Blogging isn’t new, and neither is being a health and wellness blogger. There are many who have what it takes to be a successful blogger, but don’t reach that potential because they’re unaware of the best blogging tactics.
Just knowing how to write a blog or build a blogging website is not enough. You need to understand the basics of blogging, from picking up on tips to increase organic traffic for affiliates to conducting keyword research.
In this post, we’re here to give you a head start on how to start a profitable health and wellness blog!
Before You Learn How to Start a Profitable Health and Wellness Blog
A lot of people talk about how easy it is to start a blog. And we’re not denying that starting it is simple enough! However, there is no guarantee that you can scale the blog well to success just because you were able to start it on your own without much guidance.
To give you a nudge in the right direction, here is everything you need to know before we learn how to start a profitable health and wellness blog.
Identify Your Goals.
Imagine starting a blog with no goal in mind. You wouldn’t know what direction to head in, nor would you have any semblance of organization. That’s why the first thing you need to do before you start a blog is to identify your goals.
What is the purpose of starting the blog? Is making money your ultimate goal? Or do you simply wish to use the space as a way to impart your knowledge to your readers?
If you do want to make money, how do you expect to do it? The goals you have in mind will determine how you take the blog forward.
Social Media is a Friend.
We’ve all been using social media as a platform to talk about ourselves, share our accomplishments, and post eye-catching pictures that others want to engage with. However, social media is more than that.
As a blogger, you must remember that social media is the perfect companion to your blog posts. Create accounts for your blog page on all social media platforms and link them to your blog site. You will not only engage with more people but also have many visiting your blog through social media.
Some content you create is more “shareable” with social than “searchable” on Google – so make sure social media is on your side.
There’s no Blogging Without SEO.
Think of a person who can’t swim. Now imagine this person diving into the deep end of the pool without any swimming floaties. There can only be two outcomes.
One, the person will flail about and push to the surface, simultaneously learning to swim. Or, someone else has to come to their rescue to keep them from sinking.
Blogging without SEO is just like that.
You can write hundreds of blogs a month and they’ll only get lost in a sea of search engine results. When used right, SEO is the boost that gets your blog to the top of the search results.
Internal Linking Keeps Readers on Your Blog.
The greatest success for a blogger is not simply to have a reader land on their site but to have the reader stay there for longer than just a few minutes spent reading one blog.
Internal linking allows you to link the currently-read blog to other blogs on your site.
So, if a reader lands on your blog that talks about superfoods that help reduce weight, you can link a superfood to another article you’ve written that includes a recipe using that particular superfood!
This way, your reader not only reads what they came to the page for but also reads up related information on other blogs you have posted. Internal linking also helps make your website content more visible to Google!
YMYL and EAT Are Key Factors for Google.
For every blogger, Google’s algorithm is the trickiest to impress. However, considering how vital some information can be to readers, Google holds certain types of articles under more scrutiny, which includes health and wellness articles.
Your Money or Your Life (YMYL) content is anything that could significantly impact the health, happiness, safety, or economic stability of a reader. Blogs that offer advice about diseases and disorders, hospitals, drugs, and other medical emergencies need to be extremely reputable and publish only genuine content that is factually correct.
Health and wellness blogs are certainly that. You may end up offering advice or suggestions that Google may consider YMYL content. In such cases, your blogs are judged on the following parameters:
E – Expertise
A – Authoritativeness
T – Trustworthiness
As an expert in the field, you can still build an authority site and post content that is genuine, trustworthy, and beneficial to your readers. Just keep in mind that many queries will give weight to sources like WebMD and Mayo Clinic.
Build a Constant Network.
So, you’ve started your blog and have been posting a couple every weekend. But is anyone really reading?
You can hardly expect much growth unless you’re constantly increasing your network. Being connected to well-known marketers and bloggers can help you organically increase traffic to your blog site, increase your revenue within a short span, and connect with more people.
Share your content.
The whole purpose of writing content is to share it. Fortunately, there is more than one way to share your content with your readers. Here are just a few ideas!
