The Yoast SEO plugin: when it comes to optimising a blog post in WordPress from an SEO perspective, I recommend that you make Yoast your go-to choice.

It’s logical and uses a traffic light system to guide your SEO efforts, as well as highlighting any potential readability issues.

Today, I’ll be taking you, step-by-step, through how to install and optimise a blog post with the free version Yoast plugin. We also have a quick look at some of the Premium features.

Stage 1: Install the Yoast SEO plugin

If you don’t already have the Yoast plugin installed and activated on your website, then follow these steps:

1. Log in to the dashboard of your WordPress site.
2. Hover your mouse pointer over the Plugins option in the main menu running down the left-hand side of the screen.
3. If you’re not sure whether you already have Yoast on your site, you can click on Installed Plugins and check whether it’s listed.
4. If Yoast isn’t already on your site, click on Add New in the plugins menu instead (see picture below).

This will take you to the Add Plugins screen.

Here, WordPress will show you a selection of popular featured plugins that you might want to use on your site.

Ignore these for now.

5. Your next step is to type Yoast in the Search plugins bar highlighted in red in the screenshot below.

This search should bring up Yoast SEO as the first result.

6. Click on Install now in the top right-hand corner of the Yoast listing.

7. You will probably see two circular, rotating arrows telling you that the plugin is installing. Once the installation is complete, the Install now button should change to Activate. If it does, hit the Activate button and move on Stage 2.

If you don’t see the Activate option here for any reason, click on the Installed Plugins option in the Plugins menu on the main dashboard menu. This will take you to a list of all of the installed plugins on your site. Scroll down to Yoast SEO and click on Activate.

Congratulations. You now have the free version of the Yoast plugin installed on your site.

Our next step is to set it up.

Stage 2: The Yoast SEO Configuration Wizard

If you haven’t used Yoast before, it’s advisable to go through the Configuration Wizard to make sure you’re happy with the settings.

To do this, go to the Installed Plugins page (as explained in point 7 in the section above) and click on Settings.

This should take you to a screen that looks something like this:

Click where it says configuration wizard.

The configuration wizard will ask you a selection of questions designed to help the plugin (and Google) understand more about your website.

Simply choose the option that best fits your site for each question and then click on Next. Here’s a screenshot of the first question you will see:

Once you’ve been through these nine screens, click on Close the wizard.

Next, click on the Start SEO data optimisation button in the general Yoast screen (you’ll find this below where you clicked to start the configuration wizard).

This will prompt the Yoast SEO plugin to look at any existing posts and pages on your site and analyse how optimised they are.

Once Yoast has completed its initial optimisation, your general set-up of the plugin is complete and you should see ticks next to each of the main set-up tasks:

Stage 3: Optimising a blog post using the Yoast SEO plugin

Now, let’s discover how to optimise a blog post using the Yoast plugin.

Click on Posts>All posts in the main menu of your WordPress dashboard and then choose the option to Edit the post you want to optimise.

(Depending on which WordPress theme you’re using, you may see a couple of editing options, such as Edit with block editor, Edit with classic editor or Edit with Divi. Pick your preferred editing option).

Once you’re in the backend of your chosen post (remember, the screen in which you added and edited the content, as explained in How to log in to WordPress and write your first blog), scroll down to the end of the post.

Here, you will see the panel for the Yoast SEO plugin.

Note: I will be sharing screenshots from my own blog to explain each field. I do have the Premium (paid-for) Yoast plugin installed but the core features are the same as in the free version.

The panel will look something like this:

As you can see, Yoast fills in as many details as it can from what is included in the post. We just need to do some fine tuning.

Check the Readability

I like to check the Readability tab first to ensure that the article is as readable as possible.

As you can see from the screenshot above, when I copied and pasted this article into WordPress, Yoast immediately gave it a green smiley face for readability. This means there shouldn’t be anything too drastic to resolve.

To be sure though, let’s click on the Readability tab.

The information on this tab will depend on the content of the post. Broadly speaking though, the Readability information looks at elements of your content such as:

• Are your sentences too long and complicated?
• Is your copy easy to read?
• Are you using an active or passive voice?
• Is there enough variety in your content?
• Are you using enough sub-headings to break up the copy?
• Are the paragraphs short and snappy?
• Have you used enough transition words (e.g. because, for example, for instance, as a result) to provide clarity?

