Blogging: What to Check before You Post
Blogs can be one of the best inbound marketing tools you can use to boost your search engine rankings, generate more leads and bring more visitors to your website. Whether you are working with a web content writer from writing services or you write your blog posts on your own, it is important to make sure they are ready before you publish. Before you hit the publish button in your blog software, make sure you check the following to ensure quality.
Proofread
It should go without saying, but your web content writer should proofread his work before submitting the final piece to you for publishing. However, it can still be beneficial to go over it on your own before you hit the publish button. Read it out loud to check for readability and make sure all grammar and spelling mistakes are removed. You should look for the following:
- Sentence Structure
- Punctuation
- Grammar
- Numbers
- Spelling
- Style
Headline Optimization
If you use social media, you need to make sure your headline is optimized for social media sites. This typically means keeping your headline to 140 characters or less, grabbing your readers’ attention and including your keywords. Because your headline is the first thing people will see on their social media sites, you need to make sure it is enticing to encourage them to click on it and read more.
Search Engine Optimization
Before you post, ask yourself these important SEO-related questions.
- Does the post include relevant keywords?
- Are the keywords used in the title, text, headlines and anchor text?
- Are the keywords present in meta descriptions and tags?
- Are you using an SEO pack plug-in for your blog software?
- Are your images optimized with alt tags and the appropriate size?
Links
Links are extremely critical to your inbound marketing. Content writers should be using several in each post, many of which point back to other parts of your site. Before you post, article writing services should make sure that all the links work and lead to the appropriate place.
Basic HTML Tags
A basic understanding of HTML tags is essential to make sure your blogs will perform properly. Some of the important HTML tags you should learn to use include those that:
- Open links in a new tab on the browser.
- Add alt tags to your images.
- Make your blog mobile-friendly.
Readability
Your web content writer should pay close attention to the readability of your blog. Before you post your blog, make sure your posts are easy to scan for information. Clear, concise posts are easier on the eyes, and individuals are more likely to scan them before they decide to read. To ensure that your blog posts are as easy to read, writing services will often include the following features:
- Subheadings that indicate what each section is about.
- Bullet points.
- Plenty of white space.
- An uncluttered page with few distractions.
Categories, Tags and Slugs
The categories on your blog should offer a clear method of grouping blog posts together and telling your readers what a blog post is about.
Tags are another tool your web content writer should use with your blog posts. Unlike keywords, tags help individuals determine what the post is about. It can also be used by search engines to better index the post so it can easily be found by individuals who are looking for specific information.
In WordPress, a slug takes your tag phrases and removes the spaces so they can be used as a URL for your blog posts. It also converts all text to lowercase so it can be more easily searched.
Call to Action
Every blog post needs to end with a call to action. If your writing services aren’t using them, you will need to add them yourself. However, if you find your web content writer consistently leaves off the call to action, you may want to consider finding a different company to handle your posts. The call to action is an essential aspect of inbound marketing, telling your readers what you expect them to do after reading your post.
While you should never hesitate to publish your blog for fear of failure, it is important to check it over one last time before you hit submit. As long as you check these eight things, whether you wrote the blog yourself or you hired a web content writer from writing services to do it, you can feel more confident in the success of your blog.
If you need help managing your blog posts, contact us to find out how our web content writers can provide you with quality blogs that meet these criteria.
