When you create WordPress site its most probable that you have spent months setting up your blog, deciding topics you want to post and how to draw visitors. This task is quite hectic and leave you pretty stressed out. Launching your own blog is quite exciting and interesting but an enormous task at the same time. So let’s have a look at the steps you will have to take to get your blog up and running. If you missed out this steps you may get stuck at various points in your entire journey of WordPress Blogging. Below are the essential steps to take care before launching WordPress blog.
1. Researching Other Blogs
The very first step you should do is to research some other blogs. Decide what you like and what you don’t like about them. Just Looking at their niches and categories try to get a sense of what’s the thing that is working for them. Chances are, if it’s working for them, it will work for you, too. As you look through other blogs, start to dream about your own blog and what it will look like. So, this is the thing you need to carry on before launching wp blog.
2. Niche And The Categories
You have to give a proper Title under which everything of your will be narrow down to one topic; this is called your niche. Once you are done with the niche, decide on some of the more specific categories you will write about. For example, someone’s niche can be food blogging but within that niche there can categories like Italian, Indian etc.
3. Description According To An Ideal Reader
You should know for which segment of people you are writing about. Knowing who you’re actually writing for will help you establish a consistent style and brand. When you write your posts, think about your ideal reader and write the post for them. This is the thing you need to know before launching wp blog.
4. Decide On A Monetization Strategy
Monetization is one of the concept you have to study before launching WordPress blog. You shpuld know how to make money from your blogs. There are four main ways to make money with a blog i.e. Advertisements, Sponsored Posts, Affiliate marketing and your own products.
5. Create A Logo
Logo is nothing but the brand representation of your blog and website. Making a Better Logo is the important checklist you need to follow before launching wp blog. To make logo you can simply use canva at the initial stage and can give the same task to the professionals as well.
6. Buy Domain And Hosting
The only thing you have to mandatorily do the expense is for Hosting. There are many ways you can buy your own domain and hosting. Choose wisely between various available hosting and domain providers. This is the thing you need to know before launching WordPress blog.
7. Choose A WordPress Theme
There are lot of options available for the themes in WordPress. There are free WordPress themes available and some of them are paid. There are various themes available for the particular type of content like for food blogging the WordPress themes related to the same are available. You need to know this thing before launching WordPress Blog. Choose wisely between the themes.
8. Setting Up Social Media Accounts
You have to Decide which social media platforms you’ll be active on and then according to that set up your accounts. There are many popular social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram etc.
9. To Set Email List Management Account
Setting up email list management account is another thing you need to know before launching wp blog. This is needed to pick an email management platform for contacting your email list. You can use mailchimp or convertkit for the same. Mailchimp has some limitations that can be overcome by convertkit.
10. Create Welcome Email For New Subscribers
After setting up your email list management platform, next thing you should do is to set up a welcome email for new subscribers. Most of the email platforms will give you the ability to automate emails, so your subscribers will automatically be sent the welcome email you create when they sign up.
10. Use Google Analytics
Google analytics plays an important role for the WordPress websites. Exploring it is the thing you need to do before launching WordPress blog. You need to sign up and know how it works. Google analytics will show the different analysis like the no. of visitors etc. which will help you to make best tactics to boost your blog.
11. Analysing Competitor’s Keywords
This is the strategy you need to know before launching wp blog. In this you have to take a look on some blogs that you like and analyse their keywords. This can be done by simply going to the blog and looking around, or you can use a site like Google’s Keyword Planner to find keywords that might be a good fit for your blog.
12. Install An SEO And Other Plugins
To rank higher, it is must to optimize your webpage. This is a must. You can use various SEO Plugins to rank higher amongst different website. The SEO plugin can be a game-changer for you. You have to Install other plugins too for related posts, opt-in forms, etc.
While installing too many plugins is not recommended at all because they’ll slow down your site, there are a few that you’ll probably find helpful, such as plugins for related posts, opt-in forms, back-ups, etc.
13. Menu In WordPress
To set up your blog’s menu is one of the thing you need to know before launching wp blog. Setting it up goes hand in hand with creating categories. Once you’ve created the categories, you’ll want to set up the menu on your blog. You can look at different blogs and overview their menus, if you liked something then you can use the same in your blog too.
14. Permalink
No one gives the shit to permalink but it’s actually the important thing you need to know before launching wp blog. Permalinks are the URL for a specific page or post in your site. You need to pick a certain layout for your permalinks just before publishing any posts, because after publishing the post it becomes difficult to change them. Keeping it simple is good way for permalinks like the title of the Content.
15. Adding Metadata
Adding metadata is another thing you need to know before launching wp blog. There are various SEO plugins that will provide you to write a meta description, which will appear under the page in Google. This description is part of SEO. It directly helps Google to understand what your blog post is about.
16. Adding The Links
Adding Links Internally and Externally plays an important role for the growth of your site and this is the thing you need to know before launching wp blog. Internal Links plays a dramatic role in decreasing your bounce rate and encouraging readers to keep reading. On the other hand, External Links will boost your blog’s SEO rating by connecting your site with site’s that are already doing well. So, take it as a serious note and use proper and natural links to add in your WordPress site.
17. “About” Page
People who will visit your blog and like your blog will immediately look for The about page. To create an about page is so necessary because people will definitely visit there. It is massively important, so take the time to make it good.
18. “Contact” Page
Your contact page won’t be visited nearly as often as your about page, but it is more likely that some visitors will definitely want to contact you, so creating the contact page becomes one of the thing you need to know before launching WordPress blog. You can include your email address or some social media accounts like Instagram, Facebook etc.
19. Mobile Friendly
After setting up everything, checking the mobile friendliness of the site also becomes of utmost important as many readers will use their smartphones to see the website. So, it is the thing you need to know before launching WordPress blog. Most responsive WordPress themes now are already set up to be mobile friendly, but there may be some little things here and there that you want to change.
20. Compatibility With Different Browsers
It may happen sometimes that your website looks differently in different browsers. So, it becomes important to check if everything is looking similar in different browsers. Just because it looks nice in one browser, doesn’t necessarily mean it looks the same in other browsers. So, browser doesn’t affect the appearance of your site is also the thing you need to know before launching wp blog.
21. Scheduling The Content
Creating a content schedule is one of the Important thing you need to know before launching WordPress blog. It is always better to have some of the couple of blog posts waiting to be published at the time you launch your blog. Creating a content schedule will give you a more strategic setup and increase your ability to make money with your blog early on. So, this thing is really helpful and should be taken into consideration before launching wp blog.
Conclusion: -
The Task for launching your website is not that small and tough. All that you have to do is to check few things before the launch. These things are very important when it comes to success of the website. What’s the next thing you will do? Once your website is launched and starts getting traffic, make sure you’re converting those website visitors into subscribers to grow your email list.