10 Things You Must Know Before Starting a Blog Successfully

So, you’re thinking of starting a blog? Not a bad idea, really. But there is something you need to consider before you do so.

I don’t want to bore you with a long introduction that you don’t want to probably read anyway. All I can say is that the world is changing, and so is the internet, which is why I have put together for you a list of 10 things you should know before starting a blog successfully.

Keep those in mind, and you’ll be golden. Enjoy!

1. Blog saturation

The first thing you must know before starting a blog successfully is that it’s pretty saturated out here. No, seriously, every niche that you can think of, profitable and non-profitable, is crowded. But does that mean that there is no place for you here?

Of course not!!!

You just need to be very realistic about your expectations. But most importantly…

You need to decide how are you going to be different from everyone else. Before you start blogging.

Think about it this way, how many different coffee shops do you know in your area? What about pizza places? How many different car brands exist in the world at the moment? That’s right, a lot!

Regardless of how much there is of any one thing, there is always that special one that stands out. Do you see where I am going?

Why do you like a certain car brand over another one? Why do you choose to get coffee on the street to the right of your house instead of the one on to left of your house? Probably because one is in some way better than the other. And that is how your blog should be, too. It should be the one offering better coffee.. or articles, as in the case of blogging.

So before you rush into launching your own blog, go through some of the existing blogs of your niche and write down all of the ways how you can be different from them. Being different in an already saturated market of blogging is the right approach.

2. Google went mobile-first

Did you know that Google now indexes websites mobile-first?

Huh?

It means that Google will first look at how user-friendly your blog is on a mobile device. Then it will rank it as good or not so good, and only then will look at how user-friendly your blog is on a desktop computer. A desktop version is still important for ranking. It’s just that a mobile device is now more important to Google in terms of ranking your blog as user-friendly or not.

So when you go on picking some really unnecessarily complicated theme for your blog, make sure that it feels comfortable and reponsive on your phone or tablet.

You can read what Google has to say about it here.

3. Google Speed metrics

Another thing you must know before starting a blog successfully is that your blog loading time is now super important!

This is not 1999 anymore. Google expects your website to load with lightning speed, in under 3 seconds for sure! So what can you do about it?

Well, first of all, don’t do the mistake I did, and don’t upload images that are 500kb to 2mb big. This is an absolute killer for your blog’s speed. As a rule of thumb, have ALL of your images 50kb in size or smaller. Every image you get from somewhere, edit it in Photoshop, Mac image viewer or something of the sort to make it smaller in quality and size.

Secondly, get a theme that is light in weight. If you don’t know which ones are, just google around and see what people say. I know most people want to start with a perfect theme that has all the fancy bells and whistles, but trust me, you don’t need any of that. The lighter your theme is, the better it is to start with. People come to your blog for the content, after all, not for the theme.

Another thing that you could look into is your hosting provider. I use Bluehost and that is more than enough to start with.

You can go with WP Engine down the road, but that’s a bit more expensive, but it also makes your blog load faster.

If you wanna check out how fast your blog loads and what you could improve, go to PageSpeed Insights.

4. Google’s new algorithms and natural language

A lot of Google points are on this list of things to know before starting a blog successfully. That’s just the reality of owning a website.

Google changes its algorithms a lot, almost on a daily basis, with some major updates about once a quarter. You need to be prepared for your traffic to increase and decrease for no apparent reason. The last two algorithm updates hit me so hard, I don’t even feel comfortable talking about it.. my organic traffic fell by about 75%.

And you know what is the worst part, Google won’t even say what you can do to recover!

This is what Google officially stated:

“We confirm broad core updates because they typically produce some widely notable effects. Some sites may note drops or gains during them. We know those with sites that experience drops will be looking for a fix, and we want to ensure they don’t try to fix the wrong things. Moreover, there might not be anything to fix at all.” – Google

On the other hand, it’s your job to do all that you can to really figure out what can be fixed to recover from the update. Is it the loading speed of your blog? Maybe. Maybe not.

After some careful research, I found a lot of interesting information about Google’s latest update called – “BERT“.

The whole point is that BERT completely revolutionizes how we – bloggers – do keyword research. No longer it is so black and white. Now it’s more about using natural language. I figured that BERT (released October 21, 2019) might have something to do with me overusing certain keywords in my content… which is why my traffic fell.

