Hello friends, once again I am here with the second part of the super series about blogging. In part 1 of this series, you learned the basics about successful blogging. In this second part of super series, you will learn how to set up a blog and which tools or services compulsory for a successful blog.
Read Part 1 – Proven Tips To Start Successful Blog
Full Disclosure – This post may contain affiliate links, meaning that if you click on one of the links and purchase an item, we may receive a commission (No additional cost to you).
Let’s Start – Setup Blog Checklist
This post basically tells about key tools or services which is necessary to boost your blog website. In this post, I will discuss about some most important factors to build a successful blog website.
SSL Certificate (HTTP vs HTTPS)
SSL stands for Secure Socket Layer, a standard security protocol used by millions online business, bloggers, websites etc. It helps to establish Secure and Encrypted connection between website and browser. The main purpose of SSL is to keep all the transmitted data secure in an online communication.
An SSL certificate consists website or business details like domain name, business name or website name, address, expiration date and many more. When a browser initiates a connection with SSL enabled website, the browser first retrieves website’s SSL certificate to check whether it is still valid or not. If browser founds any mismatch, it shows a warning message to the user about the website.
An SSL enabled website uses HTTPS instead of HTTP. An SSL protocol indicated by the presence of green lock icon in the address bar.
Why Use SSL / TLS Certificate
SSL (Secure Socket Layer) / TLS (Transport Layer Certificate) helps sites in many ways to keep website strong in the online industry.
User’s Trust – Visitors trust more on an SSL enabled website. for an online eCommerce website, it is compulsory to use SSL. SSL secure online transactions information.
Improve Page Rank – Another fact is that SSL enabled website has a higher rank than a non-SSL website. Therefore it helps to improve page rank of an SSL enabled website in SERPs (Search Engine Result Pages). More than 75% website is listed in top 50 results in google search result pages are https (SSL enabled).
Who can use SSL
Companies, bloggers, almost every website owners can use SSL certificates on their website for fair means.
How to get SSL for website
In the online industry, there are lots of companies who provide SSL certificate both paid and free. Also, good web-host companies like Bluehost, Kinsta, Hostgator and many others provide Free SSL with their hosting plans. You only need to buy hosting from a good hosting company and click on install SSL within your c-Panel.
Here is listed two SSL provider company – you can choose who fits you best.
Let’s Encrypt SSL – It is completely free for everyone used by millions of website owners and brands. Some hosting companies like Bluehost, Kinsta, Hostgator etc activate Let’s Encrypt SSL certificates on your website on a single click within the c-Panel. If your hosting company does not provide Free SSL, visit Let’s Encrypt website and follow the mentioned procedure on their site to install SSL certificate. Wildcard certificates of Let’s Encrypt coming in January of 2018.
Visit – Let’s Encrypt Free SSL
Comodo SSL – Comodo is another great SSL certificate provider also used by millions of website and brands. It comes in both paid and free plan. Check the complete plan details by visiting – View Plans
Get Free Comodo SSL certificate – Comodo Free SSL
Site Backup
The most important thing in online industry is site backup. Every blogger and website owner must use site backup technique to keep their site and hard work safe and secure. Millions of user use the internet but not all for fair means. Some of them are used to harm websites and online data and spread malware over the internet. These bad people can affect anyone’s hard work badly.
To protect our site we need to use a better security (discuss later in this post) as well as good site backup tool. Here we listed two backup tools which are best for wordpress site backup.
Best Tools For Backup
Updraft Plus – Updraft Plus is a backup tool for wordpress websites. It is free wordpress plugin available in official wordpress plugin repository. Just download and activate it. Updraft Plus allows storing backup files in cloud services like Google Drive, Dropbox and many more. You can anytime restore files with a single click. Updraft Central is the extended service to backup more than one site using a single dashboard. Very useful for those who have multiple websites.
