The question of how to start a sports blog is a simple one, but the answer depends on what kind of sports blogger you want to be!
Sports fanatics often have opinions they want to share with other sports enthusiasts. Imagine speaking to millions at a time and getting paid to share your thoughts! A sports blog helps you do exactly that.
For people with abundant knowledge about sports, becoming a sports blogger can be second nature. And the benefits of blogging are abundant! But before you start, you’ll want to know all that is involved in starting a sports blog, including some of the more technical aspects.
Here’s a guide to help you make it happen!
7 Steps to Starting a Sports Blog
There are a number of steps you’ll need to follow in order to start your sports blog. We’ll take you through each of these seven steps for a better understanding of what to do.
Step 1: Choose Your Sports Blog Niche
Let’s say you wanted to purchase some apples and searched for “apples” online. Instead of seeing apples that you could buy, you were shown how to make apple juice, how to plant apples, or some random facts about apples. Not very productive, is it?
This same concern with searcher’s intent applies to your sports blog. While you may be knowledgable about numerous sports, it is never advisable to write about every niche related to sports under the same umbrella site. If you try to cover too much, it’ll be harder to build up a community around a specific topic. Choosing a targeted niche will make your blog clear and easy to maneuver for your audience.
While you can read up on how to choose a niche for your blog, here are some niche ideas we suggest to get started on your sports blogging career.
Based on a Specific Sport
One of the best methods for choosing a sports blog niche is to select one sport among the multitude. Posting about more than one sport within the same blog site can quickly become chaotic. For example, anyone wanting to read up on football would find it annoying to see blog articles about cricket or golf when they visit your site.
While you can choose an even more niche topic, the first thing to do is decide if there’s a specific sport that you want to write about. If so, you can further specialize in one of the niche ideas below, or combine them all under the sport of your choice!
Reviewing Sports Gear
For athletes who want to get out and play, it’s important for them to learn about the best gear for their chosen sport, such as tennis, golf, basketball, or hiking.
As a sports gear reviewer, you can blog about multiple products and get your audience interested by writing unbiased and honest posts based on your opinions. Imagine if you’re a reader thinking about buying sports gear: rather than taking the risk of purchasing something and discovering the pros and cons themselves, many sports enthusiasts will choose to read reviews and comparisons to find out which product is best suited for them before they buy.
Sports Journalism
Sports journalism is not a new niche. There are quite a few blog sites that provide news and information about sports on a regular basis. However, you can try a different route by adding your own two cents to the news and starting a debate that can help build engagement.
The more you allow others to engage with your content, the higher your reach is bound to be. You can also make room for opinions by other bloggers and sports enthusiasts to build the credibility of your site.
Sports Analysis
Every sports fanatic has, at one point or another, offered their insights and analysis about a game. With sports analysis as your blog niche, you have the perfect opportunity to share your opinion on the latest games and current events in sports. Further, you could use this as a platform to start debates and discussions on your analysis of the sport.
Every sports enthusiast has opinions and insights, so this could be a great way to drive traffic to your site.
Of course, with a site like this, your content may not be as evergreen. To get around this, you can post new blogs on your social media accounts and tag people to start debates with them, raising awareness about your site in the process!
Sports Tips
This is one of the simplest ways to start a sports blog. Unlike some of the other niche ideas, where you may have to provide an unfiltered opinion, this niche is simply offering some words of wisdom! Your sports tips could range from warm-up exercises before a game to keeping sports equipment in top shape.
Among the niches we’re covering here, a blog site offering sports tips is the widest category, allowing you to explore a lot of different content topics.
Fantasy Leagues Blogs
Fantasy league blogs have become quite popular lately and for good reason. With so many tournaments being played online, the number of people engaging in fantasy leagues for different sports is much higher than those choosing to play the sport physically.
Using this as a foundation, you can start a sports blog that focuses on fantasy leagues of a chosen sport, and connect with official pages to increase your reach and make money in the process.
Covering Sporting Events
A number of sporting events take place on a regular basis, keeping sports enthusiasts entertained all year round. Your blog can be a platform where you talk about these events and open the comments segment for discussion. You can also use this as a means to provide minute-by-minute commentary that you can post as a blog as a reaction to the game.
Step 2: Create Your Brand Name
The first rule to picking a brand name for your blog is to relate it to your niche. It would hardly make sense picking a name that offers no preview to what your blog is all about.
Remember that while you can rethink the name of the blog later on, it may come at a cost.
So, here’s what you need to remember:
- Your niche and personality will resonate with the blog name.
- Looking at what your competitors have chosen for their blog name can help you with a direction for your own sports blog.
- Your blog name can eventually help you branch out to start other niche blogs under the niche you have chosen. LADbible is a clear example, having multiple blogs branched out from one.
Choose a sports blog name that can grow with the blog. However, make sure you stick to the niche. It’s not always easy to strike a balance between relevance and specificity, but it’s worth taking some time to figure out the perfect brand name.
Step 3: Install WordPress and Theme on Your Web Host
Installing WordPress on your web host is easy. Here’s what you need to do:
- Download the WordPress package.
- Open and upload the package on your web hosting account.
- Create the database and user.
- Fill in the required details in WordPress.
- Run the installation.
- Install WordPress.
Once you install WordPress, you can get to choosing the theme. Here’s how.
- Consider your blog niche.
- Look for a layout that helps you achieve your goals.
- Choose a theme that offers flexibility in terms of image use.
- Opt for a theme that reduces the chances of clutter and keeps the blog site looking neat.
Important things to remember when installing WordPress:
Now that we have covered how to install WordPress and the WordPress theme on your web host, it’s time to focus on a few important things.
Have a Backup Plugin
Imagine losing all your hard work due to a server issue. While rare, it is a possibility! One way to avoid this is to install a plugin like UpdraftPlus or BackWPup on your WordPress dashboard that backs up all your data, ensuring that nothing you post is lost in the event of a hack, server failure, or other issues out of your hands.
Website Speed is Crucial
Your choice of web host is important. Sometimes, the wrong choice of web host can lead to a laggy website with a low loading speed that could cost you conversions and traffic. Opt for a web host that helps improve the speed of the website. Once you find the right host, get to installing WordPress.
Install a search engine analytics plugin
Search engine analytics help you keep track of your visitors and increase conversions, making it a vital part of blogging. While you install WordPress, make sure you also look for an analytics plugin to improve your content and performance in the long run.
Step 4: Conduct Keyword Research
For any kind of content, keyword research stands as a crucial part. A blog without the right keywords is like food without salt. While your blog may still get a visitor or two if well-written, you will have no chance of scaling up without conducting thorough keyword research and targeting a primary keyword for every post.
Choose a Good Keyword Research Tool
A keyword research tool is a vital part of blogging, considering how the integration of a single keyword can improve your ranking significantly. We recommend Ahrefs as a comprehensive SEO tool for everything from tracking your keyword positions to building backlinks for your sports blog.
Find Sport-Specific Keywords Based on Your Topic
While there are a number of keywords related to sports out there, you need to identify the ones relevant to your niche and topic. This can be done using your keyword research tool, which can help you narrow down all the keywords that are specific to the niche you write for through keyword suggestions and competitive research.
Filter the Keywords
Once you have a list of keywords, it’s time to filter out these keywords to implement only the ones that will be most beneficial for your blog. Most tools make it easy to filter keywords based on factors like search volume, number of words, keyword difficulty, and relevance.
Ensure the Use of Long-Tail Keywords
Many people make the mistake of ignoring long-tail keywords. However, making use of longer keywords and key phrases can help your blog rank faster for specific searches. While ranking is difficult with competitors who use similar keywords, long-tail