WordPress SEO: the definitive guide
Writing a successful blog post all comes down to the proper preparations. It starts before you even begin writing: what do you want to say and to whom do you want to say it? You might want to get going right away but remember: writing takes some time. And once you’ve written an awesome blog post, you’ll need to invest time in promoting it and keeping the content up to date. Today, we’ll cover all you need to do to write a successful blog post, from the first inception, to long after publication. So let’s dive right in! Before we get going with our step by step guide, have a quick look at this image that depicts the three phases of a proper writing process: In total, there are 6 steps you should take when writing and publishing a blog post. Does this sound a bit overwhelming? Don’t worry, at the end of this post, you’ll find a practical (and downloadable) checklist with an overview of these steps! Step 1: Preparation What is the purpose of your post? What is the main message of your post? Who are your readers? What information do you need? What’s the best way to structure your text? Step 2: Write your blog post! Step 3: Correcting, editing and optimizing Optimize your post for the search engines Step 4: Practicalities before publishing Don’t forget to add images Add categories and tags Optimize for social media Step 5: After publishing your post Share your post on social media Internal linking to a new post from other posts Step 6: A while after publishing your blog post Include posts in the newsletter Repost on social media Analyze the post’s performance Optimize where necessary More internal linking Practical checklist Conclusion Step 1: Preparation Let’s say you’ve taken a good look at your keyword research and decided upon a topic for your next blog post. Don’t start typing just yet. First, it’s time to prepare the post! That means you have to answer a few questions. And trust me, answering these questions will definitely help you write a great blog. So, let’s have a look at the questions you should ask yourself: What is the purpose of your post? Before you start writing, you should first take some time to think about why you’re writing and what you want to achieve with this specific article. Articles can have different purposes: You can write because you want to persuade people. You want to convince them to buy your product or adopt your ideas. The aim of your article could also be to entertain and amuse people. A column is a good example of an entertaining text. Your blog or article could also be informative. In this case, you want to share knowledge about a certain topic. Different articles on your website can have different purposes. A blog can be informative as well as entertaining. In any case, it’s important to think about the purpose of your article because it will give you a direction to follow. An article that intends to persuade people should be written differently than an article with a solely informative or amusing function. Read more: Why the purpose of your text is important for SEO » What is the main message of your post? You should also think about what you want your readers to know or take away after they’ve read your text. We refer to this as the message of your text. For example If you want to write a post about the importance of well-structured texts, the central question of the post could be: ‘Why is it important to write well-structured blog posts?’ The message of a post about the importance of well-structured texts could be: ‘It is important to write a well-structured text because it will allow people to understand your text better, it will lead to higher conversions and higher rankings.’ In order to formulate your message, you could try to phrase a question which your text should answer. We refer to such a question as the central question of a text. And the text you write should give an answer to your central question. So make sure that your central question is clear. Try to come up with a summarized answer to your central question in one or two sentences. This summarized answer is the message of your article. We usually put the message in the introduction of the post (where you tell readers what the post is about) as well as in the conclusion of the piece. Making your message explicit is, in our opinion, especially important in web texts. It helps readers to instantly grasp the message of your article and increases the likelihood people will keep reading. Who are your readers? Ideally, you already thought about the kind of audience you want to reach when you started your website. But it never hurts to remind yourself before writing your text. So, take some time to think about the people you are writing for. Make sure you adapt your text to them and adjust the difficulty level of the information in your article as well as the difficulty of your style (use of jargon, long sentences etc.). A good rule of thumb is to keep things readable and accessible to reach a wider audience. What information do you need? In some cases, all the information you need to write your text is already in your head. For example, if the chef of a local Italian restaurant wants to write a blog post about the types and uses of pasta, they probably don’t need to open any books. But if they want to write an elaborate culinary history about 500 years of Italian cuisine, they might need some other sources. So, determine whether you need sources (the internet, books, newspapers) to get the information you need for your text. You should take the central question of your piece and come up with a number of sub-questions you want to answer. Find and formulate answers to all your sub-questions using your sources (books, the internet,
How to write a blog post: A step-by-step guide from preparation to publication