On social media
Social media is certainly one of the key platforms where you need to share your content. From Facebook and LinkedIn to Pinterest and more, you can have followers and fans click through to your blog by sharing posts through social media.
On niche forums
Social media isn’t the only place where your blogs will be appreciated. Keeping your chosen topic in mind, you merely have to look up niche forums that invite the same kind of content.
With all the visitors on these forums holding similar interests to your niche, you can often promote your health blog on niche forums and get traffic that way. Just be careful not to spam or violate any terms of use in promoting your content!
On question-and-answer websites
Question-and-answer websites like Quora are the perfect sites to share your opinions with people and subtly plug your blog link within the answer you share.
With the number of people visiting these sites, your blog site is bound to get plenty of views, especially if you provide thoughtful answers.
Starting a Health and Wellness Blog: A Step-by-Step Guide
Now that we’ve eased you into the blogging basics for health, wellness, and topics related to the medical field, here’s a detailed guide to help you make it happen!
Step 1: Choose Your Health and Wellness Blog Niche
The first step to creating your blog, no matter the topic area, is deciding on a specific niche. Remember that the more niche your blog is, the more invested your audience is likely to be. As a niche blogger, you will offer insights not many others can.
Topics to cover under health and wellness
It is no secret that health and wellness are inherently multi-faceted. They cover many different aspects that contribute to enjoying good health throughout our lives.
The National Wellness Institute states that there are six dimensions of health and wellness. All of these dimensions, though distinctive, are beautifully intertwined expressions of every individual.
Physical Wellness
The physical health of a person pertains to activities that we take up to keep our bodies at optimum levels of fitness. This not only includes engaging in activities that keep you physically fit, but also actively educating yourself about the correct diet and nutrition practices to follow for your body type and level of activity.
You could write blogs promoting self-care, abstinence from abusive and addictive substances that may harm your body, nutrition, etc. The purpose of this dimension is solely to keep your body healthy enough to meet the demands of a challenging lifestyle.
From a niche focusing on weight loss to one that talks about the various multi-vitamins and mineral intake you need on a regular basis, there are plenty of different sub-topics to cover within this niche.
Social Wellness
This characteristic of your health not only involves the amount of attention you pay to the people and the environment around you but also how you interact with them. Using your blog to talk about the act of sincerely giving attention to your surroundings and devotedly caring for them can help your audience grow and add immeasurably to their self-worth.
Through a social wellness niche, you can help your readers understand the need to passionately invest their time towards the environment, a part of life that continually gives itself to others without restraint.
Your communication through the blog posts can help them see their actions resonate with many others and enhance their vivacity.
Occupational Wellness
A much less-talked-about, and even less-addressed, part of your health pertains to one’s occupation. This part of life deals with one’s experience with the choice of their profession.
Within this domain, you can talk about how an overly ambitious profession that leads to a person being burnt out is undesirable, and a profession that utterly fails in motivating them to work is not rewarding either. A person’s occupational health has much to do with personal satisfaction, their attitude towards the work they have chosen, as well as the vision they have set for themselves to achieve.
Keeping all of this in mind while you blog can help you connect with your audience by striking the right chord.
Intellectual Wellness
Intellectual health has very little to do with the amount of knowledge or number of degrees attained. Rather, it has more to do with how someone seeks to continually stimulate the creative side of their mind. The intellect is an interactive aspect that involves the exchange of ideas, engaging in problem-solving, learning and teaching various skills, and exploring issues that interest a person.
The reciprocity of information and the creative stimulation of collective minds have the potential to stretch out intellectual boundaries and improve their mental acuity exponentially. You can use your blog to stimulate this exchange of information and ideas and build a strong community where your audience can interact with like-minded people.
Emotional Wellness
The emotional quotient of an individual is as important as their physical and intellectual quotient. It involves dealing with one’s assessment of their shortcomings, stress, and many other factors that directly or indirectly affect one’s emotions.
