Complete 5 Steps guide How to Start a WordPress Blog in 2020 with SEO?

Answered: The Easiest way to Start a WordPress Blog in 2020.

This was the most commonly and frequently asked question from my readers and social media followers who are either new to blogging or already created blog but want to learn the most updated WordPress blogging tips and tricks for 2020. So finally I decided to write a comprehensive article on How to Start a WordPress Blog  in 2020 within 5 easy steps. Also I’m creating this article from scratch so even if you are new with zero blogging background, you will be able to create a professionally looking WordPress blog in just a few minutes. So let’s begin your blogging journey !

After reading this guide:

• You will be able to buy a Domain and Web Hosting
• Install WordPress on your Hosting
• Install WordPress theme in your Blog
• Install Plugin using Contact Form 7 example
• Create your First Page or Post for your blog
• Learn Search Engine Optimization basics
• Types of SEO
• Basic on-page seo optimization step by step

Following are the 5 steps of complete A to Z guide with title of each step to jump over. But if you are new to blogging, you are advised to start reading from begining so you won’t miss any single tips and ticks in order to learn how to start a blog in 2020.

Start a WordPress blog step by step:

Step 1: What do you need to start a blog (Knowledge Base)
Step 2: Installing WordPress
Step 3: WordPress Theme Installation
Step 4: WordPress Plugins Installation & Setup
Step 5: Optimizing Blog for Google Search Engine (SEO)

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STEP 1: What do you need to start a Blog?

Every blog or website that you see online has 2 most important thing to be created. So you must have the these two things for starting a blog.

• A Domain Name
• A Web Hosting

Domain Name: First thing first, You need a Domain name to create a blog that will be your blog’s unique address on the internet like freelancefront.com and its called your blog URL. Domain name should be easy to remember and easy to spell so that the people can memorize it easily but if  you want to create a blog for personal portfolio or information about yourself then you can get a domain name of your own name, like shahzadbasheer.com. Also, Try to buy domian name with a “.com” extension because it is the most popular and easy to remember extension.

A Domain Name comes with different extensions so just for your knowledge, following are few basic Domain Name extensions.

.COM: (Commercial) – This is the most popular domain extension used globally and everybody knows about this extension.

.Net: (Network) – This refers to the “Network” and very popular after a .com extension. The Big Companies, Firms, Institutions most likely use .Net extension to show their presence at the internet.

.Org: (Organization) – Recommended extension for Organizations, NGOs, Institutional organizations, etc.

.Info: (Information) – This used for the website that provides information about any thing.

Web Hosting: 

The second important thing is “Web Hosting”. In order to keep live on the internet 24 hours a day 7 days a week and 365 days a year you need a server computer connected to the internet. The Web hosting is basically an account that is created on an online server computer by registering your domain name and allocating a piece of hard drive space for a set monthly or yearly price. This is important to keep your website files on that server computer’s allocated space because those server computers or “hosts” designed to provide the particular services and never shutdown so that your website is accessible 24 hours from anywhere in the world. Now your question must be

How to buy Domain Name and Web Hosting ?

Well, Normally the bloggers buy Domain name from a Domain registrar and web hosting from a Web Host and they pay for domain and hosting but there is a most popular and WordPress recommended web hosting company bluehost.com that provide a Web Hosting account with a Free .com Domain name. So save your domain price and get your free domain name with web hosting at bluehost. Check Bluehost exclusive discount offer for November 2020

It is very easy to buy web hosting from bluehost that is the oldest web hosting company. it was founded back in 1996 and WordPress recommended bluehost as the most reliable host specially for new bloggers.

If just go to bluehost.com and click “Get Started” button as show in the picture above.

Next you will see bluehost packages as shown in the photo below:

Bluehost Basic Package: If you want to create only one blog or website and no more needed in future, then the Basic package is the most suitable for you which comes with around 60% discount so just get it for $3.95/month

Bluehost Plus Package & Choice Plus (Recommended) Package: If your plan is to host more than one blog or website with unlimited features, then you can select either package for a discounted price.

Free Domain Registration. As soon as you selcted any package, on the next screen you will be able to get a Free Domain Name registration option. You can either register a Free Domain name or use a domain you own. I recommend you to find and register a relevant free Domain name with .com extension that is easy to remember and spell.

Bluehost giving more discounts on first time sign up

As soon as you completed the payment transaction by your paypal account or credit/debit card or other payment method, you will be sent an email with login information to your hosting account called “Cpanel” where you will be able to “install WordPress” blog.

STEP 2: Installing WordPress Blog in bluehost 2020

What is WordPress?

The WordPress is the most popular blogging platform in the world and according to the global survey, 34% websites in the world use WordPress as it is super easy to learn, just like  a play in WYSIWYG (what you see is what you get) style. WordPress offers two types of resources that you can use according to your preferences.

