SEO Friendly Blog Posts

How to Write SEO Friendly WordPress Posts

First of all, remember that you can do more harm than good if you copy and paste chunks of content into your blog, as with the rest of the website all content must be unique! If you can, try to add something at least once a week, if you don’t have time to say much the occasional short news story is OK, but make sure there are more long posts than short. All this tells Google that the site is being updated regularly.

Before you start click the show/hide kitchen sink button   you will see more menu items appear.

Step 1 – Open a New Post

Go to your website and navigate to your blog, if the whole site is built in WordPress this is just the domain itself, in the address bar add /wp-admin to the end of the url (either mywebsite.co.uk/wp-admin or mywebsite.co.uk/blog/wp-admin), enter your user name and password, press enter and your dashboard will open. On the left you will see a menu, click POSTS, then below it click ADD NEW, a new blank post will open.

Step 2 – Title

At the top of the page is a long narrow field, this is the title of the post, it also becomes the page title when published, probably the single most important SEO factor on a page, this will also appear as the header of the listing in Google search results, so you want something in there which is relevant to the content, ideally something people will type into the search engines. Then click the Tab key, your cursor will move to the main body and just above your URL will appear with the term used in there too. Try to keep it short and snappy.

Step 3 – Content

Ideally your blog post should be at least 300 words to stand a chance of ranking, although the longer the better (I aim for 500 words or more), however, if you have a news item to add which isn’t there for SEO purposes, the length isn’t important. Use the exact term in your title 2-4 times depending on the length of the post, plus use plenty of related terms as well.

How you write is entirely up to you, only you know if your prospective customers just want the facts or a bit of personality coming through.

Generally, unless it’s a technical guide, people will only skim read the article, so make it easy for them to get the information they want, structure the page with headings (described below), use bullet points or numbered lists and try to think of a newspaper layout, the header is to catch attention, the first paragraph summarises what it’s about, then the remainder contains the detail, with an optional brief summary at the end.

You should add a heading in the page which is related to, but not the same as your title, type it at the top of the page, then select it, click on the drop down next to “Paragraph” and select HEADING 2, if you want sub headings further down the page, do the same, but use HEADING 3.

Linking – Your blog may be set to automatically link to internal pages, if so just use the keywords and it will create the links automatically. If not, or if you want to link to an external source do as follows:

First highlight the term you want to link from, then click on the hyperlink icon in the toolbar (looks like 3 links in a chain link fence) enter the external url, or if linking to an internal page you can click on OR LINK TO EXISTING CONTENT and select the page. Then enter a title, this is the term you want that page to rank for, or its keyword/term, click ADD LINK. Remember that linking out can help Google to see your site as an authority, but only if you link to related and reputable sites and content. Linking to Wikipedia, the NHS or vendors sites etc is good (depending on your niche) linking to new, junk or unrelated sites is bad. Of course don’t link to a competitor as you are effectively voting for them in Google’s eyes!

Step 4 – Making the Page Look Good

A blog post which includes images and video not only looks good to visitors, but also helps optimise the page.

Adding Images – First crop or reduce the size of the image to the maximum size you want it to appear if someone clicks on it and save it with a name relevant to the image and title, no spaces, use hyphens. Then place your cursor where you want the image to appear in the text and click the button near the top of the page which looks like a tiny TV screen (next to Upload/Insert). Click SELECT FILES and browse to the image and double click it, the image will upload. In the Alternate Text field add your post title again if appropriate, if not something as close as possible, you can ignore the other fields. At the bottom select alignment and the size you want the image to appear, click INSERT INTO POST. The image is now saved to your database and in the post itself.

Click it once to delete or go back to the options, you can also drag it around the page, but it will always be forced to the alignment you chose (can be changed in options). Don’t worry about the text being too close to the image in the editor, it will look fine once published.

Adding Video – Navigate to the video you want on YouTube, then copy the url, in your post find the HTML tab and click it, then paste the url where you want the video to be, WordPress will take care of the rst for you and embed the video when you publish.

Step 5 – Publishing your post

Categories (on the right of the editing page) are where the post will be filed, so choose one, or add a new one which is relevant, try to keep it to a reasonable number of categories if you have a list of them showing on your pages.

Post Tags are optional, but I use a few related words and terms which I want to rank for but not those already used several times in the body of the article. These will usually appear at the bottom of the post dependent on your specific configuration.

Spell check and re-read before you press PUBLISH. You can go back and edit posts but I strongly advise against deleting them for SEO reasons too long to go into right now.

You have just added a search engine optimised post to your blog. Remember that regular posting will help in a number of ways:

1.    Google likes fresh content, so can see the site is regularly updated
2.    The exact term you used may be searched for and your post may be found and clicked on so can increase your web traffic.
3.    Other general terms in your post pay be searched for and pull in further traffic
4.    The more pages there are focused on the theme, Google will begin to see your site as an authority in its field and rank you higher accordingly (this is a very long term strategy though).