Using a web page editor

All blog platforms use a WYSIWYG (what you see is what you get) text editor which looks a bit like this:

If you have drafted your blog post in Word, I would recommend to cut and paste the text and put it into Notepad, as Word adds in lots of formatting than can make your blog look nasty when you publish because web pages are created in a language called HTML which doesn’t speak the same lingo as Microsoft’s Word.

Don’t add lots of formatting like bold and italics or different fonts into Word as you’ll lose it all when you add it into the web page editor. It’s a real pain You can then add links (tip: remember to select ‘open in new window’ if the link is external site, i.e. NOT to another page on your website), and add bold to emphasis keywords.

The web works best as a multimedia platform so adding images and video with a caption or description is a good idea.  If you don’t own a picture yourself you can hyperlink to a picture on an existing website (on a PC right mouse-click then select ‘copy image location’) like the pictures above. It’s best practice to add a credit underneath to the photographer or site it’s taken from. If the copyright owner takes offence and writes to you, be sure to remove their image immediately.

Page structure

Unlike a newspaper, people ruthlessly scan blog articles looking for sections that match their interests so you need to structure the content well. Firstly, the title needs to be compelling so people are likely to stop scanning their RSS feed or scrolling down the site and stop and click. It should describe accurately what your post is about but make it fun, intriguing or relevant.

Keep to short paragraphs – no more than eight lines in each. Use plenty of sub-headings (H2 and H3 in the editor) to break up the text. Add links frequently, but not every few words – curate the reader to just the most useful things they may want to know about next. Videos hosted on YouTube often have an option to embed the video onto your site.

Keywords, tagging and categories

You will often hear keywords discussed by search engine optimisation (SEO) specialists and other web geeks. Here’s an article all about it, but as a novice blogger for now don’t be too concerned – just remember to include the main words people may use in a search engine or everyday parlance in key places in your post like the title and first paragraph.

More importantly, you need to add tags which are keywords to describe the article. This is so website search engines can find your article, and search engines within blogging network create ‘trending topics’ based on frequently used tags.

For example, this page is about:

Tags: keywords, tags, tagging, web, categories, editing, wysiwyg

You also need to create categories within your blog; this helps people to find and navigate around your content. It could be ‘business’, ‘personal’, ‘case studies’ or whatever suits you (and you can easily change it later).

Read part 4: Tech Talk – RSS and selecting your blogging platform

A Beginner’s Guide to Blogging: Index