Blogging has been a hobby for millions and also a business for as many. However irrespective of whether you’re a seasoned blogger or a newbie, some things have to be checked before publishing your blog post. Here is a comprehensive list of them, check all these off before you hit that publish button!
Catchy, keyword rich title
That is stating the obvious, but the title of the post plays an extremely important part in persuading people to read more. Even if your content is good, it can be lost in the information explosion that the internet is.
An attractive title makes people actually click on the post and read further. Additionally, ensure that the title contains keywords, which make the search engine find your post better.
Long-tail keyword domination in the title
Most of us know that using suitable keywords takes the ranking of our site higher as the search engine can find the posts faster. However, if you use a very generalized keyword like ‘shoes’, chances are that the user will get millions of posts with the keyword pizza.
Hence short-tail keywords such as this is not a good idea. Now ‘how to clean leather shoes’ may be a good example of a long-tail keyword. Long tail keywords are more specific and targeted to your audience and their needs. If you have a title that features long-tail keywords, all the way better.
Check content
“Content remains king” It is obvious that you are serious about writing and expressing your opinion given that you have started a blog. Make sure that your posts have a good flow, are easy to read and follow the particular theme.
Ensure that the meaning is clear to the audience. Check the content for all of this before publishing. Bad writing often draws the audience away.
Write attractive sub-points: As a user, you are more likely to click on a well-formatted, concise looking, neatly paragraphed text, rather than a giant box of text all over. Many people scan a post, see if it sounds useful, and then decide if they’ll actually read. By dividing the content in attractive sub-points, you increase the chances of people reading it.
Add good quality images
A picture is worth a thousand words could not be any truer. But do not simply add the first image that you may think of. Firstly, ensure that the image is relevant to what you are posting.
Once you find a relevant image, check it for its quality. It should be an image with good dimensions, which ensures that the pixels do not go awry when the user zooms on it.The preferred image size for blog 800×600 and 600×400 because it contains 480000 pixels of information.Since the larger image contains more data and the file is larger, this will slow down your page load time.
Additionally, do name your images, describing below them what they are. Let the description also be keyword-rich and do include alt text, if you are using WordPress. When you add alt text, it is automatically included in the description of the image, in case someone pins that image. Needless to say, the alt tags should be keyword-rich as well!
Interlinking: It is the practice of linking to your own past posts on the blog in a new post. So, if you have written a post which mentions a topic you wrote about before, link it back to that previous post before publishing. This gives your readers more information about your topic and also keeps people on your site for the longest time.
Optimize for on-page SEO
Even if you blog for a hobby, it is better to optimize for SEO as it will drive traffic to your blog. Now if you blog for business, it is an absolute must that you optimize your post before you hit the publish button. You can download some excellent plugins, but otherwise too, mind your keywords. Ensure that they are in your title, also ensure that the text of the blog has optimum keyword density.
Structured Data
Schema.org, often called Schema is a specific vocabulary of tags (or microdata) that you can add to your HTML to improve the way your page is represented in SERPs.
Tags
Tags are generally used to classify content in a way that is useful for the reader and easy for search engines to understand, which potentially makes them incredibly important for both SEO and usability. However, over the years, the way we use tags and their relative impact on rankings has changed.
Proofread
Again stating the obvious, but essential. Do not hit the publish button excitedly before proofreading the text. Spelling mistakes, grammatical errors give a bad impression and the reader will not continue reading even if your content is good.
Insert a call to action at the end
Online audiences often need a little nudge to get them into action. Like a marketing post will typically have ‘buy now!’ at the end of it. Make sure that you give a clear call-to-action at the end of your post so as to tell your audience what to do next. You can include a question, which will have them commenting on the post.
So now set out to write that next post! Just check all these things off before you publish and you are gold!
