Blogging on a WordPress Site
Harnessing the convenient tools of a quality CMS like WordPress is a great way to manage your company’s web presence. But are you taking full advantage of what WordPress has to offer? One function you need to look into if you haven’t already is the blog feature.
Why Blog Using WordPress?
Small businesses can do quite a lot with their websites by using WordPress, and if you’ve been using the platform for a while, you may not even know you can post blogs. Adding a blog to your website is a powerful way to boost your company’s brand and enhance your website’s SEO.
One of the great things about using WordPress is that it’s fairly simple to get your blog started. All of the tools you need to create your blog, and to reap all of the rewards content marketing has to offer, are readily available to you.
Creating Your Blog
Creating a new section of your website that will be dedicated to your blog is quick and easy to do. Find the “Pages” tab and select “New Page.” From here you will be able to title your new page and organize it into the place on your website you want it to stay. Once you hit “Publish,” your new website page will be live but you’ll still need to change some settings.
In the page settings, make sure your homepage is set to “static” and your blog is set to post in chronological order. You can also use this page to pick the number of posts that can show up on each page on your blog. Now, your blog page is ready to go.
Posting On Your Blog
When you want to add a new blog post, you’ll want to find the “Posts” section and click on “New Post.” You’ll then be taken to a portal where you can write your blog or paste text from whatever application you wrote it in. If you are pasting text, it’s a good idea to paste it in as html instead of text to get rid of any unnecessary coding that could mess up the blog’s formatting.
The body of your writing should be broken up into small, digestible sections using headers. You can find different headers to use in the “paragraph” tab on your document. For some blogs, you may want to make some points even easier to digest by using bullet points and numbered lists.
SEO Tools in WordPress
Not only can you use helpful formatting tools when you make a post, similarly to a Word document, but you can also use their helpful tools for improving SEO. When you create a title, you can use a character counter to make sure you’re keeping the title around 60 characters. You can also include a meta description for an SEO keyword-rich block of preview text that will show up in Google searches. Be sure to keep this between 124 and 160 characters for it to be accepted.
On your posts, create categories and tags to make it easy for users to find related blogs on your website. WordPress also features a hypertext tool where you can link words and phrases to other pages on your website.
After you’ve authored and formatted your blog post the way you want, hit “save draft” and schedule your blog to post whenever you want. By unlocking the potential of blogging on WordPress, you can create a content marketing strategy that will drive strong growth for your business.