WARNING! Don’t publish your next blog post until you read this!

One of the most exciting moments of blogging is when your well written article is ready and you are about to hit the ‘publish’ command button. But often, our articles are only ready in our brains. A lot of things are still left undone and some of these untidy things go a long way to thumb down the post. Before you publish your next post, I recommend you check these few points out to avoid embarrassment and falling out with search engines. You may also have to look at these 5 ways to promote new posts  as soon as you publish it. Here therefore are the 9 crucial points I recommend;

1 – Proof-reading

One of the things you must do before going live is to read through your copy several times. Leave your PC and come back to reread. You’re certainly going to find some silly errors.

Sometimes, what you read is not what’s written. It happens often. You are looking at something and reading another thing in your brain. That’s while it’s recommended to read aloud to yourself. This practice actually corrects any wrongly recorded text in your brain and helps you correct errors. If you have someone around to check the article for errors, that will be better.

2 – Take care of some SEO components

SEO is not dead really! There are a couple of onpage SEO factors that you must pay attention to before making your article public. Following the recent Google updates, some SEO brains may argue some of these points but I think we still need to consider them. Let’s start with the permalink.

The Permalink: This is actually the url structure of your article. It’s just below your post title. Before now, SEO experts used to advice having your main keyword in the URL of your article. Whatever Google is cooking, it is still worth using your keyword in the permalink and making it clean and readable.

Post Title, Description, keywords and tags:  These 4 components certainly have some SEO importance so there is definitely need not to rush over them. Some times, we forget the keywords, description and tags. This has happened to me and I looked dumb. Before you publish your next article, be sure these factors are all well in place.

Categories: Categories are meant to help organize posts in different relevant groups. This helps the readers quickly locate the information they are looking for. Poorly categorized blog may mislead the readers and send them away. This plays negatively on bounce rate and time on site. It’s important you pay attention to which category your post should tie to.

3 – Media Components

Images and videos and some of the components that add value and beauty to your article. However, these also have downsides if you miss the point. While well tagged images can improve visibility on search engines, poorly treated and large image files will add more weight to your page and make it SEO unfriendly. Be sure to optimize your images for SEO and fast loading speed.

4 – Internet Speed

Now those of us from areas where Internet is

still a luxury, speed is often an issue to deal with. Fast speed Internet connection in such areas always weighs heavily on the pockets of users. This explains while more of us still have dial-up technology. Now avoid hitting the submit button when your connection is too slow. You stand a high chance to lose part of your article. This happened to me and I almost lost a huge part of my post. If you think your connection is not good enough to publish, just wait until all is set.

5 – Install commentLuv Premium

If you want real engagement on your next blog post, CommentLuv Premium is the most recommended engagement plugin. I saw a huge improvement on my blog when I upgraded from the free to the premium version. Now, a lot has been added to the piece to make it even more exiting.  It’s a perfect mix of referral and SEO traffic, Twitter and community building plugin. All these in one can completely change your blog positively.

NB: Here is how I finally got CommentLuv Premium absolute free

6 – Linking to other articles

We know that creating both external and internal links on your next article will have some SEO benefits. Linking to external resources adds more value to your article and gives visitors more information.  Linking to another article on your blog increases time on site and reduces bounce rate. These are all SEO ranking factors you must neglect. So I encourage you go back to your article and be sure you have some links to related contents.

7 – Social Sharing tools

Are your social sharing buttons in place? I know most blogs now have the tweet, like, Google+, Facebook share buttons in place but you need to double check yours are well in place too.  This will help your readers share your next article on social media bringing in more traffic. The good news is that most of these social sharing plugins are free. Check on JetPack (by WordPress)  if you are not sure which package to get.

8 – Encourage Engagement

Most of us wonder why we don’t get engagement on our articles. One of the reasons is that we don’t ask for it. There is nothing bad in asking questions in your article, aimed at pushing your readers to react in the comment box.  Don’t just write like you are preaching in church. Make sure your next article encourages conversation. Make it a discussion board by asking question and encouraging your readers to leave a comment and share the post.

9 – The ‘Update’ command button can hurt your blog

Each time you hit ‘publish’, WordPress sends a ping signal to Google and other search engines to let them know you have a new article on your blog. That doesn’t end there. Hitting ‘Update’ also pings the search engines telling them your article has an update. Now the more you update, the more signals you get sent to Search engines. This may turn down on you if you repeatedly update within a close range as these search engines may misunderstand your action and take it for search engine spamming. Be really sure you get your post well set before publishing

I hope these points will help you get your next article quite ready before publication. Let me hear your thoughts in the comment box below.

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