11 Steps to Take Immediately After You Start a Blog

Starting a blog is an exciting journey, but I know firsthand how overwhelming it can feel at the beginning. When I first ventured into blogging, I had the same questions you probably have now: How do I structure my posts? How do I drive traffic and gain readers? How do I actually make money from this?

I’ve been in the digital marketing world long enough to understand that while your enthusiasm is key, there are some crucial steps you need to take before you start churning out content or promoting your site like crazy. Trust me, if you set your foundation right from the start, it will pay off in the long run.

From my years of experience helping brands build their online presence, I’ve crafted a step-by-step guide of what you should do immediately after launching your blog. These steps aren’t just tasks—they’re a roadmap to help you succeed and avoid common pitfalls that many beginners make.

Here are 11 essential steps to take right away:

1. Modify the structure of your permalinks

WordPress automatically assigns a “date + post name” structure to your links by default. As a result, your links will likely appear as follows:

www.website.com/03/02/2018/how-to-create-a-website-from-scratch.

Instead, alter the permalink structure to only display the article name because this can make your URLs appear too long and unattractive. This is the ideal WordPress SEO permalink structure, according to Yoast.

Go to settings > permalink, click the circle next to “post name,” and then click save to accomplish this. Your link will then appear like this in its place:

www.website.com/how-to-create-a-website-from-scratch.

Much better, yes? Furthermore, it will appear lot better when you share your links.

2. Establish your contact and about pages.

You should always have an About page and a Contact page so that your readers may learn more about you or get in touch with you if they need anything.

It is simple to make these. Just go to WordPress’ Pages > Add New page.

If you’re a personal blogger or running a blog for your business, the About page should contain information about you or your organization. Check out what other people have written on their websites if you’re unsure of what to write. You ought to be able to locate a lovely layout to serve as a model for your own About page.

I advise adding a plugin called “WP Forms Lite” for your contact form. By enabling you to construct a stunning contact form that you can embed anywhere on your website using a shortcode it provides, this plugin eliminates all of the labour.

Your contact form will appear once you copy and paste the short code into a new page.

3. Open an account with Google Analytics

You will track all of the site’s statistics using Google Analytics, including page views, audience data, and acquisition data.

Some of this information might not be helpful to you right now, but you’ll need it soon to improve your posts and pages and discover more about your readers.

Google Analytics is it free?

Indeed it is! By utilising your Gmail account, you can set up a Google Analytics account and begin monitoring the traffic data for your blog right away.

Sign up for Google Analytics

You’ll receive a tracking code to add to your website after signing up. As tracking your own page views will bias your analytics statistics, I advise using this method to prevent Google Analytics from doing so.

4. Register with Google Search Console.

You’ll be utilising Google Search Console as a tool to monitor how Google perceives your website.

After you’ve established a connection, you can index your website on Google’s search engine, which will enable Google to crawl your pages and list them on its search engine. Your blog will ultimately get found even if you don’t index your site, but this technique makes it happen much faster because you’re manually submitting to Google rather than waiting for them to find you.

You can keep track of the terms visitors are using to find your site using Google Search Console. It will show the keywords and positions for which you are ranked as well as the quantity of Google clicks and page impressions your site are receiving.

Since Google is the most popular search engine on the planet, you can be sure that they have your best interests in mind when it comes to assisting you in making your website successful. This tool’s insights can assist you in boosting your organic traffic.

Sign up for Google Search Console

5. Send Google Search Console a sitemap

A page listing all of the URLs to your website is known as a sitemap. Google will be able to use this when you submit it to Google Search Console in order to index all of the links on your website and display them in its search results.

No one will be able to find your posts on Google if they are not indexed.

Logging in and selecting Crawl > Sitemaps > Add/Test Sitemap will allow you to submit a sitemap to Google Search Console. Use www.your-domain.com/sitemap.xml as the sitemap link since that is where your sitemap is often found.

Download the Yoast SEO plugin to create a sitemap if you don’t already have one. Yoast SEO will be covered in more detail later.

Check out my article on How to Install WordPress Plugins if you’re unsure how to locate and install plugins.

6. Increase website security

The last thing you want is to get hacked and lose everything while starting a blog. Lessening the likelihood of that occurring will help you make your site more secure.

By adding the WordFence plugin, you may make your site more secure. It can be found by searching for it in the search field under Plugins > Add New.

Once installed, it will turn on a firewall to defend against all attacks and notify you whenever something questionable or potentially hazardous occurs on your website.

7. Configure automatic backups.

It’s usually a good idea to have a recent backup to restore from in case you are hacked or something horrible occurs to your site while you’re working on it.

With the help of the “BackupWordPress” plugin, you may programme automatic backups. You can use this plugin to schedule specified periods for your website’s database and file backups. To have a secure copy of these files on your computer, you can download them whenever you wish.

Learn more about this in my article on automating WordPress backups.

8. Include opt-in forms to get subscriber data.

As soon as possible, you should begin acquiring mailing list subscribers so that you may send them email updates whenever you publish new content or decide to get in touch with them.

Don’t skip this step because your mailing list will eventually become one of your main sources of recurring visitors.

Since MailChimp is free and a very well-liked email automation platform, I always advise beginning bloggers to sign up for it.

Below, you can register for an account.

Signup for MailChimp

You’ll require a plugin to link MailChimp to your website after joining up with the service.

I advise utilising the “MailChimp Forms By Optin Cat” plugin. You may design stunning popup forms and sidebar forms in the free version to add to your website.

9. Add a social media sharing plugin.

Install a social sharing plugin to add social networking buttons to all of your posts so that people can share them more easily. Instead of having to copy your URLs, your readers will be able to share your pieces with only the press of a button.

I adore using Social Warfare Pro because the buttons are gorgeous and I can display a share counter for my readers to see how many times my posts have been shared on social media. This increases the authority of my website. At just $29.95 a year, it’s also reasonably priced. There is a free version as well, and it is excellent.

10. Understand SEO

Search engine optimization, or SEO, is what affects how well your content rank in search results.

It is important to understand this before you begin writing your posts because it is useless to create content that no one will read. If you properly optimise each of your posts and pages, you will eventually receive a large amount of organic traffic.

Installing the Yoast SEO plugin should be your initial SEO action. When you are composing your content, this plugin will walk you through the optimization process. It will offer you a green light for what you’re doing well and orange or red light for what you could improve on.

Check out these articles to learn more about SEO:

An encyclopedia of on-page and off-page SEO techniques

Finding SEO-Friendly Keywords: How to Drive Organic Traffic

11. Avoid Basic Blogging Errors

Not to mention, you want to be sure you get off to the right start! It’s extremely possible that you will make a lot of blunders as a new blogger.