficient headings and sub headings. If the article is too long, use table of contents. Use references only if necessary. Use bold and italics as you feel fit. And do not forget to add relevant images wherever necessary. Give credits wherever due and use stock images if you do not want to click them.

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Getting Started with Blogger

If you already have an account with Google, either by Gmail or YouTube or Google Plus, you are good to begin. If not you need to open an account with any of the Google Services. You can also straightway begin with Blogger and open a Google account from there.

Look for the yellow colored Blogger icon after expanding the nine small boxes on the top right of your screen.

Once you click on Blogger, the linking process of your Blog with Google account and creation of a new blog begins.

At this time please note that it is highly recommended that you already have a Google Plus profile in place. Google Plus is the social networking arm of Google. It has not taken on the social networking scene as Google would have hoped it to, but still it is a formidable platform and an integration with your blog always helps.

Once your profile is confirmed, you can continue to Blogger.

Starting a New Blog in Blogger

Look for the New Blog button on the left side of the screen.

Click on the button to open the New Blog interface.

There are three things to be chosen here

• Your Blog title
• The address of your blog
• Template of your blog

The blog title will appear in the Title Bar of your web browser and on the top portion of your blog. The address of your blog is what will appear in the address bar. It is a sub domain of blogger, and it is always in the form of

something.blogspot.com

where ‘something’ is what you get to choose.

Be very careful of what you choose for the Blog Address. Once chosen it cannot be changed or transferred. There are some work around and some tricks but they are basic at best.  You can of course use a TLD as your blog address too. This part will be covered later in a separate article.

A template is what defines your blog design. Google has been very slow on providing options for users. Third party templates are available which help bloggers a lot. But at this time, design options are far far limited for Blogger.

Once you have finalized all three options, click on the Create Blog! button.

Writing your first post

Blogger works out of the box. So after your blog is ready, instead of navigating the options it is best to write a new post for your blog and then check how it looks.

For that locate the New Post button on the top left and click it.

Once you click on the new post button, it opens up the writing interface.

Like the Blog interface, even the new post interface has got lots of options, but those can be explore later. Right now it would be suffice to say that all the essential tools to blog are packed in here by Google.

Start typing the text of your post in the post area, and once you are satisfied with the post, press the publish button.

How a post is published

If you have a Google Plus profile, the post will prompt you to publish it on your google plus profile so that your friends and followers can view your blog post. Beyond that nothing else is asked from you and your post is published. You can view your post in your blog by clicking on the view blog button.

The scope of the article is to cover the basics of Blogger. Eventually we will see all the options in detail in future articles.

You can also have a look at similar articles from another website dealing with How to start a blog on Blogger by Google.

For a tutorial on how to setup a free blog on WordPress.com check out this article

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