As you can see from the Readability information for this article, Yoast has flagged up two potential problems: Sub-heading distribution and sentence length.

Sub-heading distribution tells me that there’s one section of text that could probably do with an extra sub-heading to make easier for a reader to skim read.

Sentence length tells me that a few of my sentences could probably do editing.

If I click on the eye icon to the right of the issue, Yoast highlights the affected text. I can then edit the copy, where appropriate, if I want to.

Given that the article has a green light for readability, I may decide to leave as it is.

The SEO tab

Having checked the readability of your article, your next step is to click on the SEO tab in Yoast.

This will take us back to the SEO panel I showed you earlier in this article. Here it is again:

As you can see, Yoast has already given the post an SEO title based on the main title of the article. If the title is too long to appear in full in a Google search, you will see an orange or read line under the title (more about this in a moment).

At the moment, the overall traffic light ranking is grey because Yoast doesn’t have enough information to assess the SEO data.

Your next steps

We now need to do the following:

1. Add a focus keyword or phrase in the Focus keyphrase field (with the free option, you can only add one word or phrase)

Stop! Before you do this, you’ll need to do some basic keyword research. Choosing a relevant keyword that your target audience searches for will help to ensure that the right people find and read your content. It’s all very well getting a green light in Yoast but it’s not so great if it’s for a search term that isn’t used!
Need help? Check out my Keyword Research Guide.

By adding “Yoast SEO plugin” as the focus keyphrase for this blog, you can see Yoast gives the SEO elements of the blog an amber rating (a neutral amber face), meaning there’s room for improvement. That’s because some information is still missing.

2. Next, we need to check that the SEO title is a good length. If you want to change the title, you can delete the dark pink lozenges that say “Title” and “Page” and type a new title into the SEO title field. As I have a green line for the length, I plan to leave the title as it is for now.

3. Your next task is to set the slug for your post. The slug is the end part of a URL that identifies a particular page on a website. My domain is seo-plus.co.uk but every page has a unique slug so a reader can go straight to the right page, instead of having to find it via the Home page.

Yoast may use the title of a post to suggest a slug for you. This auto-suggestion is often too long.

Aim for a short slug that includes your focus keyword and describes what the post is about. For this post, using-yoast-seo-plugin would be a good slug.

4. You now need to give your post a meta description. Remember that this will be the description of the post that people see in Google searches. It needs to explain what the post is about in a compelling way. Try to include your focus keyphrase.

Again, keep an eye on the colour of your line below the meta description in the Yoast SEO panel. Also, look at the preview for how your listing will appear in searches. If your meta description is too long (or short), the line will turn amber and then red.

Fine-tuning your SEO

As we can see from the screenshot above, using a keyword-rich SEO title, meta description and slug has helped to turn our amber rating to a green smiley face.

But there may be more that we can do to boost the SEO elements of the post. Yoast will tell us.

Click on the next section in the Yoast SEO panel, titled SEO Analysis.

This will open up a list of traffic-lighted insights and recommendations. Here’s the SEO Analysis for the draft version of the article you’re reading now:

Fortunately, everything looks pretty good. The only thing I haven’t done yet is add images to the article but they’ll all be in place by the time I hit publish.

The SEO Analysis looks at the following points:

• Are there outbound links to further sources of information? (The more reputable your sources, the better for building trust)
• Are there internal links to related content on your site?
• Is your keyphrase in the SEO title and as near to the beginning as possible?
• Is the SEO title a good length?
• Does the focus keyphrase appear within the introduction of the article?
• Is the keyphrase well distributed throughout the article?
• Is it a good length?
• Are you using it too much or not often enough?
• Is the keyphrase in the meta description?
• Is the meta description a good length to appear in searches?
• Have you used your keyphrase before? (It’s better to use a unique keyphrase so you’re not competing with your own content in the same search).
• Is the text a good length? (Google might consider articles with fewer than 300 words as “thin” content)
• Is your keyphrase in the slug?

The exact points raised in the analysis will depend on your content.

If there is anything that you can improve, Yoast will highlight this with a red dot and explain what steps you can take.

It’s up to you to decide whether to follow all of the recommendations. For example, if you have an impactful title, do you really need to put the keyphrase at the beginning?

Optimising images

As the SEO Analysis that I’ve just run has mentioned image alt tags, I want to cover those briefly.

Yoast likes to see images with alt tags, with at least one including your focus keyphrase.

