blogging in india

How to start a blog in India in 2023?

Sachin Sival

Feb 8, 2023 — 15 min read

How to start a blog in India? – A dream for most of us and reality for only a few. Why is it so? Especially in India. The biggest reason for that is we are always being told to do the things other people are already doing. Just get into the rat race of becoming an Engineer, Doctor, Teacher, etc. Why not a blogger or digital marketer?

No, it’s not that I don’t respect these professions. I do, I respect every one of them, but the harsh reality is that not everyone wants to be an Engineer or Doctor still they are recommended to do so. Nobody cares about what your dream is unless you start caring for yourself.

I had this dream too of starting my own blog; however, nobody was there to guide me. I started searching online about “how to start a blog in India”, went through every source of information on how to start a blog in India. Unfortunately, not much information was available at that time.

I just started my blog one day, with the hope to learn everything on the way. But trust me it was not an easy journey. Every now and then I was facing so many challenges because I did not know the right way to start a blog in India. I made so many mistakes, learned from them, and implemented what I learned.

There are so many people in India, who like me want to start their blog, but nobody knows the right way of how to start a blog in India?. If you are one of those people, you are in the right place. Because I am writing this article to teach you the step by step process of starting a blog.

How to start a blog in India? – The Beginner’s Guide

Step #1 – Choose a blog Niche
Step #2 – Decide a name for your blog
Step #3 – Pick a blogging platform
Step #4 – Purchase Web Hosting
Step #5 – Set up your blog
Step #6 – Start Writing Blog Content
Bonus Tips – How to write posts that will generate traffic?

Before moving any further, you must consider a few things first. Because blogging is not something that you can start without any proper planning. If you want to be a successful blogger, you should consider the following things:

Do you have basic writing and thinking skills?
Your expertise level on your blogging topic.
How confident you are about being successful at your blog?
Do you have basic networking and marketing skills?
How eager are you to learn something new?
Do you clear understanding of the main reason for starting a blog?

While you can always hire a freelancer to write your blog posts, you should have some understanding of the process.

Step #1 – Choose a blog Niche

The first important and critical step in the process of starting a blog is to choose your blogging niche. But first, you should understand what Niche is. In short, a blog niche is a topic that you write about most often, love writing about this topic, and most importantly can make money by writing about it.

How to choose a perfect blog Niche?

Create a list of the topics or areas, you are passionate about.
List the ways you can help others with your blog.
List the problems you can solve with your blog.
Identify your competitors in the topics or areas, you are interested in.
Find out the ways you can make money with your interest topics.

Trust me, by following these steps you will be able to find out the perfect niche for your blog. It isn’t as complicated as it seems. Everyone has a passion for something. If you love bikes, write about them or maybe cars or maybe soccer. It doesn’t matter what your passion is about. What matters is that there are people who want to know more about the topic you are writing about. Hence, you must choose your niche wisely.

Step #2 – Decide a name for your blog

Now that you have taken the first step of starting a blog, next you must choose a name for your blog. You need a name to create a unique identification for it.

Naming your blog is like naming your start-up. It is your online business hence you must choose a brandable name. In addition to that to make your blog website live, you would also need a domain name.

Want to know more, read it here

How to choose a perfect domain name in 2020?

How to name your blog?

Unfortunately, the most generic domain names are already taken by other people. Hence, you need to choose a unique name for your blog, for which you can register a domain name. So, let’s have a look at the steps to choose a perfect name for your blog:

Create a brief description of your blog. Write down an introduction to your blog. List down things like industry, topic, purpose, audience type, and the important keywords that define your blog.
List the potential blog names that you can think of by reading the description you create in the first step. You can even try the combination of two words to make it catchy. Try to keep them shorter and easy to pronounce. Most importantly, avoid using any special characters.
Validate your list of potential blog names, you can use Namecheap or GoDaddy for validating if the required domain name is available. You can even purchase your domain on Namecheap or GoDaddy, they offer great discounts.

Step#3 – Pick a blogging platform

A blogging platform is a Content Management System, where you can create and design your website and publish the content. It makes the process of publishing and managing blog posts easy.

There are several blogging platforms available on the internet. In fact, you have the option to choose between Free as well as self-hosted (you need to purchase the hosting for this) platforms. I know the availability of free tools and resources pulls us towards them. However, they are not good for you if you want to use your own domain and monetize your blog. You don’t even have complete control if you use these free blogging platforms.

As a beginner blogger, you would want an easy to use and scalable system that you can use to run your website. Also, once you get some traffic, you would want to monetize your blog, change your website design, and add more features to your website. A free blogging platform can’t offer you these options. Therefore, I recommend you choose WordPress.org for your blog.

WordPress is an open-source self-hosted CMS that you can use to create any kind of website. It powers more than 35% of the websites today. Several of the big websites are also powered by WordPress. You can design your website with zero coding skills, scale it to any level and add any feature you want.

