Writing posts
…
Guidelines on how to write posts and the importance of headlines to attract readers.
…
Click on the button to download a pdf of this page.
First, a glossary (important = read it to understand this e-course fully):
Blog = an online diary that can be adapted for business purposes.
Post = an entry, article, piece of writing or message in your blog.
Dashboard = main menu or hub of a blog which provides access to the various elements.
Wordpress.com = the recommended blog programme software provider I’m using for ‘free’ blogs.
Domain name or URL = the web address of your blog or website.
Internet Spiders = robots that search the internet looking for keywords and new material to help with SEO.
Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) = improving organic or natural search engine results using spiders.
Interaction = the ability to contribute or comment on the internet via blogs and forums.
Keywords (Tags) = words that are currently being searched for in search engines and are therefore attractive to internet spiders.
Categories = archived topic pages to store posts for research or retrieval purposes.
Permalink = each posts’ own specific URL created from its headline or title.
Link = an interactive method of getting to another website or blog.
Widget = blogging programme or application for the blog’s sidebar.
Spam = unwanted comments or emails, usually of a malicious nature.
Tagline = secondary headline or title of your blog.
In your new blog you’ll notice you already have an example post provided for you by Wordpress.com. This is so you can see what a basic post looks like. You can see that it consists of a headline (title), underneath is the date and the author, the content contains a link back to Wordpress.com, and the additional material shows it is allocated an uncategorised category and has one comment (also supplied by Wordpress.com).
Writing posts is very easy in Wordpress; if you can use Word, you can write a post. May I suggest you compose your post beforehand in Word, and then copy it into a plain text medium such as EditText or TextWrangler. This is because these programmes don’t contain unwanted formatting that would interfere with the layout. Now you can copy your content into Wordpress without any problems.
You can type directly into Wordpress if you like, but sometimes it’s better to compose your post ‘outside’ the blog, especially for checking spelling and grammar, proofing, editing or whatever. Blogs should be written for your readers, not necessarily for spiders and SEO – use your keywords liberally by all means, but bear in mind who will be reading and therefore commenting on it.
Go to your dashboard (link at the top of your browser space); although you’ll also see a direct access link to create a new post, I’m going through the dashboard to explain a few things first:
In fact the New Post link at the top will get you to the same page as Posts > Add New:
The main parts of a post are • the headline • the permalink (the post’s individual URL it is allocated) • the content of the post • links in the content • tags (keywords relevant to the post) and • categories (the subject chapter the post is allocated to for later reference).
The first thing to take note of is the headline. This is a very important part of your post, because it becomes part of your permalink, the post’s individual URL it is allocated. Each post is given its own unique page, so it needs to have an URL address for it. The permalink appears automatically a few seconds later under your headline when you’ve finished typing it in.
Permalinks consist of the URL of your blog: http://settingupablog.wordpress.com followed by the date: /2009/05/10 followed by the headline of your post: /its-easy-to-set-up-a-blog/ resulting in the whole permalink: http://settingupablog.wordpress.com/2009/05/10/its-easy-to-set-up-a-blog/ created uniquely for that particular post.
There is a chance to edit this permalink, as you might change your mind regarding your post’s headline to make it something better, or want to change the headline part of your permalink into something more rememberable. Click on the edit button on the right of the permalink and the field will become interactive for you to change it. Your permalink should not be left as just a page number. Save it to return.
If you have composed your post beforehand in a different media, and copied it direct into the large space where the main element of the post is to go, and if you don’t put in a headline immediately, you’ll be given a post number instead of the headline words – it’s important to edit that after you’ve finalised your headline.
A word about headlines. They are extremely important for SEO because not only are they part of the post’s permalink, but it is the first thing both human readers and search engine spiders read. The human will respond to the subject and attraction criteria, the spider to the keywords within it. Therefore it is important to spend a bit of time thinking about your post’s headline: how it will get your reader’s notice to make them want to click on it within an RSS feed; use a question that empathises with your reader’s need or pain, provides a solution to it, or is an outrageous statement that requires further investigation. Spiders don’t respond to this, they’re just programmed to look for links with keywords, and respond favourably if the link goes to a destination that contains relevant material that matches the headline’s content.