VaultPress – VaultPress is premium service offered by wordpress. It is also a great backup tool for wordpress sites. for a wordpress.com user, it is the best option to backup your file. Like Updraft Plus, it also comes with 1-click restore file, brute-force attack prevention and many more exciting features.
Visit – VaultPress Plans
Softaculous – Almost every hosting comes with Softaculous installer enabled. You can backup any type of site using the softaculous backup tool. But like others, it does not give the option to restore the file using single click. You need to manually upload the file if you want to restore your site. It also does not offer cloud location storage.
Note – All the tools mentioned above backup site regularly based on your setting like daily, weekly or others. When you want to setup blog, be sure to choose right backup tools to protect your hard work safe.
Security
Security is the main important factor for any type of website. It has the highest priorities among all the services. Generally, we use a lot of wordpress plugin to protect our site from malware, spam, brute-force attack etc. Google banned millions of website every month due to malware issues. There are lots of wordpress plugin like Sucuri, Akismet, Antispam Bee etc. You can use which suits you best.
Sucuri Security – Therefore to protect your site, Just use Sucuri security. Sucuri security is the best security tool for protecting the site from hackers, viruses, malware etc. It also helps to clean hacked site. Best in the industry.
For a wordpress user, there is a plus point. Sucuri Team builds their wordpress plugin. Just download Sucuri from wordpress repository and activate your wordpress site. Basic settings are free in wordpress plugin. for extended service, just visit Sucuri website mentioned below.
Check Sucuri Plan – Click Here
Antispam Bee – Antispam Bee is a free wordpress plugin has #2 position in the anti-spam plugin. Previously it was available in wordpress plugin repository but now you need to download it from their official website. A completely free wordpress security plugin that cares your site in every security aspects.
Akismet – Akismet is another great premium security tools for wordpress website owned by Automatic. It comes with default wordpress installation. You need to only activate the Akismet plugin within your wp-admin dashboard and enter Akismet API key. You can get Akismet API key from Akismet website. Choose a plan which suits you best and gets the API key. After getting, Enter API key in your wordpress plugin setting and protect your website.
Cache
Cache is a technique to serve the optimized static page to the users in place of dynamic queries. If you open a website in your browser, It stores the static files including images, html, js, css etc file in local disk. After that every time you open the same website, it will serve the previously stored files after matching the files from original destination. If any changes occur in original files, it will serve the latest version for that particular file.
Speed is the most significant factors for a website. It directly affects the revenue of a website. Some high traffic sites conducted research and uncovered the following facts:
Source – W3 Total Cache WordPress Page
Google.com: +500 ms (speed decrease) -> -20% traffic loss
Yahoo.com: +400 ms (speed decrease) -> -5-9% full-page traffic loss (visitor left before the page finished loading)
Amazon.com: +100 ms (speed decrease) -> -1% sales loss
Therefore we need cache on our site to load faster. It also helps the folks who have limited hosting plans by reducing the server load, I/O usage, CPU usage etc and prevent from any unexpected error due to the server like most common 500 Internal server error etc.
You can use WP-Rocket, W3 Total cache, Super cache etc to enhanced your site performance.
Know More – Cache Technique – Improve Page Rank and Site Speed – Check Best Caching Tool
CDN
CDN (Content Delivery Network) – is a system of multiple connected servers distributed around the world. In general terms, servers are placed at various different location globally. Website’s files are stored in these locations so that when a user visits a CDN enabled site, files are served from the nearest location, not from the hosting destination to that user. Confusing? Read below for more detail;
In Simple Terms:
CDN is the system of the connected server at multiple locations around the world. When a user visits your site, files are served from hosting storage and use server resources. If huge traffic visits on the site, then the files are served from the same hosting storage, cause the server crash or poor site performance. Sometimes it shows “500 Server Error”. But if your site is CDN enabled, then the website files are automatically stored in various connected servers around the world and when users visit your site, static files (images, js, css, flash etc) are served from the geographically nearest location of the server to the user. Files are not served from the hosting storage, therefore, no load on the hosting server. It will also minimize the server resources to perform better.
