Guest post by Gagandeep Singh
Y
ou’ve spent hours finding a unique idea for your blog, after that you spent some more time in researching the facts and information for references, after that some more time putting your ideas in to words. And Bang.
You published the post.
Now you’ve involved yourself in other activities and after few days when you read your post, you see all the places that it could be improved.
Have you found yourself in similar situation? I find myself in this kind of situation daily. No, I’m not a perfectionist who wants everything to be perfect. But still after reading my old posts I feel that they could be improved. May be due to the new ideas or skills we’ve learned over the period of time. But let’s not get in to it because that is out of our control. We’ll keep on improving as a person, as a blogger and what you think is perfect now won’t seem so perfect after some time.
But still we can focus on things which are in our control and we should do so (or just try to do) before hitting the publish button on your website.
Check your title – Time and again, I see bloggers who publish the post, promote it on their social media channels and after few hours come back and then change the title. May be due to the feedback they got or they forgot to put a keyword into it or anything else. Title plays an important role in attracting the attention of your audience so make sure (or convince yourself) that the title you are going to use is as best as it could be and stick to it. Changing titles later is only going to confuse your readers.
Proofread at the last moment – Proofread your article again to see if you’ve missed any typos or grammar mistakes. Okay, you can’t please everyone with your writing skills and content and context is more important. But still try to keep it error free as much as possible.
Check hyperlinks – In case you are linking to other sites or other pages of your site from your content, please ensure that the links are working correctly. Many times the html code gets stripped off (or gets modified) from the content when you are copying it from any text editor and then pasting to your blog dashboard. Visitors don’t like looking at 404 pages when they click on something.
Make sure that ad codes are working correctly – Make sure that your ad codes are working correctly and are not interfering with your content in case you are doing a product review for your client or doing post with commercial intentions which requires you to insert some ad codes (affiliate links). Also, it is better to get your posts (paid posts) approved from your clients before publishing them to avoid any problems later.
Proper Disclaimer – This is a kind of follow-up of the previous point. Put proper disclaimers as per FTC guidelines if you are getting benefited in any kind from your posts. (Off topic – I’ve also seen that blogs which have a loyal readership earns more when they clearly mentions their intentions behind a product recommendation.)
Give credit to sources – Don’t be a leech. Blogging is all about generosity. Give proper credit to sources (using content, images, free applications, etc.) for creating article. I’ve seen many blog posts, where bloggers don’t give proper credit to the creators of images or software they’ve used for writing their post.
Okay. So these are the seven things, I could think off. Have anything more to add? Then, please share them in your comments.
Gagandeep Singh is a freelance writer working for conversion rate optimization company Invesp.
About Kiesha Easley
Twitter: AlisonMSmith
says:
Very pertinent information! A nice pre-publish checklist.
.-= Alison Moore Smith´s last blog ..10 Better Blogging Tips =-.
I agree about giving credits. I just love linking to people I talk about and where I got the photos, etc because I think everyone deserves to be recognized for their well done works. I am not a perfectionist myself but I often find myself wanting to improve my article and wish there were not as much errors. Luck duck for me because Blogger doesn’t change the URL even if I change the title so there’s no problem with URL change or possibility of No page found. I think it’s double advantage ;)
Before publishing, I think it is also important to check on the time when visitors usually visit your blog (schedule post) because that’s when you get the most traffic and you’d find more value in interactive conversation with your visitors as they get fresh content in sort of real-time or when the most people read your blog at a specific time, more chances of getting really heard/read.
.-= Jonha´s last blog ..Counting My Blessings Through Eating =-.
I do occasionally change the title of my articles. There really isn’t much harm in doing this. The most important thing is to make sure the permalink remains the same as that is what people are using to link to the article.:)
.-= Kevin Muldoon´s last blog ..Install WordPress the easy way with WordPress Loader =-.
I spend a ridiculous amount of time on my posts, and nothing annoys me more than finding a mistake in an article after it has sat on the blog for any amount of time.
This just sort of came to mind, but have you checked out a plugin called “After the Deadline?” It’s a crazy good spell checker by Automaticc and it has saved me plenty of times.
Great post Kiesha!
.-= Alex | Blogussion.com´s last blog ..How I Learned to Design: The Answer You Won’t Expect =-.
I was constantly publishing, editing, publishing and editing again. Then I started using the preview option and realized how silly the whole publish/edit cycle was. I don’t know about anyone else, but I so often miss GREAT BIG GLARING MISTAEKS when trying to proof-read within the editor. After figuring out that for some reason the editor didn’t “show” me the mistakes I saw in the finished product, Preview is now always the last step before hitting Publish.
.-= Michele´s last blog ..Label Your Work =-.
Great post! There are many times that I fall into this trap too! Thanks for providing a checklist to work through before I hit publish. :)
.-= Kevin M.´s last blog ..You can’t steal second with your foot on first =-.
Thanks for the great post! Lots of great information here and will pass this on to my other blogging friends :)
.-= Duane Scott´s last blog ..the adoption of a chinese gerbil =-.
Hey Keisha, Great tips. I always triple check my posts but still find things I would like to improve after hitting publish :-) I got used to check the following before publishing: adding the more tag, image for the excerpt, permalink optimized for SEO and like you said: title and external links.
.-= WebTechWise´s last blog ..Use iecollection to Test Your Site in Internet Explorer 6, 7 and 8 =-.
Hey Gagandeep,
Thanks for providing me with a quick reference.
The one thing that I’ll say about the Title. Once you have published the post sometimes the search engines will indexed that page fairly quickly.
Now, having to go and change the title can change the permalink of the URL. This will create a ‘No Page’ found if click on from the search engine. Not good if you are generating traffic from SEO.
Chat with you later…
Josh
.-= Josh Garcia´s last blog ..5 Blogging Tips For Business Owners That Your Competitor Wishes You Never Find Out… =-.
Twitter: weblogbetter
says:
Hi Josh!
You’re right about the issues that come from changing titles. I’ve had that happen to me. What I do now when I need to change the title – I make sure the permalink stays the same, but I change the text. Thanks for this reminder.