Launch your new WordPress Blog Today – beginner tutorial!
I know you are thinking: Why WordPress and not other platform?
Well, there are many reasons why WordPress is the best blogging tool on the market, but I’m mainly recommending it because it’s the tool that I am familiar to use – and I’ve built multiple websites in the last 5 years without any coding experience.
My current website Alexandraceambur.com has got over 3.97 million impressions just in the last year – and that’s all from organic traffic. I’ve never paid for advertising my blog.
Let’s get you the help you need to start your first blog!
Step 1: Think of a concept for your New WordPress Blog
There are millions of things you may want to blog about. The most popular niches are food, pets, health, fitness and travel. But you could also start a tech review blog, an online education site or even a blog for your YouTube channel.
A blog can be about anything. So how do you choose a concept that’s going to be successful? While I don’t have the power to see the future … I can share a few things that can help you find a successful niche to blog about.
- What are you passionate about? (cycling, cats, books, coffee, etc.)
- What are your unique hobbies and obsessions?
- What is something you mastered (a skill, process) you can teach other people?
These questions can help you figure out what you’re good at. But that’s not enough. You see … for you to grow a successful blog there needs to be enough market demand (aka. A large group of people who are interested in reading about your topic).
So the next thing you need to do is … *drumroll* research your blog topic/concept to find out if there’s already an audience.
Tip: Research your blog topics using keywords
Go to SEMrush and type in your keyword and see what questions people are asking. How many monthly searches does your keyword get? Ideally, your concept should be niche but not too small that nobody searches.
The keyword “Instagram marketing” is an example of a blog topic. SEMrush analysis shows that there are enough monthly searches (around 4.4k) and plenty of things you can write about.
However, you need to be careful because the keyword itself is highly competitive (difficulty 90% = very hard). This means it’s difficult to rank on Google search for new blogs.
Instead, the keyword “Cat cafes” is a much better blog topic as the keywords have enough search volume (3.6k monthly searches) and are easier to rank (difficulty 55%)
Step 2: Choose a domain (FREE or paid) for your blog
With your blog concept in hand, you now need to think of a domain for your website. If you create your blog on WordPress.com, your domain will be free for 1 year.
How to choose a good website domain?
What’s the difference between a .WordPress vs . Com Website?
A “yourname.wordpress” website is a free domain offered to all bloggers who create a website on WordPress.com. This allows you to get used to the platform and start writing blogs as a beginner.
Contrary to what you may think, there is no difference in how websites rank on Google. I’ve had good traffic on my .wordpress websites for years. The only advantage of a .com address is that looks more professional and more suitable for businesses. That’s mainly why I changed to a dot.com.
How to start a new WordPress blog? Is it hard?
If you don’t already have an account on WordPress, now it’s time to create one. You’ll need to write your email & set a password. If you already have a user or author account you can tap on the left side menu (under my sites) and choose to create a new website.
Follow the steps to create a new WordPress blog:
- Go to WordPress.com and create an account
- Choose a website domain (or link to a domain you already own)
- Choose a name for your site (you can change this later)
- Choose a WordPress plan (paid or free) – start with the free one, you can always update it in the future.
Step 3: Choose a WordPress theme
A good thing about WordPress is that they have professionally designed website themes that you can use without knowing how to code. Yay!! The themes are also easily customisable and you can choose your colour palette, and fonts and upload logos and images.
To select a theme for your new website, go to your dashboard and on the left-hand side menu click Appearance -> Themes.
This opens the Themes library and you can scroll through the page to find a theme that suits your style. If you like a theme, click on the menu button (…) to see a live demo of the theme before activating it.
Tip: I like to search for themes using the filter for “Blogs” since that is the most important feature for me.
PS: You should not spend too much time on choosing a theme – as you can change your theme anytime. It’s pretty easy.
Step 4: Customise your Theme
Editing and customising your theme is very easy on WordPress.
From your Dashboard go to Appearance -> Themes -> Customise to change the settings of your landing page, including your brand elements and colours.
The landing pages are fully editable and you can just tap on each “box” to edit the text, add images, change the layout or delete parts of the design.
Before you start customising your WordPress blog, prepare this information beforehand:
- Brand color palette 🎨 (#color1, #color2)
- Your logos (jpeg, png)
- Branded images or stock photos (at least 3-4 images for the landing page)
- A name for your site
- Optional* a tagline
- Your social media channels
- Contact method (email, email list)
- Some copywriting (About me, What I do, and a Call to Action – explain to people who you are, what you do and what actions you want people to take on your site (eg. Sign up for a newsletter, send you an email, give you a call)
You can preview your site using Desktop, Mobile or Tablet views before saving your changes.
Step 5: Add a new Blog Page to your Website
At this point, your main page should be in a draft state. So you can add a second page for your blogs. Go to the left side menu, and click on Pages -> Add New. From the list of pages, choose a page template that is suitable for Blogs. Now you can customise it to match your branding similarly to what you did in the previous step.
Note: Blog pages will automatically display a list of your blog posts in reverse chronological order (latest at the top).
That’s all you have to do!
Step 6: Write your first Blog Post and Publish it!
Ready to write and publish your first Blog Post on WordPress? Let’s do it! From your WordPress dashboard, at the top right corner, you can see a “Write” button. Tap on it to create a new blog post.
The “Write” button opens up the WordPress blog editor where you can type or paste your content. I prefer to type my blog articles in a Google Docs file and then do a few rounds of proofreading using Grammarly before importing my blogs into WordPress.
I also love that the Wodpress editor pastes your text together with your formatting (bold text, headings, emojis, paragraphs, titles) when you copy+paste text from Google Docs – so you don’t have to worry about doing the formatting twice!
After you have imported your text, you can add images, highlight text, bold text or add clickable text using the hyperlink tool.
Now let’s publish your post.
How to Publish a blog post on WordPress:
Click on the Gear ⚙️ icon at the top right menu, and finish your post:
- Choose a posting date & time (or select immediately)
- Add a new blog category (eg: “product reviews”, or “tutorials”)
- Add a few tags ( these are like keywords that your audience searches)
- Choose a featured image (upload new or select a Royalty Free image from Pixels)
- Write an excerpt (optional) – this will show when you share the post on social media. If you leave it black, the excerpt will extract the first lines from your blog automatically.
Done – you’re now ready to launch your site and publish your first post.
Step 7: Launch your new WordPress Site!
Once you’re happy with your theme and have at least 3-4 blog posts scheduled, I think it’s time to launch your site! Yay! Don’t forget to make your site public and promote it on all social media channels to start building that initial traffic.
My advice is to also start learning about SEO and optimize your articles as you get more experience and invest in a paid WordPress plan where you can add SEO plug-ins.
To learn more about writing SEO Blog Posts, check out my guides and recommended tools.
Happy writing!
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