Most of the website owners already know how to publish a post on WordPress? But why is everyone discussing about WordPress? Well, when we refer to the most recent research done by W3Techs, as of now, more than 39% of self-hosted websites are on WordPress, and the rate is still growing.
Now you must be wondering why all of the websites are moving towards WordPress? Well, because there are several benefits, resources, and WordPress tutorials available on the Internet, which makes the development easier for small, and medium enterprises.
For instance, you can create your website, portfolio, e-resumes, and much more with WordPress, and the best part is, you don’t need to have any technical knowledge on Coding or other know-hows. All you need to have is just a domain, hosting, and theme (paid themes are preferred.)
Now when you discuss about adding content on WordPress websites, there you’ve two options, either add the content through a Post or a Page. But wait, what is the difference between them? Well, if you want to post dynamic content such as news, articles, etc., then you should go with Post.
Whereas if you want to add static content such as Informative Content, Service Information, Product Information, etc., then going with a Page would be the right choice.
If you’re not sure how to publish a post on WordPress, then this article would be beneficial for you; make sure you bookmark this page for future reference.
Let us begin with the query:
How to publish a post on WordPress?
In order to publish a post on WordPress, you need to follow a few steps; all of the steps are as mentioned below.
Step 1
Go to the login page of your website. Usually, the login page can be accessed by adding /admin or /wp-admin or /login or /wp-login at the end of the page (example: https://bridgingpointsmedia.com/admin or https://bridgingpointsmedia.com/wp-admin or https://bridgingpointsmedia.com/login or https://bridgingpointsmedia.com/wp-login).
But if the website is using some security add-ons, then you may need to access the unique login URL; it may look something like https://bridgingpointsmedia.com/s0m3r4nd0m4lph4num3ricstring.
Step 2
Once you’re on the login page, enter the credentials, i.e., the username or the email, and the password.
If you’re not sure about the login credentials, please get in touch with the website admin, and refrain from doubtful attempts as your login may get blocked for a certain period of time.
Step 3
After you enter the login credentials, you will be directed to the dashboard of WordPress (also called the Backend Page by some users).
This is the main page after every successful login; there is no other admin section of WordPress.
Step 4
On the left-hand side (left-menu), you will see the Posts tab; when you hover over it or click on it, you will find four more options: All Posts, Add New, Categories, Tags.
If you want to see the list of all the published posts, you need to click on All Posts, else click on Add New in order to add a new post.
Step 5
Now, you will see the post editor, which has two major sections, the title, and the body. Before we move to the other sections, let’s discuss the title first. In the title text field, you need to insert the title of your post. For instance, How to publish a post on WordPress?
Though there are certain best SEO practices that you need to follow, you will read about these SEO practices in the second half of this article on WordPress. In the first half, we essentially focus on the steps to publishing an article/content.
Next, let’s address the body of the post (the large text area), here you need to put together all of the content of the post—for instance, all of the paragraphs, images, videos, and much more.
Step 6
Also, in between the title, and the body, you will come across the permalink option. Here you can edit the URL of your article. Make sure it is short, simple, and has alphanumeric characters only. Do not add unnecessary words or letters. The simple, the better.
Step 7
Once you add both the title, and the body, you need to add the featured image of the post, you will find the option to add the featured image on the right-sidebar.
This is the default image of your article/content. This image is the only image that is fetched when you share the link of your article.
Step 8
After you’re done with the above, you need to enter the tags that are related to your post. These tags are not categories but dwell on the key-points of your article/content. For instance, if you’re writing on the 2021 elections, then the relevant tags are politics, elections, etc.
Step 9
And, after you add the tags, you need to choose the right category for your article. Make sure to map the right category; you will see the category-field on the right-sidebar. If you choose the wrong category, your article will not appear on the expected category page. So choose wisely.
Step 10
Now you’re all done, all you can do now is, save the article as a draft or publish it (immediately or schedule it). If you save the content as a draft, it won’t be published, till it is published.
Whereas if you want to publish it, you have two options, publish it immediately (default) or publish it later. If you need to publish it later, you need to click on the Edit button. After you click on the Edit button, it will ask for the date, and time, enter as needed, and then click on OK, and finally on the Publish button.
“So congrats! You’ve successfully published your post on WordPress.”
But wait! Have we missed something? Well, yes. We have. We have discussed about how to publish a post on WordPress but we haven’t yet discussed about how you can write these posts effectively.
As you write these posts for your target audience, you therefore need to cater to, and take care of all the essential points that will help the article reach its target audience.
Title
Title is the only thing that the people usually see, before they decide if they want to click, and read the article. So try to make the titles more catchy. Also, make sure to use Power Words within your title so that users are inclined to click. You can also use the Title Generator for the same.
Moreover, keep the titles short, and the main keyword of the title towards the beginning.
Body
After the users click on your article, you want them to stay on your article for a good period of time, but unfortunately, they won’t stay; they leave.
