The Ultimate FREE Guide to Making Blog Posts with WordPress

I’m asked several times a month by clients how to make a blog post. Sometimes the question is about where to get the content, how to post the format, what to do about images, and of course SEO.

Well, now I have a few websites where I’m asking member participants to supply me with “guest blog” posts too. So, I figure it’s time I put together a real blog post checklist to follow for clients, members, and of course welcome first-time visitors to the HereNextYear site too.

I’ve talked with my clients in great length to answer these questions, of course, so these steps might make more sense to them than to a person landing on this page for the first time. I just needed to assemble a sort of quick-reminder checklist for them.

If you have any questions, please add them to the comments area below and I will be happy to reply…for free…in a written form to your comments.

So, here goes…

Blog Post Length

A good blog post is typically 200-600 words in length. If you are a guest poster (posting to a blog that is not yours), this length may be considerably longer. Here’s an example of a guest post I made for Premium Web Cart. On your own blog, however, the typical length should be within the 200-600 range.

Blog Post Etiquette

Never write a blog post that is just a bunch of paragraphs. Your readership will be cut down to 5-10%. Always section off your content into the following pieces:

1. The problem – The intro states the problem and why it’s important that your readers know that there is something they can do about the problem right now. I like to make these intro sections either one or two paragraphs. Rarely will I go beyond that unless I’m guest
posting.

2. The solution – Present your recommended solution in either one of two ways–a series of steps or bullet points. Always use 1, 3, 5, or 9 steps or bullet points. Never use even numbers as the human mind is always wanting resolution. If there are two steps to the solution, the human mind will always look for the third, for example.

Once you get over the 9 mark, all sorts of possibilities exist. Use of “10 Steps” just seems to be not detailed enough for people anymore. It’s funny. Offer 3, 5, 9 steps and people get excited. But, 10? Blahhhh. Who wants 10 basic steps anymore? Better to go up to 21 Steps, or 35 Reasons.

That reminds me of one of my most popular blog post ever. It’s called 35 Reasons Why a WordPress Website is Better than a Traditional Website for Your Business.

Notice the numbered list. Notice the slightly longer intro. Notice the “Why WordPress” image (more on that further in this post). Notice the bold on the main points and light text of the description of each point.

3. The send off – Provide a recap of how important this topic is and that by using those steps or bullet points, the reader will be well on their way to improving upon the problem. You may decide to have a link to a product you’re selling or give a phone number if additional services are suggested. That’s completely fine to do in a blog post…BUT! You want to be sure to finalize your steps or bullet points before suggesting the next step.

For an example of properly closing off a discussion and suggesting there’s more, go to my blog post about 5 Home Page Designs for Pro Speakers

3 Types of Blog Posts

There are three core types of blog posts. Others do exist that I might post something about someday, but focus on these for now. They are enough to keep you busy for years!

1. How-to information – Position yourself as an expert in your field and that you are willing to share what you know. Craft a nice mix of giving them the goods without giving away the farm. Start these types of blog posts with lists.

Examples:

“3 Easy Steps to….”

“5 Questions Everyone Should Ask Before Hiring a….”

2. Industry News – Know when news is happening in your industry so that you can blog about it. Go to Google Alerts and setup several keywords you are trying to get search positioning for.

When anyone on the Internet posts content or news that includes those keywords, you will receive an email with a link to that document. You might want to adjust the settings at Google Alerts so that you are only notified once per day.

With an industry news post, you have two choices. You can either add a link in your post to an article you saw someplace and then make a comment about the posting; or, you can make the posting as if YOU discovered the news and you’re reporting it to your readers. Either is fine. But,
personally, I choose to link to other websites and give them the credit for the news and then give my side of the story on my blog post. Just lets me appear more honest that way.

3. “Real Stuff” – I use this term real stuff because these are the blog posts that most people equate to “what I ate for breakfast.” You know…the real useless stuff. Or is it?

Remember, people BUY from people they know, like and trust. I’m going to add another word to that list you’ve probably heard many times before. And, that word is “relate-to.” People will buy from you if they know, like, and trust you. But, if they can relate to you, more people will buy from you and they’ll buy more from you.

Every once in a while, you need to step aside from telling people how smart you are with all of your educational lecturing (blog post type 1) and

industry opinions (blog post type 2) and simply prove to people that you are a real human being that has the same questions, experiences, findings,

intrigues as your audience does.

