10 Essential First Steps When Starting A WordPress Blog

There are certain steps that need to be followed before you start a WordPress Blog. You will be able to generate quality traffic by following these steps. Here we discuss 10 essential steps while starting a WordPress blog.

10 Essential First Steps When Starting A WordPress Blog

Quality Content Is The Key Factor

Most of the people only put YouTube videos and images with captions in their blog posts. Your blog should have a diversified content. You must focus on quality content so that you get good traffic.

Your posts should be at least 10 in number. But the ideal number is 30. Write an article with original content of more than 400 words. Do not copy your content from any site or resources.

Your articles should be very focused and grammatically correct. Do not use any slangs or informal language. Nobody would like to read it. Do a thorough research. Include the relevant details and make it attractive.

Get A Domain

Choose a relevant and attractive domain name. It should be very catchy and easy to remember. An appropriate domain name is very important even if your blog is posted on free blogger account or WordPress.com. Never go for free domain such as .cc. Choose a ‘cool’ domain name only if you have an excellent web service along with a huge investment to promote it.

Create A Permalink Structure

In case your URL appears like mydomain.com/blog?id=1324, do not market your blog. Go to WordPress settings and check out permalink options. A URL which is similar to mydomain.com/my-article would be a nice option to promote the blog.

Install SEO slugs type plugin. The length of the permalink URLs is reduced by eliminating commonly used words like or, the, a. A short URL is always better.

Make Changes In The Tagline

Change the tagline. Go to ‘General’ in ‘Settings’ and change it as per your choice. The tagline is placed in header by many themes. It is also placed in meta-titles of the homepage. Anybody who searches on Google will be able to see this tagline.

Set Up Google Analytics

Google Analytics give a free website traffic report. But installation of Analytics is of no use till the time you do not get heavy traffic. 
Get accurate feedback of your traffic. Do not assume the number. Gather real feedback and take actions.

You must find out what makes your blog popular. Determine the keywords which will fetch more traffic. Do not get very involved in this number game. In case people are visiting your page and leaving soon, you must rewrite the article which is more well-researched and in-depth.

Analyticator is another plugin that is connected to the analytics account. You do not need to copy the codes and paste those. The profile can be selected very easily.

Google Sitemaps Plugin

It is not a very essential step but is definitely an advantage for Google to maintain your blog. This sitemap generator will automatically generate whatever is being posted.

Webmaster Tools

This tool is very useful. It performs various functions. The sitemaps are submitted for indexing. The 404 errors are tracked by this tool. Various alerts are provided for security issues related to malware. It also provides WordPress updates, if available. It is not a very essential tool but it is very useful if implemented properly.

Images relevant to SEO

Image search is very important. The title and alt tags are added to the images with the help of this plugin. The image uploader of WordPress can be used for this process but it is automatically done by this plugin. Add these to the image tags. This will generate heavy traffic from the image search of Google.

Join A Forum

Look for a forum which is relevant to your topic. Join it. Give your brief introduction and write some quality comments, threads or advice. Place a link on the website by modifying your signature. Repeat the process. This will help you in getting more traffic.

Social Networks

You must submit the articles on various social networking sites like Google+, Twitter and Facebook. Do not post all the articles there. Choose the best posts and promote those on the social networks. This will help in getting more responses.