If you use images that illustrate and complement the key points of an article, it’s usually fairly easy to include your focus keyphrase without keyword stuffing.

For example, when I added the Configuration Wizard image earlier in this blog, I was able to give it an alt tag of “Where to find Yoast SEO plugin configuration wizard” to explain the purpose of the image. This naturally included the focus keyphrase.

Adding this image and alt tag turned the final red bullet point in the SEO analysis to green.

Cornerstone content

One final option on the SEO tab is to flag up a post or page as cornerstone content. Cornerstone content is a term used to describe the most important bits of content on a website.

If you’ve read my blogs before, you may have heard me talking about the “hub and spoke” model of blogging, where you have an in-depth article about a topic that links to smaller articles about sub-topics within that overarching subject area. In turn, all the smaller articles link back to the main article.

In this context, the main article would be seen as cornerstone content. You can tell Yoast this by turning the cornerstone content switch from “Off” to “On”.

Yoast SEO plugin premium version

For a free tool, the Yoast SEO plugin provides amazing power and is an essential tool for putting the SEO basics in place.

A premium, paid-for version of the plugin is available. The features on the premium version are all about improving the overall structure of your site, how content ties together and the user experience.

They can help you to:

• Find and update stale content
• Fix broken links and manage redirects
• Easily find related content to link to elsewhere on your site
• Find orphaned content (i.e. content that has no internal links)
• Review the language you use in your copy to include more synonyms and related keywords
• Optimise posts before sharing them on social media
• 24/7 technical support
• Access to the Yoast SEO academy

Let me know how you get on

I hope this step-by-step guide will help you to feel confident about using the Yoast SEO plugin to boost your SEO.

My advice is to review the SEO analysis and experiment with its suggestions, then track how each article performs using Google Analytics and Google Search Console.

If you tweak your SEO title and meta descriptions, how does it affect clickthrough rates?

If you add in more sub-headings and internal links, do people stay on your website for longer?

Yoast in a fantastic addition to your SEO arsenal. It will also help you build up a bigger understanding of your ideal customer and their favourite content.

If you found this article helpful, we’d love it if you could share it – thank you

Have you been pulling your hair out trying to write the perfect blog post?

Surely, perfection is in the eyes of the beholder!

Well, yes, which is why knowing your audience and those all-important ideal customers will help you land on the right style and level of content.

And the more you blog, the more information you’ll have about what your customers love, what they click on, what they share and what content leaves them cold.

But even without that information, there are many things that you can do to make each blog article as compelling and shareable as possible, starting from your very first blog post.

I call this the anatomy of a perfect blog post.

Today, I’ll be walking you through each must-have element, as well as showing you how to implement them in a WordPress blog.

(Why WordPress? I hear you ask. Well, it currently accounts for 32% of the entire web and 59% of CMS-built websites. If you’re launching a blog, there’s a good chance you’re doing it with WordPress).

Pick a single topic for your article

Each article you publish should focus on a single topic.

This provides clarity for your audience and for Google. You want people to land on a blog article and be able to see at a glance what it’s about.

If you want to cover related topics, you can always write about them as separate articles and then use internal links to tie the related content together (more about this in a bit).

The great thing about this approach is that the main words and phrases people would use to search for the topic will be words that come up naturally. These are your keywords.

With this article, for example, the main topic is “perfect blog post”, which the Google Keyword Planner tool tells us is a low competition phrase. However, I’ll also be using plenty of other words and phrases about blogging and formatting blog posts, just by staying on topic.

Not sure what to blog about?

If you’re not sure what your audience wants to know about, here are a few tools and tips for you to try:

• Have a look at what people are talking about on your competitors’ social media pages or in reviews about your competitors – this can give you some amazing insights into what your potential customers care about. Are there topics that get loads of engagement? Do people talk about their problems in reviews? These could make perfect blog topics.
• Check out Answer the Public – just pop in one or two keywords related to what you do and find out what questions people have.
• Try an idea generator like Portent.
• Have a look at my recent article about finding blog content ideas.

A perfect blog post has an awesome headline

The main headline is your first – and sometimes only – chance to grab a reader’s attention.

According to Copyblogger, on average, eight out of 10 people will read a headline whereas only two out of 10 will go on to read the rest of the article.

Your headline has to persuade people to read the intro to your blog and then the intro has to persuade people to read the next paragraph – and so on.