Incapsula, KeyCDN, MaxCDN etc are best CDN providers. You can pick anyone that fits your budget and suits you best.
Know More – Why CDN is so Important for a Website – Check Best CDN Providers
SEO
For a website, Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is most important part to optimize your website and contents for better page ranking. SEO helps to increase your page rank as well as improve the quality of contents. There are lots of SEO tools on the internet. Some of the web-based tool like Semrush, Ahref, SEO Presser etc and some of wordpress SEO plugin to give more flexibility to the users within the wordpress dashboard.
In wordpress repository, there are lots of SEO plugin available. in my opinion, Yoast SEO is the best wordpress plugin for SEO.
Know More – Best WordPress SEO Plugin – Trending List
Schema Markup Integration
Schema Markup is a technique to make data more informative and useful in the search result. It is the result of combined effort of Google, Bing and Yahoo. Only represent information in search results is not the way to give better user experience, therefore we need schema markup. Schema technique represents data more informative and more useful for the user.
Schema markup is applicable to many sectors like;
- Star Ratings
- Book/Author Review
- Product information
- Addresses and phone numbers
- Appointment Date
- Event dates,
- Opening and Closing Times
- Images, Video in rich Snippets and many more.
It helps to improve page rank in search engine result pages and send the high volume of traffic on the website.
Know More (with pictures) – Schema Integration in WordPress – Schema Markup & SEO
Social Media
For growing a site on internet social media platform is the key to engage your users and send directly to your site. Setup your brand account on social media platforms like Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and many more others.
Jetpack provides post sharing and auto publish mode to engage your social media users. In my opinion, the best social media plugins are Monarch Social Sharing, Social Warfare, GetSocial Etc.
Monarch Social Sharing – Best Tool For Social Sharing – View Details
Social Sharing Plugin – Best Social Sharing WordPress Plugins To Increase Visitors Rapidly
The Next Level – Use Buffer to manage all your social media platform. Price starts from free to custom according to your need. Schedule your post using the Buffer and manage all your social media platform in one place.
Image Optimization Tool
We need image optimization to get a better page rank we need to site load fast like other techniques. So we need to compress images so that they can load faster and give a better user experience. Few reasons are listed below why we need to optimized images;
- Improve page rank
- Increase site speed
- Better user experience
- Improve SEO
- Reduce server load and save its resources and many more reasons are there.
WP Smushit developed by WPMUDEV Team is the award-winning best tool for image compression.
Know More – SEO Friendly Image Optimization in WordPress – Speedup Site
Keyword Research Tool
For a successful blog, keyword research is also compulsory like security, SEO, CDN and many more. Do some keyword research to check which keyword has high rank and vice versa. Set focus keyword for your post using keyword research tool. It will help to grow your site gradually but effectively.
There are lots of keyword research tool on the internet like Semrush, Ahref and many more but Semrush is the best keyword research tool used by millions of website owners. Beat your competitors using Semrush tool.
Always Up to date Site
Since WordPress is an open source platform and it has a huge repository of wordpress themes and plugins. Millions of developer work regularly to make it super easy and super safe. In order to keep safe, they regularly provide updates. You need to update all the wordpress files. The best part is wordpress has option to automatically update all the files using Jetpack without a headache.
Just go to Jetpack setting -> manage plugin and select automatically update the plugin and similarly for wordpress.
But remember, set a site backup plugin before doing any updates manually or automatically. It is not compulsory but recommended to avoid any error.
Copyright Protection (optional)
Because there are lots of folks on the internet, who don’t want to work, but love stealing content and publish on their site. Sometimes it is harmful to your site as content duplication but search engines are smart and they have the ability to recognize the original content.
But if you want to protect your content as well as your complete website, Just use DMCA website protection tool. It will protect all your content from every type of harmful activities with your contents.