Through a blog that focuses on emotional wellness as a niche, you can help your readers be more aware of their feelings and attitude towards life and others that are part of it, and deal with it objectively.
Spiritual Wellness
Spiritual health deals with one’s search for meaning and purpose in life. This dimension of health maintains the balance between the challenges they face daily and their tenacity to keep true to their pursuit.
Your blog can help them build their interaction with the universe and its forces as well as their attitude towards it, strengthening their spiritual integrity.
Step 2: Create Your Brand Name
Choosing a domain name is like naming a child. Once you’ve decided on a name, your blog site will forever be recognized by that name. While you can always change it later on, it may come at a price you’re not willing to pay: the loyalty of your readers.
So, when you’re choosing a name, remember to go with one that’s relevant to your niche.
Here are some example ideas to show how you could go about it based on your niche.
- For a blog focused on physical fitness: Fit and Fab.
- For a social wellness blog: Mindful Connections, Happy Together.
- For a blog on occupational wellness: Work and Wellness.
- For a blog on intellectual wellness: The Brain Yard.
- For an emotional wellness blog: The Empowered Soul.
- For a blog on spiritual wellness: The Zen Life, The Modern Yogi.
Understand this: your brand name will give your readers a glimpse into what they can expect from you. And while you may start out with one niche topic under health and wellness, there may come a time when you consider branching out to different niches.
That’s when most people decide to switch to another brand name. Our suggestion? Start a new blog for a new niche.
Step 3: Install WordPress on Your Web Host
For someone looking to start a blog free of cost, there is no better platform than WordPress. It is currently the most popular content management system among bloggers, is free, and allows plugins for extra functionality!
Once you have chosen a hosting plan, all you need to do is install WordPress and get started.
To install WordPress, you just need to:
- Download WordPress on your system.
- Upload the WordPress package to your web hosting account.
- Add the name of the site.
- Select your domain name.
- Click on Next to install
You’re all set up!
Step 4: Find a Health Blog Theme
Now that you have WordPress installed, you only have to browse through the many free themes they offer and choose one specific to health and wellness.
However, the right theme isn’t as easy to uncover as you think.
Here’s how you can go about it.
- Decide on what features you need on your blog. Choose only what you need and avoid clutter at all costs.
- Keep the features to a minimum to ensure the speed and performance of the blog.
- Choose a theme that is responsive so you can operate with ease from any device.
- Choose colors that are soothing to the eye, considering the wellness aspect of the blog.
- Go for fonts that are easier to read and comprehend.
There are also a number of sites that allow you to purchase themes for your site. For those of you who don’t mind spending, opting for paid themes on WordPress or other sites is often a better choice, as it comes bundled with premium features to make your website better – and also technical support if you ever get stuck.
Step 5: Do Your Keyword Research
We cannot stress enough how vital keyword research is to blogging. Poor keyword research will only result in poor results.
Leaving the prevalent competition aside, you are likely to miss out on all traffic without the right keyword research strategy in place.
By using renowned keyword research tools, you can narrow down the most effective keywords for your niche and compile a list of all the keywords that can help increase traffic and engagement on your site. This not only includes keywords that rank high but also long-tail keywords and niche keywords that can further help your blog.
For example, using “mindful meditation techniques for “good sleep” as a keyword is more likely to get your blog rank high in search results than using a generic keyword such as “meditation for sleep” which will have almost every blog on meditation lined up.
While planning your content calendar, make sure you conduct thorough keyword research that helps you list the most searched topics, relevant keywords, and queries that you can answer through your content.
Step 6: Write Useful Content
No matter what phase of blogging you are in – a total beginner or a fully established one – the only way to create profitable content is to make it useful to your readers. You cannot benefit from a blog that offers no insight or information a reader would find useful.
Some of the ways you can work on creating useful content are by:
- Asking your audience what they want to hear about.
- Making content calendars.
- Covering topics that are trending.
- Adding videos to the blog.
Rather than writing what you consider useful, find out what your readers peg as useful content and curate blogs that enrich their lives.
You can look up blogs that teach you how to write content for affiliate marketing to help create blogs that make money.
