10 Things Blog Posts Need Before You Publish
So, you’ve written a great blog post. Your finger is hovering over that shiny “publish” button – but hold on. You want that blog post to be noticed, to be read. So, there are a few essential things you should do to ensure your blog post gains traction. There are 10 things blog posts need before you publish that can make your article go from meh, to a huge traffic driver for your website.
I always say the writing is only 50% of the work.
Ensuring you hit the other 50%? That’s what gets your blog noticed.
So let’s dive in together and review the top 10 things your blog post needs to be successful, get traffic, and keep people on your site.
The Top 10 things blog posts need before you publish:
- An Awesome Blog Post Title
- A Passed Readability Test
- The SEO Green Light
- Smart Internal Links
- Great Social Media Graphics
- Link to Social & Email Accounts
- Categories, Tags & Feature Images Set
- A Strong CTA (Call To Action)
- A Fresh Set of Eyes
- Share, Promote & Shout It From Rooftops!
1. An Awesome Blog Post Title
Your blog post title may be the most important part of the whole post, and is a huge part of marketing. How important is a great blog headline?
It’s usually #1 reason people will click to read your post. A great blog headline should include two things:
A. Have a great key phrase
A key phrase is essentially the words people use in their Google search. That makes the blog headline highly important for SEO. Make sure to use terms that you think people will be searching for when they want to find content like yours.
B. Be enticing enough for someone to click through
Basically, a reader needs to know “what’s in it for me?“. Put yourself in their shoes – in the sea of information, what will make them click your post? Most of the time, people click because they want to learn something – how to save money, how to crochet, how to get traffic from Pinterest, etc. Teaching people how to accomplish something peaks their interest.
An okay headline: “What I Learned About Pinterest”
A way better headline: “How to Use Pinterest to Grow Blog Traffic”
Why it’s better: It includes two key phrases (“How to use Pinterest” and “Grow blog traffic”), and it promises to teach people something/help them accomplish something.
2. A Passed Readability Test
What is readability, and why is it important to have good readability before you publish?
It’s basically a test to see how easy to read your post is. Many of us think that writing at a more complex level makes us sound smarter, more qualified.
Au contraire, my friend! (look at me, breaking the rule).
You’ll be doing the opposite of everything you’ve been taught in junior high. It’s often something I have to coach my marketing team on, because it can go against your nature. But research says the best readability for adults is around the Grade 8 level.
This does not mean you’re talking down to people.
The does mean you’re writing to keep them reading.
To pass the readability test, you should hit the following rules:
- Use active vs. passive voice (say “the dog chased the ball” vs. “the ball was being chased by the dog”)
- Have no more than 300 words before a subheading appears
- Keep sentence length to average of 8 words
- Keep paragraphs between 1-4 sentences
- Don’t use the same word to start multiple sentences in a row
- 35% of your sentences should have transition words (I break this one all the time)
The good news? There’s no need to memorize these if you have the right plugins.
The Yoast plugin with your WordPress.org site checks this for you – magic! If you have yet to set up your blog, using my link will get you 50% off of a new site on WordPress.org through Bluehost.
3. The SEO Green Light
By now I assume you’re using an SEO (search engine optimization) plugin, like Yoast SEO. If not, check out my post on how to start a blog and see why it’s so important.
SEO is basically what will get you to appear in search engines, like Google, Bing, YouTube, and Pinterest. Here are a few things that help you accomplish great SEO:
- Keyphrase should be included in title and at least one heading
- Keyphrase should be used multiple times per post
- You should have both internal & external links
- Text length should be minimum 500 words
- Images should have alternative text (in case the images doesn’t display)
- You should write your own meta description (the Google preview text)
Sound like a lot to remember?
The best thing about SEO plugins is that you don’t have to! They highlight each rule for you, showing you which you’re adhering to or breaking. Score!
4. Smart Internal Links
Internal links are important for SEO purposes, but they’re important for another reason too: internal links help keep readers on your site.
You don’t want people to read one article and leave. You want them to find other awesome content you worked so hard to build.
So ask yourself this question before you click publish: have you included internal links, and are they front and center?
Another important factor to consider (because generating generating income is a big part of this site) is to have your internal links lead to revenue-generating posts – which are usually either sales pages or lead-generation pages.
The posts should still be helpful to your readers and be a natural transition from the article you’re reading. Just don’t forget that creating income is a goal of your website.
To recap:
- Add at least 3 internal links
- Ensure they’re prominently positioned within the first 1/3 of your post
- Have them lead to revenue-generating posts
5. Add Great, Sharable Social Media Graphics
Next up on 10 things blog posts need before you publish, is to beautify your site with great social media graphics.
You’re likely going to create images for your post anyway (and if not, browse this website to see how they can massively boost your traffic).
But don’t forget to input your graphics into your post directly.
Why?
Aside from adding some beauty to your post, they are also great traffic drivers to your site.
