If already started your own blog or a website this is what you have to expect after 3 months of blogging.
In the first month of blogging
There are some things you have to do first. Most are technical and have to be done only once. Some are need to be done on daily basis.
Day 1. You’ve started your own blog.
Bought a domain (and hosting), set up a CMS, create site structure, important pages, about the site info, contact page, policies etc. Have wrote few posts.
Don’t forget setting SSL protocol for your domain, so it will go through a Secure Server Layer starting with HTTPS:// instead not secured HTTP protocol. This is good for SEO and improves your site credibility.
Another thing is to go to Google Search Console and set your website property eg. domain and/or adding a prefered version of your site (with HTTPS: followed with or without WWW – this is up to you which but must use HTTPS).
Signing up Google Search Console let your site visible in Google search. Hmmm… not exactly. Your site will be visible in the search but signing and setting your website will speed the process and get your site indexed fast.
Day 2 – 7.
If your site is running on wordpress I’m sure you’ve changed the default theme and added few plugins.
Theme and plugins
Default theme is lightweight and will workĀ but look too ordinary. You’ll have to find a better theme and customize it to your needs and to look exactly like you want and have functionalities you need.
When it come to plugins, not are plugins are equal and combination of some just doesn’t work and will mess with the blog look and functionality. Believe me, We’ve been there, installing plugins (especially those related to cache, security, database cleanup and backup and SEO) can cause trouble sometimes resulting in theme crushed, meta tags disappear, incorrect linking , duplicate posts etc. All these can undermine your SEO efforts and will cost you time (and money) to fix it. So better fix it now then later while there is still little content and relatively easy to navigate through your posts.
Some necessary plugins that you must have are:
- Yoast SEO (probably most widely used SEO plugin trusted by millions)
- WP Fastest Cache (lightweight cache plugin). May use others but please use only one to
- All in One WP Security (keeps your wordpress site secured from attackers)
- Google Site Kit (for analytics includes Google analytics + Google Adsense)
- Advanced ads (this is the plugin that enable you to show ads)
- Classic editor (will switch the modern but not too practical block editor into familiar old fashion editor)
If need more functionality: landing page, forms, widgets, social sharing or something else, or need to disable comments, author or post dates, will need few more plugins to do that.
It is advised to sign up and set up for Google Analytics but you might choose to use WP statistics plugin instead if don’t want to rely solely on Google for traffic stats.
Create a website structure
This mean you need to create a menu with your pages and categories. Categories are by far most important in a site structure and will improve SEO and internal linking making your site more credible if well structured.
Create necessary pages: about page, contact, privacy, policies, etc. You’ll be asked for some later if plan to use third party services.
Create few posts. Actually create as much as you can. Ideally publish a new post every day or 2 in day if you can.
These are the things you must do in the first week of blogging.
Week 2: Focus on content
Start writing posts on a daily basis. Don’t have to post daily but make sure you have a new post ready in 2-3 days. A blog post is not only text. Have to create graphics and videos if can. There are free tools for that and AI can help with creating images and speed up the process.
Although Ai is great for image creation, try to stay away of using to write your posts (if you can). You’ll be tempted to use it to write the posts for you but Google can detect it is created artificially and may not rank it so well. Instead ask ChatGPT or some other to suggest a paragraph or two or a list of subject/titles you can use with prior modification by your side.
If don’t have idea what to write about check the categories you’ve created and then check what is trending online and it is related to the subjects you cover. There are tools for that but they are a subject for another time.
Week 3: Test your site performance
Test your website speed. If your blog is loaded in 3 seconds or less its great and don’t have to change anything. If loads in more then 3 seconds then you’ll have to install and use a cache plugin to cache the content, minify code and optimize images. Using a CDN (Content Delivery Network) for images can speed up a site a bit. Changing a theme might help also.
Test again. If there is some improvement you’re on the right path.
Another thing is to test your onsite SEO performance. Great tool is SEO analyzer from AIOSEO that will give an insight of your site onsite SEO and ways to improve it.
Week 4: Create your social media profiles
Social media are great way to drive traffic to your blog. Open account on most popular: Facebook, Twitter (X), Pinterest, Instagram, TikTok…
Set your profiles, add avatars and bio. If possible insert link to your homepage.
Grow your audience. More followers = more traffic.
You can share your blog posts directly on social media or create content just for them. Second one is a bit more complicated, but you can repurpose your images and videos in half an hour. Believe me it will worth the effort. Try to be constantly present on social media and post something at least 2 times a day on a social media of your choice and of course the one that delivers most views.
After 2 months of blogging
After a month you’ll get your first 100 visitors (or maybe 100.000). Depends of your content, strategy, time and budget invested.
Either way, you need to post constantly (at least once post daily or in 2 days), both on your blog and your social media profiles driving visitors back to your site. Social media is a free way to get visitors. SEO is also free and works on long term so worth investing in creating evergreen content and building backlinks to grow your SEO and drive visitors to your blog.
Backlinks building
Backlinks can be acquired in different ways which will not be discussed now, but you must have as much as possible. Learn how to build backlinks and schedule at least 1 hour every day for building backlinks.
Don’t be disappointed if you get somewhat 10-20 visitors a day. And please stop checking the analytics every 2 hours. It will change nothing just distracting you from creating new stuff and other related tasks.
Monetizing your content
You can add affiliate links in your posts that are related to your content from a day 1 of blogging if you wish but now is maybe the exact time to start if didn’t done yet.
If thinking to monetize your blog by showing ads it is too early and don’t even think about it if not have 20-50 posts already. If you have not achieved to create this amount try to keep up in the next month and try with AdSense first as it doesn’t have minimal traffic requirements as most other advertisingĀ networks have but is a bit hard to be approved and start showing ads on your blog.
After 3 months of blogging
Till now you probably have 20 to 50 posts created. Difference in traffic received between 20 and 50 posts is very distinctive. Either way your blog may reach 100 visitors a day within 3 months of blogging. If not, don’t worry. Keep posting and sharing your contents and continue with link building.
SEO and SEM
Your SEO metrics have surely rise up till now to some 15 DA / PA 20+ meaning you’re on the right path. But if you want to grow traffic more and see your numbers going up, using free methods to get traffic is just not enough. SEO (Search Engine Optimization) is just the free part of SEM (Search Engine Marketing) and marketing is a paid promotion. Be prepared to start a marketing campaign. Set your marketing budget first and go with Facebooks ads first as Google ads may be too costly for now. There are many other places to start paid ads but these 2 are most widely used.
Revisit and improve older posts
Since you have new content posted on daily basis, this means you are forgetting about the older posts. Something that most SEO experts “forget” to tell is that inlinks – the links from one post linking to a content into another post/s on the same website counts as links and more you interlinked posts and pages you have, your onsite and overall SEO will rank better.
Check and read all the posts you have in the past 3 months or so. Check if some are on similar topics. Ask yourself if they can link each other and create the links and anchors. This will greatly improve your blog navigation, site structure and number of links.
Create a strategy for more content
Concentrate your efforts on content creation. Make a checklist and schedule of blogging tasks you need to do daily. Write this somewhere or put it in a spreadsheet or notepad. It is essential to stay organized.
Sooner or later you’ll run out of ideas what to write and create next (it’s the writers block). Make a content strategy and write down topic ideas for future posts.
This is what should be done in the first three months of blogging.
If we missed something, please let us know.
For the end, here is the shorter version of this post as an infographic.
If you loke it, get this infographic created by the NonCon Team