Step 7: Monetize Your Health and Wellness Blog
We all know one of the key reasons why everyone wants to be a blogger. The money, of course!
While most start out writing blogs to be heard and get their thoughts across, there is no denying the many monetary benefits that come with blogging. However, it is only advisable to start monetizing your blog once you establish yourself as a credible source.
The key criteria to be an established blogger is – the quality of content, the value of the information offered, the authority of your blogs, engaging content, and keeping to your niche.
Once you have established yourself as a blogger, you can start earning through it, from any of the following methods.
- Display ads
- Affiliate marketing
- Selling e-books
- Email marketing
- Acquiring sponsorships
By reading up on blogs that tell you how to make money blogging, you can find a more detailed explanation as well as the many pros and cons of each method.
Frequently Asked Questions by First-Time Health and Wellness Bloggers
These days, there’s a blog for almost every topic under the sun. And it just proves how many bloggers are out there. Consider that your blog is just one among many thousands in the same niche!
What can set you apart is the way you approach your blog.
Once you learn the answers to these frequently asked questions and queries below, you will be better prepared as a successful health and wellness blogger.
So, here are some of these questions that almost every blogger has asked before starting their blogging journey.
How do you become a wellness blogger?
Starting a health and wellness blog can be a challenge if you are going about it without any knowledge of how a blog works and the efforts needed to be a blogger. For someone who wants to promote wellness and share anecdotes that can help their readers at large, starting a wellness blog is certainly the right thing to do.
For someone who has worked in the medical field before, blogging in the health and wellness space shouldn’t be that hard. You can use your experience and expertise to give your readers some lesser-known information that can greatly increase your credibility among your readers.
As to how you can start your own blog site, we have a guide later in this post that tells you exactly how to start a successful health and wellness blog.
How do bloggers get rich?
Most bloggers have a single question in mind before they start setting up their site: how do I make money? And there is no doubt that bloggers can earn quite a lot if they know what to do!
While we’re solely focusing on how to start a health and wellness blog, you can read up on how to become a rich blogger and how fast you can make money blogging by reading more of our articles here at Brand Builders!
Is there a required qualification to be a health and wellness blogger?
The greatest thing about making blogging your career, or even a side-hustle, is that you don’t really require an educational degree in the topic you intend to write about. Possessing enough knowledge to pass in on to others who might reach your page and benefit from it is qualification enough.
To start a health and wellness blog, however, it is vital that you write information that is genuine and trustworthy, keeping in mind the number of people who will eventually read your blog and follow the directions you offer within the blog post.
Further, blogs falling under YMYL and EAT content will certainly be judged based on how trustworthy your content is.
How do I start my own blog and make money?
While starting a blog is relatively easy, making money through it requires a great deal of patience. You need to have enough website traffic to reach a level where you can begin earning through the blog. Using the email address list you’re building from readers visiting your site, you can send frequent updates every time you post a blog to have your loyal readers return to your site and read up on any new content posted.
To get started monetizing your blog, begin by looking up affiliate marketing business models. This is one of the many ways to make money blogging.
Which tools can be used to increase blog traffic?
Your blog traffic can be increased using a number of tools, the most important being an SEO tool.
The right keywords are bound to bring in organic traffic and help you curate blogs that are more relevant to your audience.
How long will it take to establish my blog?
When people ask about the time it would take to establish a blog, they’re usually asking about how much traffic a website needs to make money. By guest blogging, creating an email list for newsletters and email marketing, posting on social media, and other such methods, you are likely to increase your website traffic within a short span of time – but usually, six months to a year is a realistic timeline for getting established.
How to Start a Profitable Health and Wellness Blog Wrap-up
We’ve covered almost every aspect of blogging as a health and wellness blogger to help you get started. From the steps included in starting a blog to the things you need to know before you even get started, we’ve laid it all out before you.
Now, no one can stop you from pursuing your career in health blogging if you have the expertise needed and a flair to put your thoughts across into words. Best of luck out there!