Blogging Tips For Beginners BEFORE Starting A Blog (in 2022)

Blogging tips for beginners and small business are needed before learning how to start a blog post in 2022 and can be helpful.

I’ve had a lot of fun writing as of late but sometimes I wish that I had a few tips that would’ve helped me before I started.

But I wanted to begin writing as quickly as possible to get my message out to small business owners and anyone who aspired to be one.

If you’ve been following my blog posts, then you would know that I have a passion for writing too.

Actually, they tend to be pretty lengthy and packed with valuable information to take your local business to the next level in a very simple way in 2019 or 2020 and beyond.

At least that is my intention and I hope that I am doing so to your full benefit.

Ok…what does blogging have to do with your business?  I’m going to explain it as clearly as I possibly can and provide some tips you should know before starting your first blog post.

Blogging Tips Can Help Your Small Business

There are many blogging tips that can help your small business with the right touch but first let’s get down to the basics.

A blog is a regularly updated website or webpage that is written in an informal or conversational way to bring awareness to a particular topic.

For a local small business (or any type), blogging can really boost your exposure and can set you apart from competitors.

Just as social media channels and websites can be found via search engines, a blog can be hugely magnetized if strategically constructed.

Broader exposure for your message is the biggest payoff to what blogging can do for your business in terms of growth.

Blogging adds another marketing line to bring potential clients and additional revenue for your business.

I’m sure that you can find many things within your business that can be informative to your target audience.

Before Starting A Blog Post Be Sure To…

A few things that you MUST do before starting your very first blog post:  add your website to Google Search Console (formerly Google Webmaster Tools), set up a Google Analytics account, upload your robots.txt file to your website & Google Search Console, and lastly uploading your sitemap to GSC as well.

These blogging tips are very important and can be the difference between your content reaching its intended audience and just completely wasting your time.

1. Add Website to Google Search Console

Be sure to add your website to Google Search Console to keep your web property in tune with the platform.

It allows webmasters to do a bunch of cool things such as optimize the visibility of their website and check the indexing status to keep it up to par.

This is good for your blog because it gives you a bunch of feedback and analysis to help you beat your competitors and avoid certain mishaps internally within your online system.

The entire platform is needed before you start your first blog post or even expand anything on your website in the beginning.

2. Set Up A Google Analytics Account

Regardless of what type of blog you have, it is essential that you create a Google Analytics account to track the traffic coming to your website.

You can see different breakdowns of who sees your content but also things such as what type of device your visitors are viewing the blog from as well.

Google Analytics is the most used web analytical service on the internet because of the great features that it provides.

The data that is created from GA will be extraordinarily effective for the overall goals of your blog.

3. Upload a Robots.txt File To GSC and Website

The robots exclusion standard or robots.txt file is often times ignored by webmasters.

Its purpose is to communicate with web crawlers that come to your website and tell it what to scan or process.

This is a simple text (.txt) file that can be made from a program such as Notepad or WordPad.

Go to your website’s Cpanel and to the file manager and upload it.

Make sure that you click on “public_html,” your website file listed (www.yourwebsite.com), and then “upload.” 

Then go to Google Search Console to submit the robot.txt file and then run a test on any webpage.

Feel free to copy as much of my image as you like and save it.

4. Upload a Sitemap to Google Search Console

It’s an easy process to upload and then test your sitemap but here is the true definition below:

According to Wikipedia, the Sitemaps protocol allows a webmaster to inform search engines about URLs on a website that are available for crawling. A Sitemap is an XML file that lists the URLs for a site. It allows webmasters to include additional information about each URL: when it was last updated, how often it changes, and how important it is in relation to other URLs in the site. This allows search engines to crawl the site more intelligently. Sitemaps are a URL inclusion protocol and complement robots.txt, a URL exclusion protocol.

If your website is using a WordPress blog, there are many options to get your sitemap.

A few of them are via plugins such as Yoast SEO and Google XML Sitemaps.

Consequences Of Starting A Unprepared Blog?

Many things can happen if you don’t prepare your blog the right way but the main thing is not reaching your audience.

Now some might argue other methods to get your message to the masses and I can understand their perspective.

Organic traffic is the lifeblood of a blog (along with a great email list) and you will lose out on that.

Free traffic is always better than paid and growing it organically via search engines will help your overall blog.

Google has done a great job over the years with changing and updating its algorithms.

Just follow their lead and implement as much of their information into your website and pass these blogging tips on and you will come out on top.

Every Google property that I’ve mentioned is a free service so take full advantage of it.

How to Start A Blog Today?

Are you a small business owner or a future content creator who’s contemplating starting a blog today?  If you are a beginner, you should start immediately and don’t wait.  

There is nothing wrong with taking baby steps to finally starting a blog that can possibly revolutionize your business and life.  

You will need a few things to start:  domain name and hosting account.  

Your domain name will be www.nameofyourbusiness.com (business) or www.yourname.com (personal brand).  

This is obviously the website address where your blog and contact info along with several other pieces of content will be.  

It’s important to keep in mind that you should ‘brand’ everything related to your business or personal brand such as your social media pages as well.  

The hosting account is the platform where your website data lies along with a few other things.  Your hosting plan should be set up before you host your website.  

I use the WordPress platform because it is very easy to use and most of the best websites in the world are run using WordPress as well.  

I use HostGator [affiliate link] to host a few of my websites and really enjoy their products and services.  

It’s fairly cheap to start and I would be completely grateful if you used my affiliate link to purchase your hosting and domain.  

I receive a small commission if you use my affiliate link so feel free to do so.  

I like to be completely transparent because I know that you will enjoy HostGator services too.

For more blogging tips and how to build a blog, please click here to see if it helps you.