Mainly because of 2 reasons SG have stopped operations in India:

1. Poor performance indicators
2. Regulatory and tax complexities

Unfortunately, as per Siteground, due to a combination of poor performance indicators and the growing regulatory complexities in some regions including India, it has become ineffective to continue doing business there.

1. Poor performance indicators

Siteground closely monitors KPIs such as an accounts’ lifetime span, account value, and renewal rates, which determine the ROIs from their services in a particular region.

Unfortunately, the latest analysis indicates that overall, the sales coming from India have deteriorating KPIs, including among others alarmingly low renewal rates, higher cancellation rate, and short life span of the accounts.

2. Regulatory and tax complexities

Another negative trend that Siteground has been monitoring in India and several others is the heavier regulations and growing tax complexities that impose an additional financial and bureaucratic burden on them.

All these factors impose a growing financial risk for them and they can no longer guarantee the sustainability of the hosting services in the long run.

That is why they have taken the hard decision to discontinue operations in India and several others.

Looking for the best WordPress hosting in India in 2024?

Well, look no more. Siteground is sure one of the best web hosting service providers in India. And I am not just saying, it is the best I have used for my WordPress blogs and websites that are targeted to India.

Read this Siteground India review and decide for yourself.

However, if you’re looking for a budget-friendly hosting provider then read these reviews instead: A2 Hosting India Review or Bluehost Review. 

Anyways, below I have also shared a list of the best WordPress hosting providers in India for a blogger:

The Best WordPress Hosting in India:

1. A2hosting – Another company that accepts payment in INR, and has servers in Asia; that makes them a very good choice for an Indian blogger. I have been using their services, and trust me it is very good. Checkout A2hosting Plans
2. Bluehost – This is one of the WordPress recommended web hosting providers. I haven’t personally tried them yet, but I have heard great reviews about them. Checkout Bluehost Plans
3. Hostgator – Very good for new bloggers. If you’re looking for cheap WordPress hosting in India then look no further. it is affordable, you get unlimited disk space, they have servers in India, and charges are comparatively less and the best thing is you can pay in INR. Checkout Hostgator Plans
4. Inmotion Hosting – A little expensive for a newbie. But their services are great. So, if you can shake your budget a little higher then you can surely go with this one. I had bought Inmotion Hosting for a client, and I haven’t got any complaints ever. Checkout InMotion Plans
5. Dreamhost – Another WordPress recommended hosting. One of my niche sites is hosted on this hosting. So, my personal recommendation after Siteground, go for it without thinking much. Checkout Dreamhost Plans
6. Siteground – SG used to be my first recommendation, even WordPress itself recommends it, along with Bluehost and Dreamhost. With their dedicated WordPress hosting and amazing support, it’s a great pick for anyone.  The only reason I don’t recommend it anymore that’s coz it’s very costly now for a newbie. Checkout Siteground Plans
7. WPengine – this one is a high-end hosting provider which comes with Genesis Framework & 35+ StudioPress Themes. Their services are top-notch. But not recommended for small sites. This is great for a heavy site, maybe an eCommerce site. However, on the second thought, if you have a big budget just go for it, you won’t regret it. Checkout WPengine Plans

Depending on your budget you can pick any of those web hostings, they all are good to my knowledge. But If you want my personal recommendation, then go with A2hosting. This blog is hosted on A2hosting itself; so I am not just saying.

And if you’re a beginner, very tight in budget, you can try any of these hostings as well Bluehost, Hostgator, DreamHost,  or Inmotion Hosting;  they are comparatively cheaper than the Siteground and WPengine.

Okay, now check out the best WordPress hosting plans in India that I recommend from each of the service providers; if you find them expensive then check out their other (starter) plans by visiting the links below.

If you still can’t decide, Instagram me @bloggingventure. I will surely help you out.

Now that you have seen the other hosting providers in India, let’s look at the best-recommended hosting:

Siteground India Review 2024

So, you’re planning to start a WordPress blog or website?

Maybe it’s a blog you want to start or maybe you run a service in your city and now want to take it to the world by using the internet, increase your reach to everyone out there.

But do you know what the basic needs for starting it are?

The first step in starting an online presence is finding a suitable domain name and reliable hosting. A domain is the address of your online website and hosting is a place where all of your data stores and then deliver to your readers or customers.

Finding a domain name is very easy, goto to Namecheap.com, type in the domain name you want to register; if it is available then just follow the on-screen instructions and buy it. That’s it. You don’t need to know anything more.

But while buying hosting, there are a lot of factors that you have to keep in mind. You also have to know about the type of hostings like shared, VPS, Dedicated, cloud, etc.

So, if you’re from India (or anywhere else in the world) and looking for the best WordPress hosting provider for your blog or website then this post is for you.

There are so many hosting providers you will find out there. But not all are good. There are a few dominating the whole website hosting industry for a reason; Performance !!

I hosted my first site on Bigrock.com. After experiencing it, I would never recommend that to anyone.

I have used many of the local hosts as well; mainly for the clients at my job. But never had a good experience with any of those.

Last year when I started this blog I had hosted it on Godaddy.com. I didn’t get what I was expecting.

That’s why after reading so many reviews I decided to move to Siteground. Fast forward to 7 months from then, I am in love with their services.

The best decision ever made. It’s giving me exactly the kind of performance and support I was expecting and needed.

Anyways, today I am going to review by far the best WordPress hosting provider that I have used in my career.

It’s none other than SiteGround. And in this review, I will provide all the required information you want while choosing the right WordPress host.

Well, SiteGround is one of the most famous web hosting companies. SiteGround is known for its always uptime servers, fastest loading time, and 24/7 customer support.

No wonder why WordPress itself officially recommends SiteGround Hosting.

I don’t just say for no reason it’s the best WordPress host for your upcoming project. SiteGround has almost everything that you want from a web host.

Before moving to its features, let’s talk a little about SiteGround.

A brief About Siteground India

SiteGround is a Bulgarian-based hosting company which was founded in 2004 has employed more than 400+ employees.

It has so far hosted almost 800,000 domains worldwide on their servers.

SiteGround has its offices situated in 6 places in Bulgaria, but it has served globally, including India, and has data centers in three continents across Europe, United States, and Asia.

SiteGround provides different types of hosting services such as Shared, Cloud, Dedicated, WordPress, and even reseller hosting. So, you can buy the hosting as per your needs.

Okay, let’s move to the pros and cons of this hosting, and after that, We will talk about if it is worth investing?

Pros and Cons of SiteGround WordPress Hosting India-

Like every other hosting, SiteGround also has some plus and minuses, and today I am going to introduce you to every single one of them.

Let’s start with the pros first.

Pros of SiteGround Hostings-

Uptime-

SiteGround Hosting promises that its servers are 99.79% uptime while many reviews say that it is much better than that. Last year, its hosting had only nine outages, and, it was resolved very quickly as well.

Also, SiteGround doesn’t use any readymade software as they have created their own which checks its hosting every 0.5 seconds.

honingbird.com uptime status since hosting:

Speed –

When someone tries to visit your website, it goes to your host and asks for the files. Now it’s your web host’s duty how fast it sends that files to your viewers.

The thing that works here is the Time to First Byte. It means that what is the quickest time that server takes to send its first byte.

In my test SiteGround performs well for this. The Fastest Time to First Bytes(TTFB) was just 0.390 seconds while accessed honingbird.com from India.

Apart from that, it offers a SuperCacher technology made by SiteGround itself which adds several layers of caching which helps in loading sites faster.

The great part of SiteGround is, it is the only hosting provider that is currently providing this service for shared hostings.

24/7 Top-Notch Customer Support-

Customer support is the thing where SiteGround pays so much attention. It is the reason why they have hired more than 230 people for customer support only.

They offer 24/7 phone, ticket-based, and live chat support. Also, they usually manage more than 1500+ tickets, 800+ phone calls, and 2000+ live chat support daily.

After creating a ticket, in just 15-20 seconds their knowledgeable customer support will connect with you and assist almost every possible question.

Unlike other companies, Siteground doesn’t have any wait time, your calls get picked up right away.

One of the recent incidents that made me love Siteground even more:

I was trying a new plugin, and accidentally I flushed all the cache. Next thing I know my whole site was broken. And unfortunately, I didn’t have any backups.

I deleted the plugin, deactivated all the plugins and reactivated one by one, disabled Cloudflare, and literally tried everything I could. But no luck.

For a moment, I thought I have lost my website and I would have to recreate the whole site again.

My last hope was the Siteground’s support, I initiated a live chat and after trying for one hour the guy on the other side finally brought my site back to normal.

In such situations, an excellent support system is the best thing money can get you; especially, if you’re not technically strong.

High-Performance WordPress Hosting-

Since WordPress is one of the most used content management systems for bloggers, SiteGround has added all the required features for WordPress CMS.

SiteGround has all of the features integrated into its well-managed hosting. That can be the term of speed, optimization, security, customer support, or almost anything that you want.

The great part of SiteGround hosting is they have moved their infrastructure to Google Cloud, which is supported by their own built caching tool SG Optimizer, Cloudflare CDN, and other software that checks their servers regularly to give the best performance at your side.

If I know anything about Google Cloud, is that they are fast, some might say superfast.

With Google Cloud, Siteground is now able to processor all server queries with 40% faster speed. Script executions on all plans have become even more efficient and this results in faster website load and less resource usage for all customers.

Siteground regularly checks for vulnerability and the security of your WordPress site. That’s why they make daily backups of your site for free, so if you face any issue, you can restore that backup and instantly make your site live again.

Free SSL Certificates-

As you know Google is very strict about its user’s security, that is why it is very important to run your site on HTTPS.

So, an SSL certificate is definitely one of the must-have features in any WordPress or Shared hosting.

And here, SiteGround offers a free SSL certificate from LetsEncrypt. Almost every new user will receive it pre-installed. You just have to enable it from the settings, and that’s it.

Free Site Migration Tool for Existing websites-

Siteground used to provide one free professional site migration done by their experts for each GrowBig and GoGeek hosting plan purchased.

But as of May 20, 2024, all manual migrations have become a paid service of $30USD per site.

Although, in place of the paid service they have now introduced a free automated WordPress transfer tool, called WordPress Migrator. It is available on all plans for free.

I know transferring a site sounds a little bit risky because with a single mistake, you will drop your rankings from SERPs. But with SiteGround, you don’t need to worry at all.

The site migration plugin is very simple to use, and it is being successfully used by hundreds of their customers to move their WordPress sites to SiteGround with just a few clicks.

If you still find it difficult to use the tool, just raise a ticket with their customer support and their smart support team will help you transfer the site.

Free CDN:

Siteground has partnered with Cloudflare to provide a free Content Delivery Network (CDN) service to its customers. A CDN helps speed up your blog’s load time for visitors from different geographical locations.

The most important tasks of a CDN are it speeds up the delivery of the pages or posts of your blog, caches the content, auto-minifies images, exploits RailGun to speed up uncacheable dynamic content, blocks malicious traffic, and even reduces SPAM.

And the most basic way a CDN can help you is – it stores a cached version of your blog/site on many of its servers all across the world. So, whenever a reader visits your blog from anywhere in the world, the CDN loads the site from the closest server to the reader.

For example, if a user tries to access your blog from let’s say, the US, what the CDN will do is it will show the user a fresh cached version of your blog from the US itself, given they have servers in the US. which will tremendously increase the load time of your blog.

The Cloudflare CDN network has 152 locations and is growing.

So, it’s a no-brainer to use a CDN. But it usually costs a lot to signup for a CDN separately and also you’ll need some technical understanding of the tool.

With Siteground you can minimize both, the price and technical hassles.

Free Security Add-On-

SiteGround offers some free security add-ons for their customers. Some of them are IP Address Blocklists, Leech protects, SpamAssassin, SpamExpert, and Hotlink Protection.

Almost every plan offered by SiteGround comes with free LetsEncrypt SSL included. Also, you can add HackAlert monitoring which checks if your site has been hacked or compromised.

Although The HackAlert is not free it charges around $1 per month but it’s worth the buck.

Easy E-commerce Installation-

If you are buying hosting for your e-commerce business, then SiteGround can be the perfect choice for you. Installing e-commerce software is a little bit difficult for those who don’t have enough knowledge of it.

But SiteGround offers you more than 18 e-commerce applications and that too with just one click install feature. Isn’t that sound great?

Also, they provide servers in many locations, free CDN, and advanced caching solutions, and for security purposes, their client accounts are isolated by a custom solution.

This means even if, let’s hypothetically presume, one of your sites gets hacked despite Siteground’s strict security; your other sites will still be secured.

Transparent Pricing-

The plans for SiteGround are not very cheap, but if we talk about its features, investing in SiteGround worths every penny.

The plans of SiteGround start at just $6.99 and vary according to your need. Investing in a good hosting like SiteGround makes total sense because you can make $$$ from its cheapest plans itself.

30 Days Money Back Guarantee-

Like other hosting companies, SiteGround doesn’t offer any free trial, but they offer a 30-day money-back guarantee.

So you can test their services, and if you like them you can keep on using them or else, you can simply raise your hand and get your money back.

But, you have to follow a few conditions before applying for your money back. Below I have mentioned a few of them, but  I will suggest you visit their website to find the full detailed conditions.

• You must have to post a service termination request through the User Area of your hosting.
• Initial orders for the hosting services are going to cover only within thirty days from the day you have started your plan.
• The renewal orders will not cover the money-back policy.
• If you bought a domain from SiteGround, you can’t apply for the amount of domain or the WhoIs protection. This refund policy is only applicable for hostings.
• If you bought any dedicated or cloud hosting service or any paid support, then you can’t apply for money back. Also, other third-party services will not be covered by the money-back guarantee.
• Your Reseller packages will only be covered if you will cancel the whole hosting package. This guarantee does not apply to the termination of a single account in a reseller package, either.

So, those were some of the terms and conditions that you have to consider before buying hosting from SiteGround or before applying for their money-back policies.

PHP7 Supports-

If you are a blogger, then you must have to know that WordPress needs MYSQL and PHP to run blogs. But many of the web hostings are still using PHP 5.6 whereas PHP 7.1 is the latest one.

If you upgrade from PHP 5.6 to PHP 7.1, you can boost your website performance by almost double. You can upgrade it in SiteGround using its free plugin, SG Optimiser.

Global Oriented-

The last professional advantage with SiteGround is they contain their global orientation.

SiteGround is mainly based in Bulgaria, but they have their clients worldwide. Also, they accept almost all international currencies such as USD, AUD, GBP, EUR, etc. Also, they have multiple toll-free lines for their customer support with no wait time.

Compare The Plans

Cons of SiteGround Hosting

Like any other web hosting company, SiteGround also has its downsides too. So, here are the cons that I have faced while using SiteGround Hosting.

Overall pricing-

If you compare SiteGround with other hostings, you will see that it is a little bit costly. Well, I am not talking about its introductory prices.

I am talking about its renewal prices, as it costs around $24.99 per month for the Startup plan (a Hosting plan offered by SiteGround) which is limited to 10000 visitors/month and supports only a single domain.

Although, you can still get a discount by initiating a support call and ask the team for a discount on your renewal.

The intro price is pretty impressive, but the renewal is a little bit costly compared to other hosting companies out there.

I know that you are paying for the quality, but still in my opinion, if you consider other reputed hosting providers like A2Hosting or Bluehost, SiteGround is obviously costly.

Plan Limitations-

If you look at their plans, you will consider the fact that their plans are not managed properly. for instance, if you look at its StartUp plan, you’ll see that they are providing 10GB of Storage and 10000 visits per month; which is not managed well.

If you are a newbie blogger, probably a 5 GB web space would be enough, given you use fewer images and compress them properly, but you need a server that can handle around 30-50k visitors per month.

And on the other hand, if you have a media-rich blog then it is not that good as you might need more web space to store images, audios, and probably videos.

However, the good thing about SG hosting is the number of visits per month can be increased by enabling the SuperCacher that comes with the higher Siteground plans.

According to Siteground, with the SuperCacher enabled, the server can handle up to 230000 visits per month. Which is huge at this price.

I know that no host can provide you with unlimited web space or unlimited bandwidth, but they can manage it according to the needs of the customers.

That’s a downside I believe Siteground needs to work on. Otherwise, it’s always my first recommendation.

Setup fee for Monthly Billing-

If you are thinking to choose the billing cycle to be monthly, then there is a setup fee that you have to pay. This setup fee starts from $14.95 depending on the plan you pick.

But if you buy their hosting for a long period, like for a year then you don’t need to pay the setup fee. Which is in any case recommended.

And besides, you get the one-month money-back guarantee; so if you’re not happy with their services you can leave within 30 days.

So, my point is, I recommend you to buy its annual plan and if you don’t like it, simply raise for money return. But make sure that you have read the terms and conditions of their 30 days return policy carefully.

Again, going for a long period is anytime a good idea.

Compare The Plans

SiteGround Hosting Plans, Pricing, and Other Facts

SiteGround offers many types of web hosting such as dedicated servers, shared hostings (WordPress hosting), cloud web hosting, and reseller hostings.

Since I have only used shared hosting or the so-called WordPress hosting, I am going to talk about those plans only.

Before we go any farther, here’s a thing – Siteground doesn’t support Indian Rupee (INR). So, you will have to pay them in USD; which is not an issue nowadays.

However, that could be an issue if you don’t have a credit card or international payments enabled debit card.

No worries I have a solution too.

Sign up for a FREE zero balance Kotak 811 bank account. It hardly takes 5 minutes to open an account with the bank, you just need an Aadhar Card and a Pan Card in your name.

Just download the app from the Google play store or Apple app store and sign up with your details.

Once signed up, you will get a virtual debit card instantly which could be used to purchase not only Siteground hosting but anything you wish to buy online (including Facebook ads).

Sign up For Kotak 811

SiteGround offers three different types of Shared or WordPress hosting plans.

Let me get you through all of those:

You can also check out the detailed comparison of Siteground Plans Here >>

StartUp Plan- 

It is the first, and the cheapest plan of SiteGround shared hosting which costs around $14.99 per month. Good for beginners but before you make any decision check out the other plans as well.

Although for the first time, you can get it for the introductory price, which is around $6.99 per month.

You might still manage to get a 20% bargain on your renewals if you talk to the support team.

This plan comes with 10GB of web space and it’s perfect to start a blog or website with around 10,000 visitors per month.

