I decided to write this blog post today because I have been getting a lot of people asking me how to setup a blog and it seems to hold a lot of people up when it comes to tapping into search engines. Or sometimes I see a lot of people deciding to take what they think is a shortcut and post their articles on blogger or wordpress.com. Now before I get into showing you how to get everything set up in 3 minutes I want to give you a few good reasons why you should decide to host your own blog instead of using typepad, wordpress.com or blogger.

When you install wordpress on your own server you get:

1. Full control over the design in the future or right now.
2. Unlimited plugins you can install.
3. You own the authority you create, this is huge when you are going to spend time building authority to your blog you should be in control of where your authority is directed.
4. You can sell your site for more money if you choose.
5. You look more professional

I’m sure their are a bunch more that I forgot please add them to the comments if you can come up with a few more I forgot and I’ll add them in.

Ok so now that you know why you need to host your blog lets talk about what you are going to need to do.

1. pick a domain name 2. pick a server to host your blog 3. install wordpress on your blog 4. install a wordpress theme on your blog

I recommend using bluehost because it’s only $5.95/month allows you to do all 4 of these steps easily in 3 minutes and it is super simple.

Now before you click on the link to go to bluehost to set up your blog i want to make sure you think about the domain you choose. Selecting your domain name can strongly impact your search engine rankings. If your domain name has your primary keywords that you are targeting in it people tend to link to your like this Keyword blog by ryan hache or just link to you with your keyword because it is the name of your blog. The reason this is important is because each time someone links to you with your keyword in the anchor text you get a bump in rank from the search engines.

Example: If you were making a dog training blog and your domain was bestdogtraining.com a lot of people would link to you with best dog training as their anchor text or “the text in their link”..

Your other choice is to try and get your name. this is a popular choice because it allows you to brand yourself over and over. It also secures your name in google so you are the only thing that shows up when someone googles your name. This can be great after you become a household name

Ok so lets get started:

1. Go to bluehost.com or click my affiliate link to help support the blog at no cost to you
2. click the sign up button
3. pick a domain name
4. enter your account information to get started
5. when you login for the first time scroll to the bottom where you will find an icon that says install wordpress. ITS THAT EASY!

Resources:
If you want to make your blog look really professional you can use woo themes to pick a wordpress theme designed by some of the best designers online! I use a woo theme called “fresh news”