Botify put it quite well regarding what all of this means for keyword research and tracking – “SEOs have historically relied on painstaking research to select keywords to track, based on a number of variables — keyword search volume, strategic products or topics, query competitiveness, and more. While this strategy of keyword research and tracking seems alluring on the surface, in reality, its returns often don’t justify the time and effort we put into it.”

So what does this mean for you and me? Well, you still can and should focus on using keywords in your articles in order to be found on Google, but you don’t need to keep repeating the same keyword over and over forty times to get noticed by Google. Now you need to write about your subject as naturally as possible, kind of like if you were talking to a friend.

In any case, having a keyword research tool is still pretty much a must for any blogger these days if you really want to make progress and not just be in the dark.

If you want to go professional right from the start, get SEMrush. It’s pricey, but advanced.

Recommended: How to Make Money with a Blog for Beginners

5. Reliable hosting with an SSL certificate

Earlier I talked about having a fast-loading blog and the role of your hosting in it. Well, to repeat myself – a reliable and fast hosting provider matters.

Also, it’s really important to get an SSL certificate for your blog.

Woah, what the heck is that?!

Simple. It’s that “s” at the end of the “https://” that you see in the website address search bar up top. If you have an SSL certificate, you will have that prefix instead of just the typical “http://”.

So why does that matter? Well, it makes the connection to your blog secure. Unless you are saving passwords and/or collecting payments through your blog, it really doesn’t make a difference. Your reader couldn’t care less. But Google does care always these days.

With Bluehost, you will get a free SSL certificate. So as soon as you create your blog, make it an “https://” address instead of “http://”. Check out some tutorials on YouTube on how to do it in case you get lost, or ask Bluehost’s customer service for help.

6. WordPress.org

I quite often hear people asking whether they should start a blog using some existing blogging platform.. the answer is NO!

If you go with an existing platform, you will not have full control over how your blog looks and feels.

WordPress gives you full control over anything that you can possibly want from a website. You can literally do anything you want with it.

And no, having your own hosting and a domain name is not expensive in case you are wondering. It will be around $100 a year, which should be something more or less affordable.

P.S. Almost forgot, it’s WordPress.ORG you want, not WordPress.COM. The .com version will be pretty much another existing platform with limited control.

Recommended: How Much Does It Cost to Start a Blog?

7. Diversification into video content

While you may not want to be on camera, I strongly suggest that you give it a try at least.

Most people today have become quite lazy and don’t want to spend time reading. But your written blog is where all the money will be made. So in order to drive people to your blog, create a YouTube channel, Facebook and Instagram accounts to go with it.

You can use all of the social media channels I mentioned above to drive traffic back to your blog. On YouTube, you make videos, and Instagram and Facebook you can use to go live for your audience.

I know, I know, you probably hate this idea, but trust me, after some time passes, you will see just how beneficial it is for your blogging business to be on camera, too. You don’t have to do it straight away, but keep it in the back of your mind for the future.

Also, because social media has become so greedy today, making you pay for any good amount of traffic, I encourage you to find new platforms and experiment there. Don’t just go with the traditional social media services – explore.

8. Laws online and data privacy

The eighth thing on the list of things you must know before starting a blog successfully is Internet laws.

Many people take the internet for granted, thinking they can do here pretty much whatever they want. That is definitely not the case when it comes to laws.

Things here are getting more strict every year. By the time you launch your blog, you should have an idea of what a privacy policy is, a cookie policy, terms and conditions, GDPR, earnings disclosure, affiliate income disclosure, etc.

Don’t worry, they aren’t difficult to grasp, do some research. Just keep in mind that even blogging has some rules to it. I mean, even I don’t know what all of them are made up of 100%, so relax. 😎 Just keep in mind that blogging is also affected by some internet rules and laws that you shouldn’t break.

9. SEO

I talk a lot about what SEO (Search Engine Optimization) is here, so I won’t repeat myself.

But what I do want to emphasize is that you cannot turn away from SEO and think that it’s not important or that you don’t want to learn it because you think it’s too difficult. It’s not. Every single blogger needs to understand SEO on at least a beginner’s level to be successful.

SEO is advancing just as fast as Google’s algorithms are – that’s fast. This is exactly what I was referring to in points #2 and #4. So it’s not a matter of do I learn or don’t, it’s a must. 

Take your time understanding SEO if you are not familiar with it. As your blog grows, you will become savvier and more experienced with it, so no worries.

10. Enjoy the process as much as possible!

The final point on the list of things you must know how to do before starting a blog successfully is to learn to enjoy the process of blogging.

The difference between stumbling blocks and stepping stones is how you use them.

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