Apart from that, It comes with all the basic features included such as 24/7 customer support, Free LetsEncrypt SSL, Unlimited Emails and Database, Free CDN, Free Daily Backups, and Free Site Migration Tool.

Buy This Plan

GrowBig Plan –

The GrowBig plan comes with 20 GB of web space and can easily handle more than 25000 visitors per month.

It is good for a single more heavily trafficked website or multiple average-size websites.

The great thing about this plan is that in addition to the essential features you get a few premium features that the StartUp plan lacks.

The pricing is $9.99 for new customers while for renewal, you will be charged $24.99 per month. Just like the above plan you can get a 20% to 30% discount by getting in touch with the support team.

Also, the SuperCacher comes in three layers which means the loading time of a website will be faster than most websites on the internet. Apart from that, the other features are the same as StartUp plans.

Buy This Plan

GoGeek Plans-

If you’re planning to host a high-trafficked or resource-intensive website or average-sized e-commerce website then this is the plan for you.

Also if you’re planning to sell hosting to your clients, you can use this plan from Siteground which comes with white label rights.

GoGeek plans cost $14.99 per month for new users while the renewal will charge $39.99 per month. Again, you can get a 20% to 30% discount by initiating a chat with the support team.

This plan also comes with unlimited domain hosts. This plan provides 40 GB of web space and can easily manage more than 1,00,000 visits per month.

The plan comes with almost the same packed-up services listed above in the other hosting plans, plus few more productive features.

So, those were the shared hosting plans offered by SiteGround, and they are good though.

Buy This Plan

My Recommendation: Go with the GrowBig or GoGeek plan, especially if you’re planning multiple sites & thinking long term.

Why?

Siteground Startup vs Grow Big and GoGeek

Opportunity to host multiple websites – the StartUp plan allows you to host only one website, whereas if you’re interested in hosting more than one website under the same account, the higher hosting platforms would be a better choice.

SuperCacher – Only level 1 cache available with the Startup Plan – this is an in-house tool developed by Siteground that manages to trigger the website speed several times, and also increase the Google ranking and helps you with the SEO optimization. With the Growbig or GoGeek plan, you get the level 3 SuperCacher.

Priority Support – even though Siteground has an amazing response time on each channel – Phone, Live Chat, Ticketing System, their GrowBig and GoGeek clients are handled with a priority which might be something you should consider before making the buying decision.

So, my best suggestion is, buy any of the higher plans and buy them for at least 2 or 3 years (at the same rate as the first year).

Check out the Detailed Plans

The post Siteground India Review 2024: Best WordPress hosting in India? appeared first on Blogging Venture.

Well, then look no further.

Today I am reviewing one of the most famous and affordable web hosting for a blogger, especially if you’re from India.

On the other hand, if you are already familiar with Bluehost’s Services and you’re here just looking for a discount link then here it is: Bluehost India Deal

Bluehost, it is one of the most popular web hosting solutions company. They offer services such as shared hosting, WordPress hosting, VPS hosting, dedicated hosting, and WooCommerce hosting. Bluehost was founded by Matt Heaton and Danny Ashworth in Provo, Utah, and it is now owned by the Endurance International Group.

Recommended by everyone, from WordPress themselves to Pat Flynn of Smart Passive Income, to John Lee Dumas of Entrepreneur on Fire.

Bluehost has become synonymous with web hosting and has effectively become the world’s go-to web hosting service!

AN INTRODUCTORY BRIEF of BLUEHOST:

It is one of the 20 largest web hosts, collectively hosting well over 2 million domains. Bluehost’s facilities are world-class. The company operates its servers in-house in their 50,000 square feet Utah facility, employing over 750 people.

Their servers are powered by PHP 7, HTTP/2, and NGINX+ caching. They have their own custom-built 20,000-square-foot data centre with enough backup generators to power a city!

Bluehost was one among those studied in the analysis of web-based hosting services in collaborative online learning programs.

Since its founding in 2003, Bluehost has continually innovated new ways to deliver on its mission to empower people, to fully harness the web, by providing comprehensive tools to millions of users throughout the world so anyone, novice or pro, can get on the web and thrive with their web hosting packages.

THEIR UNPARALLELED COMMITMENT TO WORDPRESS:

They proudly state, “We believe in WordPress and our partnership has allowed us to support it for over 10 years. Our in-house team consists of dedicated WordPress experts to provide the best customer support whenever you need answers. We even dedicate engineers on our development staff to full-time WordPress CORE development. No one powers WordPress better or understands it more than we do. Bluehost is constantly driven to be the number one web solution provider.”

CORPORATE HISTORY:

Matt Heaton first conceived Bluehost in 1996. However, he first created two other web hosts, 50megs.com and 0catch.com, before finally settling on Bluehost in 2003.

It was in 2010, that Bluehost was acquired by Endurance International Group. In June 2011, company founder Matt Heaton announced on his blog, that he was stepping down as CEO to focus on the company hosting platform’s design and technical structure, while COO Dan Handy took over as CEO.

In January 2015, Endurance International Group appointed Mike Olson as CEO of Bluehost, while Dan Handy moved to enterprise-wide mobile development for small businesses.

Suhaib Zaheer is the current GM/SVP/CEO of Bluehost, since 2017.

Bluehost is now officially located in Burlington, MA.

Alright, now let’s get into their detailed specifications to get a clear idea of how great, average or poor this hosting service appeals to us.

Let’s begin with the edges first…

BLUEHOST INDIA PROS:

CONSISTENTLY DEPENDABLE UPTIME 99.99%:

What is your top priority when searching for a dependable web host?

For most entrepreneurs /web developers, it is bound to be the ‘uptime’. Uptime is undoubtedly the most important aspect when choosing a web host because after all if your site is down, how do your users even access your product/service?

Luckily though, it’s hard to find a hosting provider with better uptime than Bluehost.

Bluehost offers a super-competitive uptime guarantee of 99.98% and is known to post month after month of 100% uptime. If and when the service goes down, it is only for minutes or even seconds.

While there are a few complaints from users about several server outages and a server team that is slow to respond, a great number of Bluehost users claim that the company has a solid server performance, praising their stability and reliability.
And according to whom, Bluehost scores a 99.99% uptime on average and occasionally outdoes itself to deliver a 100% uptime.

The company itself also allows you to cancel your hosting agreements because of downtime without having to pay any cancellation fees.

(However, you should keep a check on the way you are designing your website. A lot of WordPress users end up using too many plugins, which might eventually lead to a server crash.)

RESPECTABLE SPEED

The speed of your website is more important today than ever before. Users’ expectations have grown and patience shrunk. If a website loads too slowly, they would rather move on to the next site, than wait a few more seconds. Even if they don’t quit, the slow load would definitely have a bad impression on their overall image of your site.

Furthermore, Google has clearly stated that the speed of a site will affect its ranking in the search results. So in order to keep both your users and Google happy, your site speed needs to be paid due attention to. Hence after uptime, your host’s page loading times are the second most important thing that can literally make or break your site’s success.

In spite of having an acceptable speed, in 2017, Bluehost made some updates and changes, focusing on increasing its page-load speed. And today, they rank among the top 10 web host providers in terms of speed, offering load times that hover in the low 400s (milliseconds) and sometimes even less.

FREE DOMAIN WITH FREE SSL CERTIFICATE

Bluehost waives off the domain name registration fees when you sign up for a web hosting service. Even if you pick up the most basic package for as low as $2.95, you are entitled to get a free domain (for a year). This obviously comes in pretty handy, when you are just starting a small business with a tight budget.

The best indication of a secure website is an SSL (Secure Sockets Layer) certificate. SSL certificates let users know that any information they share on your site will be safe, and these certificates are indicated by the padlock icon and the “HTTPS” at the beginning of your domain.

So along with the free domain, you also get a free SSL certificate, which enables encrypted communication between a web browser and a web server, meaning your website will be more trustworthy and secure at no extra charge.

DOMAIN NAME EMAIL ADDRESS

When it comes to building brand awareness and establishing trust and relationships in business, a domain name email address can go a long way.

When you purchase a hosting plan from Bluehost, you get an option to sign up for your own domain name email address. These domain name email plans start at just a few dollars per month and add significant value to your hosting plan.

FREE PREMIUM CLOUDFLARE CDN

Here are the benefits that you’ll get for Free, which usually costs $20/month:

Site Performance Improvement- CloudFlare has proxy servers located throughout the globe.  Proxy servers act as an intermediate.

What it basically does is when a user let’s say from India tries to access your site, now instead of loading your site directly from a Bluehost’s server in the US (which will take more time due to the distance), Bluehost will connect the user to a Cloudflare proxy server that is located closer to him/her, which will result in fast delivery.

So, it’s a great feature to have. And the best part is Bluehost is providing it for FREE with any hosting package you chose.

Having this feature will visibly improve the page load speed of your site because the cached content will be delivered from the closest caching box rather than directly off the Bluehost’s server.

Since Proxy servers increase the speed of your site your visitors are likely to stay on your site for a longer period of time.  Which will eventually improve your Google Search Rankings.

Bot and Threat Protection- CloudFlare uses data from Project Honey Pot, other third-party sources,  and its community to spot malicious threats online and stop the attacks before they even get to your site.

Spam Comments Protection- CloudFlare leverages data from third-party resources to scale back the number of spam comments on your site.

Alerting Visitors of Infected Computers- CloudFlare alerts human visitors that have an infected computer to wash up the malware or virus on their machine. The visitor will have to enter a CAPTCHA to get access to your site.

Offline Browsing Mode: For whatever reason, if a Bluehost server is unavailable, the visitors should still be able to access your site since CloudFlare serves the visitor a page from its cache.

Lower CPU Usage- As fewer requests hit the Bluehost server, this lowers the general CPU usage of your account.

New Site Stats- There are tools that help you analyze human traffic coming to your site, but no insight into bots, crawlers, and threats. With Cloudflare, now you can analyze the mysterious traffic that is coming to your site.

BLUEHOST INDIA FOR WORDPRESS

Bluehost is a recommended host by WordPress itself, and is currently hosting more than 850,000 WordPress websites!

If you’re worried about WordPress being a little complicated to use, BlueHost is the solution. Its seamless integration with WordPress.org makes hosting your site a piece of cake, saving you time, money, and a whole lot of stress!

Learning how to install WordPress with Bluehost is extremely straightforward since it comes with a one-click WordPress set-up to get your site up and running in no time (and effort).

Already satisfied and want to buy the hosting right now? 

Here is the link: Bluehost India Deals

WOOCOMMERCE HOSTING – Bluehost India Review

Bluehost has partnered with WooCommerce to provide a complete shopping cart solution to online businesses.

WooCommerce is powered by WordPress which is one of the most trusted and versatile website builders today. And with the collective services of WordPress, WooCommerce, and Bluehost, users have everything they need to build their dream sites.

Especially so because it is equally suitable for novice and experienced webmasters alike. Even a beginner will be at ease building their stores with the straightforward point-and-click interface.

While knowledgeable pros will appreciate having the freedom to edit their sites’ PHP and implement more advanced customizations at the back end.

Another exciting part is, that you get a promotional offer of Google advertising credits with every new Bluehost account. Enabling you to start driving traffic and hopefully get some sales in a matter of hours with your new store!

EASY TO USE CPANEL

Most of the cPanels implemented by hosting companies are more or less the same. Though some of these hosts are good only for advanced users.

LiquidWeb, for example, is great if you know what you are doing. But they lack a user-friendly interface for non-technical people. So if you are a beginner, you would have a tough time getting your site live without support.

But Bluehost has made a few nifty little tweaks and upgrades to make their version simple to use for website newbies. And that is their real selling point. They enable complete novices to build great websites in a jiffy. The very layout of Bluehost’s control panel makes it incredibly easy to use, so much so that you just need to point and click in most cases.

It also has features for advanced users, but beginners too can easily install and start WordPress there. Or, they can use the Bluehost website builder tools too (such as Drupal, Weebly, etc.) to start with a template that they can customize by simply dragging and dropping.

As an added bonus, Bluehost users enjoy access to in-depth support via their self-help and how-to resources.

SOUND SECURITY

Every Bluehost plan comes with a free SSL certificate, so you don’t have to worry about your visitors getting warned, about your site being insecure. For even advanced security, you can also get a premium SSL certificate for $49.99/year. (This would be a worthy investment for eCommerce sites or others where users will be logging in with a username and password and providing sensitive information like their credit card details.)

Bluehost uses SiteLock to scan your website daily for viruses and malware and also performs 24/7 network monitoring on its company servers.

This company does not reveal information about its data centres, their locations, or their security measures, in order to protect its infrastructure. However, what the Bluehost website does state is, that they have a UPS power backup, diesel generator power backup, and 24/7 network monitoring.

If you opt for their dedicated servers, you’ll get what’s known as “RAID (Redundant Array of Independent Disks) Level 1” support. This means that your data is mirrored to multiple disks which effectively increases the reliability and security of your data.

Bluehost’s security features offer three antispam tools – Apache Spam Assassin, Spam Experts, and Spam Hammer, as well as hotlink protection and Secure Shell access. They also offer Cloudflare, which further enhances the performance and security features.

In addition to going out of its way to ensure the security of your website, Bluehost also allows you the freedom to take whatever security measures you want. You can create IP address blacklists, password-protected directories, manage private keys and digital certificates, create filters for email accounts/users, and so on.

Bluehost includes more than enough security measures to get a standard website off the ground, but if you’re looking to scale your site or sell online, you may want to invest in a few extras. They offer a lot of additional security measures to choose from, but they can add up to get expensive, so choose wisely.

BLUEHOST CLOUDFLARE WITH ADVANCED DDOS PROTECTION

Bluehost protects your site with a cloud-based, always-on DDOS protection, powered by the intelligence harnessed from Cloudflare’s always learning global network. Cloudflare’s layered security approach combines multiple DDOS mitigation capabilities into one service, preventing disruptions caused by bad traffic, while allowing good traffic, keeping websites, applications, and APIs always available and performing.

BACKUPS ARE COMPLIMENTARY

Your data is backed up. But the only possible downside to Bluehost’s security is that the company does backups at its own discretion.

Therefore, for full-on security, you must do your own daily backups. In their knowledge base, they clearly state, “We do offer complimentary backups for our customers. They are created on a daily, weekly, and monthly basis. These backups are not guaranteed in any way. We highly recommend all Bluehost customers create and manage their own backups.”

And for this purpose, Bluehost recommends that you use the control panel to access the third-party software tool called Site Backup and set them up to be stored offline. You can also purchase the “Pro” version of Site Backup for a fee.

24/7 CUSTOMER SUPPORT

Bluehost’s knowledgeable in-house, expert team is always on hand to help answer your questions, get you started, and grow your presence online. They offer 24/7 telephone support, online webchat, and a knowledgebase— that maintains a huge library of articles, FAQs, step-by-step guides, and video tutorials.

Also in order to ensure that you get the fastest possible response, they have categorized their team for you to choose from.
‘The Sales team’ helps those with general inquiries, potential, and new customers.

‘The Technical Support team’ is who you want to talk to if you have any support-related questions.

‘The Account Management team’ handles inquiries related to billing, the terms of service, and account verifications.
(Please note that Bluehost’s normal 24/7 phone support is reduced to 8am to 9pm EDT during the COVID19 crisis.)

INEXPENSIVE PLANS

Bluehost’s cheapest shared hosting plan starts at Rs.199/- per month, (and renews at Rs.499/- pm). WordPress optimized hosting also starts at the same Rs.199/- pm, while WooCommerce hosting starts at Rs.459/- pm. VPS plans are Rs.1159/- pm to start with, and dedicated plans are Rs.6499/- pm.

All Bluehost plans come with discounts for new customers. In fact, you can save up to a whopping 64% per month with their promotional offers! (Like most other hosting providers, Bluehost offers discounted prices for new customers only. This reduced price lasts for your first term, and then renews at the regular price once the period is over.)

All the above packages mentioned are monthly prices, for a 36-month contract.

Being totally upfront, Bluehost’s prices aren’t the cheapest in the market. However, it definitely does offer great value for money.

You can also check out the plans on Bluehost’s Site itself; here is the link: Bluehost India Deals

MONEY-BACK GUARANTEE – 30 Days

You can cancel your hosting plan within the first 30 days for a full refund. There would be no questions asked.

Their website quotes, “Your satisfaction is our top priority and we’re confident you’ll be pleased with our services. Still, if you try us and decide your account does not sufficiently meet your needs, you can cancel within 30 days for a refund as follows:

If you cancel within 30 days, you’ll receive a full refund on your hosting service only. The money-back guarantee does not apply to most add-on products, such as domains, given the unique nature of their costs.

If you cancel within 30 days and your plan includes a free domain, there will be a fee to retain that domain. Bluehost will deduct a non-refundable domain fee from your refund, at the regular cost of your domain.

Bluehost does not offer any refunds for cancellations that occur after 30 days.”

OK, so is Bluehost this flawless? Unfortunately, not! Listed below are the disadvantages that come along with their package…

BLUEHOST INDIA CONS

SPEED & UPTIME ARE NOT THE BEST IN THE MARKET

Their speed is fast but not the fastest. Similarly, their uptime is decent but not the best. Well, given its cheap price, these cons can be overlooked.

Although Bluehost is cheap, but not the cheapest. So, if you’re willing to pay some extra bucks then you can always look for other potential hosting options like A2Hosting or Inmotion Hosting, on the basis of performance and loading times.

If Interested you can also read the review of A2Hosting

POOR BACKUP:

Their default backup solution is fairly limited. Plus, they don’t guarantee them and recommend you to do your own daily back-ups. Or get their paid services to solve this hassle.

NO FREE SITE MIGRATION:

Unlike most of their competitors, they would not migrate your site for free. In fact, dedicated IP addresses and website transfer fees on shared hosting plans are overly expensive! This is a bummer since a lot of other hosting services offer at least one site migration, even with their cheapest plans, for absolutely free.

HIGH RENEWAL RATES AND LONG COMMITMENT PERIODS:

The cost of renewal rates on the Basic and Prime plans are over twice the introductory discounted price. Also, in order to avail of the lowest prices, you need to commit to a long period of 3 years (36 months) in a go.

Having done with the cons let’s now look into what plans we have to consider…

BLUEHOST INDIA PLANS & PRICING: A Quick Look

Before we begin, please note that all the prices mentioned below are in USD and for a month’s time (per month/pm).
Each of their plans comes with a 30-day money-back guarantee along with promotional offers/discounts for new customers.

