Are you search optimizing or SEOing your blog
posts in WordPress before they go out?
Pre-publish optimization in WordPress is so
important, it could be the difference of your
blog post being visible and Google or not.
Plus it's just almost a crime to spend all
of your time creating this epic amazing piece
of content around a great keyword only for
it to fall flat because it wasn't optimized
properly on WordPress.
In today's video I'm sharing with you my personal
checklist that my team and I use every single
time we publish one of our write blogs at
express raters.
If you follow each of these eight steps in
my checklist you're much more likely to see
results in google search rankings with your
blog post and I'll even show you an example
of one of the blog's we published this year
using this optimization checklist that ranked
in the top of Google for a high value keyword
in just 30-days, so let's get going.
Before we get into my personal checklist of
how to optimize your blogs and WordPress,
a word to the wise; no matter how much you
optimize a piece of content, no matter how
great it is how comprehensive, it's really
not going to work if your site, if your foundations
are broken it's like trying to build a house
on a shaky foundation, it's just going to
crumble and fall in.
So, if you're at that stage where you don't
have a beautiful fast SEO friendly, well-designed
website, stop right now make sure that gets
fixed before you post and optimized free content.
With that foundation of a fast clean beautiful
site your results will be 10x whenever you
start to publish optimized content and on
the right blog we recently created and published
this checklist of how to build content that
ranks in Google, including some of those foundational
tips, so the link to that will be in the video
description definitely check that out.
Okay, so let's head over to my computer and
I'll show you the 8-steps to take every time
you schedule or publish a WordPress blog.
Ok, so here are first of all the steps that
I'm going to go through for how to SEO optimized
a blog post and WordPress and I'll give you
this in the video description so definitely
look for that but these are my 8-steps that
I use my team uses anytime we publish any
type of content.
Ok so our first step here is to load the blog
we're going to edit, proofread it, we're going
to upload all the corresponding images then
we're going to go through the sub headers,
those are our H2s H3s, we're going to make
sure that all links open in a new window which
is really important to lower bounce rate,
so people don't leave your site.
Then we're going to include any relevant CTAs,
we're going to add some social shares that
make it really easy for people to share this
content, then we're going to go into used
at our meta title and description very important,
then we're going to upload the right images
in the right spots with alt text that is SEO
friendly and finally we're going to optimize
it for social sharing.
Okay so let's go through each of these steps.
I'm in my blog I'm going to hit add new for
posts, I have a zip of all the content that
I'm going to be adding.
So, my blog post is titled this tone of voice
and POV, how to correctly use bold for stronger
more consistent brand presence.
Now I'm a big shortcut key fan, so I'm doing
central V which is actually command on a Mac,
okay I'm going to take this title, move it
up here.
So, what we're doing right now is we're just
loading in the blog and then we'll format
it after we've added everything
Okay so here's what our H2s look like we're
going to have to go in the text editor for
that and then we need to add this code, so
that tells Google hey this is a header and
an H2 is a primary header, H3 secondary header.
So, one thing we really like to do in the
write blog is we like to add all of our headers
at the beginning, you can take that a step
further and hyperlink each of these to the
sub headers but this gives readers a really
good view of what's coming and lists like
these do really well in search.
So, sometimes these get inside of the featured
snippets.
Okay, so the rest of the content we need to
make sure that it's broken up we've proofread
it, we need to make sure all the sub headers
are in correctly, so see how this is that
is an H2 so this is an H3 anything that's
a numbered list should be an H3 you should
always have a header before a numbered list
so that would be an H2.
So, what our tone of voice and point of view?
Well we have two points explaining both and
then in my content you'll see sub headers
below the sub headers, so what we do for those
is we just bold them I haven't found any value
in an H4 if anything in H4 doesn't look it
doesn't read well so I just avoid it and if
we have a secondary sub header to an H3 we
simply bold it.
And then all of our links open in a new window
which we've double-checked, the way to do
that is to hit edit on the link go to link
options and then make sure that little box
is clicked.
Okay, so when it comes to CTAs, I�ve done
a lot of testing and I found out that it really
works best if you keep those minimal it's
best to have one two at the most three image
CTAs and where we put our image see TAS are
a lot further down, so here we only have one
image CTA and this is hooked up to the services
in our content shop.
Sometimes, I'll add as a CTA where it's relevant
like for example we've talked about writing
style here a bit so what I might do is do
a block quote format with italics and type
in a CTA.
So, this is a really good way to just add
a CTA that's not at all annoying, you can
make that go to a lead magnet a free eBook,
we have a free eBook on the home page of this
course, you can have it go to a book that
you sell a course etc.
Okay, so our one-click social shares, we do
this with a plugin called click to tweet and
all you do to generate that for example is
you grab a sentence that you're going to use
as the tweetable, you hit that button on the
plug-in you have to install the plug-in on
WordPress, you put it here, you're going to
add the user name and then you hit OK and
then it generates it, super simple, so definitely
get that plugin consider doing that and then
emojis, we found work really well or those
little quick click to tweets, so check out
this one, this one's kind of crazy but it
works so well, it's really fun this is it
this is a great way to social share a piece
of content that you've done and then we've
also referenced me as the author my handle
here so that's another good thing to do if
you have an author to mention in your click
to tweet code
Okay, so our last three steps are these we're
going to go into Yoast now and make sure the
meta title and description is added so that's
all the way at the bottom you hit edit snippet
make sure the SEO title reflects a variation
of this, what we did is we shortened it down
so it stays in that green area which means
that's the right links and then we wrote just
two sentences to describe the blog, getting
your brand recognized requires the right tone
of voice and POV.
