Before you hit the Publish button and set your blog post free to the online audience, run it against the following Blog Post Checklist to ensure it's poised for success. Omitting elements reduces the effectiveness of your blog posts, so think long and hard before you skip anything.
Keywords
Did you do some keyword research, choose the keyword (or keyword phrase) to target in your post, and use it effectively throughout the post? You can learn more about keywords in the following articles:
Categories and Tags
Many blogging applications allow you to categorize (or label) your posts and tag your posts with relevant keywords. This can help with search engine optimization (SEO) and improve the user experience on your blog by making it easy for people to find content that matters to them. If your blogging application provides this feature, make sure you use it!
Title
Your blog post title should be interesting and motivate people to click on the title link and read the complete post. Your blog post title should also use keywords when it's appropriate and relevant to do so. For help, read Tips to Write Great Blog Post Titles.
Content
Of course, your blog posts need to be interesting or no one will read them, and there is more to writing interesting content than the subject matter of your blog posts. Read the following articles to learn more about writing compelling content:
Links
Try to include at least one link to your archive content in your new posts, and include links to other sites that you used as resources in writing your post or where your audience can find additional information. Not only does this help your readers but it also puts your blog on the radar screens of other site owners who will see traffic coming to their sites from the links in your blog posts. Of course, it's also important that you check to make sure all of the links in your blog post are working before you hit the Publish button. Learn more about using links in the following articles:
Image
Include at least one image in every blog post that you publish. Images not only make your blog more visually appealing, but they can also help your search engine optimization efforts. Therefore, make sure you include keywords in the title and HTML Alt-Tag of each image you publish and always attribute the source of the image. To learn more about finding images and following copyright laws, read the following articles:
Proofread
The final step in the Blog Post Checklist is to proofread your post before you publish it. If your blogging application offers a feature that enables you to preview how your post will look online after it's published, proofread it in that format. While it's highly likely that you'll miss some errors when you try to proofread your own work, you should try to make your posts as perfect as possible before your audience sees them on your live blog.