Writing a successful blog post all comes down to the proper preparations. It starts before you even begin writing: what do you want to say and to whom do you want to say it? You might want to get going right away but remember: writing takes some time. And once you’ve written an awesome blog post, you’ll need to invest time in promoting it and keeping the content up to date. Today, we’ll cover all you need to do to write a successful blog post, from the first inception, to long after publication. So let’s dive right in! Before we get going with our step by step guide, have a quick look at this image that depicts the three phases of a proper writing process: In total, there are 6 steps you should take when writing and publishing a blog post. Does this sound a bit overwhelming? Don’t worry, at the end of this post, you’ll find a practical (and downloadable) checklist with an overview of these steps! Step 1: Preparation What is the purpose of your post? What is the main message of your post? Who are your readers? What information do you need? What’s the best way to structure your text? Step 2: Write your blog post! Step 3: Correcting, editing and optimizing Optimize your post for the search engines Step 4: Practicalities before publishing Don’t forget to add images Add categories and tags Optimize for social media Step 5: After publishing your post Share your post on social media Internal linking to a new post from other posts Step 6: A while after publishing your blog post Include posts in the newsletter Repost on social media Analyze the post’s performance Optimize where necessary More internal linking Practical checklist Conclusion Step 1: Preparation Let’s say you’ve taken a good look at your keyword research and decided upon a topic for your next blog post. Don’t start typing just yet. First, it’s time to prepare the post! That means you have to answer a few questions. And trust me, answering these questions will definitely help you write a great blog. So, let’s have a look at the questions you should ask yourself: What is the purpose of your post? Before you start writing, you should first take some time to think about why you’re writing and what you want to achieve with this specific article. Articles can have different purposes: You can write because you want to persuade people. You want to convince them to buy your product or adopt your ideas. The aim of your article could also be to entertain and amuse people. A column is a good example of an entertaining text. Your blog or article could also be informative. In this case, you want to share knowledge about a certain topic. Different articles on your website can have different purposes. A blog can be informative as well as entertaining. In any case, it’s important to think about the purpose of your article because it will give you a direction to follow. An article that intends to persuade people should be written differently than an article with a solely informative or amusing function. Read more: Why the purpose of your text is important for SEO » What is the main message of your post? You should also think about what you want your readers to know or take away after they’ve read your text. We refer to this as the message of your text. For example If you want to write a post about the importance of well-structured texts, the central question of the post could be: ‘Why is it important to write well-structured blog posts?’ The message of a post about the importance of well-structured texts could be: ‘It is important to write a well-structured text because it will allow people to understand your text better, it will lead to higher conversions and higher rankings.’ In order to formulate your message, you could try to phrase a question which your text should answer. We refer to such a question as the central question of a text. And the text you write should give an answer to your central question. So make sure that your central question is clear. Try to come up with a summarized answer to your central question in one or two sentences. This summarized answer is the message of your article. We usually put the message in the introduction of the post (where you tell readers what the post is about) as well as in the conclusion of the piece. Making your message explicit is, in our opinion, especially important in web texts. It helps readers to instantly grasp the message of your article and increases the likelihood people will keep reading. Who are your readers? Ideally, you already thought about the kind of audience you want to reach when you started your website. But it never hurts to remind yourself before writing your text. So, take some time to think about the people you are writing for. Make sure you adapt your text to them and adjust the difficulty level of the information in your article as well as the difficulty of your style (use of jargon, long sentences etc.). A good rule of thumb is to keep things readable and accessible to reach a wider audience. What information do you need? In some cases, all the information you need to write your text is already in your head. For example, if the chef of a local Italian restaurant wants to write a blog post about the types and uses of pasta, they probably don’t need to open any books. But if they want to write an elaborate culinary history about 500 years of Italian cuisine, they might need some other sources. So, determine whether you need sources (the internet, books, newspapers) to get the information you need for your text. You should take the central question of your piece and come up with a number of sub-questions you want to answer. Find and formulate answers to all your sub-questions using your sources (books, the internet,
Holistic SEO: Improve every aspect of your website