Learn the difference between the two and how
you can find your perfect brand points
And then our keyword is tone of voice and
I'm not really worried too much about the
overall colors of Yoast because I found that
these really don't matter to end results from
your content, so we published over a thousand
blogs and some of our top ranked blogs are
actually orange, sometimes red and Yoast.
So, worry more about the actual content does
it read well is it going to engage your audience.
Does it have a clear call to action that pulls
that reader into the next step whether that's
buying something from you calling, booking
a call etc.
Those are the things you should be worried
about rather than just a color on a plug in,
software is fallible but whenever it comes
to content a human eye it's really what it
takes to make sure content is great
Okay, so these last two parts are super important,
so we're going to upload feature images to
complete out our blog and I've already uploaded
them but what it looks like whenever we get
it from the designer is it's a zip folder
of four images, so we do these sizes and then
we do a CTA for each and every blog, so the
header is sized correctly to show as a featured
image at the top of your WordPress we have
an Instagram image that we're going to share
on Instagram and then we have this the inset
is a really great image for a couple things
and I'll show you what those things are right
now.
Okay, so the featured image goes here, you
don't want any text on this, you want this
just to be a clear image and we've already
uploaded it so you want to make sure the title
and the alt text reflects the keyword, super
important.
So, go ahead and hit that set featured image
and now we're going to add our inset and this
inset image is sized to a couple things, so
it reads well it's visible whenever you scroll
down on the blog and we're able to put it
in the social media area of Yoast which I
just learned about this after six years of
doing content.
So, what you want to do is upload an image
and then upload that inset sized image, so
this is strategic the size of this image,
it'll show with the text and our branding
our logo of the image, whenever we go and
share this on Facebook, Twitter etc. so, it'll
show whenever the link populates an image
alright so once we've uploaded that image
there you can even see Yoast gives you recommended
size, we've modified the size a little bit
to fit even more social platforms, so go ahead
and hit update once you have those images
added with the alt text correctly done.
So, we just finished those last two points,
now the last thing I like to do is preview
the blog so we've proof read this blog about
five or six times at this point but that's
what it takes to create great content, if
you let a typo go out, if you let a sentence
graph that reads like crap well people are
going to notice it so see how this featured
image doesn't have any text distracting from
that the blog post because down here we have
two title, that's how WordPress works, featured
image title is usually right below it beside
it and we have our nice inset image and because
I have a couple social media sharing apps
installed, one of them is actually telling
me hey you can share this image, so that might
happen for your reader too.
We have our table of contents, we have our
click to tweet showing correctly, our sub
headers are showing correctly, we have our
nice CTA here, see how that blockquote style
kind of gives it a little bit more readability
as a CTA the sub headers look good images
are all plugged in our click to tweets are
showing correctly and then of course we end
with our CTA.
So, every link we've set to open in a new
window, see how this blog stays there while
it generates a link to our content shop.
So, that's exactly what you want to happen
with your links.
So, I mentioned that I was going to show you
an example, so I'm going to do that now.
Now there's something you might not know about
Google but it's this fact that if you rank
in the top position of Google, the click-through
rate is as high as 31% if you rank somewhere
near 10 it goes down to 1% and these optimization
steps can really mean the difference between
ranking in 1 or ranking all the way at the
bottom
So, here's a piece of content that we created
this year and its ranking as you can see right
here, right at the top, how to build a strong
digital content strategy, right below the
featured snippet, so it's ranking really well,
we probably want to go back and update it
soon because it's been more than six months
which is my benchmark for updating content
but this ranked at the top within 30-days
and everything done on this blog follows the
same guidelines, the same optimization steps
that we just went through.
Search traffic is turning out to become 70%
of the world's traffic now, that's where 70%
of all online traffic comes from, so you want
to get this optimization, your keyword research
all of these stuffs down so critical to seeing
success in ranking in Google and somewhere
like this height of a spot.
Taking care of all of those small pieces inside
WordPress may seem like busy work but I can't
stress the importance of optimizing your blog
before it goes out into the world.
This attention to detail could be the difference
between your content ranking in two, three,
four, five versus the number one spot in Google
which as we talked about gets so much of a
higher click-through rate, they say the devil
is in the details and that's pretty true.
Now if you don't have time for all of this
busy work this is something we do at Express
writers in our blog packages, check out the
link in the video description, we offer amazing
done-for-you content packages for your blog
where we can do everything from researching
the right keyword to creating amazing content
to all of those optimization steps in your
WordPress which are WordPress savvy editors
take care of, content marketing results is
all about consistent content so check that
out if you need help
If you liked today's video if you learn anything
new, give this video a thumbs up your feedback
really encourages me to keep creating this
type of content let you know in the comments,
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I look forward to seeing you around.
