Putting together a blog post is like constructing a building. There are different parts to…
There’s no doubt that you already know how to post a new article to your blog, right?
But how much do you know about what needs to get done before and after you push the publish button?
Do you know what to do to optimize your post for the search engines?
Now, hear this…
SEO is a big part of blog post creation. After all; it’s a waste of time and energy if nobody goes to your blog to read the posts you’ve lovingly crafted!
Before you even think of writing a blog post, you need to know the tasks which you MUST complete before and after publishing it for SEO purposes. In today’s post I want to provide you with a handy guide that will serve as a search engine optimization (SEO) checklist.
Here is what you need to know:
Before You Post
When you’re ready to write a blog post, the first thing you need to do is determine if you’ve already posted about the same subject in the past. People that have large blogs can sometimes end up posting almost identical content.
As you can imagine, that’s bad news from a search engine point of view. Just do a quick search on your blog to find out if you’ve written about the subject before. And, if you have, there are two things you need to do.
First, ensure that your new article isn’t identical in structure or content. And, second, consider linking to it from a relevant word or two in your post!
For instance, let’s say that you run an auto blog. Your first article might have been about “spy shots” for a particular new car under development. Perhaps your new one talks about the release date and specifications for the production vehicle.
Once You’ve Written Your Post
When you’re done crafting your new blog post, there are some tasks you need to tick off your checklist before you hit “publish”:
1. Proofreading
Even professional bloggers make mistakes! The golden rule of writing anything, blog post or otherwise, is to check it for errors. That means ensuring your spelling and grammar is up to scratch. Typos can have an indirect effect on your SEO efforts. For example, your content might not get shared as much;
2. Title
Does your blog post’s title have the keywords or phrase you want to rank in search engines? Change it if it doesn’t.
3. Meta Description and Excerpt
Again, make sure you’ve got the right keywords and phrases in them. If you’re using WordPress, Results First suggests using a plugin that lets you edit meta text in the post editor.
After You’ve Published Your Post
Now that your new blog post is live, there are just a few more things you need to do. For a start, copy and paste the URL to your blog post into your social media profiles. Make sure that you do this as soon as the post gets published, as you’ll want to share fresh content with your followers.
It also means that your blog post can get shared with their friends and followers too. Chances are, your content could also go viral!
Next, you need to submit the URL to Google. If your blog create an XML sitemap automatically, that’s fine. As an extra measure use your Webmaster Tools account to add your link to the Google Index immediately! You can find this under the “crawl” section.
Conclusion
As you can see, there are a few things that you need to do to make sure that your blog post gets that SEO push that is necessary for it to perform effectively. As much as this may seem simple enough you will surprise how many bloggers really do this. But if you want to blog like an SEO pros then make sure you do this every time you publish a new post!
