Why format blog post in wordpress?
On average, 1.4 million WordPress blog posts are published every day. Building sites and publishing posts would be a bit tough when you consider the mind-bending number 1.4 million posts – how do your posts stand out? Is the content well-written and properly formatted? What makes a blog post worth being noticed?
The quality of the information is one way to stand out in this competitive content publishing industry. You might be spending hours to write a blog post, but does your blog reflect that? Is it easy to read and skim?
WordPress CMS is used by the vast majority of bloggers.
Did you highlight the main points of your WordPress blog post, urging readers to read more? Did you format blog posts properly? The article answers all of these questions by including a short guide to publish a blog post, followed by highlighting some of the best practices that will help you format your WordPress blog in a way that you might make it to the first page of Google!
Why Blog?
Blogging can be incredibly valuable to people for a variety of reasons. It enables you to reach billions of people and helps you promote yourself or your business. Additionally, blogging allows you to be your own media company and leads to business traffic generating opportunities.
Here are a few statistics about blogging:
77% of Internet users read blogs. – Courtesy of Impact
346 million people read blogs throughout the world. – Courtesy of Impact
* Courtesy of Hubspot
How to publish a WordPress blog post?
You prepare an article and to add it in WordPress there are just a few simple steps:
- Login to your WordPress site
- On the left side of the screen, click on the Posts “Add new” option
- A new window will appear, enter the post title
- Paste your content in the appropriate content tab and continue formatting your post
Note: In Blogely, you do not need to do any copy-&-paste… You can just publish it from the app and review the final blog post in WordPress.
Paste content, add tags, and category
After pasting the content, add/browse images from your local repository and save the post as a draft. Optimize your post and its title with SEO, try to choose an attractive and catchy title that people would want to click. Add tags so that your blog post appears in search results.
For example, the title of the blog is “Blogging Trends in 2020”, selected keywords will include blogging, blogging trends, and blogging trends in 2020. Similarly, the category will be chosen as content marketing.
Formatting blog post article
Once you are done with your post, make it look and feel better by formatting it intriguingly. There are various options provided by WordPress to help make your content more readable and clear both for search engine bots and actual human readers. Click on the toolbar toggle to check different options.
After you write a WordPress blog post, give your post a title, include an image or any media file to your blog post, configure the categories, tags, and select the option of publishing. There are three main options provided by WordPress to publish your post. It includes the following options below.
Publishing options
There are 3 statuses of blog posts in WordPress:
Draft – select this option if you need to save your post as a draft, so you will publish it later. On the Posts menu, click the Posts link to access your draft blog posts. The post will not be published and remains invisible to website visitors.
Pending review – preview button enables you to view your post in a new window while providing the opportunity to see it on the site and check whether any changes are required for both content and formatting of the blog post. Pending Review means the draft is waiting for review by someone else (admin) prior to publication.
Publish – this option allows you to publish the post immediately to your site, or set a future date for publication. The post will be viewable to everyone who visits your site.
WordPress Blog Formatting Tips
Below are several common rules for formatting a blog post in WordPress.
1. Use Headings
Heading help search engines and users to read and understand the content. They act as a signpost for the readers while making it easier for people to get an idea of what a post or page is about. Additionally, it also defines which part of the content is important and presents how the whole content is interconnected.
- Click on the dropdown menu and select the heading style
- As a rule, Heading 1 (H1 formatting tag) is reserved for the blog post title
- Use H2 heading for your primary sections of the blog post, followed by H3 subheadings below
* Format blog post headings
2. Write Four Line Paragraphs
Make sure to use short paragraphs of 4 lines maximum as it improves the readability of your blog post. It isn’t very easy for the reader to stay focused and read your entire blog post when there is a wall of text. Paragraphs in between 3-4 lines work best to break the text into manageable and comprehensible chunks.
3. Use white space
Blog formatting includes the layout and design of the content. One aspect of this type of design is “white space“. “White space” is the space around and between your content. The proper use of white space makes text on your blog more legible. Content begins to feel cramped if your article does not have enough white space. Design elements next to white space attracting attention to that part of your blog.
