Welcome to the Mom Blog Money Blog Series! For 30 days we are following the Mom Blog Money Blog Workshop (affiliate link) sharing some tips so that we can work through the steps and grow together. Grab your coffee, have a seat, and join us.
Yesterday’s post we talked about creating a 12 month blog post schedule. Today’s post is all about formatting your blog posts to maximize their potential to be indexed by search engines and to save you valuable time when blogging. And we all like to save time, don’t we?
Laurie Turk created a great checklist which breaks down the anatomy of a blog post and is available to anyone who purchases a membership for the workshop. We can’t share the actual checklist here but we are going to talk about a few of the steps.
How to Format Blog Posts To Make Money and Save Time
Main Goal of your Blog Post
As a blogger your head is probably full of post ideas that are just itching to get out. Before you put anything to paper (or computer screen) think first, “what is the main goal of this blog post I am about to write?” Keep that goal in mind as you write so you can focus your post and your SEO keywords.
Want to know more about SEO? Check out this video from Holly and Laurie about basic SEO for bloggers.
Title of the Blog Post
Sometimes I think the hardest step in writing a blog post is coming up with a title. You want your blog post title to grab the attention of your busy fans so that they will read what you wrote. Keep the title short whenever possible and relevant to the main goal of your blog post. If possible, add a keyword (or two) into the title.
URL of the Post
Let’s say you have this really creative title for your blog post that is guaranteed to capture the attention of your readers but it’s not very SEO friendly. To help Google and the other search engines know what your blog post is about you will want to change the URL of your post and use keywords that relate to the main goal of the post. Check out the Google Adwords Keywords tool for helping your figure out your keywords.
Read more about SEO for your blog title and post URL.
Beginning of the Post
The first 150 words in your post are where it’s at for SEO. Work your keywords and internal links (links to related posts on your site) into the beginning of your post so that Google and your readers know what to expect in the rest of the post.
Main Body of the Post
In the main body of your post is where you can shine. Put your personality into the post as well as beautiful pictures (so that your post can be shared on Pinterest). Remember your main goal for the post and stay on that one topic – no rants, distractions, or sidetracks. Use those for another post.
In the workshop, Laurie shares even more tips for formatting your blog posts to save time and make your blog search friendly which will help you make the money, honey.
Thoughts on formatting your blog posts? Do you think it will make your life as a blogger easier?
Don’t miss Day 9 which focuses on generating high traffic with high interest posts and has a Google + Hangout video with Holly, Laurie, Jessica and Randi.
About Jessica Torres
For me, I generally give my post a title right away, before even starting the article, and then at the end of the post it never fails- I revise the title to be a bit more spot on and more of general summary of the post.
Great tips, Jessica!
I tend to do the same thing with my post titles, Crystal.