Web hosting
For a successful blog or website, a good web hosting is compulsory as I said in my earlier post. Users don’t want to wait more than 3 – 5 sec. They just move towards the other websites. Also, there is lots of other factors like security, protection, support, speed, uptime guarantee only provide by some hosting.
If you want to build website using wordpress – Bluehost and Kinsta is the best wordpress hosting providers under budget and have a great support team. They also offer free SSL, website migration and many more service. Kinsta also provide free CDN by KeyCDN.
Get Bluehost Discount + Free Domain
Get Bluehost – Get Huge Discount on Bluehost Plan + Free Domain
Visit Kinsta – View Kinsta Plan
Hosting Offers: Latest Hosting offers from the top hosting providers (Above 50% Off)
But if you want to build a website using other platform, you need a shared hosting. Bluehost and Hostgator are the best hosting companies.
Learn More – Shared Hosting Vs WordPress Hosting – Which one is best ?
Theme
Like hosting, wordpress theme also matters in various aspects like speed, SEO optimization, mobile responsive, clean code, regular updates and many more. There are lots of wordpress theme available in wordpress repository and other marketplace but my recommendation goes with few themes listed below.
Divi by Elegant Theme – View Divi theme and its features
Genesis Framework by StudioPress – View Genesis Framework and its features
OceanWP Theme – View OceanWP theme and its features
I have written about these themes already in my earlier post. Just follow the given link below to explore more about wordpress theme.
Best Theme – 10+ Trending SEO Optimized Responsive WordPress Theme
Free Theme – 20+ Trending SEO Optimized Free WordPress Theme
Content Creation & Content Marketing (Optional)
Many bloggers or agencies don’t want to write post themselves. Here comes the work of content writers. If you want powerful content on your blog, hire content writer. They will create powerful content for you according to your need.
Many content writers work independently as a freelancer on various site like Upwork, Fiverr, Freelancer etc. There are lots of good agency are also available, you can hire anyone according to your need and budget.
For a successful bog, content marketing is the another great factor. If you believe in high quality content creation, then you should believe in content marketing strategy. It is the strongest method to get visitor on your site. In short content marketing is the powerful technique to grow your site rapidly on the internet.
I searched over internet and listed some of the profile according to their portfolio and ratings to ease your work if you are looking for a content creation and content marketing service (based on their portfolio and ratings).
6. Write Freelance – Ritika and many others.
Revenue Generation Method
At last It is worth mentioning this topic as a reward of your hard work and investments. If you invest in something, you should know the ROI (Return of Investment).
If Blogging is Passion, Earning Should be considered as Reward of Hard Work!
Many folks run their blog only for money. I am not blaming anyone but it is not good for a blog. In order to increase their revenue they post wrong or incomplete information on their blog.
Remember earning money from a blog should be reward of hard work and passion. if your blog is getting traffic regularly, you can monetize your blog in various method to generate revenue like adsense, affiliate etc but don’t put too much ads on your site which create problems for the readers. Keep your site neat and clean.
Know More – Best Methods To Make Money From Your Blog Easily
Final Words on Setup Blog Checklist
Before launching your website, do your homework and check all the things properly. These are the key techniques that every website must have to grow their size on internet.
In wordpress setup blog is super easy. You need to only plug and play with plugins and tools. If you don’t want to invest amount on your blog, you can find alternative of every plugins and tools in wordpress. Millions of wordpress developer work regularly to keep wordpress a better place. You will get quick support from wordpress community anytime without any cost.
Setup blog with wordpress is the most amazing and easy thing. When you are done with blog setup, create content and use content marketing service to grow your site rapidly.
If you found any other tools or method that should be the part of this post, please let me know. I will love to hear from you and update this post if found any suggestion useful for the readers.
#Need Assistance – Want to start a Blog and Looking For a WordPress Developer – Hire WPYard, We will do our best to build your blog according to your need. Connect with us on Twitter, Facebook or drop a mail using contact page on WPYard inbox.
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Keep Smiling, Happy Blogging! 🙂
