How to Start a Blog using Blogger– A Step by Step Guide for Beginners | NIGI ENGLISH CARE

 

How to Start a Blog using Blogger – A Step by Step Guide for Beginners

Starting a blog in 2019 can be a superb idea because, with the help of blogging, you can express your thoughts and share anything with the world. Also If you are wise in this field, then you can earn a decent income from it.

Each day, millions of articles/posts/stories get published on the web, and more than 200 thousand new blogs are created. It means more than two new blogs are published every second. Isn’t Amazing? So many blogs are springing up daily with their various topics, and many of them became famous around the world. So, now It’s your turn!



So If you’re new to blogging and planning to start a blog for free, then you’re in the right place. In this article, I’ll show you how to create a blog on blogger.com (Google’s own free blogging platform).

Before we start let me tell you some interesting facts about Google Blogger

What is Google Blogger?

Blogger.com is Google’s own free blogging platform where you can create a free blog with the .blogspot.com subdomain (for example, yourblogname.blogspot.com) or you can buy a domain (always recommended) to have your perfect website (for example, www.yourdomain.com).

Advantages of Starting a Blog on Google Blogger

• Starting a blog with Google Blogspot is very easy, and you don’t need any professional skills to operate your blog.
• Google owns the platform, so you have that trust and credibility.
• Blogger is free for all, and they never ask for a penny.
• Though there are many free blogging platforms available on the web (like WordPress, Weebly, Wix, Tumblr, and others), Blogger.com is the winner of all of them when it comes to giving you freedom and the features offered.
• You can set up your custom domain there instated of a free .blogspot.com subdomain.
• You can Configure a free SSL Certificate for your blog (by simply turning on HTTPS). Now blogger offers HTTPS versions of both types of sites, so no matter if you’re using their .blogspot sub-domain or your custom domain.
• They provide free simple and responsive templates and also allow you to upload your own theme. On the web lots of free and premium blogger templates are available, so you can install them and customize them as you want.
• Some cool features like template editor, template designer, and layout editor, are very advantageous. With the help of the template editor, you edit the code of your theme and can customize it as you like. Template Designer is used to design the essential elements of your blog and to add custom CSS to your blog. Layout editor helps to place various widgets at different locations on your blog by just dragging and dropping.
• Blog post publishing and management system are very easy to use.
• The communication system is good also. You can use its default comment system or can set up Facebook, Disqus, and Google Plus Comments easily.
• Blogger post editor provides all the essential tools to write an excellent blog post. It allows you to edit or modify your article, search description, labels, location, custom permalink, custom robots tags, image alt tag, blog post scheduling, errors, redirections, etc.
• You can monetize your site with Google AdSense and other programs like affiliate marketing easily unlike other platforms.
• Like other CMS (Content management systems), Google Blogger also lets you take a backup of your data. So, if something wrong happens with your site, then you can restore it with your backup.
• Also later, if you wish to move to other platforms (like WordPress, Wix, Weebly) then by using their plugins, you can easily switch to them without losing anything.

So, I hope now you can understand, why starting a blog on Blogger.com is beneficial for you.

OK, now let’s see how you can start your blog with a blogger using our step-by-step guide below.

How to Create a Free Blog with Blogger.Com

Sign Up for a Google Account

You need a Google account to access your blogger dashboard. So just signup for a Gmail or any Google product to proceed. If you already have an account then skip the step and log in to your account.

Sign in to your Blogger Account

Go to the blogger.com homepage and then SIGN IN to your account using your Google account credentials.

Choose a Blogger Profile

Once you signed into your Blogger account, for the first time, it will ask you to set up a profile for your Blogger blogs. You can choose your Google Plus profile or limited blogger (BlogSpot) profile. So pick any of them and then proceed to the next step( I’ll recommend you choose a google plus profile).

Create your blog

Now you will be able to see the blogger dashboard, and like my given image, you can choose the “New blog” or “CREATE NEW BLOG” option to start your blog creation.

Choose your blog title, address, and theme

After clicking the ‘new blog’ or ‘create new blog’ option, a new window will open like the following screenshot below and there you need to fill details. Now enter your blog name, address, and then pick a theme. After that, you need to click the” Create blog” button to finish your initial blog setup. Don’t worry about your selection; you can change/modify them later also.

Lunch your blog

once you finished the initial blog setup process, you can able to see your blog dashboard like my given screenshot below. Your blogger blog is live now and ready to start blogging. You can check it by clicking the “View Blog” link, or you can visit directly by typing your blog address (URL) at any web browser.

Great! You have finished your Google blog creation. Now your blog is running, and it’s live for all.

However, just creating a blog is not enough. There are many changes that you need to do after creating your blog setup. Now it’s time to optimize it for more search engine visibility and better user experience.