Read full tutorial here: Best Blogging Platforms for Bloggers in 2023

WordPress is supported by so many themes and plugins that you can use to add extra features to your website. Both free and premium themes and plugins are available online. More on themes and plugins, later in this article.

Step #4 – Purchase web hosting

Web hosting is the building blocks of the internet. It is a virtual space that lets you host your website and serve the webpages on request. Choosing a reliable web hosting provider is the most important task for starting a website. Your website speed and uptime depend on it. You would not want your website lagging to compete with others in your industry.

At present, there are so many web hosting providers which makes it a daunting task to choose the perfect web hosting for your website. Each of them offers great features and promises unmatched uptime. But there are some factors that you should look before choosing a web hosting provider.

How to choose the perfect web hosting?

Here are the factors that should be considered before choosing a web hosting partner:

The kind of website you want to create, which in our case is a blog website on WordPress.
How many websites do you want to create? Some people would want to create more than one website. In some cases, you would want to launch another website in the future.
The kind of traffic you will be expecting every month.
Email hosting and SSL certificate.
How much you can spend each month?
Uptime promised by the provider.
Security features provided by the hosting provider.
Reliability of customer support.

I have written a detailed article here: How to choose a perfect web hosting partner?

To make the process of choosing your web hosting partner easy, I made a list of the best hosting providers. You can use this list to choose the suitable hosting for your needs.

I have personally used these web hosting providers and can say that they are best for hosting a WordPress website. Every one of them has an easy registration process. The whole process will hardly take 5 minutes.

If you are looking for any premium hosting, you can check CloudWays too.

The good thing is that all these hosting providers have a one-click install WordPress application. After purchasing the required hosting plan, log in to your hosting account, and install WordPress. It will ask for some basic details like a username, email, and password. Make sure you consider security while creating your username and password.

Step #5 – Set up your blog

If you have been following along, you must have a hosting account and WordPress installed. Here comes the most important step of the process. In this step, you will configure WordPress for setting up your blog.

After you have installed WordPress by following Step #4, you need to log in to your WordPress dashboard. Now, there are two ways to log in to your account; you can log in, either directly from the hosting account or you can go to yoursite.com/wp-admin. I like the second way as you do not need to visit your hosting account every time to log in to your WordPress dashboard.

setup your blog (How to start a blog in India?)

Once, you are in your WordPress dashboard, the first thing you need to do is, install a theme. A WordPress theme is a collection of templates and stylesheets used to design a website. You can install any theme you want, change it, or remove it.

How to install a WordPress theme?

Installing a theme in WordPress is so simple and easy. In your WordPress admin area, go to Appearance » Themes. On the next page you will see a few themes that are already installed and one of them is even activated. These themes come by default with WordPress.

To install a new theme, click on Add New button, and you will be redirected to the next page where you will some themes that you can install. You can even search for a theme and install it after you have found the theme you want. And the good thing is that these themes are free. You can install any theme that you like and suits your need.

In case, you have purchased a theme outside the official WordPress repository, then you can install this theme by uploading it to WordPress. You will get detailed steps when you purchase a premium theme.

Free is not good always but if you are just starting out then you must be using a free theme. Once you have got some traffic to your website, you can go for a premium theme. I am not saying that you should install a free theme only at the beginning. It’s up to you, what you want. Free themes have only a few features and they are not customizable at all.

In case you would want to go with a free theme, you should choose the Astra theme which is great for any kind of website, and they also have a premium version. Astra theme also has an add-on plugin that offers ready-made website templates that you can use to design your website. Just import a website template and change the content or design.

Premium WordPress Themes

If you want to install a premium theme or after getting some traffic you would want to redesign your blog, you can use one of these. Do not worry about their reliability and performance, I have tested each one of them myself and they are as good as they are marketed.

Read some valuable stuffs here:

Here is the list of these premium WordPress themes:

How to install a WordPress plugin?

Earlier in this section, we talked about WordPress themes. Now, it’s the time that we talk about WordPress plugins. In WordPress, plugins provide additional features and functionality to WordPress themes. Hence, you will end up using several of these.

To install a plugin, go to Plugins and click on Add New button.

how to add new plugin in wordpress blog ( how to start a blog in India )

Same as themes, you can install any plugin you want or like but don’t install a plugin if you don’t need it. Overusing the plugins can also be harmful to your website performance. Like themes, plugins also have premium versions, which offer extended features and functionality.

Read this useful guide too: 15+ Must to have WordPress plugins and their alternatives – Free and Premium Both

Here are some of the plugins that you must have:

1. Yoast SEO

Yoast SEO helps in creating the content that search engines love. It is one of the most used WordPress plugins.

2. Elementor Page Builder

One of the leading page builders for WordPress which helps you design your website with zero coding skills. It also has a large library of ready-made site templates and blocks that you can use to design your website. While the basic version is available for free, the premium version offers advanced features and customization options.

3. Beaver Builder

Another drag and drop page builder for WordPress. It has all the features of a page builder that you need to have to design your website.

