10 Tips on How to Start and Run a Successful WordPress Blog

Blogging since it came into existence has been one of the fascinating ways for sharing your passion for a specific subject with the world on the internet. It includes everything from mechanics, cooking, bird migrations, or SEO. There is a target audience for virtually any topic you might think about. The period of over 20 years in blogging has seen drastic evolution. Starting as a hobby, it has evolved into a full-blown career today. A huge chunk of bloggers are making money by blogging and simply doing what they love. So if you are thinking about how to to start a blog and make some good money, then we have some basic tips to help you start.

Below we cover some of the key blogging tips that can be implemented immediately and help you become a great blogger. WordPress is the platform we are discussing and providing in-depth knowledge as how you could use it to become a successful blogger.

Ready to find out more about how to start a blog on WordPress? Well then, let’s jump right in.

1.   Write About Something That You Know

Although obvious, some people write for the sake of writing and gather information from different sources even when they have limited knowledge about the subject. It is very important to write about something that you are passionate about. You need to know your subject to impress the readers or targeted audience. It will not only make it more enjoyable or manageable but increase the chances of being successful.

In case you want to add content about different subjects you specialize or different areas which you might want to include, it’s better featuring them in different categories or under different writers respectively. WordPress themes support multiple authors and allow you to create custom author pages. Plugins such as User Role Editor for WordPress can help in allowing limited access to different users and assign them roles accordingly.

2.   Publish Relevant Content

Another aspect that you should focus around is creating relevant content. It would be a wrong idea to write subjects that aren’t related just because other bloggers are cashing in on a particular subject. The content on your WordPress blog has to be relevant to the main idea of that blog and more importantly, something that you have ample knowledge about.

3.   Make the Articles Interesting

Simply writing about something that you know about is not everything. You have to write them interestingly. Readers won’t like to read a dictionary but something interesting that reads well and most importantly offers value. Various tools allow you to find your writing style. Grammarly, for instance, is a handy tool that can help you in improving your language and reduce errors in your writing. Yoast plugin for WordPress is another great tool that aids in reducing errors and improving the standard of your writing. It even offers great tips to improve in certain areas.

4.   Draft A Good Headline

Irrespective how great the content is the headline can prove to be a spoiler. It is equally important to use a headline that is good enough to attract readers. They are regarded as the 1^st thing that potential readers would search online. The four most important elements that make a great headline are:

1. Urgent: Integrate some urgency or call to action in the heading. The content should be something that readers can use for current requirements or a specific timeframe. A good example of such a title would be: “How to start a blog for free”.
2. Uniqueness: Uniqueness is not only important to improve your chances to attract but equally important to make you rank on the search engines. To avoid penalties and damage to your entire blog, refrain from copying content from an external source, and publish it under your name.
3. Usefulness: The content has to be of some value to the readers. The article should include relevant information for the readers that can be used for specific purposes. It may be anything from DIY’s, lessons for life, tips for fixing stuff, recipes, etc.
4. Highly Specific: Hyper useful content is the new thing that is more specific content making your readers more involved. However, on the other side, niche content caters to a smaller section of readers than a general pool. But once you create a good mix of general and specific articles, your blog will grow and attract more audience to it.

There is a plugin that can be used to improving your headline quality. It is called title split testing plugin which allows you to try different variations of the same heading. You can select the format that you believe appeals to the targeted readers. Although, not an important step, this WordPress plugin is handy to assist you in creating appealing headlines.

5.   Integrate Social Sharing

Once you have created your content, you would want to share it with the targeted readers. The content will be shared if it impresses the readers and is worth sharing. So how can you do that?

To make it easy to share your content, the blog needs to have integrated social sharing buttons. The presumption that the readers will already have social sharing shortcuts in their browser will be wrong on most occasions. Readers also will not make extra efforts to share the content on their own. Usually, people are not that good in making decisions; hence, you have to make them do something they are likely to do.

Jetpack is a popular Automatic free plugin that is used for social sharing. It offers bloggers a wide number of powerful options to facilitate social sharing. Once installed, you merely need to navigate to the Jetpack settings and enable sharing buttons and select the preferred location for them to be placed. It currently supports ten services that include Facebook, Google+, and Twitter.