SHARED HOSTING – Bluehost India Review

Bluehost’s shared hosting, which is the most common and cheapest, costs Rs.199 to begin with, and Rs.499/- at renewal. So if you happen to be on a tight budget and need just basic hosting for a single site, shared hosting is your best bet. Though a very limited kind of hosting, it is extremely affordable and works fine for up to a basic level, such as personal, hobby, and brochure sites.

For a WordPress site I recommend their WordPress Hosting; check out below.

You get four shared hosting plans to choose from, each providing different levels of performance and features. The more you pay the more advanced features you get.

Visit Bluehost for further details on the shared hosting plans.

Here is the link: Bluehost India Shared Hosting Deals

WORDPRESS (SHARED & MANAGED) HOSTING – Bluehost India Review

WordPress has been recommending Bluehost to its users since 2005, describing it as “the ultimate WordPress platform” – and it is easy to see why. An incredible amount of features are packed into its plans, to help you build and grow your WordPress site efficiently.

Visit Bluehost for further details on the shared WordPress hosting plans here. You can use the links below to quickly go there.

Bluehost has three managed WordPress plans too, ranging from Rs.199/- to Rs.299/- as discounted starter prices. These plans are best for WordPress users aspiring to go pro.

Visit Bluehost for further details on the managed WordPress hosting plans.

Here are the links: Bluehost India WP Plans & Details

WOOCOMMERCE HOSTING – Bluehost India Review

For those who are selling stuff online Bluehost has three WooCommerce hosting plans too. And you won’t have to splash out your hard-earned money either, with their affordable prices ranging from Rs.459/- to Rs.759/- (with the initial discounts).

Visit Bluehost for further details on the WooCommerce hosting plans.

Here are the links: Bluehost India WooCommerce Plans & Details

VPS HOSTING – Bluehost India Review

VPS hosting is the next step up in both features and price – yes, it costs more, but also comes with better security, speed, and performance. If you have a regular website, this is usually the best type of hosting, that combines sensible prices with solid features.

Visit Bluehost for further details on the VPS hosting plans.

Here are the links: Bluehost India VPS Plans & Details

DEDICATED HOSTING – Bluehost India 2021

Dedicated hosting is the big (or biggest) hitter of the hosting world. It is designed for sites that need the ultimate of everything – speed, performance, control, security, and technical features. There is no compromise here! Meant for massive sites with tons of traffic, even with a discount, the prices start at Rs.6499/-, while at renewal the regular prices begin with Rs.8495. This is definitely a big hosting for big websites with big budgets!

Visit Bluehost for further details on the dedicated hosting plans.

Here are the links: Bluehost India Dedicated Hosting Deals

Wrap Up:

It is understood that choosing a hosting provider for your blog is tough, not because there aren’t enough hosting providers out there, but because there are too many!

Now that you have a thorough knowledge of all the advantages, disadvantages, plans, features and pricing, (along with your unique needs and expectations) you are in the best position to judge if Bluehost is the best fit for you.

There is no denying that Bluehost is a strong contender in the market full of hosting providers. In fact, it is one of my top 3 recommendations to start a WordPress blog.

Its easy-to-use interface and affordable introductory prices, make it worth trying out. Especially so, if you are someone who has just started and would appreciate a stress-free, simplistic environment that doesn’t look too intimidating for a beginner.

Bluehost is also much recommended since it offers a complete starter package for newbies – a cheap discounted plan, an easy Cpanel, WordPress integrated one-click installation set up, an extensive knowledge base, great 24/7 customer support, free domain, free SSL certificate, and domain name email service.

But if you happen to be more advanced and are more concerned about getting nothing short of the best possible speed and performance in the market, you might as well want to check out your other options.

The post Bluehost India Review 2024: Really “Best Web Hosting for an Indian Blogger”? appeared first on Blogging Venture.

Learn how to write a blog post that attracts readers and ranks well in search engines with this comprehensive guide. Whether you’re an accomplished blogger or simply beginning, figuring out how to deliver drawing in blog entries is fundamental assuming you maintain that individuals should share them. Let’s read below about “How to Write a Blog Post?”.

Understanding Your Audience:

1. Define Your Target Audience:

Before you begin composing, you really want to sort out who you’re composing for. It’s important to know who your audience is so you can better cater to their wants, needs, and interests. Contemplations like socioeconomics, interest, age, and level of understanding are fundamental.

2. Identify Audience Pain Points:

Learn more about the problems that your audience might be facing. In addition to adding content to your post, addressing these concerns can do more; It can also make your blog known as an expert in the field. To gather information, overview your interest group, draw in with them via virtual entertainment, and read their remarks.

3. Set Clear Objectives:

Clear goals ought to direct your blog article composing. Whether you want to illuminate, persuade, or sell anything, having a particular end as a primary concern when you begin making content assists you with keeping on track and conveys a strong message.

Research and Planning:

1. Topic Selection:

Pick a point that lines up with your blog’s strength and provokes the consideration of your perusers. Explore applicable reports, industry happenings, and watchwords to see what others are referring to and how your abilities may be utilized.

2. Keyword Research:

Do some watchword examination to figure out what your main interest group is looking for. Make your blog entry more discoverable by finding important watchwords utilizing a help like SEMrush or Google’s Catchphrase Organizer.

3. Competitor Analysis:

Inspect the websites that your opponents have distributed to recognize any holes or regions where you can give a remarkable viewpoint. Exploring what different specialists in your field are expounding on can assist your blog with articling stick out.

4. Create an Outline:

Create an organized summary of your ideas. Having a reasonable layout can assist you with keeping up with the legitimate movement of your blog content. Separate your substance into a presentation, fundamental body, and end to make it simpler for perusers to follow.

Crafting a Captivating Introduction:

1. Start with a Hook:

Use an engaging hook to immediately captivate your audience. This may be an explanation, an inquiry, an interesting reality, a story, or a blend of these structures. The objective is to tempt perusers to peruse.

2. Introduce the Topic:

Make a short synopsis of your blog entry’s primary thoughts. Provide your perusers with an unmistakable thought of what they will get from perusing your work. Set up for what is to come.

3. Establish Relevance:

The accentuation of your blog entry should be on how it connects with late happenings, famous topics, or normal encounters. One dependable method for catching and holding perusers’ consideration is to exhibit the pragmatic significance of your material to their day-to-day routine.

Writing Compelling Body Content:

1. Maintain Clarity and Conciseness:

Rearrange and be immediate if you need your thoughts heard. Make a work to be understood and abstain from utilizing superfluous specialized language. Students may be able to better comprehend large concepts if they are broken down into smaller, more understandable chunks.

2. Use Subheadings:

Make use of descriptive subheadings for improved organization. Subheadings have a double reason in blog articles; they upgrade comprehensibility and furthermore, make the data simpler to investigate. Subsections need to offer a sneak look at what’s to come.

3. Provide Valuable Information:

Follow through on the commitments you made before by giving data that is both important and applicable. You should provide evidence, concrete examples, and references from reputable sources to back up your claims. Really try to illuminate, engage, or help your crowd in some way.

4. Include Visuals:

Supplement your blog entries with eye-getting visuals like infographics, recordings, and pictures. To captivate readers and provide a visual contrast to the text, incorporate images into your content. Use visuals to enrapture perusers, delineate your perspectives, or present models.

5. Foster Readability:

Using succinct sections, list items, and numbered records can upgrade the clarity of your blog article. Content ought to be introduced in a searchable manner to empower perusers to quickly retain the most significant subtleties, as people who read online tend to skim.

6. Maintain Consistent Tone:

Your blog post’s tone should stay the same throughout. Keeping a steady tone all through your composing assists your crowd with interfacing with you and the substance you’re introducing, whether that is an authority, conversational, or comedic style.

Crafting an Effective Conclusion:

1. Summarize Key Points:

In the final section of your blog post, reiterate the most important points. Reiterate the main points to make sure that your readers have understood what you’ve said.

2. Call to Action (CTA):

Include a compelling call to action to encourage additional reading. For example, you could propose that perusers pursue your bulletin, share the article via virtual entertainment, or quest for comparable substance on your site.

3. Encourage Discussion:

People will discuss if you post a question or a comment section where they can share their thoughts. Perusers will become given to your site and return for extra happiness assuming that you draw in with them.

Optimization for SEO:

1. Optimize Headings and Subheadings:

Ensure that your headings and subheadings contain important watchwords. It helps search engines understand what you want them to rank for and makes your blog post easier to read.

2. Use Descriptive Meta Tags:

The meta labels (title and depiction) for your blog entry ought to be alluring, so focus on them. Since they show up in web search tool results, these labels are significant for drawing in guests to tap on your page.

3. Incorporate Internal and External Links:

Be mindful to connect to other significant blog entries inside your own. Likewise, when you make a case, make certain to uphold it with connections to believable external sources. Your content will gain credibility and perform better in search engine optimization if you include a link to it.

4. Optimize Images:

Check to see that the pictures you use to illustrate your blog post have been optimized for search engines. Utilize substitute phrasing and engaging record names to furnish web indexes with additional data. Make the page load quicker by lessening the document size of the photographs.

5. Mobile-Friendly Design:

Streamline your blog entry for cell phones. Since a huge part of web clients access content through cell phones, making your plan versatile further develops convenience and lifts your web search tool rankings.

Editing and Proofreading:

1. Take a Break Before Editing:

After you finish the report, enjoy some time off so you can return and alter it. You might be able to see the data in a different way as a result, which will make it simpler for you to find any potential flaws.

2. Check for Consistency:

Keep your blog entry’s style, tone, and format uniform. Confirm that the post’s typefaces, headings, and other visual components are uniform.

3. Edit for Clarity:

Ensure your text is clear before adjusting it. Kill superfluous words, check for mistakes and linguistic blunders, and guarantee that your sentences stream appropriately. If you write clearly and concisely, your blog post will be better.

4. Proofread Carefully:

Find and correct your blog post’s types and other errors. Check it for errors in spelling and grammar. Altered posts exhibit impressive skill and scrupulousness.

Engaging Headlines and Meta Descriptions:

1. Craft a Compelling Headline:

Remember a short synopsis of the article’s substance for the title to get perusers to tap on it. To increment clicks, have a go at seeking clarification on pressing issues, and serious areas of strength for utilizing, or provoke their interest. Maintain an air of secrecy while remaining concise.

2. Optimize Meta Descriptions:

Utilize a meta portrayal to compactly and convincingly sum up your blog content. Before actually using a search engine, users can get a feel for it by reading meta descriptions.

Promoting Your Blog Post:

1. Social Media Promotion:

Your blog’s content will be seen more by sharing it on social media. Use relevant hashtags, create captivating captions, and encourage your followers to share the content.

2. Email Marketing:

Make benefit of your email rundown to disperse data about your blog entry. To feature the substance’s worth, ensure the email is customized to the beneficiary’s requirements and incorporates serious areas of strength for a activity, like visiting your blog.

3. Collaborate with Influencers:

To help get the word out about your post, get in touch with other bloggers or well-known people in your field. Assuming you maintain that more individuals should see your substance, you ought to team up with others.

4. Repurpose Content:

You can reuse your blog entry by making it into a video, digital broadcast, or infographic. By finding new purposes for your substance, you might build its openness and along these lines increment its return for money invested.

Analyzing Performance:

1. Monitor Analytics:

It ought to be natural to utilize examination instruments to screen the presentation of your blog entry. It’s important to keep an eye on things like bounce rates, average time spent on the site, and pageviews. Examining measurements can show you a ton your objective segment and how to make content that impacts them.

2. Gather Feedback:

Use polls, comments, or requests for feedback on social media to gather criticism from your audience. Learning about audience preferences and areas for improvement is made easier with constructive criticism.

Evolving Your Writing Style:

1. Stay Informed:

Remain current on what’s happening in your forte, what’s moving in your area, and what your crowd likes. You can keep your composing style and theme matter pertinent by being exceptional.

2. Experiment with Formats:

Think of some bullet point articles, instructional exercises, meetings, and stories to see what works best. Changing the sort of happy you distribute on your blog is an incredible method for keeping it drawing in and open to an enormous crowd.

3. Embrace Iteration:

Give yourself permission to improve and change. You can improve your writing style and content strategy over time by analyzing the performance of your blog posts, getting feedback, and using this information.

Conclusion: How to Write a Blog Post

It takes innovativeness, readiness, and correction to compose a blog entry that perusers will need to get back to over and over. Knowing your target audience, conducting extensive research, and adhering to a structured writing process are all necessary for creating content that captivates, educates, and benefits readers.

An extensive manual for turning into an incredible blogger, this book has all that a peruser might actually require. You will be well-positioned to succeed in the dynamic and ever-changing world of blogging if you follow these recommendations, regardless of what your blogging goals are—more traffic, stronger relationships with other bloggers, or expert status. Embrace the excursion of improving as an essayist, investigating various methods, and at last making work that contacts and rouses perusers. I hope you like reading “How to Write a Blog Post?”.

The post How to Write a Blog Post appeared first on Blogging Venture.

You can check out the current Deals for my top 3 recommended Hosting providers for an Indian Blogger (all comes with a FREE SSL Certificate):

• A2hosting – Get 78% Off
• Bluehost – Get 60% Off
• Hostgator – Get 64% Discount

For Domains: go with Namecheap – they have free privacy protection for life and renewal prices are cheap.

What was once a US-only event has grown to become a global phenomenon. As the event inches closer, the bargain hunters wait in anticipation of the discounts to be unleashed on many different products online and as well as in offline stores.

The good news is on this Black Friday & Cyber Monday the top hosting companies like Siteground, Bluehost, A2hosting, Hostgator, WPengine, and many more are giving away the best and the cheapest deals of the year on their web hosting packages.

If you’ve been planning to start a blog or website very soon then this is the best time to buy your web hosting, even if you plan to start your long pending projects from the new year, I would still recommend, keep your web hosting plans purchased now.

You’re not going to get any web hosting packages at this unbelievably low price tag that you can see during the Black Friday and Cyber Monday sale.

So, without further ado, let’s present you with the best Black Friday Web Hosting Deals as well as the Cyber Monday Hosting Offers for the year 2024.

Black Friday & Cyber Monday Hosting Deals in India, 2024:

Note: Black Friday & Cyber Monday Web Hosting Sale will is now live and in some cases, it will continue till 30th November 2024; Although some companies will keep the deals and discounts Live till 27th (Black Friday) and resume the offers on the day before Cyber Monday. And some companies will continue the offers till Cyber Monday.

So, follow the [LIVE] sign to find the offers that are currently live. Also, refer to the Offer Dates mentioned for each hosting provider below and use the respective links to activate the deals.

Go grab the cheapest web hosting and Domain deals of the year 2024.

A2Hosting Black Friday & Cyber Monday Deals: 78% Off

A2hosting has the reputation of giving away the cheapest deals for Black Friday and Cyber Monday.

A2 Hosting is known for blazing fast web hosting- with its turbo speed feature you can get 20x better performance when compared to other hosting providers, and on top of that, you get an anytime money-back guarantee; which is something very rare and it’s slowly being considered by many of the hosting companies as well.

It shows confidence. They are so damn certain that once you signup for their services you’ll never have a second thought about signing out.

And I can vouch for that, I have been using their services for more than 3 years now, and I am not at all disappointed.

Read the full review of A2Hosting for an Indian Blogger

The Black Friday and Cyber Monday deals of A2Hosting:

* Each discount will be auto-applied upon purchase and are set to run from 26th Nov – 02nd Dec:

• Shared Hosting – Up to 78% off – Host your personal blog/site
• Managed WordPress – 61% off – Best for professional blogs/sites
• Managed VPS & Core VPS – 57% off – Best for Online stores
• Unmanaged VPS – 25% off – Good for Online Stores and Corporate Websites
• Reseller Hosting – 60% off  – Sell/Host your client’s websites

Avail the A2Hosting Black Friday Discount

You should definitely take advantage of this A2 hosting black Friday sale and get the best hosting plans at the lowest prices of the year. Best Siteground alternative.

Some of the features A2 Hosting provide;

• Up To 20X Faster Turbo Servers
• Free Account Migration
• SSD storage for all the hosting plans (for highest performance)
• Free SSL certificate available with all A2 hosting plans.
• Anytime money-back guarantee
• Free CDN is also included with all the plans
• 24/7 GURU customer support for any hosting assistance you might need

So think no more; just go grab the Black Friday deals from A2 hosting now!

Offer Date: Starts on 24th November 2024 and ends on 30th November 2024

Activate The A2Hosting Deals

Bluehost Black Friday Sale India: 60% Off

Bluehost is one of the most recommended hosting companies in the bloggers’ community. And also it is one of the hosting providers that WordPress itself officially recommends.

Bluehost has an expert team who are specialized in WordPress. That’s, in fact, one reason why WordPress recommends them.

I have never personally used it and none of my clients using it. So, I can’t surely say how good it could be. But given their very good reputation, I would surely not mind recommending giving them a try.

And fortunately, this is the best time to give them a try. With their Black Friday Sale, you can get a shared hosting space from Bluehost at just Rs.199/month; which is much cheaper than their regular price.

Bluehost Black Friday and CyberMonday deals have already started and will continue till November 27th, 2024.

Avail Bluehost Black Friday Discount

Along with the hosting deal, Bluehost is also offering a special 60% discount on Domain names. You can purchase a domain name for only $2.99 for one year.

Some of the amazing features of Bluehost shared hosting plans:

• Unlimited websites hosting
• Unlimited web space
• Unmetered Bandwidth
• 1 Free domain name
• Free SSL included
• 30 Days Money back guarantee
• Trained, in-house experts available 24/7

If you happen to like what you just read about Bluehost web hosting, then stop thinking just grab the deals already!

Offer Date: Starts on 16th November 2024 and ends on 27th November 2024

Activate The Bluehost Deals

HostGator India Black Friday Deals: 64% Off

I have used HostGator for a few of my clients. They seem happy with it. I mean I never got any complaint. But again most of the clients have their company website, where you can imagine not much traffic there.

So, I can’t really say they are gonna be the best or anything.

But many of the bloggers are using it and the most negative reviews are related to their customer support. And recently I came to hear that their support system is now been upgraded.

So, based on some old reviews you can’t judge their services anymore.

And the good news is they have monthly and half-yearly plans as well; that means you can give them a try and then decide.