4. WP Forms

If you want to create the awesome looking and fully functional forms on your website, WP Forms is the go-to plugin.

5. Monster Insights

The best plugin for integrating Google Analytics on your WordPress website.

All the above plugins have free versions, which you can try and upgrade if you like it. Like I said earlier, free versions are good to have but you need to have premium themes and plugins if you want to get the best performance from your website.

Permalinks Structure

Permalinks are the links that remain the same for many years. When you visit a website and open a specific post, you will see page URL in the address bar like somewebsite.com/some-specific-post. It is the permalink for that specific post.

There are several options that you can use as your permalinks structure, however from an SEO point of view, it is recommended that you choose Post name permalinks structure.

In your WordPress admin area go to Settings>>Permalinks and choose Post name under Common Settings then click on Save Changes.

permalinks settings in wordpress ( how to start a blog in India )

Your blog is setup now and its time that you start publishing posts to your website.

Step #6 – Start writing blog content

Publishing the content on your blog is an art and you must be good at it. In this section, I will share some tips that will help you to publish the posts that will generate traffic. But before that, we need to few important pages to your website.

First, you must have an About page that tells the people who you are, what your blog is about and how are you helping people with your blog.

Another page that you should have on your website is a Contact page. This page must include your contact details or maybe a Contact Form, where people can submit their queries. WP Forms is a great plugin for that.

Your website should have a Privacy Policy page as well. A privacy policy page tells people how you consider the privacy of your visitors. When we use contact forms and other analysis tools on our website, we collect some user data directly or indirectly. A privacy policy page must include how you or your website processes the user data.

How to create a page in WordPress?

To create a page in WordPress, go to Pages in your admin area and click on Add New.

Add a page title and content. If you are using a page builder, you need to click on the page builder button, which will take you to the Page builder editor.

Create your page and publish them. Now your website is live on the internet and anyone can visit your website with your domain name. Here comes the most important part which recurring, and you will be working on it most of your time in your blogging career.

Keyword Research

Now its time that you write your first post. But take a pause and think about what you are going to write about. You can’t just write anything. To become a successful blogger, you need to write the content that your audience loves and want to read for a long time.

Nobody has that kind of power that will help us to know what content people love. Luckily, several tools are available to help you with that and we will talk about some of these tools. These tools are known as Keyword Research tools in the blogging industry. Here are the tools that I use and recommend for keyword research:

Each one of them is great and gives complete insights related to keywords. Use any one of them and find out what people love about your niche. You can even do competitor research with these tools. It will give you complete insights of the keywords used by your competitors. These insights will also help you to understand that how can you compete with them.

By using keyword research or competitor research prepare a list of the topics that you will write in the coming few weeks. From this list choose a topic that you are most confident about and has low keyword difficulty, a smaller number of required backlinks but a good amount of expected traffic. Remember, you need to plan everything if you want to be successful.

If you have been following me with this how to start a blog in India guide till now, you would have a fairly good idea of what you are going to publish as your first post. So, let us find out how to create a Post in WordPress?

How to create a post in WordPress?

In WordPress, you can create posts by going to posts sections in your WordPress admin area. Go to Posts>>Add New.

Pretty simple, right? Creating a page or post is similar, you only need to do it in the different sections.

On the next page add a title for your post. Make sure you have your target keyword in the post title. Then write your post and publish it. But to make sure that your post is optimized for search engines, you need to follow a few basic SEO recommendations.

Basic SEO Guidelines

Keep your post simple and easy to understand.
Use heading and subheadings in your post.
Always try to divide your content into sections and include tables or bullets in these sections.
Keep your post content comprehensive but don’t over-explain something.
Don’t try to include the target keywords everywhere, use them naturally.
Keep your content 100% unique and follow your own writing style.
Don’t ever include repetitive information.
Always avoid using passive voice.

Congratulations! You have your first blog post live now and soon you will have initial traffic on your blog.

Bonus Tips – How to write posts that will generate traffic?

Starting a blog is easy, but to generate traffic to your blog website is not that easy. However, you can make it easy by following some basic things.

Know your audience.
Research on the topics that people are interested in your Niche.
Use the power of keyword research tools.
Research your topic to know as much as possible about it.
Create a post outline before writing the blog post.
Create a compelling headline for your post.
Try to impress your audience with the introduction section of your post.
Add content to your post but remember to use the SEO guidelines from the previous step.
Add images or infographics to support your post content.
Publish posts frequently.
Try to engage with your audience in the comments section or social media handles. Ask them for content ideas.
Try to solve a problem with your posts.

That’s it! You must have successfully started your blog or got your answer for how to start a blog in india?

First, I would like to thank you to stay with me until the end of this post. It was a long post. I have prepared this guide for your benefit and would love to see you being successful at it. If you have been successful to start a blog, let me know in the comments section.

In case, if you are stuck somewhere or need help with how to start a blog in India, feel free to contact me. I would love to help you.

Happy blogging!

Must check these too:

You can follow us on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram for more valuable content about how to start a blog in India.