The next step is the content of the post:
As I said earlier, it’s wise to compose your post and transfer the content from another simple text programme (such as TextEdit or TextWrangler) into the post field. This is to prevent transferring any background programming within Word which could cause inconsistencies within your post’s presentation, such as line spacing or paragraph returns. You want to use just plain text.
You could just type your post straight in if you’re doing a very quick one, if you’re really sure about the content. You can always edit your post once it’s published (after all you are the Administrator).
Copy and paste the content into the post field. Highlight certain words with bold and italics, and create links behind keywords and phrases to make contextual links (much better for spiders and SEO). Highlight the appropriate words with your mouse (dragging while pressing down), and then selecting the required button from the above selection.
To create a contextual link, highlight your keyword or special phrase and select the link icon (looks like a chain link). Fill in the menu with the full URL of your link’s destination, select the target to open in a new browser window (so the reader doesn’t lose your blog once they go to the other link) and if you wish give the link a title (which will show as a yellow pop-up when you mouse over the completed link) then fill in the next field with an appropriate description. Press ‘Insert’ to activate the link.
It will then look like this:
If the blog recognises links that have been used before, they revert to the activated colour purple, whereas unused links are blue.
Once you’ve completed writing or uploading your post content, the next thing to do is to fill in your tags and select your categories, and to find out about this you should refer to my blogging visual e-course ‘Creating tags and categories’.
Tags are keywords or phrases that help your blog post get higher in the search engines. They are designed to attract spiders, and are primarily used for SEO and to create traffic to your blog. Wordpress also uses them as a link to connect your post to blog archives within the same subject. Tags are listed at the bottom of your posts and also in the Tag Cloud widget on your sidebar.
Categories can be considered as archived subject or topic pages for specified posts. If you are writing about a variety of subjects you would like to store your posts under, and would like your readers to find them efficiently in the future, then allocating your posts to their specific category is an answer. Categories can be thought of as containers or folder-pages to store posts into, carefully filed away for safekeeping.
You already have a categories widget listing ‘Uncategorized’ which is the default category supplied by Wordpress, but now you should create your own. More information can be found about how to create categories though my blogging visual e-course ‘Creating tags and categories’.
Now you’re ready to publish your article. The menu is placed at the top right hand of the Add Post page, and you have the opportunity to publish immediately by pressing the Publish button, or schedule your post to a more convenient time; more information on scheduling your posts can be found in my blogging visual e-course ‘Scheduling Posts’.
Once published Wordpress will confirm and the blue button will change to ‘Update Post’ should you wish to make any amendments, plus the date of publication is documented and will appear under the post’s headline. Go view your post by the ‘View Site’ link at the top next to your blog’s name:
Your post has now been published in four separate pages: main blog post page, separate post’s page and category and tag pages. Click on the post headline to view your post’s individual page:
And note that Wordpress has given you some related posts links automatically, and that there is an area for your readers to write a comment. More about comments can be found from my blogging visual e-course ‘Comment Control’.
But you’ve still got that post Wordpress gave you by default. If you don’t want to keep it, you can go to ‘Edit’ under ‘Posts’ in the Dashboard to either edit or delete it:
If you mouse over the headline of the post in question, quick links to Edit | Quick Edit | Delete | View appear.
You have the opportunity to either edit it (the ‘Edit Post’ page will appear like ‘Add New Post’ above which will allow you to make your changes) or delete it (Wordpress will make sure first beforehand):
If you want to find out more, visit my blogging visual e-courses to improve your business blog. And if you have any questions, click on the fairy blog mother logo to send an email.
© Alice Elliott 2009