6.   Improve Readability

Designing an attractive blog and placing your content is the biggest step, but you should never neglect readability. The quickest and easiest way to check readability when starting a blog on WordPress is using the Flesch test. It is a standard method to test the difficulty level of an article or passage. The entire concept works on a mathematical formula that uses sentences, words, and syllables as variables. Although it shouldn’t be the only factor, the Flesch score can help in improving the quality of your content. This feature is available once you install the Yoast SEO plugin to optimize your blog. It helps in optimizing your website and your articles to meet the required standards for both the readers and the search engines. Also, the tool offers you a quick section to fit in your title, Meta, and SEO content.

7.   Improve the Website Design

There are webpages where you would never have returned because of their designs. Fancy illegible fonts, crazy sidebars, and flashing advertisements are a strict No! Simplicity still rules and blending a great design that not only improves readability but also integrates simplicity is the key to have a great design.

This is possible by selecting a WordPress theme that is easy for the readers to browse. It should be good enough to offer access to everything in your blog from a single homepage. There are several straight-forward blogging WordPress themes that are clean, Free, and use minimal elements. They usually use a simple centered content layout without sidebars that can be irritating to the usual readers. It allows them to focus on the content and not the other widgets or unwanted stuff on the page.

You may even opt for a premium theme that comes with a page builder to further enhance the user experience. These are highly customizable and allow you to build any design that you have in mind. You can add unlimited blog pages, select from different preset layouts, integrate optional blog filters, add multiple authors, add sidebars, enable social media sharing, create post series, etc. They even allow you to add custom colors, logos, fonts, and more.

Irrespective of the theme that you select, you should always choose a good font and a standard font-size that makes it easy to read your blogs. As per American Writers & Artists Inc., the preferred fonts for online reading are Veranda size 10, Arial size 12 or Georgia size 10.  In case you are unable to change your fonts using custom codes, we advise you to install Easy Google Fonts for WordPress. It is a free plugin that will allow you to make changes to the fonts using the WordPress live customizer. You can edit and preview the font color, size, letter spacing, and line height for different text elements on the website.

8.   Simplified Formatting

Organized content is highly important. In case you are making an effort to write long articles for your readers, you should be formatting it to ease readability. Formatting your articles is something that can contribute highly in terms of eased readability. It is not always important to type in long sentences to make your blog stand out. Shorter sentences are great at places and can help readers stay on point. You can use headings to label different sections of the article clearly. Use H2 headings for the important sections while the lower level heading should follow up as H3, H4, etc. Adding bullets or numbered lists further simplifies your points and makes them appear better.

9.   Add related images

As the saying goes, a picture is worth a thousand words; they do have relevance for your blog as well. They can be used to take proper advantage of. You may create visually captivating images or download royalty free images from websites like Unsplash, Pixabay, Big Stock, Death to Stock, etc. You may also use Photoshop or other free tools like pixlr to edit different images, add texts, and do all sorts of changes that you would like.

When adding images to your blog, make sure you are including an alt-text with each of them. These are important for search engines. This will allow the same image to rank better on search engines for relevant search phrases.

10.  Encourage Readers to Contribute

Although it has been covered above under different sections, it is important to state that a reader’s engagement is very important. The focus has to be around getting them involved when reading your blog. You can do so by implementing the tips below:

1. Enhance the Comment’s Section
   Comments are the most prominent and the easiest ways to get the readers involved. Although WordPress comments are great, there are ways you can enhance them further. Several WordPress plugins can help you in making the comment section look better.
2. Integrate A Newsletter
   The newsletter is another simple way to reach you, readers. These go directly to their inbox and inform them that there are fresh updates available to your blog. They are also an awesome way to share exclusive content with the readers. It can be a special content or a freebie. There are several freely available plugins that allow you to integrate newsletters on your WordPress blog in easy steps.

Concluding Thoughts

The above tips are simply the basics that can help you improve WordPress powered blogs. Implementing these and following the tips will certainly help you better understand how to start a blog successfully. While starting a blog might sound daunting in the beginning, in the end, you will find out that starting to blog is simple if you follow all of the necessary steps. Having said that! Content is King and will remain to be so. Concentrate on creating valuable content that is worth reading. There has to be a constant effort to improve the quality of content besides improving the value. Although presenting the content and writing them in a manner that keeps the readers engaged is not a tough task, it is not that easy as well. If you are thinking of trying your luck without investing much on a paid domain, start a blog for free on WordPress. Starting a blog for free is your chance to try your hand at blogging without spending a penny. Once you are well-versed with the techniques and are confident enough to start a blog on WordPress, you can buy your domain and start writing at a professional level.