You can consider adding:
- The Pinterest Pin It plugins directly to your site so readers can pin directly from your site.
- An Instagram plugin, so users can see your latest Instagram posts directly in your website footer.
- Social media bars to your top pages, so people can check out your social accounts.
6. Link to Social & Email Accounts
Your website is an amazing way to build connections. The more people you have a relationship with, the more support you can provide in the future, and the more potential customers you may have.
If you don’t include a link to your social accounts, you’re missing out on great opportunities for people to follow you.
Remember, as well, to include an email signup form. Always, always try to build your email list.
The best way to entice people to sign up is to offer a freebie. These can be things like:
- E-books
- Checklists
- Quizze
- Industry Insights
- Top Trend Lists
- Free Tools
- Guides & Resources
- Essentially, anything to make their lives easier
Just ensure you follow the correct privacy and opt-in rules (like GDPR and getting consent).
To that end, make sure to follow me @MarketingGrowthLab on Instagram and Pinterest!
7. Category, Tags & Feature Images Set
Once you are ready to publish, don’t forget about highlighting the top things in your post. Make sure to set and customize a few areas before your click that valuable “publish blog” button:
- Categories – you can set each category to appear under specific menu headers, so everything I set as “writing tips” will appear under that menu header.
- Tags – tags allow readers to find other articles with the same tags. So if you click “blogging” for example, you you’ll see all posts that have the blogging tag.
- Featured Images – the featured image is the one that appears in certain areas like post preview, header image, etc.
Here’s a snippet from WordPress.org, but you can usually set these with whichever CMS (content management system, the tool you build your website on) that you use.
8. A Strong CTA (Call to Action)
Before you click publish on your blog post, you should also have a very clear call to action.
Yes, you created the post to help and inspire people.
But in order to monetize your website (and create value from all the hard work you’re putting out), you’ll need readers to do something further.
This could be a number of things:
- Sign up for your email newsletter
- Download a free PDF
- Purchase your ebook or course
- Follow you on social
- Buy a product
- Click on an affiliate link
- Etc.
I often get so caught up in offering education, that I forget to include a call to action. So checking the 10 things blog posts need before you publish reminds me to include a couple CTAs (calls to action) myself.
In that vein, don’t forget to sign up for our awesome newsletter!
Again – you do not want to sound too salesy. Be intentional about how often you ask your readers to do things, and only do it if you really think it will add value to them.
Always, always remember that you need to need to be offering support to your readers first and foremost.
9. A Fresh Set of Eyes
Please, do not click publish immediately after writing your post.
I daresay don’t click publish in the first few hours of writing your post.
Time gives you perspective, and sitting on a post even while you just brew yourself a cup of coffee and prepare some social media graphics may let you catch something you didn’t see the first time around.
When you return, open up the post in preview mode.
The biggest question to ask is what can you cut?
The more words you can cut from your writing, the more succinct and clear your points will be (while still keeping the post long enough to make Google happy – they tend to like posts over 1,800 words).
I know some people who aim to cut 50% of their work. I say that’s a bit much, but be prepared to slash some paragraphs to make your writing tight.
You can bet I did when writing this.
After You Publish: 10. Share, Promote & Shout It From Rooftops!
I know, promotion can be scary. But someone put it a great way recently:
If you don’t take the time to promote your work, you’re robbing people of content that could help them.
You need to tell people your awesome content exists.
After all, you started your business because you believe it can help people. So if you just throw it on your blog and don’t do anything with it, you’re robbing them of that help.
Would it surprise you to know that for one of my brands, I get 90% of my website traffic from Pinterest? It surprised me when I started posting on the platform!
If you want to see this kind of traction yourself, check out my post on how to use Pinterest to skyrocket your blog traffic. Because getting your business to thrive is what I’m all about!
Figure out which images you’re going to use, and an idea of the descriptions you plan to use. If you prefer to batch your work, you can do this all in one day for your whole month’s content (in fact, I recommend that strategy!). Using a tool like Tailwind can save you so much time by scheduling all of your Pinterest & Instagram posts at once.
Your Blog Post is Ready to Go
To recap, the top 10 things blog posts need before you publish:
- An Awesome Blog Post Title
- A Passed Readability Test
- The SEO Green Light
- Smart Internal Links
- Great Social Media Graphics
- Link to Social & Email Accounts
- Categories, Tags & Feature Images Set
- A Strong CTA (Call To Action)
- A Fresh Set of Eyes
- Share, Promote & Shout It From Rooftops!
The next time you’re preparing to launch a blog post, come back to this page.
Incorporating these 110 things blog posts need before you publish can make the difference between maximizing your traffic and struggling to get views.
Even I can forget some of them at times, so you better believe I’ll be bookmarking it myself and coming back to it as well.
Did this post help you? I’d love to hear about it!
Catch you online, friends!
– Danielle