Neil Patel has put together a fantastic step-by-step guide to writing powerful headlines, which is well worth a read.

Stats suggest that the best length for a headline is six words (roughly 53-57 characters), mainly because people tend to read the first and last three words of a headline. That being said, there are some 30-word headlines that really pack a punch.

A good rule of thumb is that if a headline is too long for a tweet, then it’s too long.

Try to use your main focus keyword in an attention-grabbing phrase so it’s obvious what the article is about and what people will get from reading it.

You can add a descriptive sub-line if needed to tell your readers more about the content.

Applying an H1 tag

With most WordPress themes, when you create a new post the main heading is automatically allocated with an H1 tag that tells Google it’s looking at the most important heading in the post.

You will enter your main heading here:

You can apply an H1 tag to other headings within an article (although more about why you probably shouldn’t in a moment!).

To do this, highlight the text you want Google to see as a heading and then click on the dropdown menu labelled Paragraph in the formatting toolbar (as pictured below).

I would advise against having two H1 tags in a single article.

The purpose of the H1 tag is to show Google the main heading. If you have multiple headings with this tag, it can make it harder for search engines to identify your main search terms and, therefore, the article’s relevance to various searches.

An introduction that draws your audience in

Today’s audiences are time poor. When they read a blog article, they want to get straight to the meaty bits or have their curiosity sparked to keep reading without a long preamble.

This is the job of your introduction. It has to grab the attention of your audience.

In my experience, the three main elements of a great introduction are:

1. The hook – This is the opening line to your article that will make people sit up and take notice. You could ask a question, describe an event or realisation, make a controversial statement or share a surprising statistic as just a few examples.If you look back at the opening line of this blog, you’ll see that I asked the question, “Have you been tearing your hair out trying to write the perfect blog post?”

   It’s a question that should make the reader answer “yes” or “no”.

   The chances are that if you’ve been searching for articles about the “perfect blog post” (remember the main topic of this blog) then you might be struggling with this issue. And if you are, hopefully you’ll read on!

2. The transition – This follows straight on from your hook and leads people from the hook into the main body of the article, as well as clarifying the heading.

3. The thesis – This is the last element of your introduction. It should reinforce the main topic of the blog and highlight the benefits of reading the rest of the article. Tell the reader what they stand to gain!

Top tip: Sometimes articles evolve as we write them. Try writing the introduction once the rest of the article is complete because, by that stage, you’ll be crystal clear about the key points.

Engaging body copy with key arguments

As you’re writing the main body of your blog article, think about how you can make it as easy to read as possible.

• Use sub-headings to break up sections (see below)
• Add bullet lists like this one to pull out key points
• Highlight important points or information in bold or italics
• Keep paragraphs short so that people don’t have to read big chunks of copy
• Illustrate key points with images (more about images in a bit!)

Remember that your audience will be reading on a screen, which can drain more of their mental resources than reading something on paper. You want your blog to be skimmable and for the main takeaways to be clear at a glance.

Formatting your blog in WordPress

You can make many of the format changes to your blog mentioned above using the formatting toolbar on the new post page in WordPress (see below).

If, for example, you want text to be bold, highlight it with your mouse and then click on the B button next to the “Paragraph” dropdown menu.

To feature text in italics, highlight the relevant text and click on the I button.

You can bullet point or number a list by clicking on the bullet point or number list icons in the same toolbar.

The quote (“) symbol in the formatting enables you to highlight a quote that you want to pull out from your body copy. It might not look dramatically different in the backend of your post but if you hit the ‘Preview’ button, it will show you what the quote will look like when the post goes live:

You can also choose how to align the text using the formatting toolbar. Do you want to centre your copy, align it to the left or to the right?

A word about word count

People often ask if a perfect blog post has a specific word count. Different sources tell us different things.

HubSpot recently published its findings based on its 50 most read blogs and found that the highest performing blog posts were in the region of 2,100-2,400 words. However, 16 of its 50 most-read posts were under 1,500 words while others sat nearer 5,000 words.

My advice is to make an article as long as it needs to be to talk about the key points you want to cover and genuinely add value for your ideal customers.

If you opt for a ‘hub and spoke’ model of blogging, your ‘hub’ articles (sometimes known as ‘cornerstone’ content will probably be longer (HubSpot says in the region of 4,000 words).

