In this lesson you will learn how to write and publish a blog post, and how to queue posts for automatic release in the future.

The Title

Your blog title is very important because it describes the post to the search engines, and is also the title that will appear in the SERPs. A good title is snappy and sparks interest, possibly with a controversial statement or question. For SEO purposes, it also helps to have the most important keywords at the front of your title.

Here are a couple of examples of well-written blog titles:

• 6 Best World of Warcraft Addons
• Is Amazon about to kill Paypal?

Notice how each title contains two important keywords that not only catch the eye, but are also likely to be searched for by the target audience. Having a number in the title, like the top option above, often helps to attract readers. 

The Post: A few tips

• Don't worry about how long or short your blog post is. Instead, focus on how useful the information will be to your audience.
  • Does it help them to do something?
  • Is it relevant to their interests?
• If you are nervous about writing, try reading your post aloud before publishing. This will help to ensure that it flows well and sounds chatty and informal.
• Be generous with your knowledge.
• Don't be rude, but by all means be controversial. People like blogs with strong opinions and plenty of personality.
• Be consistent with the quality of your posts. 

Adding Tags

Tags are keywords used to describe and summarize blog posts. They help people to find posts on topics they are interested in and they are also used by blog search sites such as Technorati.com to classify your posts appropriately. Technorati is an important traffic source, so it's worth taking your tags seriously.

When choosing your tags, think about the keywords your audience might be interested in. For example, a review of the drop shipping service Doba.com would interest people searching for information on 'drop shipping', 'eBay', and 'making money', so these would all be suitable tags.

Categories

If you are planning a large blog, you may wish to add some categories to organize your posts under. Categories make it easier for visitors to find information and search through historical posts.

You can add a new category by clicking the Add new category button.

Trackbacks

Trackbacks let sites know when you are referencing them. When you add the trackback URL for another site to your blog post, your blog URL should then appear under 'trackbacks' for the blog or website you are referencing. This enables anyone interested in pursuing the topic to click through. The Trackback URL is different to the regular URL and can usually be found just below the blog post text.

Comments

Comments are a critical component of a lively and interactive blog; however, spam is a massive and time-consuming problem. You'll need to moderate your comments regularly, a task that involves deleting spam and 'allowing' genuine comments to become live. We also highly recommend the Wordpress plugin Akismet, which automatically identifies and deletes a large percentage of spam comments.

Queuing Posts

Let's face it, some days the words just flow, and some days they stick like gum to the back of your brain and refuse to come out. Luckily, there is a special plugin available that allows you take advantage of days when creativity is flowing and build up a stockpile of posts to get you through the lean times.

You can use a WordPress plugin like Publish to Schedule to queue your posts so they automatically release according to the schedule you set up. Just decide on the length of time between the publication of each post, and on the appropriate date an entry will be selected from your queue and posted to your blog.

Lesson Summary

In this lesson we've taken a look at the basics of writing and publishing a blog post. Some important tips we recommended include:

• Focus some effort on your title
• Write posts that are useful to your market audience 
• Be consistent
• Add appropriate tags and categories

We also recommend looking into adding comments on your blog, and using a post queue plugin to help you on those days when you're suffering writers block.