SEO isn’t just a trick. Sure, tricks might get you ranked quickly, but they usually don’t work in the long run. In fact, they might even backfire. If you want to permanently rank well in Google, you need an extensive SEO strategy focused on every aspect of your website; the technical stuff, the user experience, the content on your website, and the security of your website all need to be in order. In other words: To keep ranking well in Google, you should develop a holistic approach to SEO. Read on to learn more. What is holistic SEO? If you practice holistic SEO (search engine optimization), it means you improve every important aspect of your website to make it rank higher in search engines. With holistic SEO, the ultimate goal is to make a website that fulfills its users’ needs on every level; not only by providing the right information at the right time, but also by being easy and safe to use. To reach this goal, website owners should, at least, work on the following aspects of their site: have good technical SEO; write quality content and structure it well; ensure a great user experience; keep your site secure. We’ll also include resources to help you learn SEO and optimize various parts of your website at the end of this post. Do check them out! Why a holistic SEO approach? Google’s mission is to build the perfect search engine that helps people find exactly what they’re looking for; whether that’s the answer to “Where is Wijchen?”, a recipe for apple pie, or the best toaster. That’s why you should make your website and your marketing strategy fit this goal. A little analogy to explain Let’s use an analogy to explain the holistic approach to SEO. Think of working on your site’s SEO as taking a ship to a ship-building competition, with Google and other search engines as the judges. Similar to a website, a ship is big and has lots of moving parts that need to be managed. Your site design is the ship’s exterior, your content is the interior and services, and your website’s technical setup is the ship’s engine. Your goal? Appeal to the judges so they rate you highly and recommend you to people. The ship-building competition is packed, so to get a good ranking, you not only need a great-looking ship and a fast and reliable engine, but you also need a good interior and high-quality onboard services. If you have a great-looking ship on the outside (an eye-catching design) but the interior (content) is lacking, people are less likely to want to be on that ship. On the other hand, if you have an amazing interior and onboard services, but your ship is slow and your engine is prone to issues (technical setup), people will also look for other alternatives. As you can imagine, the judges (search engines) only give high rankings and recommend ships (websites) that meet and exceed the standards mentioned above. The judges’ mission and reputation depend on giving good recommendations, so they take this very seriously. That’s why using “tricks” to make it seem like you’ve improved your ship won’t work, because you haven’t actually improved it. Conclusion: Improve every part of your site By working on improving every part of the ship (website), your ship will become better across the board over time. At the same time, don’t forget that you’re not the only ship trying to be better. Others are doing the same. In a competition so fierce and packed, every small gain and improvement will add up to be significant. With that, you may get a higher ranking in the competition and receive a recommendation. SEO tricks are of the past Back in the early days of SEO, people could get away with doing tricks. They used to stuff keywords and internal links on pages, wrote thin and irrelevant content, or scraped content from other sites and ranked with that content. These are things of the past. Since then, Google and other search engines have been improving their algorithms by the day. With the helpful content update, Google wants to reward sites that offer users what they’re looking for, and ‘punish’ sites that don’t meet visitor’s expectations. They no longer fall for such tricks (for the most part). Holistic SEO is the way forward While Google has changed its algorithm numerous times, our advice has mostly remained the same ever since we started: you have to ensure that your site is exceptionally good. Even though having a website with high-quality content, a great user experience, and up-to-date security won’t instantly improve your ranking, it’s still worth it. Because in the long run, all these improvements will definitely have a positive effect on your SEO! You’ll get more recommendations… In addition, overall great websites tend to get more backlinks from other websites. Plus, they also receive more social media attention. Remember the analogy about the ship earlier? This is similar to getting recommendations from other ships (websites) in and outside of that competition, which is a strong signal to search engines that your website is amazing. … and more sales! On top of that, people behave differently on a website that they like (they stay longer for example), compared to a website they don’t understand. Google uses these kinds of user signals to find out how people experience your site. And finally, awesome websites will also result in higher conversions. If your audience likes and understands your website, the chance of them buying your products or returning to your website is, of course, much higher. Read more: Everyday website optimization: 6 tasks for your daily SEO routine » SEO takes time Understanding that SEO takes time to bear fruit is a key point in the holistic SEO approach. Since you only have so much time and resources to work on improving your site, you need to identify what you want to improve. Next, come up with a plan of attack, execute your planning, then watch the results of those changes after some time. Sometimes you make big changes, other
Is AI content helping or hurting your website?