I would recommend going with at least 6 months plan. Because the offer is only applicable on a minimum 6 months period. And besides, one month is a very short period to judge their services.

Given their worldwide popularity, I am pretty sure you won’t regret going with them. FYI, HostGator is currently hosting over 9 million websites.

Anyways, in this Black Friday Sale 2024, Hostgator is also participating and they are giving away a considerably awesome 63% discount on their shared hosting packages.

And also keep watching this space till Cyber Monday (2nd December); coz last year they ran a flash sale that exists for only one hour and they gave away a whopping 80% discount on their shared hosting plans. So, they might surprise you again.

The HostGator’s Black Friday discounts will be applicable from 26th November and it will continue till Cyber Monday 2nd December.

Black Friday & Cyber Monday Offers from HostGator India:

1. Shared Hosting on min. 6 months – Up to 62% Off (extra 2% off if you buy through BloggingVenture)
2. Cloud, WordPress, Reseller on min. 6 months  – 60% Off 
3. VPS Hosting – 50% Off
4. Dedicated Servers – 25% off 
5. SiteLock, CodeGuard, and SSL – 20% off 
6. Business Email Rs. 25/mo
7. Gusuite basic Rs. 119/mo

Hostgator India Black Friday Deals on Domains:

1. .COM 2-year bundle Rs.1498/-
2. .IN 2-year bundle Rs.998/-
3. .CO Rs.299/-
4. .BIZ/- Rs.299/-

Click here to activate the offers on Hostgator

Coupon: HGI20NEONAFF
Offer Dates: 26th November to 2nd December 2024

Here are some of the features you’ll get with Hostgator plans:

• UNLIMITED Disk Space
• UNLIMITED Bandwidth
• Instant Backup
• Free SSL
• $100 Google AdWords Credit
• $100 Bing Ads Credit
• 99.9% Uptime Guarantee
• 45 Day Money Back Guarantee
• 24/7/365 Technical Support

So, go ahead and take your first step in Blogging today!

Activate The Hostgator Deals

NameCheap Black Friday Offers: Up to 99% off

Although, some of the hosting plans from the best hosting companies come with a Free domain name. But if you’re just looking to buy only a domain name, a hosting plan, or an SSL certificate, then Namecheap is offering a massive jaw-dropping 99% discount on this Black Friday and Cyber Monday Sale.

So, you should no way miss this once-in-a-year deal. I would suggest, start making a list of the domains you’re going to buy. You get a domain, hosting, and SSL for as low as under $3.

Grab Namecheap Black Friday and Cyber Monday Discounts:

The deals are gonna be live till 30th November only.  So, grab them as quickly as you can.

Epic Black Friday Savings – Up to 99% Off!

Unlike previous years, there will be no limitations on deals and time.  you can avail of the offers anytime during the sale period. Although, the most popular deals may disappear very quickly, so you have to act fast!

Domains, Hosting, Email, VPN and SSL Deals with Namecheap Black Friday

• Domains: Up to 98% off top domain registrations and up to 27% off domain transfers
• Shared Hosting: Up to 99% off on the most popular hosting plans
• Private Email: 70% off any of the plans
• SSL, VPN, and more: Savings of up to 72% on our best security products*

Some of the cool features you get with Namecheap web hosting:

• Unmetered SSD-Accelerated Disk Space
• Unmetered bandwidth
• Unlimited websites
• Website Builder
• US or UK Datacenter
• Secure hosting platform
• 100% uptime guarantee
• Knowledgeable support team, 24/7

So, stop staring at the screen, just click the button below and own your blog already!

Offer Dates: 24th November 2024 and 30th November 2024

Activate The Namecheap Deals

InMotion Black Friday Sale 2024: Up to 56% Off

InMotion web hosting is one of the biggest independent competitors of SiteGround, and my clients love their services; so in a way, I love their services too. I mean as long as I don’t hear any complaints from my clients.

Currently, I am using InMotion’s VPS for one of the clients, and I must say their service is just amazing; I have not got a single objection from my clients.

The good news is InMotion is also on the fence about offering a great discount this Black Friday. Grab the amazing and blazingly fast Inmotion WordPress Hosting at only $6.99/month, which is 22% off on its regular price of $8.99/month.

That’s not it, Inmotion decided to go crazy this Black Friday and offering their WP-2000S for the Price of WP-1000S

So, Hurry! – you don’t see this kind of offer that often.

Avail the InMotion Black Friday Discounts

Here are some of their current discounts below:

• Managed WordPress – 22% off on WP-1000S, 46% off a WP-2000S, or 41% off on WP-3000S, 55% off on WP-4000S.
• Managed VPS Hosting – 70% off on VPS-1000HA-S, 50% off a VPS-2000HA-S, or 45% off on VPS-3000HA-S,.
• Dedicated Servers – Get Essential at 18% off, Advanced at 17% off, Elite at 13% discount.

InMotion is best known for its performance and faster loading times as they use solid-state drives, PHP 7, and custom servers, which are btw super secured.

Along with that, you get so many other mindblowing features, here are a few:

• $150 Free Advertising Credits
• FREE domain to get you started
• Premium BoldGrid Plugins and Themes
• Jetpack Free License
• Security: Hack protection, Custom firewall, and DDoS protection
• FAST Web Hosting with FREE SSDs
• FREE SSL
• Auto-updates
• Free drag & drop website builder
• Free website migration

So, in my opinion, if you can increase your budget a little higher than Siteground, then InMotion is a web hosting you can blindly go with.

Offer Date: 25th November 2024 and 29th November 2024

Activate The InMotion Deals

Siteground Black Friday Deals 2024: Up to 75% Discount

Along with high speed and high quality hosting solutions the most appreciated feature of Siteground hosting is the 24/7,  always ready to help, expert customer support.

My main site – that is this blog, is hosted on Siteground. And I have been using it since last year and I am going to continue with them for sure.

If you ask me for hosting recommendations – my first answer is always going to be Siteground (WordPress officially recommends this too).

You can check out here why? Siteground Review

Just like every year this year again on the occasion of Black Friday and Cyber Monday, one of my favorite web hosting companies is giving away their best plans for a very competitive price.

This year SiteGround has decided to give a discount of 75% on all their shared and Managed WordPress Hosting plans.

Click here to avail the offer on SiteGround

The Black Friday deals are going to be live on 29th November as a 24-hour sale. Although there’s a chance that they might extend the offers till Cyber Monday on 3rd December.

But my suggestion is don’t wait till the 26th, buy your plans on Black Friday only, coz if they don’t extend the offers you’re gonna regret big time.

Here are some of the features you’ll get with each Siteground shared hosting plan:

• Free SSL Certificates
• Free Daily Backups
• Free Cloudflare CDN
• 30 Days Money Back Guarantee
• Unmetered traffic
• Free WP Professional Transfer (for hustle free migration of  your existing website)
• Priority Technical Support
• WP SuperCacher (for best performance)

The features and benefits vary from plan to plan. Compare the plans before making the purchase.

So, stop thinking too much, you’ll get confused; just go ahead and grab the Siteground’s Black Friday Deals!

Offer Date: Starts on 29th November 2024 and might get extended till 3rd December 2024

Activate The Siteground Deals

WPEngine Black Friday Deal 2024: 5 month FREE

Let me put it this way, “if you have the budget and you can afford a high-end hosting provider, just blur out everything else in the picture and hit the click button right away.”

WPEngine is in my knowledge is the best host you can have for a blog/site/online store. I usually don’t recommend this to my readers coz it is a bit expensive for beginners, who haven’t made a single buck online yet.

But during this year’s Black Friday and Cyber Monday sale WPEngine has brought you a great deal on the shared web hosting packages for new users.

The WPEngine Black Friday/Cyber Monday Offers:

• Get 5 months FREE on any annual shared plan.

Grab the Discounts Here

Use Coupon Code: CYBERWPE30

Offer Dates: Starts on 23rd November 2024 and ends on 4th December 2024

If you’re 100% certain you seriously want to get into blogging and you’re planning to buy a theme as well and looking for an SEO optimized framework then, WPEngine comes bundled with Genesis Framework and 35+ StudioPress Themes, which would alone cost you around $150.

Anyways, here are some of the wonderful features you get with the WPEngine Startup plan:

• Genesis Framework
• 35+ StudioPress Themes
• 24/7 chat support
• Fast websites loading
• Automatic backups
• Bulletproof security
• Global CDN
• Page Performance
• Automated SSL certificates

Some available Add-Ons:

• WordPress Multisite
• GeoTarget
• Content Performance
• Additional Sites

So, it’s a very good deal if you’re looking for a complete package. Just go ahead and get started today!

Activate The WPEngine Deals

DreamHost Black Friday/Cyber Monday 2024: Flat $60 off

If you’re searching for a top-notch web hosting service to try this Black Friday then you shouldn’t miss DreamHost’s fast, secure & always-up web hosting services.

I haven’t personally used DreamHost yet, but after going through a lot of good reviews about it I sure wish to give them a try soon. And FYI, DreamHost is also one of the 3 WordPress recommended web hosting providers.

Yes, I heard from them; the sale is going to be live from 28th November till 26th on Cyber Monday.

They are offering a huge $60 off on their regular Shared Hosting plans; which means you can get the web-hosting for just $4.95/month.

Click here to avail the discounts

DreamHost has its own custom control panel, which is so simple to use that it takes away most of your headaches of managing your web hosting. You would get along pretty well, even if you’re just starting up. So, that’s a plus for a newbie.

Here are some of the awesome features that come with DreamHost web hosting:

• Managed Performance, Security, & Updates
• Powerful WordPress Tools: Server Caching, Daily Backups, CDN
• 24×7 Award-Winning Support
• Zero Risk, 97 Day Money-Back Guarantee
• Email*, 1-click SSL & Privacy Included
• Quick & Easy-To-Use Custom Control Panel

FYI, 1.5 Million Websites are hosted on DreamHost. So, just get started with your dream project on DreamHost already!

Offer Date: Starts on 28th November 2024 and ends on 2nd December 2024

Activate The Dreamhost Deals

iPage Black Friday & Cyber Monday Deals 2024: $1.99/month

IPage hosting provides amazing features at a very affordable price. If you’re just getting started with blogging or starting a new website, even if you’re just thinking about moving to a new web hosting then iPage could be a great choice.

This Black Friday iPage is giving away their starter shared hosting package at an unbelievable price that is $1.99 per month, also you’ll get a free domain for 1 year; But there’s a catch, you’ll have to buy it for 3 years.

Well, given their reputation as a hosting provider I would definitely say it’s an awesome deal.

Activate iPage Black Friday Discount

Furthermore, all the iPage hosting plans come with extras worth over $500. So, that definitely makes it the best pricing in the industry, especially giving their reputation and success worldwide; there are over 1 million websites hosted on iPage’s platform.

Here are some of the great features you can get with the iPage Black Friday Deal:

• FREE domain registration
• 1,000s of free templates
• FREE email address
• FREE 24/7 support
• FREE drag and drop site builder
• FREE SSL Certificate
• 30-day money-back guarantee
• FREE domain transfer
• $200 in Google and Bing ad credits

So, don’t let this killer deal fade away; hurry and take action now!

Offer Date: Starts on 28th November 2024 and ends on 2nd December 2024

Activate The iPage Deals

Wrap Up:

If you’ve been holding up on your blogging journey to start for so long then this is the best time to get started.

You can pick a hosting plan from any of the hosting providers that I have listed above. But if you ask me, I will suggest you go with Siteground or A2Hosting.

Take advantage of this year’s Black Friday Web Hosting Deals and buy your webspace before Cyber Monday for an unbelievably cheaper price and then make a proper plan and aim to start your blog by 1st January 2022, if not early.

Making your blog a big success could be one of your New Year’s Resolutions. Good plan don’t you think?

Well, it doesn’t have to be like that; you can start planning right away, or later, you can take advantage of the Black Friday and Cyber Monday Offers to buy your hosting plan or you can choose to buy later, start working on your dream project right away or maybe later, it’s all up to you.

All I am suggesting is, don’t overthink it, coz that always ends up making you so damn confused that it’s just impossible to make the right decision.

It’s very simple if you ever want to be a successful blogger then take action today.

So, how do you plan to benefit yourself on this Black Friday and Cyber Monday?

The post Best Black Friday Web-Hosting Deals 2024: Up to 75% Discount appeared first on Blogging Venture.

What exactly SEO is?

SEO stands for – Search Engine Optimization.

As the name suggests, it’s a process of optimizations that you do for your blog or website, so that your blog/site can be found in the search engines (eg. Google, Bing) for specific keywords or phrases relevant to your niche.

To make it simpler, let’s take an example,

Let’s say you’re into “weight loss” niche, and you’ve written an article “ten easy to follow tips to lose weight in 2024”

Now, someone around the globe Googled a phrase like “tips to lose weight”

So now what will happen, if you’ve done your SEO right then your article will show up in the search results and that person can click it and read it.

Why is SEO important?

Well for starters, SEO means FREE traffic.

Given, you have done it exceptionally well.

SEO is the only way to get free traffic from search engines. And who doesn’t want free traffic?

Many are saying “SEO is dead”. But the truth is, it is not.

I have been hearing this for the last 3 years (since the day I searched the meaning of this word “SEO” for the first time).

SEO is still as important as it was then and it is always going to be, as long as the search engines exist.

So, in one word, FOREVER.

SEO being the most crucial part of a blog or site to rank in search engines, you can not ignore this.

There are various steps involved in SEO.

And based on the nature of the steps, it has been divided into two broad categories

• On-Page SEO – today we will talk about this only.
• Off-Page SEO

Let’s understand them better.

How is On-Page SEO different from Off-Page SEO?

On-Page SEO:

On-Page, as the name implies, is done on the blog or website itself.

Optimizing the Title Tags, Meta descriptions, and Image Alt tags etc comes under On-Page SEO factors.

In short, whatever optimizations you can do on your blog without someone else’s interference, the optimizations that can be done by staying inside the dashboard only, are basically known as the On-page SEO.

More details on this are below, so read on…

Off-Page SEO:

Off-Page SEO is the other type of optimization that you do outside of your blog to rank on Google. It requires other people’s involvement, most of the times.

Link building, Blogger outreaching, Social media attention; these are examples of Off-Page SEO.

I will cover more topics on SEO in my upcoming posts. So, if you haven’t already subscribed to my newsletters then do it at the end of the post.

Like I mentioned above, today we’ll talk about OOn-Page SEO techniques only. Otherwise, it will too lengthy and you can easily get overwhelmed.

And that I don’t want. So, first work on the On-Page then we will dive into the Off-Page.

In this mega guide, I’ll break down what exactly On-Page SEO is and how to do it right to rank higher in the SERP (Search Engine Results Page).

Spoiler alert: Some of the techniques might not work for you if you’re not on self-hosted WordPress. But the good news is there are still enough strategies that you can try on your non-Wordpress blog.

First, Importance of On-Page SEO:

The major importance of On-page SEO is everything here is in your hands. You can optimize your Title tags, Alt tags, interlinking or run a site audit anytime you want.

Moreover, if your site has a lot of optimized content than building an offsite presence with Off-Page SEO will be a piece of cake for you.

Because no one likes to link to content that is not worth the read. Everyone is looking for websites that have great content.

So, make sure you keep your blog strong in terms of On-Page SEO as everything is in your hands.

Now that you know how important On-Page SEO is for your blog, let’s kick start it…

First thing first, Submit Your Blog to Google

Before you could implement the On-page SEO techniques and strategies you’ll first have to submit your blog to Google.

That you can do by connecting your site to the Google search console and submit your sitemap or you could just submit it to Google directly by searching this term “add a site to google”.

But if you’re thinking long-term then I would recommend the first option. In fact, forget that there is a second option, just follow this guide and do it the right way.

If you’re on blogger.com, then you don’t need to worry about this step. Blogger sites are automatically verified by Google.

Once it’s done you can move ahead with the techniques and strategies.

Recommended Reads:

Best On-page SEO Techniques and Strategies:

1. SEO Friendly URLs

Keep your URLs short and sweet. Research says that URLs with 3-5 words tend to rank higher in Google.

Moreover, Google loves short URLs:

For Example www.bloggingventure.com/start-a-blog (Good and short URL)

Avoid big or dynamic URLs:

For Example www.bloggingventure.com/p=123 (Dynamic URL)

For Example www.bloggingventure.com/8/6/16/cat=SEO/on-page-seo-is-so-amazing-omg-its-the-best (Long URLs)

Pro Tip: Always include your targeted keyword in the URL

Let’s say you are targeting a keyword “Off-Page SEO” so the page URL should be www.example.com/off-page-seo

2. Start Title with Focus Keyword

The title tag is the most important On-Page SEO factor which Google considers till-date.

Remember, the more near your keyword appears in the Title from start, the more weight it has in Google:

Let’s understand it better with an example:

Focus Keyword: “On-Page SEO”

Title Demo 1: Top 10 Important On-Page SEO Factors to rank in Google.

Title Demo 2: On-Page SEO: My secret sauce to rank high in Google.

Here Title Demo 2 will rank higher as it has the focused keyword in the first place and Google gives most of its weight to such titles.

3. Keep your Blog Post’s Title in H1

Make sure you wrap your blog post title in the H1 tag. If you are using WordPress then you don’t have to worry, as WordPress by default keeps all the blog titles in an H1 tag.

However, if you are using blogger or any other CMS or have a custom coded website than you need to take this point into consideration.

4. Use Multimedia Content

It’s 2024, and no one loves to read a raw form of text. The straight answer to this is using Images and Video content in your articles.

Multimedia content doesn’t help you rank directly, however with the help of images a user tend to spend more time on your website.

It’s an indirect ranking signal because the more time spent by a user on your website more are the chances for you to rank higher in Google.

5. Optimize Meta Descriptions

Although Meta descriptions are not a direct ranking factor in Google they play a vital role in Click-through Rate (CTR).

Many internet users read the meta description before actually clicking the website.

And if your Meta Description is not optimized according to the human liking, chances are you might lose a potential reader.

So, always keep in mind to optimize your Meta Descriptions and include a final CTA. With a proper CTA (Call to Action), you are giving your reader a reason to click on your website.

If you’re running a self-hosted WordPress blog and using Yoast SEO plugin, then I recommend you read this first ☛ How to Setup Yoast SEO? the right way.

If you’re not able to add meta descriptions to your blog posts, don’t worry, I have one workaround.