One of my most favorite “real stuff” posts was my very first YouTube

video where I recored my then 9-year-old racing a ski instructor down a NASTAR course…and darn near beat him! It has nothing to do with my

industry or educational steps. It shows I’m a regular human being with a kid and a hobby beyond just working all the time.

The Headline

You don’t need me to tell you how important a headline is. If you’ve ever sold anything or written anything on the web, you know that a GREAT headline is really a big deal. You really need to take the time to craft a headline that hooks your reader. And, when I mean hook, I’m not saying hook them into buying, or even hooking them to call you. You just want to hook them into reading the next paragraph. If you’ve accomplished that, you’ve accomplished everything the headline is supposed to do. So, how do you find out what you should be writing about in the first place and crafting a headline?

• Go to Google’s free keyword search tool.
• Search the Google search tool for the main phrase that you are interested in making a blog post about. Example: “tree trimming” (I’m writing this portion using a specific example for one of my clients in case you’re wondering where I pulled “tree trimming” from)
• Add the captcha words so the search will function. If you use this tool on a few searches, Google will ask you to login to your account. So, you may wind up setting up an AdWords account inside Google to see full results. That’s fine. Go ahead and setup the account. You will use this tool frequently and simply having an AdWords account is free even if you never run a Google AdWords campaign.
• Notice all the keyword phrases in the search results. They can be further sorted chronologically by clicking on the column header. So, that means you can sort the report by Keyword, Competition, Global Monthly Searches and Local Monthly Searches.
• Pick a headline for your blog post that BEGINS with one of the resulting keyword phrases on this search results page …because people are already searching for those phrases.

So, if I entered “tree trimming” in the top search area, I would see a search result report that would include the word “tree trimming services.”

I would then begin my headline with that phrase and THEN tack on the end of it the content I wanted to get into the blog post.

“Tree Trimming Services in Rogers Arkansas are Reported Higher Priced than Ever Before”

NOTE: Because it takes me forever to craft the perfect headline, I had my programmers craft a little tool for me that creates headlines for me using the 250 most effective headline formats. I just answer a few questions and it spews out 250 possible headlines. Go check it out inside our completely FREE members area. Have a couple of other tools in there for you too.

Using Images and Photos

Every, well, maybe not “every” but certainly 80% of all of your blog posts should have at least a photo or an image of something that describes he blog post. Also, a photo or image helps to promote the blog post on social media because people are attracted to those images when I post the blog post on facebook and Google+.

So, you need to start including a photo OR an image (some sort of graphic, bought or produced on your own) with as many blog posts as you can. You will get better with this process as you go.

If you don’t want to take the extra time to go take photos and you’re not much of a designer, using iStock.com is a great alternative.

• Go to iStock Photo and make an account.
• Buy some credits…probably good to buy about 50 credits.
• There’s a place on the left column with a bunch of checkmarks for the type of image you want to receive in your search results, including photos, illustrations, video, audio, flash…Reduce your search results to find what you want faster by only leaving “photos” and “illustrations” checked, unless of course you know for a fact you would rather use a photo for this particular blog post or an image/illustration, then uncheck the other to reduce your search even more.
• When you find a picture or image that relates to the topic of your blog post, you will need to resize it to something that works well with your blog post. I usually set screenshots or photos to 500 pixels wide and 72 ppi resolution for easy viewing and, yet, quick loading.

   

   

  For smaller images, like those you see when I post topics about WordPress or facebook or Google+, I make those smaller so that I can have content to the right of the image. And, I’ll have that content styled to not be butt-up against the image but a little to the right of it. [Clients, let Amber know if you need help with styling]

   

• ALWAYS buy the photo or image in the lowest resolution possible for the least amount of credits.

   

• Once you have about 10-20 pictures or images, you can start re-using them with blog posts as pretty much every blog post should be somehow related to your topic and therefore have something to do with at least one of your collection of images.

   

• Design (or have your designer make) or create four or five little images that you plan to blog about most frequently. That way you don’t have to always spend money buying images and photos.

   

• And, let’s not forget about video and taking your own pictures. Not only does Google love images and pictures, well, facebook and Google+ do too! When you post a video or photo to your blog post, either will come up as a thumbnail when you add a post to facebook or Google+. Always feature a photo or video (or illustration too of course) in any blog post, because the social network posting will display those to viewers and attract them to visit your blog post.

