There are two types of people in this world. The first one is perfectionists who want 100% accuracy in their work and try to attain perfection in everything they do. The second type just wants to complete the job in any way, irrespective of its effectiveness.
In blogging, perfection takes more time to complete the tasks in terms of writing blog posts, sharing, promotion, etc. No doubt, it increases the effectiveness and provides better results like driving quality traffic and gain a high ranking in the search engine results.
The use of checklists helps to complete the entire process in a relatively short time but with perfection, because blogging involves a vast number of factors that work collectively to make your blog successful.
With time, things get complicated, and it is tough for bloggers to remember all the elements required for the successful publishing of every blog post. Therefore, it essential for every blogger to make a list of all the necessary and vital factors that they want to ensure for every blog post.
Let’s take a look at them. We will base our review on the Blogely* platform.
* BLOGELY – Blog and SEO Management app for Bloggers
Pre-publish blog post considerations
SEO is on the top of the list when we discuss high rankings in the search engine results, and there are many things that you have to consider while creating a blog post.
Keyword research is an essential part of On-Page SEO that helps you to get an idea about what searchers are looking for and how they search their desired material from the internet.
Therefore, you must ensure that the keyword is adequately researched and you must find the intent of the researcher behind the keyword. So that in this way, you can provide the desired information to the researcher accurately and effectively.
Before writing the content for your website, make sure that you perform sufficient research and get both accurate and enough information for writing the topic. Providing accurate and relevant information to readers is essential. If the information you provide is not relevant or accurate, you can lose the visitor quickly. This will ultimately increase the bounce rate and, as a result, you will rankings in the search engine results.
Other important factors
Along with blog post publishing activities, you have to consider a few other factors that are not directly related to driving traffic, but these are also important for high rankings.
Following is the list of some other important factors:
- The speed of loading of every blog post is critical, because visitors don’t like to wait for the loading of blog posts, and they will close your website immediately if the loading speed is low. Check speed using Webpagetest.org (the most reliable speed tester)
- Reliable web hosting is crucial because it has a direct impact on the speed of the website. Therefore, be sure to select a host with low downtime and high speed. In my experience (I’ve had quite a few hosting providers in the past), I found Siteground is the most reliable web hosting service.
- The theme for the website is vital for the visual look as well as for improving the speed. Therefore, try to use simple templates for your website with a low number of plug-ins. My personal recommendation of the theme – Divi for its great flexibility and customization.
79% of web shoppers who have trouble with web site performance say they won’t return to the site to buy again | * Courtesy of Unbounce
Blog post checklist importance for blog publishing
As I mentioned earlier, a vast number of factors are involved in the publishing of blog posts on your website. I assume that you have done your part in research and keywords selection. You wrote excellent content that was based on these selected keywords. Now your article is in WordPress, and you are ready to click the button “Publish.”
Hold on. Before you do that, let’s review – you have done everything to make your article a success, are you? You put so much effort into writing the content, and it will be a pity for any of it be wasted…
So, create your own blog post checklist or use the one we provide in this article.
1. Review focused keywords strategy again
Of course. when you start to write the content for the blog, you already have the topic. And yes, your keywords must be based on the specific topic that you have in mind. How do you know that these are good keywords?
Many free and paid tools are available for conducting comprehensive keyword research. The correct keywords are essential for the success of the blog, improving your blog’s organic growth traffic.
There are some free keyword research platforms. But, if you really want to get into keyword discovery, you may want to check paid tools. They can significantly vary in price.
I have found my keywords using this platform: Mangools.com Here are some screenshots of my search using the keyphrase “How to write a blog”:
Searching for specific keyword is quick. It has great performance and comprehensive info. KWfinder includes its own Keyword SEO Difficulty rank (KD) which provides great insights. It is calculated from Link Profile Strength.
SERP overview (Search Engine Results Page) is conviniently provided on the right side. I can review aricles created by competitors. So, I know with whom I am competing and if there is any chance to make mine better. ? ?
Trend of monthly searchers is also a plus.
This search phrase is just an example. I would not go head to head to compete with this authoritative sites.
2. Review your headline once more for effectiveness
When you scan the topics in your google search page while you are on the hunt for an answer – you pick one that you definitely know you’ll love. How come you have selected this topic? It’s all about the headline – that magical order of words that attracts you and makes you click. A headline that sounds like it’s worth reading. Promising the desired result within a split second. It has something in it which every marketer is striving to achieve – an emotional connection. This headline was strategically prepared. It really does make the difference for the overall blog post success.
So, you need to think about your headline writing strategy. There is some science and psychology behind it. No wonder this website has huge traffic based on their clever tool – HEADLINE ANALYZER by Coschedule.
Coschedule Headline Analyzer score cumulate the results in 4 different categories:
- Common words
- Uncommon words
- Emotional words
- Power words
You can read more about this amazon tool here: https://coschedule.com/blog/emotional-headlines/
Incorporate Keywords To Write The Best Headlines (!)
Your goal is to get as high score as possible and be smart enough to include your FOCUS keywords.
So, review your headline one more time before you go to next step.
3. Review formatting of your blog post
While writing the content for your website, it is important to remember that information must be presented in proper format – using headings and subheadings along with bullet points. This improves readability.
Break down the wall of text into paragraphs or blocks. Each block of the paragraph must be limited to a few sentences and make use of a lot of white space.
Use Blogely blocks to build an outline.
The primary purpose of effective content writing is to engage the readers in your content, and the neat pleasing post formatting is an excellent way to show your readers that you care.