When Google can’t find the meta description or if it is not clear as per the searcher’s intent, Google will fetch content from your blog post that matches the keyphrase searched by the user.

So, what you can do is, frame the paragraph (where you have your keyword) in a way that it’s intriguing to the users.

6. Sprinkle LSI Keywords

After the Hummingbird update, Google Algorithm has started focusing on the overall relevancy and topical depth of the content.

There was a time when you could target just one keyword in the whole article and rank easily on the first page. That doesn’t work anymore.

Now, you need to sprinkle LSI Keywords (Latent Semantic Index) in the articles to diversify your keywords so that Google understand the content better.

According to Search Engine Journal, “LSI is a mathematical method used to determine the relationship between terms and concepts in content.”

For example,

Let’s say you are writing an article “the top 10 foods you should add to your diet to lose weight faster”.

Now, Google will expect you to talk about fruits, salads, juices or perhaps any natural food that is considered healthy.

But if you suddenly start to talk about supplements (which are not considered food), then you’ll just make Google confused.

By doing this your main topic intent is lost. And you won’t be able to rank for a keyword like, “foods to lose weight faster”.

So, if you want to talk about supplements, write a different article with an accurate title.

7. Drop Focused Keyword in the First 100 Words

This is a very important point to keep in mind while doing On-page SEO.

Your keyword should always appear in the first paragraph of the article. Advisable to add it in the first 100-150 words.

The benefit of adding your keyword in the top 100 words or the first paragraph is that you are allowing Google to get an idea about your topic right away as soon as it starts to crawl the article.

8. Proper Interlinking

This is a skill not everyone can master. But I know you can.

Interlinking is so important that I have even heard that 2 internal links now have the power of one external link.

Also, a well-linked article can help reduce the overall bounce rate of your users and keep them on your website for a longer period of time.

Always interlink your low PA (Page Authority) pages to high PA pages.

Brian Dean from Backlinko does this the best.

9. Outbound Linking

In all your article at least have one outbound link to a high authority website, that is relevant to your niche.

This way Google will understand the topic of your article and also it will give a signal to Google that your article has a ton of information related to the topic discussed.

10. Image Alt Tags

Google cannot read images. So in order to understand images, Google tries to read the Image’s Alternate Text.

Limit the content of Alt tags to 125 characters. As the most popular screen readers can not fit in beyond 125 characters of Atl texts.

While doing On-Page SEO for your website, make sure you include your focus keyword in the image Alt tags.

However, don’t include your target keywords in all the images as it will eventually increase the overall keyword density and chances are your blog might get penalized.

Instead, use long-tail keywords, in the Image Alt Tags.

For example,

Let’s say, you’re writing an article about weight loss, and your focus keyword is “best foods to lose weight faster”.

Now, instead of adding this keyword to all the images, add keywords that are relevant and has almost the same meaning as your focus keyword; like, “weight loss-friendly foods on earth”, “Foods to help you shed pounds”, “Tuna one of the best foods to lose weight fast”.

Given you’ve listed Tuna as one the 10 foods.

There’s one more reason why you should add an alt tag to images.

ALT tags should convey what the image is all about. It should contain enough information, so, if for some reason the images didn’t load up on some screens, the people should still be able to understand what the image represents.

11. Image Optimization

Images take up to 63% of your website load time. No one likes a website that takes forever to load.

In fact, a recent article from Search Engine Land stated that Google is considering Page Speed as a direct ranking factor starting from July 2024.

So, to be in the competitive race make sure you optimize all your website images with a plugin like WP Smush or Shortpixels.

Or alternatively, you can try an online image compressor like tinypng.com if you’re not on wordpress.org.

12. Boost Site Speed

As discussed in the above point, site speed is going to be big in 2024. If your site doesn’t load in 4 seconds or less than you are going to be in trouble.

The possible solution to this is, select your hosting provider wisely and use a premium CDN (Content Delivery Network) service like Cloudflare, KeyCDN, and MaxCDN.

The CDNs will help your site load faster.

I have been using Siteground as my hosting provider for some time now, and along with its in-house tool SuperCacher, it’s the best so far.

I recommend you to read my Review of A2hosting WordPress Hosting

You Can Avail up to 72% Discount on A2Hosting Hosting Plans by using this link.

13. Mobile Friendly

Google is highly focusing on the Mobile-First Index; which means if your website is not optimized for Mobile devices then you already are out of the game.

As the majority of traffic from Google comes from mobile devices, hence they are giving mobile-first index the maximum priority.

If you are using WordPress CMS than make sure you use themes that are mobile-friendly.

Themes like Happy Themes, ThemeForest and StudioPress are good options to start with.

14. Post Long-Form Content

If you are still playing in the word range of 500-1000 and hoping to rank on the first page of Google, then you are playing it all wrong.

That way, you’ll have to wait forever to beat your competitors.

Because, if you check websites that are ranking on the first page of Google they all have contents that are more than 2000 words.

Yes, that’s the reality. Google gives more weight to long-form content and if you are not willing to write awesome long-form content than it will be really difficult to rank.

So, research well on the topic and write what your competitors have not covered, solve your reader’s problem and try covering the whole topic in one piece of content.

Check out my tips on how to write content that Google loves?

15. Boost Dwell Time

After the recent RankBrain update, Google is focusing more on the Dwell time of individual users on your website.

If a user comes to your website and immediately clicks the back button, that’s a signal for Google to understand what your page is not satisfying user intent.

If the same thing occurs multiple times you’ll see your ranking drop like a stone.

To boost your dwell time understand the searchers’ intent and frame your content accordingly. If you fulfil your readers’ intent through your article then both the readers and Google will love your blog.

16. Add Modifiers to your Title

Adding modifiers like “Best”, “2024” “Top” will help you rank for long-tail keywords.

To your surprise, you can easily rank for keywords after adding the current year to all your keywords.

Like for example “Best Keyword Research Tool in 2024”, “Best SEO Strategy of 2024”.

Ranking for keywords like “best keyword research tool” itself is difficult but just by adding the year, in the end, you can pretty much rank for all the keywords.

And the best part about this strategy is you get highly relevant traffic to your blog.

Final Words

I hope you’ve enjoyed reading the mega guide to the best On-page SEO techniques and strategies for 2024.

Now, skim through the post again and see for yourself how I have implemented most of the points discussed today.

We have discussed the essential On-Page SEO factors, and now it’s your turn to implement them on your blog and squeeze the benefits out.

I am always here to help you out, so if you have any queries put it in the comments and I will surely get back to you.

If you liked the guide then do share it with your blogger friends.

P.S. if you find this guide bit too technical to your liking, please let me know, I will publish another post simplifying the terms that have been used in here.

I will be coming with more such amazing guides soon.

Till then,

Buh-bye!

The post 16 On-Page SEO Techniques and Strategies 2024 appeared first on Blogging Venture.

Today, I will show you how to migrate a self-hosted WordPress site from Godaddy to Siteground.

Not using Siteground or Godaddy? it’s OK; this guide works for any host to any host.

So, the proper title would have been “How to migrate a WordPress site to another hosting server?” But as I am using Siteground and Godaddy, I will stick to the title I have used.

When you’re starting a blog or any website, the loading speed of your site matters a lot; especially when it’s a blog. where you are supposed to get a lot of traffic.

Speed is also one of the ranking factors in SERP.

Now, the speed depends on many things, but the most important one out of all is the hosting space, where you’ve hosted your blog.

I started my first blog (not honingbird.com) on shared hosting from GoDaddy. The speed was not that bad initially, but over the time it got from “not that bad” to “worst” when I installed 2 more blogs (one of them was honingbird.com).

I thought upgrading the plan would help, but nope! … it didn’t. I mean it improved a bit but not as expected.

So, I had decided to move my main blog (honingbird.com) to a different host.

In the past, I had used HostGator for a few of my clients. It was good, but, the problem is, in a normal scenario, most company websites are just to showcase the company’s profile, their products or services, there are not many changes you see on the website.

So, the traffic doesn’t increase that much, unless you add a blog to it.

But none of my clients were interested in SEO, so, no blogs. They wanted quick results, so we suggested paid ads and they were happy with it.

So, it means, I can not be sure about Hostgator either.

So, I did some research and found out Siteground and Bluehost are the only two best hosts that many well-known bloggers are talking about, and also claimed to be using them for their own blogs.

I finally decided to go with Siteground over Bluehost.

There are several factors that influenced my decision to go with Siteground eventually. But Bluehost is also good if you’re just getting starting, their pricing is also affordable.

You can read my full Siteground Review to know more about its amazing features.

Although, I would still like to mention three things I liked most about Siteground; their customer support, the transparent pricing and the speed (I had heard it’s very good and it’s true).

So, coming back to my main topic for today’s post, How to migrate or transfer your existing WordPress site or blog to SiteGround (or any host)

While I was doing the process myself, I thought why not document it; It might come handy for someone like you.

So, let’s get right into it:

How to Migrate Your Existing WordPress Site from Godaddy to SiteGround?

The plugin I have used for the whole migration is All in One Migration Tool by ServMask.

Before I start the tutorial here’s one Warning

Moving on…

If you have read my other posts then you’ de know I like to keep things as simple as it can be.

So, I am going to classify the whole process into 5 parts:

1. Exporting the WordPress Blog.
2. Creating an addon domain.
3. Installing WordPress on Siteground.
4. Redirecting your Domain to Siteground from Godaddy.
5. Importing your WordPress Site or Blog to the new installation.

First thing first, go ahead and install the All in One Migration Tool plugin on your site/blog.

Step 1: Exporting the WordPress Blog or Downloading it.

Once the All in One plugin is installed, you will see a new tab appeared on the sidebar, inside your WP dashboard.

Just hover over it and a side menu will pop in, click on Export.

A new screen will show up, inside that you will see an option that says, EXPORT TO.

Click on that and select the first option you have, and that would be FILE.

As soon as you click it, a lightbox pop up will pop out and will do a thorough checkup of your blog’s current settings and configurations and finally will create a full back up for you to download.

So, it might take a few minutes depending on your site’s total file size.

Once the download file is ready a green button will appear which says, DOWNLOAD WWW.YOURSITENAME.COM

Click that green button and it will start downloading the backup to your computer. The exporting is complete.

Step 2: Create an addon domain

Before you can start the importing you’ll first have to create an addon domain on SiteGround (your new host) and install WordPress on it.

Don’t know how to create an addon domain? refer to the video below, skip to the part where I have shown you the steps.

However, I didn’t have to create one for myself coz I have registered my Siteground hosting plan with honingbird.com. So, by default, my domain is assigned to the features.

But if you haven’t purchased a brand new Siteground account and don’t have it registered with your main domain, then you will have to create an addon domain.

Why add an addon domain?

I won’t get technical.

Quite simply, by adding an addon domain you’re just telling your host (in my case that is Siteground) that you want to host a site or blog on this domain which is registered with another vendor.

And doing so will automatically give you the option to install the WordPress blog on the addon domain when you run the installation on Siteground,

Step 3: How to Install WordPress on Siteground?

Log in to your Cpanel and navigate to AUTOINSTALLERS inside the cPanel dashboard.

You should see a few other applications alongside WordPress.

Locate the WordPress icon and click it.

Inside you’ll find an Install tab, click it, a new section will appear.

Please refer to the video below, skip to 4:55 minute and fill out the details accordingly and click on the Install button found at the bottom.

If you see the congratulation message, then it means your WordPress site is successfully installed.

However, your site is still being hosted on your existing host; if you try to access, it will not take you to the newly installed WordPress site, it will take you to the old site only as we haven’t yet mapped the domain to the new hosting.

Step 4: How to Redirect your Godaddy Domain to Siteground?

So, to redirect your domain to the new hosting, head over to Godaddy (or wherever you have the domain name registered currently).

In my case, I have my domain name registered with Godaddy.

So, I will log in to GoDaddy.

Once you’re inside, click on the manage button found against the domain that you want to redirect, then go to DNS Management.

Inside DNS Management you’ll see and bunch of information under a heading called Records.

Don’t get terrified, if you can’t figure out what those are; I don’t even understand most of them.

Just scroll down and locate the Nameservers. Here you’ll find the already exist Godaddy’s nameservers.

Now since we are redirecting the domain to our hosting in Siteground we will have to replace the existing Godaddy’s nameservers with the new Siteground’s nameservers.

Again head back to Siteground, log in to cPanel, if logged out, and locate the nameservers on the top left. Copy them, go back to Godaddy and change the existing nameservers with these two.

Once you saved the nameservers, it will take some time for it to get activated. So, your site might go down for a few minutes.

Anyways, when your site is successfully mapped to Siteground you’ll see a default page from Siteground.

It might look something similar to this:

If you’re seeing this page, then it means your domain is now hosted with Siteground.

Next step, upload your backup to your new server.

Step 5: Importing Your WordPress Blog and Uploading it

Log in to the new WordPress installation and install and activate the All in One Migration plugin.

Now go to its import option;

Click on IMPORT FROM and select FILE. Locate the backup we downloaded in step 1 and upload it.

The process would automatically start, it might take a while depending upon your server and internet speed. Just give it some time.

Wait until the uploading is done. Once it’s finished you will see a warning message that will ask your permission to overwrite the database and files. Click on PROCEED and next you should see a success message.

Now, check if the permalink structure is change. If needed make the required changes and save it. Even if you don’t make any changes still hit the save button.

Once the whole process is done and you’ve verified the content and everything you can now uninstall the old WordPress from GoDaddy.

That’s it! you’ve successfully migrated your site to Siteground.

And since SIteground provides a free SSL, you can now enable it to load your site in HTTPS by following the steps below:

How to enable SSL in Siteground?

Check your inactive plugins, if you see a plugin called SG Optimizer then great, activate it. If you find no such plugin in the inactive plugins then go ahead and install it.

Once installed and activated, locate the plugin settings from the sidebar.

Inside you’ll see three options to configure, the Siteground’s in house SuperCacher feature, HTTPS and option to upgrade to the latest PHP version.

Click on each configure button and enable the options from inside and your site is ready to rock again.

The whole process of migration and activation of SSL is recorded in the video below. In case if the video is not playing or you’re not able to see it; here is the direct link to the video on Youtube:

Wrapping Up:

The process of migrating or moving a WordPress site from one host to another is a bit overwhelming, but if you’re not happy with the current hosting provider then it’s an absolute necessity.

Coz, if you’re being the content creator is not happy with the site’s performance in terms of hosting, then how can you expect your readers would be happy anyways?

Don’t stay stuck to your old host just because it’s a long process. Change is a necessity in every aspect. So, change it if required.

Since your audience will grow with time it is important that you find a reliable hosting provider. And so far in my experience, I have found Siteground to be a great service provider.

You can read the review here > Siteground Review 2020

So, are you planning to change your hosting provider; if yes which one you’re gonna go with?

P.S. If you found the guide helpful, please share it with your circle.

Haven’t started your blog yet? Learn how to start a WordPress blog

The post How to Migrate a WordPress Site from Godaddy to Siteground appeared first on Blogging Venture.

Looking for the best WordPress Hosting for Bloggers in India?

Well, you’ve landed at the right place.

Web hosting is one of the crucial parts of a blog or any website. The right web-hosting can improve your blog’s SEO as well as its user experience.

So, picking a good WordPress hosting company for your blog is no doubt a very important step in your blogging journey.

The problem is there are too many WordPress hosting alternatives available in India and that could be confusing for a newbie.

That’s why I have curated a list of the best WordPress hosting for bloggers in India.

So, till now if you had any doubt about which one to go with, then you’re gonna love this guide.

You can go ahead and pick whichever one from the list fits your needs.

However, if you ask me, then the first 3 on the list are my top recommendations;

Wondering what’s so special about those 3?

Well,  it is simply because I’ve personally used them for my blogs and websites.

That being said, all of the remaining companies are also reliably the top WordPress hosting providers in the business with regards to quality and administration.

So, don’t worry, you can without any doubt go with whichever host you like.

Let’s Start…

Best WordPress Hosting for Bloggers in India

• A2 Hosting
• Bluehost
• Hostgator
• Greengeeks
• Hostinger
• Inmotion
• iPage
• Dreamhost
• Namecheap
• WP Engine

I know as a beginner you might not want to invest a lot in hosting right away or you may simply don’t have the budget to go with a host like WP Engine, or even Inmotion or Ipage (In that case you can go with Hostinger or Hostgator, they are comparatively cheaper than the others.)

1. A2 Hosting

A2 Hosting is a truly outstanding under-the-radar hosting company you probably won’t think about, however, ought to.

Why A2 Hosting?

Their speed is magnificent, uptime is dependable, client support is cordial, security highlights are copious, and discount strategy is liberal.

And I am not just saying, I have been using their services for my blogs for more than 3 years now, and I am very much satisfied with their services.

In fact, I am sure I will keep on using them as long as I’m in this industry unless of course, I find a better option.

You can read the full review of A2Hosting for an Indian Blogger I’ve shared my views and their services in detail.

Top Features of A2 Hosting

● One of the Fastest Page Loading Speed (285 ms) ● Dependable Uptime of 99.97% ● Every minute of every day Server Monitoring and Malware Scanning ● Free Site Migrations (1-25 Depending on the Plan)

● Anytime Money-Back Guarantee

Checkout A2Hosting

2. Bluehost

Bluehost is the most well-known web hosting available. If you’ve already done some research on blogging I’m pretty sure you have come across the name Bluehost many times.

WordPress itself has suggested BlueHost as the most amazing hosting alternative. So, they instantly become your ideal choice in case you’re making your first site on WordPress.

There are various reasons behind Bluehost Hosting being one of the bests, yet if I needed to narrow it down I will pick these three at the top:

1. Convenience.

Bluehost is with you from the beginning and will remain until your website continues.  You can instantly get started with your WordPress blog.

2. Active Customer Service.

While I don’t think you will at any point need to cooperate with a client service agent, still on the off chance if you ever need to I can certainly say that you’re in awesome hands.

Bluehost has a support system that is available for you all day long. The everyday support staff is always there to help you with any issues you might face (for example cyberattacks, site crashes, or even to resolve your simplest queries).

3. Have Friendly Pricing.

Bluehost has the most valuable plans starting as low as $2.95/month. That is unimaginably modest.

Bluehost is amazing enough for most sites and they’re additionally suggested by most of the bloggers too. That is exactly why you’ve heard this name many times before.

