Of course everyone knows that it would be almost impossible to create a ‘perfect’ WordPress blog in just five steps, but if you think about it, every step along the way can be placed into one of these main categories. If you are new to WordPress and are looking to build an online presence, follow along with these five main steps and you should be able to get started in just a single day or two.
1. Choose a Domain Name
Before you can do anything you need a great domain name for your blog site. If you are in e-commerce, then your company name would probably be your first choice. However, even then you need to find something that will rank highly in organic searches (unpaid searches) so that anyone looking for you will be able to quickly find you in the first few listings with the SERPs (Search Engine Results Pages).
2. Choose a Hosting Company
Once you have chosen a domain name it is important to find the right hosting company. There are various packages available and depending on the size of your site, you can find a hosting package that is affordable. If you believe there will be a huge amount of data being uploaded and downloaded, you will obviously need a package designed for greater bandwidth. In the beginning, however, you may get by with a small package that can be upgraded as you go.
3. Pick a WP Theme
Most blogs are organized differently than a market site so the theme you choose will be much more basic. WordPress is an open source content management system which is user-friendly and there are literally thousands of free themes you can choose and customise along the way. In fact, when you are looking to create a blog, the most time consuming part just might be choosing a theme! There are so many great ones out there that it is hard to decide.
4. Content and Graphics
When writing content and choosing graphics/photos for your blog, it is vital that anything you post is informative and relevant. The search engines have become extremely savvy (should we say critical?) when crawling the web and if you set up a site that is spam, you will definitely get blacklisted. When looking to monetize your site down the road, you may want to have a professional blog posting company write your content for you so that you avoid issues with the crawlers.
5. Don’t Forget a Sitemap
One final piece of advice is that once you get your site designed and start adding pages, don’t forget that almighty sitemap. Google, for one, really loves sitemaps and you will rank higher if you include one on your site. Perhaps it’s because of the ease at which it facilitates the crawlers to locate and link relevant content, but whatever the case, Google loves sitemaps. However, they are really only important if you have a large site!
These five steps are the basis for creating a perfect WordPress blog and as you get into it you will find that there are secondary steps along the way that will make your blog even better. WordPress is easy to use and with minimal effort you can have a site up and running within a single day.