Introduction
With to-do lists that give The Nile a run for its money, it’s no surprise that mistakes can be made when publishing content at scale on your WordPress site. To help reduce mistakes and ensure consistency, as well as save you time when briefing team members – we’ve taken inspiration from Pilots and Surgeons and put together a blog post checklist for WordPress that will help you publish great content every time. It’s completely free and you are welcome to just copy and paste directly into your own documents, Notion page or Trello board.
We’ve tried to keep it succinct but if you want to know more about the why behind these steps then make sure you check out the rest of our blog.
Without further delay, here’s the checklist you need:
The Blog Post Checklist for WordPress
Category Relevance
- Category Assigned: Ensure the blog post is assigned to one relevant category. Selecting only one is advised to avoid duplicate content in your category archive pages. You should make sure that the category selected is descriptive and helpful to end-users. This means it must be relevant to the content, avoid using generic category names such as “blog”, “articles” or “latest news”.
Optimised Content Structure
- Title Check: Confirm the title is SEO-friendly and includes primary keywords.
- H1 Tag: The title of the post is automatically set to H1 – so you will not need to make any changes. There should only be one h1 tag on the entire page.
- H2 Tags: Ensure that main sections have H2 headings for structure and SEO.
- H3 Tags: Subsections should use H3 tags for proper content hierarchy.
- H4 Tags (Optional): Use H4 and H5 tags for any further subdivision of sections if necessary.
- Paragraphs: Confirm that paragraphs are concise and readable.
SEO and Readability
- URL Slug: Verify that the URL slug is succinct and includes the primary keyword.
- Internal Links: Include relevant internal links to other blog posts or pages.
- External Links: Add authoritative external links where applicable.
Images and Media
- Featured Image: Set a relevant and engaging featured image for the post. The photo must be licensed for use on the site – consider sourcing from https://www.pexels.com or https://www.unsplash.com
- Image Alt Tags: Each image contains a descriptive ALT tag that can assist people with visual impairment.
- Image Optimization: Check that images are optimized for fast loading (compressed and correctly sized). For a blog post do not upload an image <1000px wide. Target file size will be approx: 40kb-120kb. Use an online tool to crop and compress the image is necessary. Cropping and resizing: https://www.iloveimg.com/crop-image. Compressing: https://tinypng.com/
Preview and Functionality
- Visual Preview: Do a visual check in the WordPress preview to ensure formatting and layout are correct.
- Mobile-Friendly: Confirm that the post looks good on mobile devices. You can test using the WordPress mobile preview. For a more comprehensive check use “developer tools” in Chrome or Safari.
- Functionality Check: Test all links, buttons, and interactive elements.
Final Steps
- Proofread: Proofread for grammar, spelling, and punctuation errors. Check that title is in the correct case (title case/sentence case – depending on site default) and that language is correct (British English/American English)
- CTA (Call to Action): Ensure there is a clear CTA at the end of the post.
- Scheduling: Set the correct publishing date and time, if not publishing immediately.
(Publishing your blog posts effectively can significantly boost your SEO growth, leaving you time to savour fresh orange juices and stare blankly at Google while the bonus money rolls in.)
Conclusion
A pre-publish blog post checklist for WordPress is essential for getting it right every time. By doing everything right you can keep your readers in flow when browsing your blog and keep search engines happy too. Enjoy! And if you think Kahunam missed anything, let us know!
