Although a lot of a blog's success comes from the ongoing effort you put into growing and nurturing it, there are a few things you can do to give it the best possible chance from day one. The checklist below varies from very simple actions through to big decisions and longer term strategies.
Blog Design and Build
- Choose the right kind of blogging platform - You can either install something like Wordpress to the back end of a domain you own, or you can go down the road of a free hosted blogging platform. There's a great roundup of the pro's and con's of all the choices on Problogger. It's very important to think long-term when you make this decision because it can be difficult to move things around in the future. For example, put your blog on a free platform like Blogger and you can't 301 pages if you ever choose to move.
- First impressions are vital - You don't have the clout to get away with dodgy code or bad spelling; make sure everything is as good as it possibly can be in those first few weeks of your blog.
- About page and welcome page - Rather than using that awkward 'first post' to explain who you are and what your blog is about, put a couple of static pages up with some authoritative and friendly information about, well, who you are and what your blog is about. After the post that attracted me, these pages are usually the first place I'll go on a new blog.
- RSS above the fold - Doesn't need much explanation. I do not want to have to search for that icon when I land on a blog.
- Offer email subscription - Old-school? Still absolutely worth doing.
- Be clever with your language - As per this excellent post on Copyblogger, think about your users and the kind of language they'll connect with. If your blog offers free tips or advice, then why not put that as a call-to-action rather than 'subscribe' or 'sign up'.
- Social Media buttons - These aren't right for everyone, but if you're going after the social media crowd then it's worth having a think about how those buttons can be best implemented on your blog. There's actually a fair bit of debate around this in the blogging community...
- Check that on-page SEO best practice is adhered to - You know the rules. If you don't, learn them!
- Check theme across different browsers - I spoke to our developers about this and they reckon that manually testing in each browser is the best plan. If you don't fancy that, I've heard some good things about Browser Shots.
- Install analytics package - There are free and paid options. Just make sure you've got something (like Google Analytics) up and running from day one.
- Get some feedback - Ask a friend to have a look at your blog before you launch it. It's really hard to spot the most obvious of mistakes when you're too involved in something so use a friend to get some perspective. You could also ask for some advice from forums or blogs in your niche. As long as you're open about what you're after, people will generally be very helpful. This has the added perk of informing a new group of people about your upcoming blog.
Blog Launch
You've got everything sorted and you're champing at the blogging bit. Here are a few things to take care of on launch day.- Launch with at least 5 quality posts - If you're link baiting for those first visitors, make sure you have some other content for them to read on the blog. A blog with one fabulous post can seem like a one-hit-wonder. Ideally, you want your visitors to feel like they haven't even got time to read everything in one sitting; they'll be forced to bookmark you and return another time.
- Submit to directories - Once you've got this first content up, submit your blog up to a few directories. Here are three good places to start:
1. Technorati
2. BOTW
3. Blogged
4. Bloggapedia
If you want to read more about this, take a look at this post on SEJ.
- Use Your Contacts - Friends, “friends”, followers, family, contacts... anyone who has ever expressed a passing interest in your life will not object to you telling them about your blog (as long as it has good content on it).
- Use blog URL in email signature - ...make it catchy.
- Get some comments going ASAP - I'm a huge believer in the concept that conversation begets conversation. Get a few comments up on your posts from friends and family (encourage, cajole, threaten, bribe- let your opinionated aunt be opinionated) and watch the party start. Rand has some alternative advice on this (point number 6).
- Consider buying some advertising - Bid on a few keyphrases or buy some Stumble Upon traffic. There's no shame in this. It can be really hard to get your content in front of the right audience, and buying some advertising will really help.
- Is it real news? - If you, or the company or person you're blogging for, is well-known, there's a good chance that a blog is news. You can go old-school or new-school with this: either publish a Press Release and get it on the wires, or contact a top blogger or three to let them spread the news for you- or both!
I'm sure you'll have lots more ideas about how to give your blog the best chance of succeeding from launch day and I'd love to hear about them in the comments.
Another way that has been mentioned a few times around SEOmoz that would be of benefit is trying to be a guestblogger on some authority blogs.
If you are writing in a niche with a few clear market leaders in terms of quality and traffic, getting your articles on there with a "read more advanced anaysis at my blog" link, that works wonders!
It may also be a good idea to conduct interviews or to re-develop content from another prominent blogger (with permission of course) and to contact them for contributions and mentions. This definately helps seed interest and develops a relevant traffic pattern. Likely new sources of content for the blog too!
Great list here, I have one much like it but I was missing a few you had. I still find that many of my users enjoy the email subscription and would suggest people look at their users age before getting rid of the subscription. Site with older users can be unfamiliar with RSS.
About to launch a blog in the next 2 weeks, this is great information.
This is a great post and unfortunately for me about 2 months too late for my blog :)
One thing I'd also suggest, depending of course on your blog niche, is ensuring that when you're doing the browser check that you also check out how your pages view on a mobile device.
Lucy - as you know we followed your advice when starting up our blog recently. In fact, I have to say - having you on the project team was great.
Guest blogging and inviting guest posts is still something I need to figure out though. Its quite a challenge when you are in my niche world of "pest control".
Well Well Well, this is perfectly fitting for us as we just agreed to launch a blog on our website last week.....and I am in charge of putting together "what we need" to do so.
Thanks for this!
Great post, what about blog roll adding and linking between authority blogs?
Thanks for a few more decent blog directories, there seems to be around 10-20 that provide some benefit...
Excellent list. It's always amazing how much the basics matter and how often we forget them.
Lucy,
This is a great and very informative blog. I know that this will be a re-read for me because I am about to launch a new blog! I will stay connected because you are a woman of wisdom!
Thanks for sharing!
pchambers
good advise, thanks
Thanks guys, this helps a lot.
Great Info!!
Fantastic Blog Launch check list - I will gladly give to my clients too at SimpleSEM.com.
Great advice thank you Lucy, I'm about to set up my own blog in the near future - so will follow these points when I do. That's when I can find the time!
Good post Lucy!
This pretty much mirrors my own blog launch strategy. It's also great to announce the launch on other social media profiles (in some cases at least) to drive some more visitors in the early days.
Go conversation!
Very good advice. I follow many of these steps whenever I launch a new blog.
The most important thing is to have a PLAN for the blog. What are you going to do with it, what's the long term goal? What types of content will it have? How will you monetize? Etc.
Great post, Lucy.
We've also found it helpful to enable autodiscovery when setting up a new blog.
I'm in the same situation as KBolsinger - 2 months too late, but still an interesting read, plus I've picked up a few tips. Nice work Lucy.
I definitely agree about getting analytics in place immediately to judge your success and understand where your audience is, but be careful, it can get addictive!
Another useful tool to distribute your blog is https://pingomatic.com/
Lou_geek
Thanks, Lou_geek,
I just used that to submit our blog. I am new to this whole blog thing. We just started our new blog at www.fast411.com or blog.fast411.com and the employees are getting ready to have their own assignments. We hope this will be a great way to stay in contact wioth our customers.
This is a very nice overview. I may ditch my blog and start new. I don't get any traffic anyway.
Thank you Lucy.
BTW, BOTW does not list blogs in their main directory and makes you wait until you have 6 months of posts before they will list you in their blog directory. I would recommend waiting the 6 months before submitting so you do not waste your submission fee.
This is a great list! Especially important (not that all points covered aren't important) is the commenting on other blogs. Getting out and commenting, offering feedback, responding to those who respond to you...all very critical. Thanks, Lucy!