When formatting text for a blog, hit Enter key to add an extra blank row after the header. Also, provide more room around the edges of the post. Between each paragraph, give yourself some white space. This gives the reader a place to rest their eyes before starting into the next section.
4. Include Bullet Points or Lists
Bullet points are useful to transform your blog post into bite-sized content that will help your readers to read the post in a snap. Bullet points are an ideal way to present important data, a list of facts, etc.
Additionally, lists and bullet points are useful to break information up into easy-to-read sections. If your readers are skimming the content, the contrast between paragraph text and bullet points will stand out to ensure that you have not missed any important information.
Fact: 36% of people prefer list-based headlines. (Source: https://www.hubspot.com/marketing-statistics)
5. Fuse Relevant Images
32% of marketers say visual images are the most important form of content for their businesses.
(Source: Hubstpot)
Including pictures make your content look more visually appealing. It would help if you made sure that images are relevant to the article’s context. Eye-catching visuals captivate the user to focus and get a better idea of related to the blog post.
Do not forget “related posts” with thumbnails. The featured image of the post will be visible in the thumbnail. It helps you get a higher CTR (click-through rate) and helps in decreasing the bounce rate.
Fact: Written articles, videos, and images are the three most engaging types of content on social media
(Source: Hubstpot)
6. Convey via Image Captions
Image captions are often the first elements of a blog post to be read. It provides essential information to the reader to understand the blog post. Make sure to write image captions in a consistent, concise format that helps readers to understand what they are and relate to it. According to recent research, image captions are read 300% more times as compared to the actual post.
7. Posts should be Narrow
Using a WordPress blog layout with particularly wide content columns could detract from your user experience. Select a new layout and adjust the column width. Make sure to keep a blog post column with a width of about 80 characters or fewer (including spaces) since a wide column of text is very hard to read.
8. Bold the text
Use bold fonts to highlight important points as it creates emphasis, slows down, and pulls the focus of the reader.
Bold sentences gather the right sight of an audience and are useful for the readers to focus on the idea or the message that the author is trying to convey. Do not use bold text as it loses the effectiveness of the post; instead, use bold text only when you need to make a splash and highlight meaningful sentences.
9. Post Infographics
Infographics are a cornerstone of content marketing and help to catch the attention of your targeted audience as it is a highly graphical visualization tool and an innovative way to display content.
Additionally, it allows your users to understand your content and promotes your brand as it presents the information in a creative, versatile, and strategic manner. Infographics generate more traffic, can be read, understood, and remembered quickly, and enable you to connect with your target audience.
Infographics in blog posts (visual engagement stats)
10. Include CTAs (Call-to-Action)
CTAs are a button or form that prompts a visitor to perform the desired action on your blog post format. It’s estimated that 90 percent of people who opens blog post will read the CTAs. If a Call to Action is written within the content, your conversion rate will increase by over 120 percent
Make sure to keep your CTAs short while urging “quick” action, and a CTA should not be too intrusive as Google does not like pages with obtrusive popups.
Additionally, CTA should be relevant to the page content and is clearly visible on the page. Implementing best design CTAs is crucial for a general conversion optimization strategy.
* Statisctics of CTA
11. Take Care of Typography
Two main factors that improve the readability of the blog post are typography and colors. Typography refers to the font, style, and appearance of the text.
It also involves the selection of the right size, style, and weight of the right typeface. It includes pairing complementary typefaces, sentences, and spacing letters in a visually pleasing way.
The main aim of a blog post is to attract the audience and get people actually to read it. Do not let your effort of writing a perfect blog post go to waste by failing to format your article.
Conclusion
Incorporating the formatting mentioned above techniques will help you increase the average time on page with a lower bounce rate. It does not take a long time to format your blog posts. Improving the format and layout of your blog posts will encourage your visitors to read more of your content.
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