New AI content tools are popping up left and right. These tools can help you write a social post, or a whole blog post, answer any question, or even create a brand-new image! This is great and helpful when you only have a little time or need more inspiration. But the big question is, are AI tools actually helping us? Should we be using them to create our content? This blog post will discuss AI content and why we should be mindful of how we use it. AI-generated content is skyrocketing AI, or Artificial Intelligence, refers to systems that perform tasks that typically require human intelligence, such as perception, learning, reasoning, problem-solving, and decision-making. And right now, there’s an explosion of AI tools in all shapes and sizes. The widespread adoption of AI-powered content generators makes it easier than ever to produce content quickly at scale. With just a few clicks, anyone can generate a half-hearted, generic article that a person must edit to fit the tone of their business and make it factual. It’s easy to get swept up in all the excitement and generate lots of content using these new, shiny tools. There is, however, something we can’t and shouldn’t ignore when using these AIs. It might not surprise you that using an AI tool to create your content results in similar content to others. For one, this isn’t great for your SEO. It also results in a much bigger issue that affects all of us. This content often isn’t diverse and inclusive at all. It’s created by AIs that were trained with biased content. And this content is often written by the same type of person. Let’s dive into this and find out what can be done! Using AI tools will create an echo-chamber One of the main concerns with AI-generated content is the lack of originality and authenticity. While algorithms can mimic the style and tone of existing content, they can’t replace the creativity and originality of real people. AI-generated content often lacks nuance, depth, and originality, which can harm the credibility and reputation of a brand. Moreover, using AI-generated content can perpetuate stereotypes, bias, and exclusionary practices, as algorithms tend to replicate existing patterns and preferences. Because AI content tools make it so easy to create content, it’s now easier than ever to produce the same content as everyone else. And if everyone uses the same AI to create content, no one is creating new content. We will, in effect, create an echo chamber with no new thoughts or ideas coming in. This leads to a narrow and non-inclusive view of the world. François Chollet had a delightful tweet about his thoughts on AI content: Related to this, Maggie Harrison at Futurism wrote an interesting article about ChatGPT essentially being an automated mansplaining machine. Having just this one, far from inclusive, point of view of the world is hurtful to society in so many ways. It doesn’t account for the vast diversity of people and points of view in our world. Nor does it champion groups of people that have often been neglected and marginalized in the past. AI training sets have a bias The Large Language Models (LLMs) that power the likes of Google Gemini, Microsoft’s Bing assistant, and OpenAI’s ChatGPT are trained on content from today’s internet. And while most people would like to believe that the internet is diverse and inclusive, it has some very questionable corners. We should try to strive for a world that’s much more inclusive than it is today. Using public forums on the internet to train your AIs may not be the best idea. In recent years this has lead to AIs becoming racist and biased. A few examples Using the internet of today to train AIs has multiple inclusion problems. This means that the AIs themselves become racist, sexist, or ableist because the content they are being trained on is racist, sexist, or ableist. Let’s look at a couple of examples. Amazon’s AI hiring debacle Take, for example, Amazon’s hiring AI. They developed this tool as the “holy grail” of hiring to help them find the right people for the job. Amazon used ten years’ worth of mostly male resumes to train the AI. Of course, this is a reflection of the tech industry overall, but it also means that the tool became sexist. They may not have intended to create a sexist AI, but because the data it had been fed was skewed towards more male hires, it thought it was doing the right thing. AI will always be biased if the data they are using to train is biased. Image creation can also be problematic Another example of AI’s going racist is AI image creation. If you want to generate an image of a romantic couple holding hands, it’s not uncommon to see that all the generators give back predominately white people. In July 2021, Dall-E 2 updated its tool to “more accurately reflect the diversity of the world’s population.” Unfortunately, it still produces photos that are non-diverse. It would only show people of color when you added the word “poor” to the prompt. This isn’t just limited to people of color; the LGBTQI+ community also fell prey to these non-inclusive images. Of course, the tools can make adjustments to their systems. We still have a long way to go to reflect the world that we are in. As Zoe Larkin (Levity) writes in the blog post on AI bias: “Unfortunately, AI is not safe from the tendencies of human prejudice. It can assist humans in making more impartial decisions, but only if we work diligently to ensure fairness in AI systems.” Don’t forget about the human edit To some extent, it’s acceptable to use AI tools as shortcuts. Today, however, content creators use them without considering the data that fed the AIs. This leads to the reinforcement and expansion of echo chambers and contributes to the creation of similar content and the production of racist and non-inclusive/diverse images. As a result, content creators need to be more aware of