So what can you do? Well, add content that is more engaging, add videos, images, and infographics, as users prefer graphical data over textual. So when you add the media files, users spend more time on your article.
Headings
When you open an article, you directly won’t start reading the article from the beginning; rather in most cases you scan the headings first in order to save time. So whenever you write any content, divide them into sub-headings; this will help your users find the right content quickly.
In addition to being useful to the readers, having subheadings in the form of H2, H3, and H4 where it merits in the article is also helpful to the search engines, and helps them crawl, understand, index, and rank your content more easily.
Since the title of the article is H1, so in the body of the article you need to start with H2, and not H1. There can be one or more H2s in the article depending on the nature of the article.
H2 is the parent of H3, and H3 is the parent of H4 which means all the sub points of H2 to be contained or laid down in H3, and like wise sub points of H3 to be laid down in H4.
Try, and add the main keyword of the article not only in the title of the article, but also in the subheadings, essentially in the H2s.
Also, it is recommended not to skip to H4 without having a H3, as this will only confuse the search engines if they do not figure out the respective H3 of a H4.
Links
When you discuss new jargons, and terminologies which you believe your audience are not in the know, you should also give links to the other websites.
For instance, if we discuss about the ranking factors of Google, we believe all of our audience are not in the know of these ranking factors, so for their convenience, we gave the link to the resource. Likewise, you should also include internal links.
Since we’re discussing about the best SEO practices, why not have a look at the Top 6 Tools To Help You With Your SEO Needs.
Images
You’re on the Internet, and not reading a novel, so you are mostly on the look out to grab maximum information in the shortest period of time. In these scenarios, images, and infographics come in handy, and aid to save the time of your audience.
Moreover, they are easy on the eye, and pleasing to look at instead of plain text.
So always add images, and infographics to your article. You can take the help of Canva.com, a free tool that has pre-built templates for almost every kind of content that you’re looking for. As now you know, how to publish a post on WordPress, never forget to add internal images to further boost the appeal of your article.
Moreover, never forget to add the Alternative Text or Alt. Txt. to the images. In instances, when the net is slow, and the images do not serve, the alternative text tells the users the nature of the image that was there. The best part, Alternative Text also help the search engines to rank your content through these images.
Users may tend to find your article on google, and other search engines through these images. (Even in scenarios when your article has not ranked, and therefore not available on search.)
You can also add the Title of the image, and the Description of the image. As far as Captions are concerned you may add it especially to explain an image or to extend credits for an image. As a norm, captions are essentially added for the internal images of an article, and not so much for the featured image.
Tags
Though they don’t hold much value today, tags still send out a positive flag to the search engines, and let the search engines know what the content is all about, and what it is actually related to. And, these days, it is recommended to add only a maximum of 3 tags.
If you so want, you can even go to an extreme limit of 5 tags, but no more.
Category
Just like tags, categories too don’t hold much value these days. Nevertheless, they are still helpful to push your article into the right cluster or to a specific genre. Hence, it is highly recommended to choose the right category for your article. Choosing one category would be the best to go with.
Keywords
Fill in the Primary keyword, and the other keywords in the Focus keyword field of the RankMath or Yoast SEO plugin made available on your WordPress dashboard.
You can take the help of this brower extension, Whatsmyserp which will aid you in finding all the in demand keywords basis the bid value, and the volume search for your targeted geography.
You can also fill in the Title, and Description in this SEO plugin, and also edit, and optimize the permalink/URL of the article. The SEO title of the article may differ from the actual article title.
We have now given you the keys using which you can now improve the experience of your users. Apart from the above, you also need to ensure that you’re not publishing copied content, and if you do so, it will have a huge negative impact on your article.
Say, the page will be deindexed from the search engines, which will waste all your efforts.
You should always check your content on a Plagiarism Checker Tool to find any copied content; if there are any, you need to replace it with more meaningful content.
After all, most people do write good content but still have a lot of grammatical mistakes. There are many free tools, and extensions which can help you take care of your spelling, and grammatical mistakes, for example you can install Grammarly Chrome Extension on your browser, and activate it.
So when you type something, the extension will help you point out the spelling, and grammatical mistakes, and help you correct them. A list of similar tools: https://www.websiteplanet.com/
Also do not use multiple colors, and fonts on the content; this irritates the users. Just be constant, and do not add multiple colors to highlight the content. just stick to a maximum of two colors (apart from black).
Also, do not write large content pieces without any context, this will make no sense, and your users will leave your website.
Last but not least, engage your users to make more comments on your articles or to share your articles. In the midst of the article or at the end of it you can request your users to express their views. You can even ask a question, and let them answer.
This will improve the engagement ratio of your content, and hence beneficial for article ranking.
The above are the must follow post-optimization techniques to boost your article. Now you know how to publish a post on WordPress, and also how to optimize your article/content.
If you have more points on how we can publish an article on WordPress effectively or more ways to further optimize an article do let us know through the comment section. If your points are unique, we will add them within the article with a link to your profile.
