Writing A Blog Post

The Essentials

1. Go to MyDomain.com/wp-admin and login.
2. Hover over “New” on the top bar and select “Post” (or hover over “Posts” in the left rail and select “Add New”)
3. Type in a title where it says “Enter title here.”
4. Type in the content of your post in the large text box.
5. Click the “Publish” button.

The Basics

1. Follow steps 1-4 of “The Essentials.”
2. If you’d like to schedule your post for a particular day or time, click “Edit” next to “Publish immediately” and change the date and/or time. Note that it uses military time, so 7PM would be 19:00.
3. Select a Category (or Categories) for your post or add a new one if it hasn’t been created yet. Categories are for broad groupings, and the default Category will be selected if you don’t choose one.
4. Add some Tags based on the content of your post. Tags aren’t required, but they can help visitors find specific keywords on your site. As you use them, more will be included in the “Choose from the most used tags” section and will increase in font size if they’re used more often.
5. Add a Featured Image by selecting “Set featured image,” selecting an image from your Media Library or uploading one in the Upload Files tab, and clicking the “Set featured image” button. Unsplash is a great resource for free images.
6. Click the “Publish” button.

The Advanced: Using Yoast

• Follow steps 1-6 from “The Basics” but keep the following points in mind as you go. These next steps assume you’ve downloaded the Wordpress plugin Yoast SEO (included with any site developed by St. John’s Media).
• In the Yoast SEO box, click “Edit snippet” and write a “Meta description” of your blog post. If you don’t, the default is to take the first few lines of text from the post itself. Think about it from a reader’s point of view. If they saw the description in their search results, would it make them want to click the link?
• Add a “Focus keyword.” This can be a part of or the whole title of your post. “My trip to the museum” might be fine as a whole, but you might only want to use the restaurant name if the title is “Weekly Review: Hayleigh’s Bucket of Fried Tofu.”
• When you’re selecting your Featured Image, use whatever you have as the “Focus keyword” as the “Alt text.”
• Note that Yoast doesn’t always immediately update based on your changes / content. If there’s a suggestion you know you followed, try saving the draft and verify the suggestions have updated.
• Do not drive yourself crazy following every suggestion. A personal post may not have the opportunity to add external links (links to sites outside of your blog). A newer blog won’t have many opportunities for internal links (links to other blog posts or pages of your blog). Every post, especially the first ones, won’t be 300 words.
• An easy internal link to create is one to your Contact page. End the post with something akin to the following:

Have questions or additional tips and tricks? Contact me.