   

• Finally, make sure your image or photo is NOT linked to anything. If there’s a picture, just about everyone will click on it. But for seo reasons, you want to keep your image/photo tied to your blog post.

Blog Post SEO

After you’ve added your post content, headline, and photo, move your way down to the bottom of your WordPress post admin area and complete the most important fields of the All-in-One SEO Pack, which are:

• The Page Title
• Meta Description
• Keywords

  Remember, the keywords field is one of those things that’s way at the bottom of the totem pole as far as what Google looks for so don’t pay too much attention there. Just add maybe 3 or 4 phrases and that’s enough.

   

  Just a few more steps that I’m going to keep in the SEO list by continuing with #4:

   

• Double check your URL to make sure it has the same keywords you just added to your Page Title. You can change that URL remember. And, it should be more exact with what people are searching for than what you have in the headline. For the tree trimming example, I would make my Page Title in the SEO Pack plugin to be “tree trimming service best prices [location]” because that’s not only something a large amount of people are searching for, but also fits well with the headline you created earlier.

   

• Publish the blog post and then go find three (3) other pages on your website or other blog posts on your site, go into edit that page through WordPress and then change a few words in your content so that a text link makes sense. For example, I might have on a different blog post the following sentence:

   

   

  “You might be wondering why tree trimming is usually so expensive…”

   

  I would enter the post and change that sentence to look like this:

   

  “You might be wondering what to expect for tree trimming service best prices…” whereas that underlined blue link would be a live link to your NEW blog post you’ve been working on all this time.

   

  Finding a few other pages or posts on your website to link to your new blog posts shows Google you have created something that is related to another pot and that if you have it on three other places on your website, it must be rather important. So, Google lists it. See how that works?

   

Alrighty, I’m all excited to go make a new blog post! Wait, I just did. Ooops.

Take your time with all these steps. Go one by one and you’ll get it. If you have a question, HereNextYear clients, you know where to find me by email, phone, or Skype. If you’re not a client, be encouraged to make a comment to this post and ask your question there. I reply personally
to all inquiries.

And, if you do want to learn more about this process, you might checkout a mini-book I wrote in December when I first realized how to get any and every one of my blog posts on Google…within 5 seconds! Often in the #1 position!

In fact, when I launched it originally last month, I even called it “5 Seconds to #1″ and it sold handsomely for the five days I let it out.

I can’t offer the orginal discounted special I gave in December, but I will open it up again the same document, 5 Seconds to #1 on Google, for purchase for just $14. BUT, that’s only going to be available ONLY until Saturday, January 21, 2012. I’m soooo close to having my Getting Brutal with Google fully updated, full-length, SEO ebook completed, (the only thing that stopped me was a deadline to have my first 5 chapters in to the Wiley group for the 2nd edition Web Marketing All-in-One for Dummies coming out in April, but that’s another story!)…

…in which the “5 Seconds to #1″ document is included.

I won’t be selling the 5 Seconds document at all when Getting Brutal launches…and that will be at the same rate it has been for the past 10 years at $79.

So, there you have it. One big giant blog post for sure, but still the same format. Intro with the problem, bullet points or steps to follow for the solution, wrapping up with a convincing statement that I HAVE given you what you came to the page to see. And, then offering some step to take if you want to do even more.

Have a great rest of the week. This is Marty Dickinson saying blog well and bye for now!

Get your copy here! The 2009 edition of Web Marketing All-in-One for Dummies is now in its 4th printing as of April 2011. Go to Amazon for the cheapest price, of course, but order through this special offer and get:

1. The book signed by co-author Marty Dickinson

2. Document that shows you how to optimize every blog post on WordPress for search engines

3. Marty’s top 30 most important blog posts on printed paper for easy reading and quick reference

4. Website Pre-Flight document to help you put your plan to paper

5. Marty’s personal checklist for getting all the client leads you want from Twitter, Linkedin, and facebook

6. 30 days free and unrestricted use of the Internet Marketing Actionizer program

7. Three hours of assistance via private online chat with Marty about any Internet topics you would like to discuss

That’s a $200+ value for the one low price of just $97 (No Charge for UPS Regular Shipping within US).

From the co-author, Marty Dickinson, “When I was asked to be a co-author, the Wiley group asked what I wanted to write about that would help people with their Internet marketing. My response wasn’t what they were expecting. When they heard my list, their reply was that no one seemed to write about those topics in other Internet marketing books they had seen. And, they thought, those pieces were so important, that my part should be featured in the first section of the book! Nice!”

