The checklist for the perfect blog

Want to know the checklist for perfect blog? Here’s just a few of them:

 

Think you got them all? You probably haven’t. Spellchecking is all very well; but spellchecking again, there’s a certain magic in that. Every time you reread your work, beginning to end, you increase your odds of spotting that missing letter, that unnecessary comma, that uncapitalized proper noun – all those minute errors so easy to pass over when you’re typing, yet which even the most semi-literate of anonymous internet users seem to have an eagle-eye for.

 

Keywords are like anti-wrinkle cream: they’re essential, but you can’t let anyone notice that you’re using them. There’s no better way to pluck up new potential customers from the swarming highway of the internet than a few well-chosen keywords (Google AdWords Keyword Planner can help you figure out just which one suit your business and blog the best); but they’ve got to be worked in there naturally. Shoehorn them in, and the customers notice. And that ticks ‘em off – they don’t like feeling manipulated.

Get those keywords in there; but don’t stuff ‘em.

 

The internet offers your potential readers several hundred billion things to do besides reading your blog; if your post’s introduction doesn’t pull them right in, a whole lot of them are going to get side-tracked right off the bat.

 

You’ve got to split your post up into subsections, and not just because the average internet user is terrified of long paragraphs. Your best bet for getting your blog noticed is ensuring that interested can find it on Google, and Google needs to know which sections and words to pay attention to if it’s going to be of any use to you.

 

Whether internal or external, anything on the internet that you feel is strongly relevant to your post should be linked to.

That said, make sure you keep a particular eye out for opportunities to throw in links to your own posts; sending your readers directly to more posts that tap into their interests only grow your chances of earning dedicated followers and fans.

 

Pick the category for each post carefully. Too specific, and you won’t spread your net wide enough; too broad, and you’ll seem deceptive. You really don’t want that – it’s the internet. Folks are already inclined to be sceptical as it is.

 

As with the keywords, don’t overdo it; but everything that’s measurably important in the post should go into the tags.

 

Let’s be honest: people like pictures. A lot of them like them more than words. But still, on occasion, folks will feel inclined to click that “visit page” button while browsing Google Images for pretty pictures; make sure your post’s images show up there with assiduous use of alt tags.

 

Your feature image’s job is simple: get attention. This isn’t asking a lot, and the qualifying factors for a good one are simple: it should be pretty, it should be colorful, it should be high-quality, it should fit in with the dimensions of your post, and it should relate, in some way, to what it’s about. Choose carefully – it shouldn’t be hard. HD photography is an industry now.

 

It really can’t be said enough: you’ve got to get yourself noticed on Google if your blog’s going to get anywhere. Your meta description’s one of the first things potential readers are gonna see on there – it’s got to be short, it’s got to be sweet, and it’s got to make your post sound like it’s everything that your target audience needs.

 

Seriously, look at the preview. And look at it again with every edit. It doesn’t matter how short or how necessary that extra sentence you’re adding is; if it ends up turning the article’s intro paragraph into a great big square of text, you’re gonna lose readers.