Primary concern:

Bluehost is the most ideal choice if you’re simply in the beginning stage but in the long run, if you ever needed high-powered servers you might need to look into alternatives like WP Engine or a cheaper option like A2Hosting

You can read the full review of Bluehost for Indian Bloggers I’ve shared my views and their services in detail.

Checkout Bluehost

3. Hostgator

HostGator is one of the biggest and most well-known hosting companies on the planet. Similar to Bluehost you must have heard this name before as well.

They are mostly known for their VPS services, committed workers, and WordPress hosting plans.

What are some of the best features they have to offer?

HostGator ensures uptime of 99.99%.

Assuming if you experience anything below that, you will get back one month’s credit for free.

Unconditional promise:

HostGator offers 45 days unconditional promise. Regularly, web hosting providers don’t offer a money-back guarantee exceeding 30 days.

Adaptable charging periods:

You can pick among month-to-month and yearly charging periods.

Of course, longer charging periods will get you the most rebate.

But why I like this feature most?

Because it gives you the opportunity to try out their services for at least six months before you can actually decide to invest more in them and go for long tenures like 3 years or 5 years.

I personally feel that 30 days is not enough to judge the performance of any hosting company.

Free Site Migration:

Presuming you already have a blog but you’re not happy with the current company and want to move to HostGator then you’ll be delighted to know that HG offers a free site migration with every new purchase.

Their expert team will move your site from your current host at no additional fee if requested within the initial 30 days of joining.

Cons

Month-to-month plans are expensive than yearly plans.

That’s not really a con if you ask me; After all, they are here to do business.

You can of course solve this problem by picking the yearly plans as they do offer a 45-day money-back guarantee.

If they set the same pricing for the half-yearly plans then most people will buy that plan only. And they want to hook you in for the long haul.

The longer you stay with them the longer time they will have to convince you to stay with them for an even longer period.

Higher pricing for nearby servers.

If you pick the US server it will cost you less compared to if you pick the Indian server.

So, if you’re ok with the cons that I just mentioned then Hostgator is an awesome pick.

Checkout Hostgator

4. GreenGeeks

GreenGeeks is an intriguing option for those who view themselves as naturally cognizant.

This WordPress hosting company has been working with the “maximum use, no waste of resources” mindset.

Their platform is built to be as energy-efficient as possible.

Why Green Geeks?

Additionally, the organization asserts for every amperage they pull from the network they match 3 times that in the form of renewable energy via Bonneville Environmental Foundation.

They also plant one tree for each hosting account that they provide on their hosting platform.

So, if you’re a huge fan of nature then this is a hosting you got to try once.

When your site is hosted on the GreenGeeks platform, you’re indirectly helping make a difference by opting for an eco-friendly web host.

Now the technical stuff: 

WordPress Perks:

• On the WordPress side of things, GreenGeeks offers WordPress plans at reasonable costs, and with heaps of highlights.
• One-Click WordPress installation, so there’s very little you need to do to kick start.
• They use SSD (Solid State Drives) in all their servers for better stacking times, and more than enough storage for a smooth user experience.
• And to top that, you also get a Free SSL certificate,  Free Backup, and Free CDN powered by Cloudflare.
• As an incredible special reward, you additionally get a Free domain name for a year with any hosting plan.
• Apart from that, GreenGeeks also provide Free WordPress Migration and Auto WordPress Updates, which make dealing with the site on a continuous basis a breeze.

The only negative I can find for GreenGeeks (mainly for Indian bloggers) is that they only have data centers in Phoenix, Chicago, Toronto, Montreal, and Amsterdam as of now.

Client Support

You can utilize three primary help channels with GreenGeeks that is: ● Email ● Telephone

● And direct visit – yeah that caught my attention too. So, if you happen to be nearby any of their offices you can just walk in and ask for tech support.

GreenGeeks additionally provide you with a lot of self-help materials that are available on their site. Which are pretty great if you’re tech-savvy.

Checkout GreenGeeks

5. Hostinger

Hostinger was at first started in Europe and now has branches in the USA, Asia, and all over Europe.

So, for an Indian blogger, it is one of the top choices since they have servers in Asia.

Note: In case you didn’t get the chance to choose your data center while making the purchase, later on, you can still get them to change it from the US or Europe to Asia. Just contact their support; which btw is a charm.

Despite being one of the most economical WordPress hosting providers, their show is incredible but yet beaten by A2 Hosting and HostGator.

However, in September of 2020, they had a 14-hour power outage which dropped their overall uptime to simply 99.74%. Past to that, their yearly uptime was 99.96%.

Hostinger WordPress Hosting Plans

Their least expensive WordPress hosting plan begins from INR99/month (if you join with a four-year plan) and renews at INR159/month.

What you’ll get with this plan:

• 1 Website
• 30 GB SSD Storage
• ~10000 Visits Monthly
• 1 Email Account
• Free SSL
• 100 GB Bandwidth
• Managed WordPress
• WordPress Acceleration

In case you’re not happy with their services, you can also ask for a full refund within 30 days.

Checkout Hostinger

6. InMotion

Since 2001, InMotion has grown a client base of more than 300,000 with two data farms in Los Angeles and Virginia Washington, D.C.

As one of the more settled names in the business, they offer one of the most trusted hosting services and technical support.

InMotion’s Basic WP Hosting plan offers:

• 1 Website
• 50GB SSD Storage
• 4x Performance
• Free SSL
• Unlimited Bandwidth
• Unlimited Email

features that come with any InMotion WordPress Plans:

• WordPress Pre-Installed: Start blogging on WordPress instantly.
• WordPress Website Migration: Free WordPress migration tools. Not sure how to use them? Assistance is also available.
• WordPress Optimized Stack: Always up to date with the latest PHP versions recommended by WordPress, managed updates, and more.
• Free WordPress Themes: All plans include custom themes and page templates.
• Premium WordPress Plugins: All the WP hosting plans come with premium plugins like Jetpack, Speed Coach, Total Upkeep, and more for free.
• Money-Back Guarantee: 90-day unconditional full money-back guarantee.

Remarkable Support Stuff:

Technical assistance is quite possibly the most important component of a decent web host, especially for newbies.

Having a strong backing will make your work very much stress-free.

With InMotion’s WordPress Hosting, you won’t ever have to worry about issues like cyberattacks, malware attacks, website crashes, or anything that could practically impact your income and blog’s traffic.

Checkout InMotion

7. iPage

iPage has been around since 1998 and have hosted more than 1 million sites on the Internet till now.

iPage is owned by the same company, that owns Bluehost and HostGator, Endurance International Group (EIG) -a reknown Internet Service Provider.

iPage has everything that you’ll need to build the perfect blog.

Here are some of the features iPage has to offer?

• it’s Search engines friendly; so Google or the other search engines won’t ever find it difficult to crawl your site
• You get a FREE domain registration for one year*
• A Free SSL certificate
• Unlimited storage
• Unlimited bandwidth
• Unlimited email addresses
• Pre-installed themes & plugins
• Automatic WordPress install and updates
• 24/7 WordPress support

If you still don’t like their services iPage offers a 30-day unconditional money-back guarantee.

So, go ahead and check out their site for more info, you’ve nothing to lose.

Checkout iPage

8. NameCheap

Most people know Namecheap as a domain name provider, however, they also offer shared web hosting as well as WordPress and other high-end hosting services.

Established in 2000, Namecheap started by offering the best domains at the best prices with the best client service. And gradually they have now added other services like hosting, security, managed WordPress, and more.

By now they have registered more than 13 million domains and expanded their business across 18 countries.

One highlight of the Namecheap Hosting is the 1-month Free trial; I loved this idea because with the other company’s 30 Days guarantee you needed to pay first and then if not satisfied you need to ask for a refund.

But with Namecheap, you don’t need to pay anything upfront, you can use their services for a month for free and then decide whether you want to continue or not.

Although you’ll have to save your card details for auto-renewal after the 1st month.

And if you don’t want to continue you must cancel the plan within the 30 days period; otherwise, you’ll be billed as per the instruction you had provided at the time of registration.

Why NameCheap WordPress Hosting?

• Truly affordable
• Awesome Speed
• Awesome Site Response Time – 0.36s
• Fully Loaded Time – 1.00s
• Flexible plans with Monthly and Yearly billing

What will you get with their cheapest WP hosting Plan?

• 10 GB SSD storage
• 50k visitors/month
• 99.99% uptime guarantee

No doubt Namecheap is a very good choice for a newbie to start his/her blog, but I would highly recommend if you chose to go with Namecheap then please go with one of their high-end plans because of the limitations (with the starter plan) below:

• No free SSL certificate: you’ll have to manually install a Free SSL certificate from a provider like Let’s Encrypt
• No automatic CDN: again you’ll have to manually configure a Free CDN with a company like Cloudflare
• Less Storage: usually 10GB is enough for a simple text-rich site but if you’re planning a media-rich blog (for example a photography blog) then 10GB storage won’t be enough.

You can check out the Namecheap Managed WP plans by clicking the button below to get a better idea.

Checkout Namecheap Hosting

9. Dreamhost

Dreamhost is PCMag’s “Editors’ Choice” Winner for 5 Years In a Row for a reason: – they have always made sure that the websites that are hosted with them are fast, secure & always up.

With 20+ years of experience in hosting over 1.5 million websites, blogs, and online stores — Dreamhost is definitely a great place to power your WordPress blog.

The basic plan of Dreamhost WordPress Hosting starts from $2.59/mo

The Features you get with the basic plan:

• 1 Website hosting
• Free Domain included
• It can handle Unlimited Traffic
• Pre-Installed WordPress
• Free Automated WordPress Migrations
• WP Website Builder
• Fast SSD Storage
• Free SSL Certificate
• 3 Year, 1 Year & Monthly Plans
• 24*7 active support

The Deal Breaker

• You don’t get free emails with the basic plan. However, if you want you can add Email for as low as $1.67/mo

Advantages of Using DreamHost

● The normal reaction time is 740 ms. ● High uptime rates: – DreamHost has a 99.928% normal uptime so far this year.

● You can get extra features like unlimited storage, unlimited emails if you sign up for a longer period.

Checkout Dreamhost

10. WP Engine

The only reason I kept this awesome hosting provider for last because it’s very expensive for a newbie blogger and even for an established blogger who is not making much revenue from his/her blog.

WP Engine is a high-performance-packed WordPress hosting provider based in Austin, TX.

As the name suggests, WP Engine is primarily built for WordPress. Their Managed WP Hosting gives you the industry-leading speed, security, and stability that you need to start or grow your website.

Being one of the top WordPress hosting providers WP Engine offer the best hosting services, and you can tell that by just looking at their great clientele; which includes big names like Yelp, Asana, AMD, National Geographic, PBS, MyFitnessPal, and many others.

To offer your WordPress site the most elevated performance, speed, versatility, and nonstop security, they’ve joined forces with Amazon Web Services and Google Cloud Platform.

Like I said, it’s the best in the industry; but of course, you’ll have to pay a lot more than the cost of any other hosts that I have mentioned above to enjoy their awesome perks.

I, obviously highly recommend WP Engine to you if you need one genuine WordPress hosting for your high-traffic site.

WP Engine Plans

The minimum costs start at $25 each month!

Pros

● They are something different from other WordPress hosting servers and literally give your WordPress site the perfect home. ● They have every minute of everyday active support.

● 1-click organizing apparatus for testing new WordPress modules and different highlights before pushing it to your main site.

Cons:

● Plans are very costly even if you want to build a small site.
● To guarantee high site optimization, not all modules are accessible in the WordPress store.

To know more about Wp Engine checkout their website

Checkout WP Engine

Wrap Up

Okay, I have shared the best WordPress Hosting for Bloggers in India. I believe the article helped worn off some of your confusion if not all of them.

So, just pick whichever hosting you want from the list and start your blogging venture already.

And in any case, if you’re still not sure which one to go with (since all of them have sort of similar features) then go with any of my top 3 recommendations, you won’t regret it.

A2Hosting, Bluehost, or Hostgator;

Like I mentioned above, I personally am using A2Hosting for bloggingventure.com – so, if you ask me to pick just one from the list then it would definitely be A2Hosting.

P.S. I would also recommend you to go with a longer tenure than 1 year for any host you pick; you’ll save a lot.

So, that’s it! I hope you have found the guide helpful.

If you have any doubt, or queries drop them in the comments or email me at jeet[@]bloggingventure.com

Until next time,

Buh-bye!

The post 10 Best WordPress Hosting for Bloggers in India 2024 appeared first on Blogging Venture.

But as a newbie, you might be wondering which platform is best for you and how it can meet your needs.

If that is the case then, you’ve landed at the right place.

There are too many blogging platforms out there. And almost all are accessible from anywhere in the world; let alone India. And I know for a starter it is going to be very confusing while picking the right one.

So, I won’t confuse you anymore by covering all the platforms I know of. Instead, I will just show you the best ones where you can start your blog for free.

In this guide, I will show you how to pick the right platform and how to create a blog using 6 of the top free blogging platforms.

The best thing about the discussed platforms is, they all have a mobile app, which means you can blog anytime from anywhere using your smartphone only.

The Best Blogging Platforms in India.

A Free blogging platform is best for you – if you haven’t yet figured out your niche. If you’re not sure whether your blog topic will work or not. Or if you just want to do a trial run of your ideas before spending any of your hard-earned money.

Whatever the reason might be, I have got your back.

Although, if you’re confident about your writing and the niche that you’ve picked; I would recommend you to go for a Paid self-hosted WordPress blog. Of course, only if you can afford. Also, if you’re serious about it and see it as a long term thing.

Why am I emphasizing more on a Self-hosted blog? because let’s say, you started a blog on blogger.com. And after a year you realized you want to switch to a paid option; since it is almost impossible to scale a blog on a free platform, sooner or later you will have to move to a paid option.

So, now, migrating your free blog to a paid self-hosted site could be hectic for a newbie.

Firstly, you won’t be able to migrate it as it is; that means you will have to redesign your blog.

Secondly, you’ll have to transfer the existing content to your new blog and also might need to take care of SEO again.

Thirdly, if you don’t know how to redesign your blog or transfer your content to the new platform you’ll end up hiring someone to do it for you and that will eventually cost you some extra money.

However,  by that time you might have enough money compared to your current situation that you won’t mind hiring someone. But it is still going to be a big headache according to me.

My point is if you’re confident that blogging is something you’ll never give up on, and can somehow manage the investment right now, then go with the paid option right away, instead of waiting for a year or so.

It will hardly cost you around INR3000-INR5000 for a year.

I am not saying this is not a big amount; I know it is. I’ve been in your shoes. All I am saying if you can somehow afford the amount now then you can save yourself some time and money in the future.

And also by opting for a self-hosted blog, you can work on growing it from day 1. Since the free sites lake a lot of the premium features, it becomes very hard to grow your blog on a free platform.

Anyways, you know yourself and your situation better than me or anyone else. So, you make the final call.

For now, I have listed below the top free blogging sites that are available in India. Go ahead and pick the one that best suits your needs.

6 Best Blogging Sites in India [FREE]:

1. Blogger.com
2. WordPress.com
3. Tumblr.com
4. Medium.com
5. Linkedin.com
6. Quora.com [Not Available anymore]

Let’s dive in and understand how you can make your own blog on each platform.

How to Use Blogger to Start a Blog for FREE:

My no.1 recommendation is blogger.com. It is one of the best blogging sites in India. It is a free blogging platform introduced by Google. It is good for any niche. You just need to signup for an account and you’re good to go.

The other best thing about Blogger is – you can work on building your brand from day 1.

Blogger has an inbuilt feature, using which you can connect a custom domain to your yourblog.blogger.com blog without having to buy a hosting plan.

Meaning, you buy a domain name now and host it on blogger.com.

Promote your blog’s custom URL and in the future when you decide to move to a paid platform you can simply host the same custom domain on the new site and your users won’t have to do anything to find your new blog, hence you won’t lose your brand recognition.

Confused??

let me simplify it…

When you signup at blogger.com, by default you get a URL (something like myfirstblog.blogger.com).

Let’s say, instead of using the default URL, you bought a domain name (custom URL) called myfirstblog.com and you hosted it on blogger.com. You wrote a few articles and shared them with your followers on Facebook, Instagram or anywhere else on the web.

Now, when people try to find your blog, they won’t use or see the default URL (myfirstblog.blogger.com), instead, they will remember and use the custom URL (myfirstblog.com) that you just bought and hosted.

This way, in the future, when you move to a paid platform, and your new blog is ready to go public, you can simply remove the custom domain from your blogger.com blog and host it on the new blogging platform.

Now, when your readers go to myfirstblog.com, it will take them to the new blog instead of your old blog. Which means you won’t lose any of the hard build audiences.

How to use Blogger to set up a free blog:

1. Go to blogger.com
2. Click “Create Your Blog”
3. Sign up with your Gmail ID.
4. “Confirm Your Profile” and “Continue to Blogger”
5. Click on “Create New Blog”
6. Give your blog a name and pick a sub-domain and a theme you like
7. Once all filled up, click on “Create blog!”
8. Google will ask if you like to buy a custom domain, you can skip it by clicking “no thanks”
9. Create your first post, publish it.

That’s it!

So, if you want your blog to have a unique domain name instead of the yourblog.blogger.com, and not ready to invest in a hosting plan right now, then just go buy a domain name from GoDaddy.com, Namecheap.com or anywhere you like and host it on blogger.com for FREE.

If you buy from namecheap.com I will get a small commission as I am part of their affiliate program. But if you’re a first time customer, I would recommend you get a domain name from Godaddy.com (I am not an affiliate there) and you can get one for as low as Rs.350/-.

Anyways, follow the steps below to host your blogger.com blog on a custom domain for FREE.

How to use Blogger with a custom domain?

Step 1: Log in to blogger.com

Step 2: Go to Settings

Step 3: Navigate to Publishing (Blog Address)

Step 4: Click on “Set up a third-party URL for your blog”

Step 5: Inside “Third-party domain settings” enter your domain name and click “Save”.

Step 6: Now blogger will ask you to add two CNAME records on your domain registrar’s website to verify the domain; Copy them.

Step 7: Log in to your domain registrar’s website on a different tab and locate the DNS settings of your domain.

Step 8: Inside, you’ll see a button that says, “ADD” or “Add Records”. Click it and select the Type as “CNAME” and add the details (both) accordingly and click on Save (refer to the image below if you’re on Godaddy).

Step 9: Head back to blogger.com and click on Save.

