We don’t all have an in-house web development/coding team, which is why WordPress has become the most popular website builder for businesses of all sizes. With WordPress, anyone can create and customize a website that will look just like the ones designed by the pros. Of course, if you’ve never used this powerful tool before, it may be a bit daunting at first. To help you get started, this covers one of the basics: how to make a blog post with WordPress.

Creating a New Post in WordPress

WordPress is designed to be simple enough for anyone to use, even if they’re not experienced with coding. To make your first blog post, you can use the top bar by clicking New > Post, or use the side bar by selecting Posts > Add New. This will bring up the interface for creating a new blog post so you can get started!

Add Your Content

Now comes the tricky part: designing your post. Start with your title and tags; if you’ve done any keyword research, this is the perfect time to put it to use! Populate your title, meta tags, and image alt tags with strong keywords for the best SEO results. Now is also a good time to search pexels.com or pixabay.com for a free stock photo to use as your featured image. Not only will this help your post catch the eye of anyone on your site, it will also give you more clout with search engine algorithms.

With those formalities out of the way, it’s time to start writing! You want your content to be readable and have SEO value, so pepper in your keywords in places where they would come up organically and don’t spam them. You could be penalized for using too many keywords. Once you’ve written around 500 words, your blog post should be ready to go.

Use Yoast Plugin for a Quick SEO Audit

The great thing about WordPress is that it allows you to install plugins that help you perform certain tasks. Yoast is one such plugin, with free and paid versions that will evaluate your content for SEO value and readability. The free version should be enough to get started, but as you get more familiar with WordPress and blogging, you may want to take advantage of some premium features like social media previews, redirect manager, and internal linking suggestions.

Save as Draft, Publish, or Schedule

Your blog post won’t get much traction if you don’t publish it! Publish it now or schedule it to be published automatically at a later date. Of course, if you don’t think it’s quite ready for primetime, you can always save it as a draft and work on it more before publishing.

Share on Social Media

Once your blog is published, you’ll want to get as much mileage out of it as possible. Share it on all your social media accounts so you can get as many eyeballs on it as possible. With any luck, some of your followers will engage with your post or share it for a bit of free viral marketing.

As we mentioned last week, blogging is an important part of maintaining your search engine rankings. WordPress makes it simple, so you’ll be able to focus more on your core business. If you’re having trouble getting started, TIC Digital Marketing can help! We can be a valuable resource as you refine your digital marketing efforts and we can even provide white label blogging services for your business! Head over to our contact page to get in touch with us and find out more about all our services including WordPress development and branding, inbound digital marketing, and more!