I have been blogging for over ten years, and there are lots of steps to take before hitting the publish button!
Include any disclaimers
If your post is sponsored, that is something you need to disclose. For example, “I received a sample of this product in exchange for my honest review”.
Assign a category
Make sure you assign your post a category. Sometimes I forget, and then it ends up in ‘uncategorized’, or perhaps you have a travel post that is also a giveaway, so it is good to make sure you have your categories correct. This allows your readers to find your posts as easily as possible.
Proofread your article & spellcheck
Always proofread your work! Some mistakes can be caught in your spellcheck, but others you need to actually proofread to catch.
Check all links
Make sure all of your links work, and you may want to add in links if you don’t already have some.
Check images and make sure you have a featured image
Be sure that your images look good and that you have selected your featured image.
Fill out meta info and tags
Meta info and tags will help people to find your blog and your post, so make sure those are filled out!
Check / choose a url (slug)
I didn’t do this when I first began my blog, and some of the longer titles meant run-on URLs. I like to keep my URLs on the shorter side, using key words.
As soon as you publish, check the post on your blog.
Sometimes something happens between clicking “publish” and how a post shows up on my blog. You never know when images don’t show correctly or if there are other issues, so make sure you take a look from the perspective of your readers.
Let me know if you have any questions!!
Check out my other blogging tips here.
This is amazing. I love all the tips and they are great! Thanks for sharing
Great tips! By the way, I’m currently using the Semrush site audit. Just sign up (free), and they’ll frequently provide the audit report to point out what went wrong with my site and how to fix them.
Thanks for these great tips. I follow almost every tip given above except that disclosure thing. From the next post, I’ll make sure to write it.
Great guide to have for blogging!
Oh no! I am so guilty for missing most items on your checklist. Thank you for sharing this. I have been skipping disclaimers and feeling too lazy with the meta info and tags. Thank you for this. Bookmarked it for future reference and will try my best to incorporate them.
Great tips Marysa!
Great tips. I have found this useful. Sometimes I forget to put some links and then i read it again and then i edit again. It’s crazy.
these are great tips and i am learning to keep them in mind consciously as sometimes i forget some of them too. long slugs and uncategorized posts for example
This is great! I was wondering, could you make a downloadable printable of this for us bloggers?
Great advice! I didn’t know about the slug thing! I have to stay doing that!
Great tips! Every blogger should know these before publishing a post.
Thanks, really great advices. We especially do not forget to indicate the category – “no categories”, I think these are mistakes of many)))
Great checklist of tips! For more advanced bloggers, I’d add to do your keyword research ahead of time, and make sure you’re getting your main focus keywords plus your secondary keywords spread throughout the post and in the meta data, to help your post rank for these carefully-chosen terms 🙂
I always forget to put a disclaimer. I need to work on that.
It would be great to be able to blog one day! This is super advice and help for all.
This is a perfect list. I wish I had found you a week earlier, because I just created a very similar list for myself and you would have saved me a lot of time!
these are great pointers and a great help very organized