Voila! that’s it.. your blog is all set.

If you don’t want to go with blogger (or the Google blog) you can use any of the other free options that I have shared below:

How to Create a Blog on WordPress for FREE:

Just like blogger.com, wordpress.com is also another awesome blogging platform in India to start a free site.

It is a product by a company name Automattic, the same company behind some more cool tools like WordPress.org, Jetpack or Gravatar; there’s a few more I am not taking the names here.

WordPress.org is more famous than the free version wordpress.com.

Just like Blogger.com, you need to sign up for a free account on wordpress.com and start blogging right away.

Here are the steps to start a free WordPress blog:

Step 1. Go to wordpress.com

Step 2. Click on “Get Started”

Step 3. Pick a unique username and then select the first option that says “Free”

WordPress also has a custom domain mapping option, but unlike Blogger, you will have to pay for the hosting.

So, if you’re planning to have a custom domain then go with blogger.com or tumblr.com (which we will be talking about next)

Moving on…

Step 4. WordPress will ask you to pick a paid package, don’t fall for that, instead, scroll down and click on “Start with Free”

Step 5. Sign up with your Gmail id and click “Continue”

Step 6. You’re almost ready to blog. Just confirm your email ID and customize the site as per your liking.

Step 7. Start publishing content on your new blog and start blogging.

How to Create a Blog on Tumblr for FREE:

Tumblr is founded by David Karp in February 2007. It is available in 18 languages.

Tumblr is more of a social media site then a blogging platform. That being said, Tumblr is perfect for microblogging. In other words, it is for those who like to create short-form of content.

For example; it is best for you if you like to share photos, small videos, write poems, small stories, quotes or anything that doesn’t take much time to consume.

So, if you think it’s the perfect match, then let’s learn how you can get started with it.

Here are the steps to start a free blog on Tumblr:

1. Go to tumblr.com
2. Click on “Get Started”
3. Sign up with your Gmail id and create a username for your blog (you can change it later)
4. Enter your age, agree to the “Terms of Service” by checking the box and click “Next”.
5. Verify yourself as human by using the captcha, and click “Almost Done”
6. Pick at least 5 interesting topics you would like to follow and click “Next”.
7. Verify your email id, customize the look and feel and start posting.

Like I mentioned above, Tumblr also has an option to map a custom domain to your blog.

This is how to do it? (Godaddy is my domain registrar)

How to set up a custom domain on tumblr.com?

In case the video is not showing, here is the direct youtube link: https://youtu.be/ZmLdYuJUS84

How to Start a Blog on Medium for FREE:

Medium.com is a community of bloggers. Although, some of the bloggers I follow use it as their secondary blog.

Medium is a very good choice for a newbie as you don’t need to worry much about customizing anything; you just need to sign up and start blogging.

Moreover, medium.com gives you the opportunity to connect with other bloggers and your readers. As it also works so much like a social media platform you can quickly create a good readership.

So, just clap, share, comment and connect with the people that matter. And once you have a good readership you can start a self-hosted blog and redirect your audience to your main blog (that’s what most of the pro bloggers do).

Okay! let’s show you how you can get started with Medium.com

Steps to start a free blog on Medium:

1. Head over to medium.com
2. Find the “Get started” button at the top
3. You have two options to join medium, either with your Facebook account or your Gmail account. Use whatever works for you.
4. Next, Dive in and pick all the topics that you would like to show up on your page.
5. Once your page is set, go to your profile and write a short bio.
6. Click on your picture at the right top, select “New story” and start writing your first blog.

How to Start a Blog on Linkedin:

If you have ever looked for a job, you probably have heard or used Linkedin. BTW, Linkedin is not a job portal.

Although, it connects the people who are looking for a job and the people who are looking for someone to fill a vacancy, so, I guess, it does function as a job portal at some point.

Linkedin is a platform that brings together people from all professions. You can connect with the people working in your field or literally with anyone from any field of work in the world. It’s social media for professionals.

Even though Linkedin has a blog writing feature, it is still not an ideal place to start just any blog. It is best for an authority blogger.

So, if you’re someone who likes to write about his field of work and doesn’t care about having a blog of his own, instead, someone who cares about reaching the right people who would want to know his point of view on a particular niche or field of work.

Meaning?

The Linkedin blogging platform is not a place to start a fashion blog or a travel blog, it is a place to blog about your professional expertise; like, marketing, finance, business, investments, or whatever the skills you have.

Linkedin is a perfect place to showcase your professional skills, and to create a professional portfolio.

Think LinkedIn is for you? then here is how to start…

Steps to start blogging on Linkedin:

1. Go to linkedin.com and sign up.

Once you’re done with your profile and logged in, go to your home page; if you already have an account you can directly go here www.linkedin.com/post/ as well.

2. On your home page, below the Start a post button you’ll see a link that says “Write an article on LinkedIn”. Click the link and it will take you to a new page, opened on a new tab.

3. In the new tab, the in Publishing editor will open up. The first thing you can do here is adding a featured image to your article. Click the icon with two dummy images and a plus sign in between (refer to the screenshot below), and select the image from your system and upload it.

Once the image is uploaded, hover over the image you’ll see 3 icons appear at the bottom of the image; you can use the first one to stretch the image to fit in full screen or simply hit the middle icon to fit the image as it is, irrespective to its size, And use the third icon to delete the image that you’ve uploaded.

Below the icons, you can see a box that says “Add credit and caption“. If you’ve taken the image from google or anywhere else and if you’re not 100% sure it is free, then you can use this option to credit the actual owner of the image or the source where you found it.

And also you can use this space to briefly describe the image if you like.

4.  Here on it’s straight forward. Use the Headline box to give a catchy title to your article. And use the content box below to add your content (text, image, video, links, etc.)

You can use the text format bar at the top to format your content. And once you’re done writing your article just hit the Publish at the top-right or you can use the Draft button next to it to save your unfinished article to rework later.

How to Start a Blog on Quora for FREE:

No longer Available – Quora removed this option

This section is only for your reference. 

Quora.com is not exactly a blogging platform; it’s more of a platform where people come either to ask questions or to answer questions.

Quora has a huge number of user base and since it does have an option to start a blog, so it automatically becomes one of the best blogging platforms in India or anywhere on the surface.

Instead of answering what is being asked, you can just pour out your heart just the way you like, whoever needs it, they will come crawling in. No obligations at all.

Quora says “We want to connect the people who have the knowledge to the people who need it.”

This is exactly what blogging is all about; coming out of the shell and sharing your knowledge and experiences with the people who would benefit from it.

So, if you feel anything like Quora does then it might be the perfect place to start your blog. And compared to the other platforms above, getting noticed on Quora is very easy. You just need to sit down and give insightful answers to the questions being asked.

Already feeling for Quora? then get onto it.

Steps to start a free blog on Quora:

1. Go to quora.com
2. Sign up with your Facebook, Google plus or by simply using your email id
3. Pick a few interests, which you’d like to read about.
4. Pick a few interests, which you’d like to write about.
5. Select your languages; by default, Quora is in English but you can pick other regional languages that are available.
6. Next, Quora will ask if you’d like to connect your account to Facebook so that you can find your FB friends that are also in Quora. If you don’t want to connect just click “Not now”.
7. Once your profile is ready, confirm your email id and now you can create your blog. Just follow the screenshots below:

That’s it! you now have all the information you needed to make your free blog on any of the platforms we have discussed today. So just go ahead and start your blog already.

Just pick the one suite your need and follow the steps above; you’re good to go.

Best Blogging Site in India – FREE

If you’re still not sure which one Blogging Platform India to pick from then pick blogger.com

It is the best of all the free options we have discussed above.

Here are the reasons why:

1. It’s free
2. A Google product
3. You can use with a custom domain
4. Beginner-friendly
5. Perfect for any niche

Once more advantage you have with Blogger; if you have a well-maintained Blogger blog, it’s easy to get approval for Adsense compared to the other platforms.

Over to You:

Check out each platform and decide which one will work best for you. In fact, if you like, sign up for all of them, that’s even better.

You can buy a domain name and map it to your Blogger or Tumblr blog and make it your primary blog and signup for the other platforms as well and make them your secondary blogs.

This way you can reach more people and the best part is you don’t need to create separate content for these other blogs.

First, publish your content on your primary blog and then copy that same content and publish it on the other platforms as well.

Just leave a link back to your main content page on your primary blog for the search engines to decide its original source. It’s totally legal.

I hope I have helped you to figure out the best blogging site to get started.

P.S. If you’ve stuck till here, and if I have done my part well then please share this post to your network on Facebook, Twitter, or anywhere you hang out. It would be a great help on your part.

Okay! I am always here to help you out, so if you have any queries leave it in the comments and I will surely get back to you.

Happy Blogging

Buh-bye!

The post 6 Best Blogging Sites in India 2024 appeared first on Blogging Venture.

Well, to be fair, it doesn’t really matter if you’re from India or anywhere else in the world, the process to start a blog is exactly the same.

So, even if you’re not from India, you can still use this guide to get started with your blogging journey.

Okay, before starting the Guide, you must first buy a Domain name and Hosting Plan.

If you’re not familiar with the words WordPress, Domain and Hosting then here’s a brief:

Domain name – is the address where you send people to read your blog, it is also called a URL; for example, facebook.com.

Hosting – is where you store your website’s files and data.

WordPress – is the application that runs your blog.

Here is an analogy for you to make it even simpler:

If someone asks you to open a specific word file from a flash drive, which is not your – first, you will need the file name, that is your domain name – second, you will need the flash drive (storage drive), that is your hosting – and lastly you will need an application like MS office to open the file, that is WordPress.

I hope you’ve understood. if not, let me know in the comment section at the bottom of this blog post.

How to Start A Self-Hosted WordPress Blog in India?

Okay, now that you have bought your web-hosting and domain name, I don’t see any point in delaying your blogging venture.

Let’s not wait anymore and get your blog up and running.

The 6 steps to Start A Self-Hosted WordPress Blog:

1. Buy a domain name and hosting
2. Install WordPress
3. Install a theme
4. Install the required Plugins
5. Connect your new blog to Google Search Console
6. Publish your first blog post and start blogging

#Step1 – Buy a domain name and hosting

We have already talked about what is a domain and hosting. So, let’s talk about why and where to get them?

FYI, it is possible to use your laptop or desktop to host a website. Just google it you’ll find the answers, but it’s not worth the time.

Even if you manage to set it up there are still going to be many complications, here are the most basic ones:

• – you’ll have to keep your laptop or desktop switched on all the time, 24/7 and 365 days
• – your laptop or desktop won’t be able to handle the heavy load.
• – it will constantly need technical assistance, anything goes wrong your site will go down.

It is a stupid idea to configure a hosting server of our own at home because it will cost you a lot of money and time.

So, the wise thing to do here is buying the hosting space you required, for a monthly fee from a company that will take care of everything for you.

Besides, buying a hosting plan will take away all the unnecessary hassles from you and let you fully focus on your main goal, to grow your blog.

If you’re looking for recommendations then here are the best service providers I know:

To buy Domain Name – Namecheap – you can save money in the long run.

To buy Hosting Plan – A2Hosting (I am currently using this one), Bluehost

So, go ahead first make the purchases then come back here. If you’re on a tight budget and you’re from India then Hostgator is another good option.

If you’re from India and looking for a hosting provider that accepts Indian debit cards and allows you to pay in INR, then, A2Hosting and Hostgator are the options.

#Step3 – Install WordPress

Now, I would suggest, don’t rush into anything and do whatever you’ve been told, not knowing what you did exactly.

Don’t just follow the steps I share, whatever you’re doing, understand it.

Take your time, take hours. If needed, take the whole day, even the whole week, but don’t just follow the instructions without having any clue about what you’re doing.

Think of it this way, you’re about to get into a new relationship. So, just like any relationship, you need to know it inside and out. That will come in handy in the long run.

I don’t want you to get too technical with it and screw your head up. I just meant that, be aware of the steps and consciously perform the steps. If you’re typing a URL, then just know why you did that, and what will be the effects.

You’ll thank me, if in the future you come across any minor issues or bugs with the blog, you will have a broader scope to troubleshoot the problem yourself, instead of depending on someone else.

Enough said, let’s dive right in…

Note: I am using A2Hosting for the demonstration. But the process is almost the same for any hosting plan from any hosting provider. And most of the time the dashboard also looks similar. So, just follow the steps, you’ll be ok. Still, if you find difficulties, send me an email I will help you out.

Okay great! Let’s get into details.

If you’ve bought your domain and hosting from different companies then first you’ll have to point your domain name to your hosting server.

But, in case you’ve bought the domain and hosting from the same company or got your domain for free with your hosting plan then you can skip this step and move forward.

Connect your domain to your hosting server

To connect your domain with your hosting server, you need to update your domain’s default nameservers with the nameservers provided by your hosting provider.

In my case, I have bought my domain from Godaddy and I’ll be hosting my blog in A2Hosting.

So, I will be updating my domain’s nameservers in Godaddy with the nameservers provided by A2Hosting.

Note: in case you can’t find your host’s nameservers, just contact their support and ask them, I am sure they will help you with the same immediately.

And if you’ve bought your hosting from A2Hosting then just use the nameservers shared below:

ns1.a2hosting.com

ns2.a2hosting.com

ns3.a2hosting.com

ns4.a2hosting.com

Just log in to the account from where you’ve bought your domain name and locate the DNS settings of your domain, and update the nameservers.

If you’re on Godaddy, this is how to do it:

Log in to your GoDaddy account, go to My Products from the menu, and locate the section that says Domains.

Inside Domains you should see your domain name, just click the DNS button seen against it (Refer to the image)

Now, inside domain settings scroll down to find the Nameservers section. Here, hit the Change button and a drop-down will appear, select Custom from the list.

Now two new blank boxes will appear, where you need to enter the nameservers you’ve received from your hosting provider.

In the case of A2Hosting, use the above-shared nameservers.

Enter one in each box, use the Add Nameserver button seen right-below to add extra boxes (refer to the image).

Once you’ve entered the nameservers correctly, just hit the Save button and you’re done.

Note: in some cases, the DNS gets updated right away and in others, it might take up to 48 hours to get successfully updated. So have patience.

In meanwhile, you can still install the WordPress in your hosting plan and connect it to your domain; and once the DNS is successfully updated you can access your blog by typing your URL in the web browser.

Before you could install WordPress, if you’ve registered your hosting plan with a different domain then you will have to create an Addon Domain for the domain where you want to install WordPress.

Create an addon domain

To do that,  at first login to your hosting account or cPanel, navigate to Addon Domains, and create your domain.

If you’re on A2Hosting, then follow the steps below:

Login to your A2Hosting cPanel,

Locate Domains section, find Addon Domains

Enter your domain name and hit the Add Domain button below

In case, if you’re getting any error message, something similar to this – “You cannot park your main domain.” This simply means you’re trying to add the domain that you’ve already registered with your hosting plan while buying the plan.

So, you don’t need to add the domain you can directly start installing WordPress.

How to install WordPress on your Hosting Server?

Just follow the steps carefully and you’ll be good to go:

Step 1: – Log in to your hosting account ( in my case, I will log in to my A2Hosting account). If you’ve bought your plan from Siteground, Bluehost or Hostgator then log in to that.

If you haven’t already bought your hosting plan then here are the offer links:

A2Hosting – Get a 51% discount on the Regular price

Bluehost – Get a 60% discount on the Regular price

Hostgator – Get a 50% discount on the Regular price

Step 2: – Find the cPanel link and click on the button that says, “cPanel login”.

Step 3: – Locate the “WordPress A2 Optimised” icon inside the dashboard. In the case of Sitegroud or any of the other hostings, it will be just “WordPress”. Once you find it click it to go inside.

Step 4: – Inside the next page scroll down, you should see a screen with 2 buttons, something like the screenshot below; Just ignore the My Apps button and click on “Install Now”.

Step 5: – Fill out the form on the next page.

Software Setup:

From the drop-down, select your protocol and domain name.

Note:  in the case of A2Hosting, the HTTPS protocol gets enabled by default once you’ve registered your hosting plan with the domain name or you added it as an addon domain. But in the case of Sitegoround, select it as HTTP and you’ll get the option to enable the HTTPS feature once you’ve installed the WordPress and have installed Siteground’s in-house plugin “SG Optimiser” in your WP blog.

· Keep the install path/ In Directory space blank.

In Site Settings:

· Give your blog a name; I am sure you have already decided what your blog name would be, but in case you haven’t, just keep whatever you like, you can change it later. Site Description is basically your tagline.

· Create an admin username, set a password, and type in the Email ID where you want to receive admin notifications related to your blog.

· Now while choosing your username, don’t just keep “admin” as it is easy for anyone to hack. And you’re also not allowed to use characters like, “-”, “@”, “#”, “$”, “%”, “^”, “&”, “*”, “(”, “)” or the so-called symbols.

Use your creativity and mix it up with some numbers and make it something non-guessable and yet you can easily remember.

Select your preferred language, and once you’re all set, click on the blue button that says, “Install”

…your installation will start now.  it will take a few minutes, and if you like you can switch tabs since it requires no supervision.

Finally, “Congratulations, the software was installed successfully”; if you have done everything right so far then you should see this message.

It can vary depending on your hosting provider. And, In case you’re not seeing the success message, then, just start over and make sure you didn’t miss anything.

Okay, now below the success message you’ll see your just installed blog URL and its admin URL. Refer to the screenshot below.

Note: if you’re not using A2Hosting then the admin URL would be something like this: http://yourdomainname.com/wp-admin; A2Hosting adds extra protection by changing your admin URL so that no one can guess the URL and try to hack into your admin dashboard. Although, with the other hosting providers you can install a WP Security plugin to do the same.

You can now log in to your blog’s dashboard by going to the admin URL and using the username and password you set during the installation.

And by clicking the “Return to Overview” link on the same page you can see your currently installed WordPress sites.

Congratulations!! Now you’re ready to customize your blog the way you like.

If you had decided to go with Hostgator, then, here’s a guide to Start a WordPress Blog in Hostgator. I published this post when I was just getting started with WordPress.

So, it can be a bit outdated but you can still follow the instructions, the look and feel of the interface might have changed but the whole procedure should still be the same.

And in case you’re on Siteground, then here’s a link to a video that should help you out: https://youtu.be/Sm9RcNJVn9c

The next step, install a theme. let’s start…

#Step4 – Install a theme

You can install a theme in three different ways, by search, by upload, and by FTP.

