A pre publishing checklist that builds muscle tone for your blog/website
Ok, I’m lazy,too.
Now that that’s out of the way don’t be too lazy when writing out your posts.
I know, more stuff to do when it’s hard enough just writing the darned thing. Still, taking just a few seconds more on each article can pay off. Other publishing tools exist but I use WordPress so this post will probably only be relevant to other WordPress users.
Tags.
Did you pick out some tags? I used to write a new category each time I wrote a new post. Now I use only a few categories for my site’s main topics. But when I write a new article I select a few tags to relate directly to what I have just written. This helps cut out sidebar category bloat and clutter. Additionally, it is very easy to create an archives template for your categories and tags to show every single last one.Then you can use the sidebar to display only the important categories. Also,when writing tags make sure you don’t double up on existing tags by adding a capitolized tag when you have a lowercase one already.
Doing this can ensure you don’t penalized for duplicate content.
Category descriptions.
I’m at fault here,too.
I never take the time to write out a brief description of my categories.This is why when you hover over my categories the title attribute says “View all posts under”. Writing out your own category descriptions can help in removing the bloggy feel from your website. This site is mainly a blog so it’s not so bad for me. If you don’t want your site to be bloggy (maybe you use WordPress as a content mangement sytem) writing category descriptions is a small move in that direction.
Incidentally, I am using Robert Felty’s Collapsing Category plugin for the website I’m working on right now. Not having categories decriptions led to 67 errors in validation for the site. The plugin doesn’t display the title attribute in quotes and the WC3 validator hated this. I spent an hour trying to fix it in the plugin code and then saw the “if empty” bit and a lightbulb went off. I went and made up some descriptions and the more I added the less errors I got. Bingo.
Photos.
Having a well placed image in your post is fabulous. Wonder why magazines have so many pictures in them? Of course you don’t. People like to look at pictures. People don’t like to read. Ideally, the photo you select was taken by you or is a graphic that you made. If photography is not your thing and neither PhotoShop or even Microsoft Paint seem worth the time there are many stock photo and clip art sources on the internets. Nothing is more bland and boring than a page full of text without images. If you have a picture for folks to look at they may not read everything you have to say but they will at least look at the picture.
The post title shouldn’t be an afterthought.
I’m hardly being original when I tell you a good post title counts.Succinct and pithy is good. Spend a little time thinking about it before you slap any old title up there.