Unit 2: Preparing Your Blog

Introduction:

A lot goes into preparing any type of business. The same applies to creating a blog. Some of the preparations are universal to both, while others are specific to blogging. Here are a few of the main considerations to help get you started:

Naming Your Blog

You need to name your blog with marketing and branding in mind. In most cases, it will be fairly hard to match your blog name with its domain name. Choose a name for your blog that can at least work with or complement your domain name. When deciding on a blog name, consider what the blog is going to be about and who the target market is. A good blog name should be descriptive so readers can easily identify with it. Once you’ve made these decisions, then a domain name can be similar.

Keyword Research

You should be fairly familiar with keyword research if you have taken WDT208. Suffice it to say, keyword research is a major part of blogging. If you research your keywords in relation to your target audience correctly, you will make your blog far more profitable than if you are just blindly choosing articles. Most people don't just type one keyword into search engines, they use phrases. Your focus keyword should be a phrase.

As a quick reminder, when thinking about keyword research, you should keep these points in mind:

• Use keyword search tools like Google Keyword Planner, Ahrefs, and even Wordtracker to find keywords that match your content perfectly.
• Use long-tail keywords that match what your audience is likely looking for.
• Examine the keywords your competitors are using in your industry.
• Think like your readers. Ensure the keywords you choose are actually what people are searching for online. This way you will increase their chances of showing up on demand.

This will be discussed later, but the WordPress SEO by Yoast or the WP All in One SEO are considered to be the most popular SEO plug-ins that help you optimize your WordPress website for search engines.

Domain Choices

You’ll want to buy a domain with a name that people can tell their friends about. A shorter, easier-to-share domain name will facilitate the implementation of social promotion strategies. Pick a domain name that naturally fits the information, service, or product you will be sharing on the site.

Keep these tips in mind when deciding on a domain name: 

• Use a thesaurus to find cool and unique words!
• Look at competitors’ domain names. This doesn’t mean copying theirs, but it may give you some idea of the types of names that do work.
• Using generators like wordoid.com [2] or LeanDomainSearch [3] can give you some extra help.
• Adding a bit of humor can really make your domain name stick in people’s minds.
• Use abbreviations. For example, these abbreviations for domain names are well known: icbc.com and ubc.ca.
• Ensure your domain name is easy to spell.
• Shorter names are easier to remember, so keep it brief.
• Include keywords that describe what your business is all about.
• If your business is tied to a specific geographic area, think about using that in your domain name. For example: sweetdelightsvancouver.com would be a good choice for a bakery in Vancouver.
• Avoid numbers and hyphens—they can be easy to forget.
• Choosing a common extension like .com can give your site more credibility and help with SEO.

Try not to stuff your domain name with too many keywords. Stuffing your domain with keywords could give you an initial ranking boost, but it is a really short-sighted gain in the grand scheme of things. What’s the point of choosing a relatively long, convoluted, hard-to-pass around domain name just because it has some keywords in it? Domain names should be catchy and have viral potential.

Domain Name Extensions

Try to also choose a domain extension related to your blog type:

1. .com for a company
2. .net for a network
3. .org for an organization
4. .ca for Canada

Domain names cannot have any spaces between the words. If you must have a space, please use a dash instead.

Hosting Choices

Hosting is another decision you will have to make. There are various hosting options:

1. Hosting your blog on the blog software’s server. WordPress.com is an example of a site that allows you to do this. It’s like signing up for an email account. You fill out a few form fields and you’re ready to go. The advantage of this is that the maintenance is more carefree. You will be dealing with less technical issues. The disadvantage is that your blog is ultimately less customizable, and you are essentially restricted in design and functionality if your blog eventually takes off. This choice is good for a non-technical novice user, who is more of a writer.
2. Self-hosted on a shared server. This is also a very common route that many people take. There are many companies that offer very competitive rates.
   When deciding on a web hosting company, consider the following:
   • The price per month.
   • The type of hosting needed. Will it be shared hosting or dedicated hosting? This will be covered later on.
   • The type of site required. Will it be a blog, a portfolio site, or require PHP support?
   • What kind of resources do you require, such as how much RAM, storage, and bandwidth needed?
   • Security and great service should be considered as well.
   • Don’t sacrifice great service for low monthly fees.

   ca.cybernews.com [4] provides a list of the top 10 best web hosting companies in Canada. Though many of these companies claim you get unlimited bandwidth, this is often far from the actual case. Their fine print includes legal loopholes that ensure you can only use X percent of their total server space. So, think carefully about this alternative. If your blog gets really big or gets sudden exposure, you could suddenly receive a bandwidth bill that’s through the roof.

   With a self-hosted blog on a shared server, you have almost unlimited customization. Self-hosting on a shared server is a good option for the intermediate user.

3. Self-hosted on a private server or dedicated Linux server. The ultimate is hosting your site on its own dedicated server. This is not really recommended unless you are very experienced with web development and/or are technically savvy. The reason for this is because servers often crash, and it can be very demanding and time-consuming to get them up and running again. If you don’t know what you’re doing, you will have to pay someone else to do it at a very high cost.
   A private server means that you have set up a server in your office or home, or bought one in a server farm. A dedicated Linux server would be from a company like linode.com [5], which gives you your own Linux operating system to host your site, without much support for the internal operations of the server.

The Competition

Competition analysis is essential as part of establishing your niche. Read Pages 21 and 22 of your e-book to learn about some of the important aspects to consider.