Before you publish your next blog post, use this blog post as your writing checklist to make sure that you optimize your content both for readers and crawlers.
Writing a great blog post that gets shared and linked to is both an art and a science.
This complete content writing checklist will ensure that you don’t miss out on the little things that make whole lot difference.
Continue reading or download a printable version below:
Table of Content
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Now you can download a printable version of this writing checklist by following the link below.
Checklist for Writing Blog Posts
- Deep Keyword and Topic Research
- Create a Starter Headline to guide you
- Define your post-specific audience
- Define your post-specific purpose
- Come up with your primary keyword
- Use a few Latent Semantic Indexing Keywords
- Minimum of 1000 words
- Use of Short and Sweet Sentences
- Use of active voice in your writing
- Action-ability of Your Content
- Primary Keyword used in the headline
- Primary keyword in image files names
- Primary Keyword in Images Alternate Tags
- Primary keyword in at least one subheading
- Use secondary keywords in the body
- All keywords are naturally used (not forced)
- Posts Illustrations e.g. analogies, examples
- Visual Content: Add Supporting graphics
- Proper sourcing and citations
- Compress images before uploading
- Avoid image copyright infringement
- Write an inviting meta description
- Include primary keyword in meta description
- Primary keyword in the first 100 words
- Link to relevant and authoritative sites
- Internally link to your best related content
- Use clean simple urls in all your posts
- Primary keyword in your post url
- Restrict meta description to 320 characters
- Use power words in your post headline
- Restrict your blog title to 60 characters
- Aim for 0.5 to 1.5% keyword density
- Monitor using Yoast SEO plugin
- Have a strong Call to Action at the end
- Proofread your post for errors
- Write additional 10 or more blog titles
- Select the most efficient title
- Break your post with subheadings H2 & H3
- Optimize for social sharing
- Benefits-focused writing
- Visually appealing: layout & white space
- Right category and right tagging
- Set Featured Image
- At least one pinnable image
- Content upgrade where applicable
- Proper blog post marketing plan
- Simple and clear language
- Optimized for readability
- Preview your post before publishing
- Click to tweet quotable blocks
- Captivating Excerpts if your layout uses them
- Offers complete solution to a single problem
- Is it Evergreen?
- Introduction has a hooking effect
- Every word has earned its place
- No fluff and bluff.
- Benefits-focused writing
- Blog post monetization: affiliate links etc.
- Affiliate disclosures where applicable
- Do a final edit
- Schedule for publication and marketing
Did you find this checklist interesting?
Printable Writing Checklist
Now you can download a printable version of this writing checklist by following the link below.
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