Sub-headings that explain what each section is about

If a blog isn’t skimmable, it’s probably not readable.

Sub-headings can help you here. A sub-heading breaks up the main body of a blog and shows the reader at a glance what each section of the article is about.

With the blog you’re reading right now, for example, just reading the sub-headings will give you a checklist of all the elements to include in a perfect blog post.

The body copy within each section is bonus material for those of you who want more detail!

Sub-headings also help from an SEO perspective because we can apply tags to them for search engines to read.

These tags tell Google what each section of an article is about and highlight the main points covered. This will help its algorithms to decide whether the article is relevant to certain search terms.

You can strengthen your sub-headings SEO wise by including your focus topic/keyword in at least one sub-heading and using plenty of synonyms or related terms in your other headings.

Applying heading tags

Heading tags let you sort your sub-heading by order of priority. Apply an H2 tag to your main sub-headings but if you have sub-sections within that, you can give those headings lower priority tags such as H3 or H4.

Again, if we use this blog as an example, all of the sub-headings describing an element in a perfect blog post have an H2 tag.

However, headings within those sections (such as “Applying heading tags” above) have an H3 tag because they’re less prominent and add extra information to what’s featured under the H2 heading.

You can apply heading tags by highlighting your sub-heading and then clicking on the Paragraph dropdown menu in the formatting toolbar in WordPress. Simply choose your heading type and click.

Include links to relevant information and sources

A perfect blog post should include some internal and external links.

Whenever you make a factual statement, link to the source. This will show your readers that you’ve done your research and can back up any claims. It’s a subtle but powerful way to build trust.

Also, if you mention something in a blog that’s covered in more depth elsewhere on your website or by a reputable third party, you should link to that to make sure people can read more about a topic if they want to.

If possible, the link text should describe what information the link will take the reader to.

Applying links in WordPress

If you write an article in Microsoft Word or a similar word processing program before copying and pasting it into WordPress, then any links in the text should carry over when you copy and paste.

For example, in the screenshot below, you will see that I copied and pasted a section of this article into WordPress and the links are automatically there.

If, however, you want to apply a link directly into WordPress, simply follow these steps:

1. Highlight the text that you want to turn into your link text and then click on the little chain icon on the formatting toolbar.
2. This will bring up a small pop-up bar that says Paste URL or type to search. You can paste or type the URL you want the link to go to in here. However, I recommend taking things a step further.
3. Click on the cog icon to the right of this bar.
   This will bring up the Insert/edit link screen:
   As you can see from the screenshot above, in this pop-up screen, you can paste or type the URL you want the text to link to in the top field.

   Alternatively, you can search the content already on your website to link to related articles or pages, which is a great way of tying content together.

4. Before you hit the Add link button, tick the check box that says Open link in a new tab.
   Checking this box means that when visitors click on the link, they will view the destination page in a new tab while the original article on your site stays open. This is a really easy way to ensure that people don’t navigate away from your site too soon.It’s especially important to tick this box if you’re linking to third party content away from your website. The last thing you want to do is send traffic elsewhere!

5. Now it’s safe to click on the Add link button to embed the link in the text.

Write your conclusion

The conclusion of a perfect blog post will wrap up what you want your readers to takeaway. Ask questions that engage the readers for discussion and comments (you can even direct them to the comments section below the article to leave their thoughts).

Include a call to action

What would you like a visitor to do after they read your blog post?

After working hard to create the perfect blog post for your ideal clients, the last thing you want them to do is leave your site without engaging further with your business.

This is where a call to action comes in.

Let your readers know what you’d like them to do next!

This could be following you on social media, downloading a free guide or checklist, signing up to a self-directed course or even working with you one-to-one.

You can find more advice about great calls to action here.

Adding a call to action to a blog article in WordPress

There are various ways to add a call to action to a WordPress post.

The simplest option is simply to include a line of text at the bottom of the article that links through to the relevant destination, e.g. an ebook download, your Facebook page, a services page, etc.

You add this link in exactly the same way as adding a link into the main copy (see above).

Alternatively, there are various WordPress plugins that enable you to add sign-up forms or more visually striking calls to action at the end of a post.

On the SEO+ site, I have the option of several different call-to-action plugins, some of which appear in the formatting toolbar. I simply click on the call to action I want to include. The options available to you will depend on the plugins you use.

(You can find out more about what plugins are and how to use them on the WordPress Beginner blog).