WordPress.com: WordPress.com is WordPress official website where you can create a free WordPress blogs using their free Hosting service and a free sub domain e.g www.you (You will read about sub domain later in this article) so if you don’t want to spend money on independent hosting and personal domain, You can use WordPress.com 
WordPress.org provides a downloadable WordPress application that you can use at your own Hosting with your own personal domain name (e.g www.yourdomainname.com). It is called self-hosted WordPress application that requires you to have your own hosting and domain name. All you need to do is, go to wordpress.org site and download WordPress latest version to your computer.

But in this tutorial you don’t need to download wordpress.org because bluehost provides quick wordpress installation that is very cool and instant way to use wordpress.

Now watch bluehost WordPress installation video and install your first blog. All you need to do is just follow the process and during the process select a default theme because after installation you can find another best wordpress theme for blog in 2020.

ok so now you have installed WordPress on your bluehost web hosting account and ready to customize your wordpress theme. so we go to the next step and install and customize template.

STEP 3: WordPress Theme Installation

Now you have completed the installation process and your blog is live but the default wordpress theme is not an ideal blogging theme so you want to find the best wordpress theme for blog so now we will find the best Free WordPress theme and then customize that.

Installing New WordPress Theme:

In order to install another wordpress theme, follow the steps given below:

login to your wordpress dashboard

Roll your mouse over the left colomn on “Appearance” and click on “Theme” from sub-menu. you will see seecreen below:

Now you are on Theme installation page and you can see the default wordpress themes that are installed. Now see at the top of the page and click on “Add New” button. 

See the menu “Featured – Popular – Latest – Favorites and you can check theme designs under each menu so actually there are over 4100+ WordPress themes and you can select the best one for you. but in order to make installation quick and easy, just find the search option at the right side of the this menu “Search Themes” field is available for finding the themes by keyword so for example you want to install a blog theme, so type keyword “blog” in the search field.

WordPress will find and display the available themes for your keywor search. so now all you need to do is select the best suitable theme for your blog and roll you mouse over your mouse on the theme. You will see a two small buttons will appear on each theme when you roll your mouse over that theme. 1. Install – 2. Preview

Click on Install button, to install the theme on  your wordpress blog.

once you installed your favorite wordpress theme, it will be available in your installed theme page under Appearance>Theme and you will be able to customize the theme according to your preferences.

STEP 4: WordPress Plugins Installation

What is WordPress Plugin? 

The plugin is a not a part of wordpress but can be associated for a particular functional task. it is a set of group that perform a precise fuction to get required results. I’ve already written an article about 10 essential plugins for wordpress blog so you can read it in order to understand and know what plugins you may need to add in your wordpress blog.

In 2020, Things are going to be changed and now you need some advance plugins to add in your blog. Also many previously launched plugins might have removed or updated with different name so you can check a list of hundreds of plugins and select the best match that provides 100% results of your requirements.

Example: Contact Form 7: This is the most used wordpress plugin for adding a contact form in your blog. It  has over 5 million installation so far. You can use contact form 7 to receive email from your readers who want to communicate to you. Its simple and easy to use plugin.

How to Install WordPress Plugin? 

Installing a WordPress plugin is an easy task.

In order to install a wordpress Plugin, follow the steps given below:

login to your wordpress dashboard

Roll your mouse over the left colomn on “Plugins” and click on “Add New” from sub-menu.

On the Next page, you will see WordPress plugin options.

You can eaither simply search and add a new plugin or you can upload a plugin file(s) if  you purchased a plugin and downoloaded to your computer. For the moment I will tell you how to add a plugin to WordPress Blog.

You will see the page like below picture, Enter contact form 7 in search field, you will see instll button when you hover over the plugin detail box. Just click Install and then “Activate” it.

 

After you installed and activate plugin, it will be shown

at you dashboard left panel just over “Appearance” tab.

Click on it and and open a contact form. Add your email id to receive users email in your inbox. You can use your email id that you created at the time of wordpress installation like info@yourblog.com. then just copy “Contact form 7 code” and then go to “Pages” tab and click “Add New” this will create a new page. Enter the page title “Contact us” and in the “Writing section” paste the code in “visual Editor” or “Text” mode and click “Publish” to publish your contact page. see picture below:

So once you are done, your contact us page will be up with the contact form 7 and your user will be able to find your contact page and they will be able to write message and send to you.

How to write first Post or Article in WordPress blog? 

So far you have created a contact page and are familiar with WordPress text section that is similar to a modern text editor like “Ms Word” that almost every body has used while learning basic computer course in school, college or computer institiute so the basic icons and tools are not new and you should have knowledge about those things.