And, if you think just because the date on the book is 2009 that the content must be outdated, checkout this testimonial from Carol that just came in…last week…over facebook:

“Hi Marty…Just wanted to say that – while nursing a cold on Friday – I started reading Web Marketing – All in one. What a pleasure! It took me all day (seriously) to get up to page 96! Every time you mentioned a service on the web, I just had to crawl off the couch and go see! I’ve been “doing” web since it started, and I learned more in one day than in all of those years! Thank you so much! Love the writing, love the info… Can’t wait to find out what I don’t know about email, social media and blogging!!! Thanks so much!”

Carol Sutherland

Whenever I attend a seminar these days, I’ll look for one of the top speakers to start speaking, take a picture of him or her, make a blog post and see if I can get top positioning on Google by the time they’re done with their talk. Sometimes it works and sometimes it takes a bit longer like 2 hours or so for the posting to appear. But, it does appear and always within the same day. So, I thought I would share the process of exactly what I do to make that happen.

The subject is Brian Jud. Brian is a semi-famous book marketer who educates people how to sell books to retail stores and other outlets. In the authoring and book marketing industry, he is considered one of the greats. Here is my first screenshot that simply shows that I really did attain a #1 positioning on Google for the term. You might get a different result depending on what IP address you’re on and in what part of the country and of course whatever preferences you have set within Google. But here’s the screenshot anyway where, as of today, searching for “brian jud presenting” or “brian jud speaking” brings a search result in the top position pointing to my WebsiteWaves.com blog.

So, how did we get there? Through a series of steps. For the past two years, almost all websites produced by HereNextYear as well as those I’ve churned out on my own have used a content management system called WordPress. My WebsiteWaves.com blog is in WordPress as well. Here is what it looks like on the inside where I made the post:

There were 6 steps I had to take to have any hope of getting my post to display even close to the #1 position on Google for those search phrases. As shown above, I had to:

1. Create a headline for the post that had “Brian Jud” early in the headline wording. Since I wanted to make sure I got positioning for “Brian Jud Presenting,” I created a headline that also had the word “presenting” in it.

2. I created a url that had “brian” and “jud” in it so that Google would see this page as being related to him somehow. If the phrase was more competitive, I could’ve further optimized this page by making the url “brian-jud-presenting.html” but apparently just “brian-jud.html” was enough in this case.

3. Instead of having a file name for my photo of brian be something like 08212010-a1.jpg like lots of digital cameras will create by default, I changed the name to have “brian” and “jud” included.

4. The content of the post itself didn’t need to be very long, but it did need to include “Brian” and “Jud” early in the content and mentioned somewhere else in the paragraph as well. So, that’s using the same keyword phrase without being overbearing or unnaturally stuffing keywords into the content.

Then, to further optimize my post, I scroll to the bottom of the WordPress blog post page where I’ll see two more steps.

5. I created a keyword targeted “Page Title” of “Brian Jud Speaking | Selling More Books to Retailers by Brian Jud.”

6. Then wrote a complete sentence that becomes my meta description line. Both the Page Title and the Meta Description are what shows up in Google when you do a search.

Notice that I didn’t even enter any keywords in the “Keywords” section. Because people have abused the keywords area so badly for so long, Google barely even recognizes them anymore. It doesn’t hurt to throw some keywords in there, but I just wanted to prove the point that you can get pages of your website on top of Google’s organic search results in under an hour without ever adding a single meta keyword.

But, the process is not over! In fact, we’ve only setup the page so that Google “can” recognize it. The next step I took was to add my post to Ping.fm so that a message can immediately be sent to all of my social networks. Here’s a screenshot from within ping.fm:

Notice how in the circle, there is a list of all the social networks I’ve added to my ping.fm dashboard. Then I’ve underlined the message with the url of the blog post. Ping.fm will automatically convert that url into a short url, which is fine. The instant addition of my post is what is seen by anyone connected to me. Maybe even more importantly though is that Twitter is one of Google’s main sources for what’s called “Real Time Search.” I’ll talk about that in another post, but let’s just say, it’s yet another way Google finds out about up-to-date information posted online…immediately in real time.