Here, I have shared the easiest one of all of those three techniques.

You can check out the other techniques here >> 3 ways to Install A Theme in WordPress

How to install a WordPress theme?

When you are just starting up with blogging, chances are high that you won’t go right away for a premium theme. First, you would want to understand the platform, how it works.

So it’s obvious that you will start your blog with a free theme.

The best way to install a free theme is, log in to your WP dashboard and go to > Appearance > Themes>

Here you will see the default themes that are already installed. It’s highly likely that you are not going to use any of the defaults; so, first, delete* all the default themes.

Note: you cannot delete the theme that is currently active on your blog; so, first find a new theme and then come back here and delete the default.

Here are the steps to find and install a theme from the WP Dashboard.

Step 1: Once you are on the themes page, click on the Add new button on the top left after the title “Themes”.

You can also click on the big plus sign next to the installed themes.

On the next screen, you will see some themes under the featured section; these are the ones that are promoted by WordPress. On the right to it, you will have the options to filter out the latest themes, the most popular ones, your favourite ones, and then the advance filtration option to filter out the themes as per your requirement.

The latest and the popular sections are easy to understand; it simply shows you the latest themes that are added and the most popular ones.

The favourites section simply allows you to see the themes that you have favourited while browsing through themes at wordpress.org.

To take advantage of this feature, you will have to use wordpress.org as you cannot favourite a theme from inside the WP dashboard.

You will first have to create an account at wordpress.org.

Go to >wordpress.org, create a new account, confirm your email id and you are good to go.

Now you can browse through all the themes available at wordpress.org and you can favourite the ones that you like and would want to refer back to later, before finalizing the theme for your blog.

Note: You have this feature for plugins as well; The feature works exactly the same for both. So, next time when you read about some plugins or themes that you would want to try out, just make a search in wordpress.org (given it is not a third-party plugin or theme) hit the love icon to favourite it and you can always come back to it later.

To see the themes that you have favourited, navigate to Appearance>Themes>Add new>Favorites and type in your user name and click on the button that says “Get Favorites”; it will list down all the themes that you have loved so far.

Next, you have the Feature Filter section; here you have the advanced options to narrow down your choices.

Simply select what type of layout you want, what features you want and select the subject of your blog and click on “Apply Filters”; it will list down all the themes that have those features you have just checked off.

Finally, if you have already researched and decided on your theme, then just type in the name of it in the search box to the right side of the filter bar.

Step 2:  Navigate to the theme you want to install. When you hover over the theme thumbnail the “Install” and “Preview” buttons will appear.

Click on “Install”

Step 3: Now, once the installation is finished, the “Install” button will turn into “Activate” and the “Preview” button will change to “Live Preview”.

You can activate or have a live preview of your blog from here by clicking the respective buttons or you can go back to the installed themes page and activate the theme from there.

That’s it! now go ahead and customize your blog the way you want.

But before that let’s install the required plugins as well.

#Step5 – Install the required Plugins

Just like themes, there are three ways you can install a WordPress plugin; by search, by upload, and by FTP.

Here, I have shared the easiest one of all of those three techniques – that is from the dashboard, by searching.

You can check out the other techniques here >> 3 ways to Install A Plugin in WordPress

How to Install a Plugin in WordPress?

Step 1: first thing first, login to your WordPress dashboard, if you have not already.

Step 2: Go to > Plugins > Add new

You can either navigate to it from the side menu or from inside the plugins page. It will open up the page where you can see a list of plugins available with WP.

There are more than 50,650 plugins available with WordPress. It’s easy to get lost when there’s a plugin for literally anything you can imagine doing on your blog.

So, just stay focused and stick to what you had planned, search the plugin you were looking for.

If you are not sure which plugin you should use, then, here’s my list of the must-have plugins for any blog.

Go ahead and check out the list and if any of the plugins match your requirement, then, you can surely opt-in for the one I have listed, as the list was made after extensive experimentation on more than ten websites. I have only listed the best as per my opinion.

If you like, you can also test all the available plugins for yourself and pick the best ones as per your liking.

Just make sure you don’t do it on your primary domain as you might screw up the whole website if you are not adept with coding or if you’re not from a technical background. So, either buy a secondary domain or create a sub-domain on the main domain and do all your testings on that.

Step 3: Type in the name of the plugin or a keyword related to the plugin in the search box.

It will show the most relevant plugins based on your search terms.

Step 4: Pick the one you want to install and click on the “Install Now” button next to it.

Now it will turn into a blue-coloured button written as “activate”; which means the plugin is successfully is installed.

Step 5: Now, you can either click on the blue button available here to activate the plugin or you can go back to the installed plugins page and find the plugin you’ve just installed and “activate” it from there.

All set! Now you can start configuring the plugin as you want.

Note: After the installation, the plugin should show up in the side menu of the dashboard. If it is not showing there, check if it is inside any of the other side menu items – plugins, tools, appearance, media or the settings menu.

Look for a name that is similar to the name of the newly installed plugin. For example, Yoast SEO will show up as just “SEO”, WP Facebook Messenger will show up as only “Facebook Messenger”.

And sometimes, some plugins for custom fonts or some shortcode plugins might not even show up anywhere in the side menu, these usually show up when you add a new post or edit one.

And some plugins might not show up anywhere at all, for example, Hellobar; the plugin is simply used to connect your blog to the Hellobar dashboard outside of your blog.

#Step6 – Connect your Blog to Google Search Console

If you want your blog to be found in Google when people type in some specific keywords in your niche then you’ll need to do SEO.

And in SEO, connecting your blog to the search console is the first step.

Now, if you are a complete beginner then connecting your blog to the search console might seem like a daunting task. But trust me, it is not.

Just follow the steps below and you will be ok.

Let’s start…

First, go ahead and sign in to Google Search Console with your Gmail account.

You should see a Welcome page once you’ve signed in.

Step 1: – Insert your blog’s URL where it says, “Site URL” and click on ADD PROPERTY

Step 2: – A pop up should appear asking you to verify your ownership of the domain.

Now, it will give you 5 different ways to verify your domain. You need to use just one.

Here we will talk about the easiest one of all, by installing an HTML tag.

Let’s start…

Inside the popup only, scroll down to see the alternative methods and Click the first option that says, “HTML tag”.

It will unfold and show you an HTML meta tag that should go in the section of your blog, before the first section.

If you understand what Google is asking you to do here, by all means, go ahead and do the needful. But if you’re not technically strong, then, don’t worry, just follow the instructions below.

So, to make it as simple as possible, we will use an inbuilt feature of the Yoast SEO plugin to verify our domain.

Note: For this option to work you must always have the Yoast SEO plugin installed in your WordPress and never remove the tag. But, in case, in the future, if you decide to try another SEO plugin or don’t want to use any at all, then, verify your domain with any of the other options that are available or use this one only by editing the header file of your blog.

Okay, now, instead of copying the whole meta tag just copy the section found in the content tag without the quotes. Refer to the image below:

Now,  login to your WordPress dashboard and navigate to SEO>General>Webmaster Tools>

Here locate “Google verification code“, paste the copied code inside the box against it and save the settings.

Now, go back to Google Search Console and click on verify (make sure you’ve selected HTML tag as the verifying option.)

If you did exactly as instructed, you should now see the congratulations message from Google.

The Google bots would now start crawling your blog and start to index the pages and posts, but the bots don’t know your site that well yet, so to make it easier for them, it is important that you submit a sitemap of your blog to the search console.

Here is how to do this:

Step 1: Go to SEO> General>Features

Scroll down a bit and locate XML Sitemaps; enable it, if it is not by default.

Step 2: Now, make sure the sitemap is working; go to http://www.yourdomain.com/sitemap_index.xml. Replace “yourdomain” with your own domain name.

For Example, here’s mine: https://honingbird.com/sitemap_index.xml

Step 3: Next Log in to the dashboard of Google Search Console. Click on Sitemaps on the left sidebar menu.

On the right side of the menu, you will see a tab that says “Add a new sitemap“. And under that, you will see your blog’s link and a blank space after it. Just type in “sitemap_index.xml” here and hit “SUBMIT“. refer to the screenshot below.

Below that section you’ll see a section called “Submitted sitemaps”; here you’ll find the submitted sitemaps and their current status.

That’s it if you have followed all the instructions right then your sitemap is now successfully submitted to Google and the Google bots will start to index your blog soon.

#Step6 – Publish your first Blog Post

Once all of the above requirements are met, it’s time to start blogging.

Clicking a few buttons is very easy, but the hard part is creating content for your blog. If you’re still having trouble figuring out what you’re going to write, I recommend revisiting your interests.

Also, I recommend you read my guide on blogging in India first.

The post How to Start A Self-Hosted WordPress Blog in India [The Non-Technical Guide] appeared first on Blogging Venture.

“The perfect Off-page SEO starts with an excellent On-page SEO. And an excellent On-page SEO starts with creating quality content.”

The content on your blog is the foundation, if it is strong, it won’t be much of a hustle to do a perfect SEO.

That being said, having awesome content on your blog isn’t always enough, you got to invest the time to get your SEO right.

There’s a second element that puts a lot of impact on your search rankings. And that is your site’s loading speed & performance.

Take an example of this post, I haven’t build a single link to this post. yet it is ranking on an average of 3-4 in Google.

There are 3 things that making this possible.

1. Valuable content. (Read the whole post and let me know if it’s valuable to you or not)
2. Speed & Performance. (For this I use only Siteground Hosting and its inbuilt SuperCacher; Read My Review for more info on this )
3. Social Signals. (Read about it below)

So, if you’ve been asking yourself why can’t I find my articles on Google? then you know the answer now.

Either you haven’t created awesome content yet or haven’t worked on your blog’s SEO, or maybe both.

So, the first rule of SEO is to “create great content.” And then do SEO.

I have already talked about SEO and the best on-page SEO techniques and strategies to try in 2020.

if you’ve missed that post, then go ahead and read that first.

Anyways here’s a brief on SEO again.

Search Engine Optimization is the only way to get FREE traffic from search engines and it is a must if you want to rank high.

There are two types of SEO: ● On-Page

● Off-Page

On-Page SEO: It is what you do on your site. Like optimizing Title Tags, Meta Tags, Image Optimization, Keyword Density, etc.

Off-Page SEO: It is what you do outside of your blog. It is something where you put in the efforts to build your brand presence on the internet away from your blog to build the overall authority of your site.

Off-page SEO is all about generating backlinks to your blog from other relevant blogs or sites. It is so much like internal linking but the links here come from other domains.

To rank higher in Google you need to build high-quality backlinks to your blog. Keep in mind though, you don’t want to build all your links to the homepage only.

In most cases when someone is referring to your blog, they would point it to an article on your blog. That is called deep linking.

The backlinks on the above image are deep links, they all are pointing to a different post on your blog.

But if you get to choose, keep a ratio of 30% (homepage) 70% (posts).

Remember Off-Page SEO requires consistent efforts and it is not something you can achieve overnight.

Don’t worry if you don’t know how to do it. Today in this guide I will show you some of the best strategies to build high-quality backlinks to your blog and rank on autopilot.

So, let’s get started!

13 Off-Page SEO Techniques or Link Building Strategies:

#1 Social Bookmarking

It’s one of the best and clean methods to build backlinks and gain highly relevant traffic to your blog.

Google loves Social Bookmarking websites as the content is updated very frequently on these websites.

You can use sites like Mix (earlier StumbleUpon), Digg, Reddit, SlashDot, Bizsugar, etc. Although you won’t get a do-follow backlink from these sites, still they are very effective.

It is the fastest way to index your website or blog post in search engines and it will also help you gain an overall brand authority of your blog which is loved by Google and the search engines.

Use proper tags that are related to your niche on these Social Bookmarking websites to drive highly relevant traffic to your website. Just share the new content with tags on these sites it’s 100% FREE.

#2 Forum Link Building

You just need to use this footprint to find forums in your niche: “Your Keyword” + Forums. Replace your keyword with the target keyword you are trying to rank for.

But before you get a do-follow link you need to participate in threads and try helping people answer their queries. Once you gain enough popularity in your niche and stand out as an expert you can then post direct links back to your website and get a do-follow backlink to your blog.

As the Forum sites have a very high authority it will impact a lot on your domain.

#3 in Off-page SEO techniques – Commenting

Comments don’t work the best in 2020 because sites now come with a default no-follow tag on all the comments.

However, commenting on high authority blogs in your niche can drive some serious traffic back to your blog.

And to your surprise, there are still some blogs available on the Internet that provides a do-follow backlink to your blog.

The only thing which you need to keep in mind is that while posting a comment make sure you keep it relevant to the article and don’t just comment to acquire a backlink.

Keep it natural and keep it simple.

#4 Directory Submissions

I have heard many people saying that Directory Submissions are dead and they don’t work anymore. In my opinion, it still works best. However, it depends on the sites you choose for Directory Submission.

If you are picking General Directory sites than it’s difficult to get a quality result but if you select Niche Directory websites then I am sure you’ll get some quality link juice.

It’s a little difficult to find Niche Websites in comparison to General Directories but it is worth the effort.

Here is a list from the Search Engine Journal to get you started.

#5 Infographics

Infographics are the best asset you can create for your website and can sell it to other websites like hotcakes.

The best way to acquire a backlink from Infographics is to approach other website webmasters who have already written similar content like your Infographics. Ask them for a backlink and in return provide them your Infographics.

There are several websites like submit infographics, Reddit, Visual.ly and InfographicLove wherein you can directly submit your Infographic to get a backlink.

Infographics are the best method to make backlinks in 2020. Having an Infographic is like having an asset that you can sell to multiple people and reap the benefits later.

#6 Article submission

There are several websites who are hungry for new and updated content regularly. For that reason, they have a free Article Submission section on their website.

So being smart here, we can just provide them with high-quality content and can acquire quality backlink back to our blog.

Sites like Entrepreneur, YourStory, Hubpages are always looking for some amazing content to publish on their website.

Usually, they take up to 48 hours to check your article manually and if it matches their standards you easily get a do-follow backlink; pretty amazing technique, right?

#7 Scholarship Link Building

The most proven and result oriented link building strategy is Scholarship Link Building.

The process here is simple, make a dedicated page on Scholarship related to your niche. Next, you need to approach .edu and .org websites and show them this page.

Show them how their students can win a scholarship prize just by submitting an article or a case study on your website. Once they are convinced, all you need to do is ask them for a link back to your website.

The best part is all the .edu and .org websites have very high authority and Google loves these sites a lot. Just by acquiring 10-15 scholarship links will help you rank like crazy in Google.

P.S., I am trying one another way to get a .edu backlink from an authority site, I will share that soon if that works.

#8 Broken Link Building

Another proven method to pocket in some backlinks is the Broken Link Building method.

All you need to do is pick up a high-quality website in your niche. Next, check their 404 pages from the tool like Screaming Frog or Website Auditor or just Google “Find Broken Links” you’ll get many free broken link checker.

If the 404 pages are redirecting to an external link then look for an email through which you can contact the webmaster and tell them the issue.

While addressing the issue at the end you can ask for a replacement of the link to your blog.

But make sure you have a similar article/resource already written on your website. If you don’t have one then make sure you write it before contacting them else all your efforts will go in vain.

#9 Building Social Signals

Social media is getting big day by day and now in 2020 Google takes into consideration how strong is your website when it comes to Social media presence.

In 2010, Matt Cutts from Google had officially confirmed that they now count social signals as a ranking factor in Google.

Check out the video:

However, in 2014 Matt Cutts again reported something opposite to his last comment, that Google doesn’t count social signals to rank websites.

And in 2016, Gary Illyes, a Google Webmaster Trends Analyst also confirmed the same.

But, despite Google employees denying it, I still believe Social Signals are an indirect ranking factor. In fact, there are many websites out there that are just ranking by having good and genuine social signals.

If you don’t agree with me just ask yourself, is this a coincidence that websites with high ranking positions also have high numbers of social signals?

Now, if that is ringing any bells here’s how you can gain some Social Signals for your website:

● Run Paid Ads to get Social Signals. – FB ads, IG ads, Twitter ads. ● Build a page and share your content there. – register on all the famous social media

● Buy Social Signals. – fiverr is a good place to look for.

Make sure you are present on all the top social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, Instagram, and Google+.

Share all your articles there and get some high-quality genuine social signals for FREE.

#10 Link Exchange

It’s the hot topic which I have seen growing really fast. As the name implies you exchange your link with the other website for FREE.

It’s not highly recommended and if done excessively it might penalize your blog directly from Google.

However, if you are just starting out then yes, you can get some good link with the Link Exchange method but do not make it a regular habit.

#11 Local Citations

Local Citations are not made for all the websites. However, if you are into some local business and want to rank higher in Google than Local Citations is the go-to option for you.

Websites like FourSquare, YellowPages, and Google My Business Listing are the best way to grab links for Free.

This is one of the best Off-Page Strategies to keep in mind while operating a Local Business.

#12 Guest Blogging

I love this method the most. It’s 100% genuine and never going to die in the SEO world.

Guest Blogging the best and natural way you can get backlinks from. Moreover, Google loves this technique as it requires a lot of effort.

For Guest Blogging, you need to outreach to various websites and after getting the confirmation you have to write content specifically for their website.

All in all, it’s a very time-consuming process but it one hundred percent worth your efforts.

#13 Competitor Backlink

It’s like stealing all the backlinks of your competitor and rank higher than them. It’s a simple technique to follow and works like crazy.

You just need to check where your competitor has built the backlinks from and copy the exact same strategies to build backlinks for your website.

Tools like Ahref, SEMrush, Open Site Explorer, Majestic SEO will help you find out from where your competitors have acquired the backlinks.

It’s quite easy to follow and gives you the best results.

Over To You

I hope you liked the Off-page SEO techniques and strategies which I have shared with you today and which works the best in 2020. So, if you really liked the article or it helped you in any way then do share it with your network.

Remember: off-page SEO takes a lot of time and consistent efforts to get a better result.

So, don’t feel overwhelmed if you can’t get any results quickly. Just give it some time and continue doing what you need to be doing.

I’ll see you soon.

Have anything to ask or add? Please share it in the comment. I will surely get back to you asap.

Buh-bye!

Over the years, Search Engine has evolved in many ways. And so does the Optimization part.When we say search engine… First off, if you haven’t already set up your Yoast SEO plugin yet then go do that first. You can refer to The Ultimate …

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