There is a lot of noise on the web when it comes to beginner blogging tips. You most likely almost always will come across blogs that say ” start a blog” or “signup to get a free email course”. It’s called monetizing, it’s one way blogs can make money.
Although it doesn’t cost you anything extra and if you take a look around the website you are on and think they might be knowledgeable enough to help you achieve your blogging journey it is a win-win.
There are so many things that I wish I knew before starting my blog but in all honesty, I think I would have gotten a bit discouraged to try. So starting is always better than nothing. You are probably passionate about a topic or have loads of information you’d like to write about or you wouldn’t want to start such a journey am I right?
(heads up) I will be updating this post as a way to keep you posted on all the resources so you may want to bookmark this page to refer back to.
Beginner Blogging Tips to Format Blog Posts
It’s easy to open a new post and start writing as you did in high school. Remember when the English teacher would tell you about how many sentences go into each paragraph? For an essay, I think it was five sentences.
Well, for blogging you want to create your paragraphs with only two or three sentences. This helps readers to skim your content better and is easier to read. Formatting for your blog posts is an essential part of blogging.
That just got me thinking, I probably should go back to some older posts and update them. Do this from the beginning and you will be off to a great start.
Beginner Blogging Tips for Pictures on Your Blog Posts
Even if you are beginning the blogging journey or have already begun, you know how important it is to have visual aspects to your posts. The pictures you use to tell a story are just as important as the words you use.
I’ll give you a few beginner blogging tips about finding pictures for your posts too.
There are websites like Pixabay, Unsplash, and Pexels. A google search will show you a lot more too. Just make sure they are not copyrighted pictures.
So how do you tell if a picture you want to use is copyrighted? Well, there are a few ways to tell. One easy way is to look for watermarks.
If your good at taking photos, by all means, do that. I would suggest that you upload your photos to canva and add your name or website with a text option on your photo. It’s free to do that.
Canva will be your lifesaver for so many other blogging related things like marketing that you will have to consider especially with all your social media platforms. Get familiar with the platform and you’ll soon realize how important it is gonna be to accomplish multiple everyday blog-related tasks.
Beginner Blogging Tips Friendly Resources
Who doesn’t like a good resource, right? Well, when I first started blogging, I knew I needed some good pointers. I needed to understand what made good readable, and relatable content. I also needed to understand the marketing side of blog content.
You’re not born knowing all these things..(So True). So as I began my crazy Google search for all the things I still needed to understand, I found Hubspot.
Hubspot has free courses and certifications from beginner to advanced levels. I just typed blogging in the search, and low and behold (bingo)! I found and binged watched a lot of the videos with clear explanations.
I took a few certifications to make sure I was digesting the material. They helped me validate my learning.
My advice to you is don’t rush it. It takes time to learn, as it did for every blogger out there. Break up a time to learn and blog because, honestly blogging is an ongoing process of creativeness!
Website Audits
It’s always hard to understand what to do after you check your website for load time for desktop and mobile. Website audits will help you understand what might be going on if your website isn’t optimized to handle traffic or why your traffic is low.
There’s a lot to consider with audits after you see your score, but after you do see your score and what some of the problems are, you may need to work on, you can then begin to learn what those are.
I have used these:
- Website.grader.com by Hubspot
- Ubersuggest
- Moz
To Check Website Speed
Checking your website speed reflects how quickly your website responds to your visitors. Speeding up your website is important — not just to site owners but to all Internet users. When a site responds slowly, visitors spend less time there.
Pingdom and Gtmetrix are great ways to test your site for speed and find out what is slowing your site down.
Reducing the Image Sizes
When I first started loading images on my website for my posts, I noticed after I did a website audit just how much my images were decreasing the load time. Always download JPG if possible, and if you download PNG or JPG, it’s always a great idea to optimize by reducing the file size.
I always use tinypng to upload my images and then download them to a smaller file size. Then I delete the original. This takes a little longer, but it absolutely worth it for page speed and load time.
Image Optimizer is also free, and you can download the software right onto your computer or laptop. I like that this website will give you the option of the width & height of your image.
Essential Plugins to Use
This blog runs on wordpress.org, so it was essential for me to figure out a way to implement easier ways than coding or messing around with files. It’s a good idea to keep your plugins at 20 or under so you don’t slow your site down. Here are some of my essential plugins.
Yoast or Rank Math, I use Yoast. Find out which one you would benefit from more.
Wp Fastest Cache to delete the cache. This helps keep everything running faster. Don’t worry; you won’t delete anything you need.
Wordfence for security is great, and I also tried Jetpack, but plenty of bloggers say it slows their sites down. I have since deleted it. I use wordfence and it does a great job at keeping me updated by email on anyone that has tried something fishy. The email will show you exactly where and when your attempted hackers tried to get into your website. You can then update your blocked list in the backend with their IP address.
UpdraftPlus is for backups/ Restore
Starbox for my bio. I tried others but felt this one was the best for me to use.
Shareaholic for growing and engaging your audience.
Really Simple SSL helps keep your site authenticated with HTTPS which my host provider provided, but it wasn’t showing up.
Insert Headers And Footers is the best way to verify your site for Pinterest and any affiliate verifications, as well as google analytics. You simply copy/paste the codes you need to verify and place them into the headers section.
Elementor for drag and drop. It’s an easier option to format page structure. It does take a little messing around to learn some of the advanced features and blocks, but you can create beautiful landing pages and buttons. This is only good for pages and landing pages, not posts on your blog.
Broken Link Checker is great, so you always know if your links are not working. Although I do get weird on and off broken links, you can double-check your links.
Akismet Anti-Spam to protect your site from spam. It checks your comments for URLs and hidden or misleading links.
Wrapping It Up
I am in a few Facebook groups where I see all the time people posting that they want to start a blog but don’t know where to start.
My advice is to take it one day at a time, as I did. Yes, it took me a long while to understand, but I got better at it each time.
I hope these beginner blogging tips will help guide you through your journey as you get better each time too!
Related post: 4 Tools for Social Media You Should be Using