Example of clean format
The results showed that about one-third of the adults read at the 2nd to 6th-grade level, one-third at the 7th to 12th-grade level, and one-third at the 13th to 17th-grade level. * Courtesy of Blogging.com
There are a few approaches (formulas) for determining the readability of the text. You can check your text here: https://readabilityformulas.com/free-readability-formula-tests.php
The easiest way is to bring Grammarly’s writing assistant to help. Blogely is, by default, integrated with Grammarly.
Blogely use of Grammary (built-in)
4. Set and optimize featured image
WordPress featured image is the primary (selected) image that appears on your blog post list page, and sometimes at the top of your individual blog posts.
Each post will have only one assigned primary image which is representing this post. Optimizing this featured image is an important task for any WordPress blog.
It looks like this in the blog:
Blogely Featured image setting:
5. Add appropriate SEO title and meta description
The post title is the first thing that a visitor can read as he opens your website. Therefore, the best way to capture the attention of the visitors and the search engine is to use appropriate post titles.
Furthermore, the inclusion of proper Meta tags and Meta descriptions for your blog post is beneficial to provide a summary of your blog post in the search engine results. Therefore, it is strongly recommended to use your main keyword in the title and Meta description of your website.
Blogely has SEO metadata in one place.
6. Review and update slug (url)
By default, WordPress sets slugs/URLs for you, automatically. However, you can always change it to your desired URL and it is better to do that for the following reasons:
- Keep it short. The shorter the URL the better, but be descriptive enough
- Include your focus keyword. Having a keyword in the slug is a big plus for Google search
- Make it readable. Having a readable URL structure is good to provide better information to searchers about the blog post article
Slug in the WordPress post:
7. Include relevant images and update Alt names
Relevant and appropriate images are essential for every blog post that summarizes the entire blog post, and readers will understand the purpose of the post more quickly and easily.
Furthermore, the inclusion of images is beneficial for getting high rankings in the search engines as well, because search engines also rank images and let the searchers find their desired results through images.
Adding images will provide you an edge in getting the high rankings, but you have to remember that images must be optimized to deliver expected value.
To optimize images means the following:
- Name image descriptively. Use a focus keyword (if it is possible)
- Provide alternative name using focus keyword (if it is appropriate)
- Reduce the file size so as not to slow down your page
* Amazon figured out that if their pages were to slow down by just one second, they would lose $1.6 billion a year.
8. Check content for focus keywords density
Checking on focus keyword density is not a trivial task. You would need to use search and find features of Word,. Google Doc, or do it directly in WordPress. Not only is that a cumbersome task, but it also does not reflect the full picture.
Here is a simple Blogely solution to check how well your content is optimized for a specific keyword.
Blogely focus keywords view
By clicking on the Scan button system will check the article and generate a density report:
9. Optimize content with internal links
Creating links with your other blog posts is known as creating internal links. Never try to underestimate the importance of internal linking, because it is the way through which users and search engines, as well, will find that you also have information about that topic in other places on your website.
Internal links are also useful for improving the performance of the website in rankings. For example, when a visitor clicks on the internal link in the content of the site, it will take him to another page of the website. The search engine loves internal linking. It helps to find, index and understand all of the pages on your site. It improves your page authority.
As a result, the visitor will go on multiple pages and remain on your website for more time. It is beneficial for reducing the bounce rate and, ultimately, improves the ranking of search engine results.
10. Enrich content with external links
External links improve your site, as well as Linking to authoritative external sites builds trust and loyalty, and can improve your site’s popularity, as well.
Linking to other websites sites can help to build relationships. If you create an external link from a blog post to another business, this can lead to the beginning of a mutually beneficial connection. Other businesses can reach out to you and potentially can backlink to your site, too.
By including external links, you provide more valuable information for your customers. You demonstrate that you care about them. You provide additional information resources to fully explore the topic.
11. Check SEO score and improve
Blogely app has developed its own SEO score checker. You can easily access it directly from the article page view clicking on “SEO data”.
Review how blogely does this work here in this quick video:
Blogely SEO checker Review page:
12. Add a compelling call to action (CTA)
Without CTAs, your visitors are less likely to engage with your content and even if some customers are interested in your products, they may not know what to do. CTA can lead them to the next step – to opt into your email marketing list and convert more visitors into leads.
Commonly, CTA buttons are placed in Homepages and landing pages.
The blog post is a great place to insert CTA. You will have the ability to incorporate custom messages depending on the information contained in that specific article.
Don’t limit yourself to a sidebar CTA – the same CTA for all visitors. Get creative and use the intelligence that you have at hand.
13. Assign category and tags
Per WordPress documentation “Categories provide a helpful way to group related posts together”. Yes, it is a great way to group and filter your content.
Tags serve the same function. There is a slight difference between them. You can read more about their differences in this WPbeginner article.
Again, in Blogely you can assign an existing category for any blog post without going into WordPress:
14. Set schedule (if need)
Setting a schedule and not just pushing articles randomly has strategic implications.
To gain the trust of your customers you must be consistent. Your consistency is interpreted as reliability – you make the time, you stick to it, and they know what to expect from you.
You can use an editorial calendar to plan ahead and check the schedule often.
The best practice is to prepare articles in advance and use WordPress publish date for its delivery. The article will be published according to the publish date you set for it.
15. Hit “Publish!”
You have completed all the steps in this article. Now it is time to publish online.
If you are working from the WordPress you must click the button “Publish”
WordPress:
If you are publishing from Blogely:
Conclusion
Making a comprehensive checklist for the publishing of blog posts is helpful to ensure the implementation of all the necessary measures and create an effective routine.
The list I prepared has all the essential (15) steps that really work for every blog, irrespective of niche or industry. However, you may want to add your own industry- or niche-specific steps to the list, to be sure that you’re not missing anything.
This simple checklist can save you hassles, eliminate any uncertainty, and help to make your blog post successful in bringing organic traffic.
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