11 Tips To Write Effective WordPress Blog Posts

Why are my WordPress posts going unnoticed?

My new years resolution for this year was to improve my blogs’ post quality.  I’ve been doing some research into how to improve my blog posts, in order to drive more traffic to Nostrovia! Poetry and publish our poets to a larger audience.

Here’s what I found in my Internet-based quest:

 

11.  Concise Titles Are For Winners

Concise is defined by Dictionary.com as, “expressing or covering much in few words; brief in form but comprehensive in scope“.  Look at the title I used, “11 Tips To Write Effective WordPress Blog Posts”.  It tells the reader exactly what the blog post is about right off the bat.

The post’s title features keywords as well, which we will focus on next.

 

10.  Keyword Rich Posts 

Keywords are important terms used frequently through your blog post.  These are the terms someone might type into Google, and boom, your blog post pops up in the search engine.

That is, if you’re using researched keywords, and depending on how competitive the usage of those words for search engine placement are.

When someone uses Google to search, “how to write effective WordPress posts”, this article shows up on the first page.  There’s a better chance this post will show up because I included keywords such as “effective” and “blog posts” throughout the post.  Keywords don’t guarantee that your post will be indexed by Google, but it certainly helps with your blog’s overall visibility in the search engine.

Make sure you don’t go over board with keywords.  It will kill your blog posts if you force terms, giving them a spammy appearance.

Use keywords naturally.  It’s about quality, not quantity.

This is all a part of SEO, or search engine optimization, an important part of blogging.  Aaron and Giovanna Wall wrote a great article on improving your blog’s SEO if SEO is a blank wall to you.

 

9.  Use Images In Your Blog Posts

A good blog post will catch the reader’s eye.  Images increase your post’s attractiveness.

Your goal is to get internet browsers to read your blog post, and hopefully buy your book, read your work, or share it around.  Images increase the chance of this happening.

The average Internet browser is a wild fire burning through web pages, not sticking around any for too long.  You need to catch their flames, and bundle their interests into a gasoline-drenched post.

Also, images will show up in Google Image searches, further building your blog’s visibility, offering some easy SEO improvement.

You know how when you upload an image to WordPress it asks for you to fill in title, caption, and alt text?  Use keywords.  This is a small bump of coke for your blog’s SEO.

My Name Is Not Bob, a writer’s blogging site, provides a great blog post about this.   You can learn from his post as an example of effective blogging techniques.

 

8.  Don’t Post Your Writing Scraps

If you post a poem on your blog, make sure it’s your best work.  Don’t just post throwaways.  Your blog is an extension of your name, as a writer.

If you’re saying to this, “I want to save my best work for publishers“, well, there’s always other blogs readers can visit to find great content.  You want visitors to think your content is great, share it, and return for more like hungry, underfed animals.

This applies to poems, short stories, articles, or anything you share on your blog.

7.  Link Often

Links, links, links, and more links.

Did you read a blog post relevant to the one your posting?  Provide an in-text link where it’s relative.  Google will be pleased with you.  Readers will be pleased with you.  If you have other blog posts relative to your current post, link to them.

Like with keywords, don’t go overboard, but link where it’s helpful to readers.

 

6.  Promoting Your Successful Posts

You should use social media to promote your posts.  If you don’t yet do this, read up on how to promote your writing with social media.  CopyBlogger offers some easy to digest posts on using social media to promote a blog.

Not all your posts are going to be successful, and some posts will flop, but  it’s a learning process.  The posts that are the most successful are the posts you promote the hardest.

You don’t want to promote all your posts multiple times on Facebook or Twitter, unless it’s a good amount of time apart from your last promotional effort, or relevant in a conversation.  Promoting all your posts again and again will simply drive readers away, rather attracting new ones.

You can hook up your Twitter and Facebook to your WordPress blog to automatically make posts, but if you want to add that personal touch to your posts, this is not recommended.

Building a social media presence, that’s recommended.

 

5.  Encourage Interaction

If you post a poem, short story, or a piece of writing, ask for other’s thoughts.

Be open to criticism though.

There are hordes of people looking to insult and brutalize others, there are trolls amassing in armies to bring down others.  Ignore those who don’t offer constructive criticism, as this is valuable, but ignore those who call you a “piece of shit writer“, and leave it at that.

Don’t fume, don’t dishearten, trudge on.

 

4.  Find Your Niche

My niche for Nostrovia! Poetry is to focus on promoting poetry to the youth through untradtional means.  My niche for W.I.S.H. Publishing is honest and accessible poetry.  For The Traveling Poet, it’s poverty, traveling, and young poets.

These are banners under which my projects operates.  Their target audiences can be determined from there.

Who are your readers?  What group of people are after what you have to offer?  What problems are you offering solutions to, or what information are you presenting?  What can you do to orientate your blog posts for this audience?

These are questions you should answer.

For example, I wrote a collection of poems titled Gatsby’s Abandoned Children.  This collection is available free online, and marketed to youth readers specifically, especially those struck with poverty, or are having struggles with living.

I discovered my niche for the publication, honed in, and jibber-jabbered away.

When posting about the collection, I’d use keywords targeted to what they’d search, and promoted to audiences interested in similar books.

 

3.  Keep Your Content Linked

You want to create content on your blog that goes viral.  In order to do so, you’re going to need content that’s shared outside your influence.

Every post you make won’t go viral, but if the virus does infect one of your posts, the post better be linked to you as a writer, other wise your content being shared around does you no good.

 

2.  Be Ruthless With Your Editing

Average online readers only give a few valuable moments before clicking away.  You want to catch their attention, then hold it.

That’s where ruthless editing comes in.  Trim the fat.  Brutalize your post.  Simplify.  Make sure everything in your post is relevant and useful.   If it’s not, get rid of it.

 

1.  Learn From Other Bloggers

Here are some blogs you can learn from.

• Amanda’s Wrinkled Pages
• Jane Friedman 
• Inky Girl