Then, when I hit the “Ping It!” button, the message is sent out to the networks and looks like this on Facebook as an example:

Notice how it was just barely noon by the time I had someone making a comment to my facebook post. I think it was about 10:15 am that morning when I took the picture of Brian. It took another 20 minutes or so getting the photo into my laptop and formatting it, then making a post. At 11:30, I searched Google for “brian jud presenting” and there it was. Then the comment came in.

So, that’s how it works. I swear I should just sit around all day and make blog posts. But, this isn’t about “me,” it’s about what YOU could do with information like this. Of course, first you need to get setup with WordPress by someone who knows what they’re doing. Then, find what people are searching for related to your industry. Then, make all the blog posts your fingers can handle!

And, one day soon, you too will be able to tell ME how YOU got a #1 search position on Google in under an hour!

All the best,
Marty Dickinson

President, HereNextYear, Inc.

There are three simple concepts to using the Internet to get more leads or sales for your business and to make more money online. No matter what products have been launched over the past year or what social networks have sprung up, the same three concepts haven’t changed. We figured with all the hoopla going on right now in the Internet marketing world, it was perfect timing to unveil our new educational manual for accomplishing those three tasks, which are:

1) Converting those who visit your website or interact with you somewhere else on the web to taking action with you

2) Enabling yourself to be not just “found” or “stumbled upon” but ever present

3) Maximizing your sales potential by either making or creating something to sell on your own or promoting someone else’s product.

Stay tuned for Thursday’s launch, which will be ONLY between the hours of 10am and 3pm. Sign-up for the Tuesday Triplet where we’re describing the product launch process one step at a time while we’re actually doing it.

Content pages for more Web site traffic are simply that; pages on your Web site that contain specific content about a focused topic. Content pages do not equal “sales” pages but are more educational or informative in nature. Although, you can certainly use content pages to introduce new Web site visitors to you or your business.Your primary goal with content pages is to supply informational content to the Internet that people are already searching for by keyword phrase. When people search for that phrase, your content page comes up and you get the traffic.For example, one day I wrote a content page titled “Why Internet Marketing Coaching Doesn’t Work.” Now, most people wouldn’t search for that exact phrase. They would search more probably for “internet marketing coaching.” When they do, that content page is #1 on Google (as of the time of this writing). Over the past 30 days, I’ve had 83 visitors to that page, 31 of them came as a direct search on Google related to “Internet marketing coaching.”Not bad for content that took about 30 minutes to write and another 10 minutes to optimize for Google and post.What if you were to build just 50 content pages around topics of interest to your potential audience, with each page bringing just 30 new visitors a month searching specifically for that phrase? That would be 1500 new visitors a month. What about 100 pages?And, the best part is that once a page is created, it continues to generate that traffic for you month after month.What should you do once you have a content page ready to go? Here are three steps:1. Link from one of your existing Web site pages to your new content pageThere are really two types of content pages. Those you want people to see AFTER they’ve arrived at your website and those you want search engines to be attracted to so that people get introduced to your website through the content pages.When focusing on the latter, add links to your content pages from within the content of sub-pages. Search engine spiders will find those links and index the content pages while visitors to your main website will probably glance over them.If you go to the Internet marketing coaching page, you will see a link called, “Finding an Internet marketing strategy mentor.” See how the link is not part of my left or top navigation. It’s just embedded within the content. 2. Wait for a week or two This is really all the time it should take to get a new page indexed in Google. If you have a well-done blog setup, you could see your new post on Google within a day or two…even within a few hours! Search periodically for exactly what you’ve added as a page title and within two weeks, often less, your new page will appear–somewhere.3. Tweak and be patientThis search engine optimization stuff takes time. But once you get the hang of it, you will consistently get any new content page you post at least on the first page. And, if not, keep working at it. Eventually your pages will appear higher on search results.In summary. . .Using content pages as a form of gaining targeted visitation is something that has a cumulative effect over time. Don’t expect to write one or two content pages and all of a sudden have 50,000 more visitors than last month. It doesn’t work that way.Think of it like this. At every speaking opportunity, I’m sure to say somewhere along the line that the Internet is an opportunity for you to become a recognized authority in your industry. Developing tons of content pages will give you that opportunity. But, that stature and reward does not happen by slapping up a page or two. Aim high in quality and quality and this strategy will pay off for you over time.Don’t pay attention to how many pages you create, but that you’ve covered every topic possible and every question someone might ask about your industry. The results will happen.