Now in order to write your first article or you can call it “Post” in wordpress, just go to WordPress dashboard and roll your mouse over “Post” tab then click on “Add New” side menu tab.

It will open a similar “text section” like you saw in “Page” section but see the right side column that is a bit different from Page’s right side column.

First of All add a Post Title at the title section. For example, “My first WordPress post”.

Now write your post using the format, tools and icons available in text editor. Make it professional with paragraph, bullet list, bold, italic, page alignment etc.

Add a Category: Once you completed your first wordpress post, now its time to add a category to identify your post relevancy to any particular topic. Like if you wrote the post about your history, career, profession, education etc, you can add a category according to your post subject. See + Add New Category link at right side of post section and add a new category. 

Add a Tag: Next thing is “Tags”. You may be familiar with this word if you use social media. The Tag can only be found in “Post” section and its not available in “Pages”. You can enter relevant keywords as a Tag, so that Search Engine as well as People who read your post, can find the relevant posts using the similar Tags.

Add a Featured Image: Finally you are done but wait, you need to add a “Featured Image” that will define your Post title, description and tells the user about your post topic. You can add your own photograph or banner image to define. If you want to add a professionally looking featured image, you can find “royalty free images” on the internet that are free to use in your WordPress blog. For example go to a Free images and videos provider pixabay.com and get a beautiful picture for free.

Now your blog is ready to launch with a post you just written. Let’s move to the next very very important step of SEO.

STEP 5: Optimizing Blog for Google Search Engine (SEO)

No matter how beautiful, trendy, professional or important your blog is, there is no use if nobody knows about it so how would you tell the world about your blog and the content you wrote? Well, you can tell people in your contact but those are not a large community, you can advertise but this will require funds so the best way to tell the world is Search Engine Optimization (SEO) that is the most advance and modern way to let the internet users know about your blog and content.

What is Search Engine Optimization? 

In a simple sentence “Search Engine Optimization’ is an ongoing process of using pre-defined instructions for the writtent genuine content (not copied from any other website/blog or not purchased from anywhere) that is useful for providing information about any particular topic that people try to search on the internet.

For example, You want to search how to start a wordpress blog in 2020 so you open your browser and type this “keyword” (keyword is a word or phrase used to find information from search engines) so once  you typed and enter the search button, the search engine instantly display a page of search results called SERP (stands for Search Engine Results Page) where you can find the most relevant website or blogs title, description, website links to read complete details. You will notice that around 10 Websites, Blogs or social media page links will be listed in 1st page of Search Results that displayed by the search engine.

These 10 results are displayed by search engine because these are the optimized pages for the keyword you are searching information for and search engine functions found those pages most relevant to your searched keyword or phrase.

Today everybody knows the best and top search engine is Google.com that is being used by around 70% internet users of the world so I’m not going to define google any more as you can find about it on the internet. So how google show the top 10 results in their search list? The answer is simple, You as an author need to optimize you written content according to the google search engine’s policies and terms that are legal and permitted. The optimizers use different ways to rank their website or blog at the top of google. These are:

1. White Hat SEO
2. Grey Hat SEO
3. Black Hat SEO

Here I’ll discuss only White Hat SEO technique because its legal and verfified mathod by Google so there will be the best results and no any penalty or black list issue for the blog or website. I recommend always use white hat seo even though its slow and ongoing but its longlasting and result oriented.

There are two phases in Search Engine Optimization

• On-Page SEO
• Off-Page SEO

On-Page SEO: 

The process of using pre-defined set of instructions for the written content inside a post or page of WordPress blog is called on-page optimization. There are many different instructions, tips and tricks that search engine optimizers use to rank the page or post in search engine results. I’m going to discuss few most important and must use options below:

First of all you need to see about the topic you have written. In our case, we already discussed that this guide is about how to start a WordPress blog in 2020 so all I need to do is optimize this guide for the keyword accordingly.

Essential On-Page SEO Tips: Follow the steps to optimize WordPress Page or Post.

Open your Page or Post in Editing mode that you want to optimize.

Go to the top right corner of your browser and open browser options and click on “Find”. ( In google chrome see 3 verticle dots at top right corner) 

find keyword “start wordpress blog in 2020” and see how many times the keyword is used in the existing guide. So you will have a number of use for this particular keyword in the article. For example if the keyword used in 5 times in the article, you should optimize it like below:

Use your keyword your Post Title. For example you see this guide has the same keyword in the Title. By default WordPress give the title “H1” Heading out of 6 headings. H1, H2, H3, H4, H5, H6.  The H1 Heading is most important in seo optimization.

Post Title

Normally you should use up to 57 characters including alpha numerics. Some SEO Plugins allow 60 characters but better to use 57 characters so my Guide title is 56 characters that is ok.