When using a call to action or making an offer to your website visitors, think about the search that would have brought them to your site and try to offer an incentive that ties in with that to provide genuine value.

Relevant images

Another way to make a blog post easy to scan and to visually explain what the article is about is to include some high-quality images that reflect the content.

Images are fantastic for creating emotional appeal and highlighting key points.

In my last article about how to write your first blog article in WordPress, I walked you through how to upload an image to a post.

Now, let’s talk about optimising images.

Optimising images in WordPress

As a quick refresher, to add an image to a post in WordPress, you need to click on the Add Media button above the formatting toolbar, then either choose an existing file from your media library or click on the Select files option on the Upload files tab.

Once the file has been uploaded, it will appear as the first image on the Media library tab. Click on your chosen image.

To the right of the screen, an Attachment details panel will appear (see below).

This should give you a preview of the image, the file title and more information. In the screenshot above, for example, I have uploaded an infographic of the perfect blog post. This is reflected in the file name, which appears in the Title field.

You can use this panel to apply some alt text to your image. This is a tag that search engines and screen readers read to understand what the image represents.

I have given the infographic a tag stating: Infographic explaining perfect blog post elements

If it makes sense to and it’s an accurate reflection of the image, try to create an alt tag that includes your main keyword for the article.

Once you’ve done this, click Insert into post.

You can read more about optimising images on your website here.

Social sharing options

Blogs are brilliant for building your reputation.

When you publish articles that are intentionally targeted at your ideal customers, your content should resonate so much with them that they want to share it with their networks.

You can help people to do this easily by adding social sharing buttons to each article.

Adding a social sharing plugin to WordPress

Blog posts in WordPress don’t automatically come with social sharing options (unless they’ve been written into your WordPress theme). Therefore, you need to add a social sharing plugin to your site.

To add a new plugin, go to Plugins in your main Dashboard menu and then click on Add new.

This will take you to the Add plugins screen where you will see a selection of featured, popular and recommended plugins (none of which have yet been added to your site).

If you pop a search term like “social sharing” into the search bar, this will bring up a selection of popular social sharing plugins for you to choose from.

You can choose More details to read more about each plugin such as reviews, features, how it works, etc.

When you find a plugin that suits your needs, click on Install now and it will walk you through any steps you need to take to activate that plugin.

I currently use the Social Warfare plugin.

Unique meta data

A perfect blog post should have unique meta data that tells search engines – and searchers – what the article is about.

Add a compelling title tag of under 50 characters and a meta description (aim for around 156 characters) that each include your main keyword and entice people to click through to read your post.

In my next blog in this series, I’ll be taking a deep dive into how to optimise a blog article using the Yoast plugin. In that, we’ll take a closer look at writing a great title tag and meta description.

Share and promote

Having put in the hard work and created a blog post that your ideal customers will truly value, it’s time to share it and promote it far and wide.

I’ve written a separate blog dedicated entirely to this subject to help you get as much mileage out of your content as possible – you can find it here.

So there you have it, everything you need to know to help you write the perfect blog post and format it in WordPress.

I’d love to hear how you get on and if there’s anything else you’d like to know!

Short of time?

If you’d like more help, we do provide a complete Monthly Blog Post Service. Do you want us to write them, optimise, publish and provide you with some posts to share on your social media platforms? We can do that all for you!

Or perhaps you know exactly what you want to write because your business is your area of expertise after all, but the thought of logging onto your website to upload and format it yourself fills you with horror?

No problem, we can do that for you and we’ll also fully optimise your blog post too which will of course increase its visibility and appeal in search so that more of your ideal customers discover and read it. Find out more about our Optimised Individual Blog Post Service here.

If you found this article helpful, I’d love it if you could share it – thank you.

Do you feel like you’ve established who your ideal customer is (if you need more help with this, check out my Attract & Boost course to learn how to identify and attract your ideal customers) and you know you need to write blog posts? You may even have a topic in mind.

The problem is that you’re just not sure how to use your WordPress site and you’re scared to death that you’ll mess it up if you try to publish anything.

Last week, a lovely business owner confessed that this very fear has been holding her back from writing blog posts. As she put it, she’s “absolutely terrified of the techy stuff”.

If this sounds at all familiar, the next few blogs I’m going to publish are for you! I’m going to help you push through your techy fears to get that all-important first WordPress blog live.