Steps to Optimize your blogger blog

In your blog dashboard's left-side panel, you can see the “Setting” option. Now click here to edit some stuff.

Add a Description for your Blog

Adding a description to your blogger blog is very necessary, it helps to describe to your reader and search engines what is your blog about. You can set it by selecting the “basic” settings option under the main settings panel.

Edit your post, comments, and sharing settings on the blogger

This section will help you to optimize your blog homepage, and you can set up commenting rules for your blog readers. These settings are pretty self-explanatory, and if you have any difficulty understanding, then you can click on the help symbol (question mark symbol) to get more details about it.

Edit and modify Blogger Search Preference Settings to Optimize your Blog SEO

In this section, you can optimize your blog for search engines. With the help of these setups, you can able to get a better ranking in search engines.

Edit meta tags: A meta tag is a brief and concise summary of your blog or website. It supposes to install after the title of the page. The user of a search engine focuses on the description of the post after reading the title of the post. So, Keep in mind that it is very much necessary that your meta description must be related to what you have written in your blog. Your meta tag description must be written within 150 characters.

Custom page not found: When someone lands on your site through a URL that no longer exists, you can set a message to them that the page doesn’t exist. You can set any custom text or HTML message instructing them what to do next.

Custom redirects: Using this feature you can redirect your full-length permalinks to a shorter one and also you can redirect your broken links to your site. Bloggers' custom redirects only support redirection within the same blog URL, so this isn’t suitable if you’ve changed your blog domain name.

Crawlers and indexing: These features are imperative because doing proper set up there, a chance to get a better ranking in search engines and incorrect configuration can harm your SERP(Search engine ranking position) or you may lose your search engine visibility. So stay away from this part, if you are not an expert.

However, if you are keen to optimize your robots.txt and Custom robots header tags, then you can read the post below.

You just finished essential SEO setups for your blogger blog. Now it’s time to customize your blog.

How to Customize your blogger blog?

In your blog dashboard left panel section, you can see the “Theme” and “Layout” options. There you can do your all customization stuff like new template installation or modification, edit or remove blogger widgets, logo setup, text color, style edit, and many more.

Customization is allowed in the blogger theme and Layout Section

• You can choose a Template from its available templates collection, or you can upload your own theme.
• Also, you can take a backup or restore your blog template anytime by clicking on the Backup/Restore button on the top right side of the Theme dashboard.
• By clicking on Customize button, a new template editor will open where you can able to make some changes such as changing the background, changing font design and colors, adding Custom CSS, selecting the layout, etc.
• You can edit the HTML of the template.
• You can choose a Mobile Template for your site.
• In the Layout section, you can manage your blog layout by a simple drag-and-drop process.
• You can see the multiple locations in the Layout Editor where you can add various widgets also.
• In the layout section, you can edit Favicon, blog header, footer, sidebar, etc.
• You can use the Blogger Theme Designer to change the layout widths and other settings.

So, I hope you are done finishing your blog setup and customization. Now it’s time to publish some posts and pages that drive traffic to your blog.

How to Publish your article on a blogger blog

Once you are ready to publish your first article(post), you need to go to the “Posts” tab from your blog dashboard and then click on the “New Post” or “Create a New Post” link to write your content.

Now you can see the blogger post editor. Here’s what the blog post editor screen looks like –

Now get ready to write an article in a proper format in Compose section. The blogger post editor is similar to MS Office or Google Docs, so it’s very easy working with.

After finishing your article writing chose a suitable post title for it and inserted it in the post title area. You can make your article more attractive by adding Headings, Sub-Headings, images, videos, etc. Now when you are done click on the ‘PUBLISH’ button to see your Blog Post live.

BEST THEMES

Keep the process going on and start publishing more content on your blogger blog. After posting some good stories(or articles), you can apply for Google Adsense approval, or you can try any other advertising platform. This way you to earn money from your free blogger blog.

Here are a few more things I suggest you consider when you are running a free blog on blogger.com

• Use a premium blogger theme on your blog which will make your blog more attractive by its design.
• Always try to publish original content and if using someone’s speech then don’t forget to credit back to them.
• Add some pages on your blog like – About, Privacy Policy, Terms of Use, Disclaimer, Contact Us, etc
• Buy a domain and then set up it for your blogger blog.
• Create social profiles for your blogger blog on Facebook, Twitter, Youtube, and other platforms.
• You can set up an SSL Certificate for your blog on Blogspot(Google provide free SSL certificates for all site, and you can easily configure it from your blogger dashboard).

So, this is my complete guide on how to create a blog on Blogger. If you have any questions or doubts in mind, don’t hesitate to let me know by commenting below.

If you found this guide helpful, kindly give it a share. Your share is very much helpful to spread our message and help more bloggers like you.