Let’s get started with the first in the series – How to log in to WordPress and write your first blog.

Step 1: Log in to WordPress

Go to yoursite.com/wp-admin and log in with your username and password. This will let you in to the WordPress dashboard, which is the behind the scenes area of your website where you can add or change content.

Check the “Remember me” box if you’re the only person who uses your computer.

Click Log In.

You will have set the username and password when you first installed the theme for your website. If someone else built the site for you, they should have provided you with the username and password.

Step 2: Create a new post

There are several ways to add a new post to your WordPress blog.

Method 1: The easiest option is to float your mouse pointer over Posts in the main menu (which runs down the left-hand side of the screen) and then click on Add New in the expanding menu.

Method 2: Another way of doing this is to let your mouse pointer float over + New in the top horizontal menu and select Post from the dropdown menu.

Method 3: A third option is to click on the Posts tab in the main navigation menu (instead of just hovering your mouse pointer over it).

This will bring up the Posts screen, which is where you can see all of the articles/posts either published on your blog or saved as drafts. Click on Add new to start a new post.

(I’ll explain more about the Posts screen later in this “How to” series 🙂)

Step 3: Give your new post a title

All of the above methods will bring you to the Add a New Post screen.

In my next article in this series, I’m going to walk you through the anatomy of a perfect blog post and what this mean in relation to all of the different options you can see in the Add a New Post screen.

For today though, let’s stick with the basics.

You need to give your new post a title. I’ve marked the field in red below (you’ll also see that it says Add title here):

You’ve probably heard me talk about H1 headings before. The H1 tag is essentially a label that tells search engines that this what the post is about. It’s the most important heading on the page. The title you put in here will be your H1 heading for your new post.

Try to accurately describe what the post is about, making it as compelling as possible to keep people reading.

Step 4: Write your blog

As you can see from the screenshot above, the large box below the title field is where you put the text, images or any other content that you want to appear in your blog. You can type straight into this box if you want or you can copy and paste the text from a Word document (most people do this).

You’ll notice that there’s a formatting toolbar above the content box.

In my next blog in this series, I’ll be looking at formatting your blog in more detail as we want to make it as readable and SEO-friendly as possible.

As an overview though, the formatting box lets you do things like:

• Format your headings and give them heading tags (click on the little dropdown menu that defaults to Paragraph to do this)
• Turn text to bold or italics
• Add bullet points or a numbered list
• Format text to show that it’s a quote
• Align the content to the left, right or centred
• Add in a hyperlink

Other options may appear on this toolbar. It will depend on which plugins you’re using on your website. For example, you’ll see on my formatting toolbar that I have options to add in a pop-up, include a form or add social sharing buttons.

As with formatting tools in programmes like Word, for example, just highlight the text you want to apply the formatting changes to and click your chosen button.

Want to see what the formatting changes look like before you publish your blog?

That’s easy.

Just click on the Preview button in the Publish panel to the right on the main content box:

This will open a new tab in your browser showing what the post will look like when it’s published on your website.

Step 5 (optional): Insert images into your WordPress blog

Pictures or other visual media can help to break up the text in a blog and make the content easier to scan. They can also highlight the points your written content is making.

If you want to add a picture or infographic somewhere in your post, simply click on the Add media button above the formatting toolbar.

This will bring you to the Add Media screen where you can see all of the images already being used on your website. If you want to add a new image, click on the Upload files tab that I’ve highlighted in red on the picture below.

As you will see, you can either drag and drop an image file from an open folder on your computer or click on the Select Files button. This will let you browse the directories, folders and files on your computer. Click on the image file you want to add and hit Open.

I’ll be talking more about optimising images in my next blog in this series 🙂

Step 6: Set the featured image

When you publish a blog post, the “featured image” is the picture that will appear on your main blog list page of your website to promote the post.

Here’s an example of the main blog page from the SEO+ website:

Of course, how the featured image is used will depend on the design of your website. If you have a feature on your website that shows “Blog articles you might also like” or “Recent posts”, the featured image for each relevant article will display in these areas too.

In some blogs (again, it will depend on which WordPress theme you’re using), the featured image may appear at the top of your WordPress blog article.

The featured image may also be used as a thumbnail image for the article if it’s shared on social media so it’s a good idea to make sure it reflects the topic of the blog or even includes the blog title.

To set the featured image, you will need to scroll down the Add a New Post page where you’ve already added the title and written the article. You will see various panels on the right-hand side of the screen. You’re looking for the one titled Featured image.

Click on Set featured image. This will take you to a Featured Image screen where you can upload a file from your computer or click on the Media Library tab to the top left to choose an image that has already been uploaded to your website.

In next week’s blog, I’ll explain how to add an “alt tag” to this picture for SEO and accessibility purposes.

Step 7: Select tags and categories

People visiting your website may not know what blog posts you’ve published. Just as you would find content in a library organised by genre/category or the topics within a genre, you can do the same with your blog posts.

Categories cover the broad over-arching topics you will be tackling on your blog. For SEO+, the main categories are Analytics, Content Marketing, Google Updates, SEO and Social Media.

Of course, I blog about all sorts of information within each of these topic areas. Tags let you be more specific about the content within each category.

For example, imagine you’ve written a blog about a beginner’s guide to painting a seascape in watercolours.

The category might be ‘painting’ but the tags (which are more specific) could be ‘seascapes’, ‘watercolours’, ‘painting tips’ or ‘painting for beginners’.

Visitors to your site could search via the category or the tags to find the post – and other related content.

Quick tip: Don’t make your tags and categories too general (this will return too many articles as your blog grows) but don’t make them so specific that they only relate to a single article.

Ideally, each blog should only sit in one category but it can have multiple tags.

You can find the Categories and Tags panels on the right-hand side of the screen (they’re usually the two panels above where you just set the featured image).

To apply a category to an article, simply click the most relevant check box – here’s an example from my own WordPress blog:

To apply tags to a post, you can just type a list (making sure to separate each tag with a comma) and then hit Add.

Once you’ve been blogging for a while, you may find that you use some tags regularly. To check whether a tag has been used before or to choose it for a new article, just click on Choose from the most used tags and then pick from the list that appears:

You’ll notice that WordPress displays your most commonly used tags in a larger font to help you see your favourites at a glance.

Here’s a snippet from the tags on my site to show you what I mean:

Step 8: Give your article a bespoke URL

When you write a new post, WordPress gives the article a default URL, which is usually numerical. You will find this just under the field where you added the main title for your post:

A generic, numerical URL like this doesn’t tell visitors or search engines what the page is about. Before you hit publish, I recommend changing to a short, keyword/topic-focused URL. You can do this by clicking on the Edit button.

Type in the URL you want to use and click OK. You’ll notice that the first half of the address (your domain) is fixed. If you’re using more than one word in the post URL, use hyphens (–) to separate them.

(I’ll be talking a bit more about blog post URLs in my next blog in this series).

Step 9: Hit Publish!

You’ve done it! You’ve covered all of the essentials for publishing a WordPress blog post.

Yes, there are some more advanced things you can do to optimise an article – I’ll be covering these points in my next blog – but let’s not worry about them for now.

Remember, if you want to doublecheck what your article will look like before you commit to publishing, click the Preview button in the Publish panel (top-right of the screen):

If you want to save the article and come back to it at a later date without publishing, click on Save Draft, which I’ve highlighted in orange above.

We can see from the same screenshot that this article is just a draft because that’s listed as its Status. (You can find any draft articles you’ve written in the main Posts screen that we mentioned in Step 1.)

If you want to delay when an article is published (perhaps because you’re adding a batch of blogs to your website that you want to release at regular intervals), then you can click on Edit next to the Publish immediately option in the panel.

This will bring up a calendar display where you can manually enter the date and time you want the article to be published to your blog. Hit OK when you’re done.

Ready for your blog to be seen? It’s time to hit Publish!

Once you’ve been through this process a few times, it will become second nature. You honestly can’t mess anything up.

Just have fun and enjoy the experience of blogging.

Short of time?

If you’d like more help, we do provide a complete Monthly Blog Post Service. Do you want us to write them, optimise, publish and provide you with some posts to share on your social media platforms? We can do that all for you!

Or perhaps you know exactly what you want to write because your business is your area of expertise after all, but the thought of logging onto your website to upload and format it yourself fills you with horror?

No problem, we can do that for you and we’ll also fully optimise your blog post too which will of course increase its visibility and appeal in search so that more of your ideal customers discover and read it. Find out more about our Optimised Individual Blog Post Service here.

If you found this article helpful, I’d love it if you could share it – thank you.