In this article, we will discuss how to create a post in WordPress using On-Page SEO techniques and Yoast SEO plugin. The WordPress key feature is its user-friendly interface for adding and managing posts.
The current article is "8.7. Create a Post in WordPress" of our Complete SEO Guide Box.
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Contents
- 1 How to Create a Post in WordPress ∞
- 2 Create a Post in WordPress: Yoast SEO Settings ∞
- 3 Create a Post in WordPress: Preview and Publish ∞
- 4 Share and Promote ∞
- 5 Create a Post in WordPress: Conclusion ∞
How to Create a Post in WordPress
First of all, we will navigate to the posts page in WordPress.
Login to Your WordPress Dashboard.
On the left side menu, click on [Posts].
On the “Posts” page, you can see all the posts and their Yoast SEO plugin statistics.
On the top of the page, click [Add New].
Adding Title and Content
At the top of the “Add New” page, you’ll see a field where you can enter the Title Tag of your post.
When you create a post in WordPress, below the Title field, you’ll find the main content area where you can write and format your post. You can type or paste your content and add headings, lists, and other content formatting types using the toolbar at the top of the content area. WordPress uses a block editor (Gutenberg) to add content blocks like paragraphs, images, videos, and more.
Suppose you don’t want to preserve the formatting style of Microsoft Word. In that case, you can copy-paste the content from Word to Notepad and then copy-paste from Notepad to the Block editor in WordPress.
Adding Links
Before adding links, you should read about External Links in SEO in our Complete SEO Guide Box.
Adding Internal Links to Your Content
Adding internal links to your website is integral to the SEO strategy.
First, highlight the text you want to use as an anchor for your link within the content area of your post. Once highlighted, click the “Link” button (represented by a chain icon) in the toolbar. A new box will appear to paste or type the URL of the internal page you wish to link to.
If the page is already published on your site, you can start typing its title, and WordPress will suggest matching pages from your site. Select the correct one, and WordPress will automatically fill in the URL.
Once the URL is in place, hit “Enter” or click the URL below the text box to confirm the link. Your highlighted text should now appear as a clickable link. Test the link by previewing your post to ensure it redirects to the correct page.
The default links in this way are “Follow” links by default.
Adding External Links to Your Content
When you create a post in WordPress and add external links, the process is the same as internal linking, though you paste the full URL link directly since you can’t use the post-search feature.
When your highlighted text appears as a clickable link, you can add more options – the “rel” tags.
Setting the link open in a new tab is a good practice to ensure readers don’t leave your site when clicking on the external link.
To do this, click on the link you’ve just created, and in the small pop-up box, click the “Edit” button (represented by a pencil icon).
Expand the [Advanced] menu.
Check the “Open in a new tab” box, then click the [Save] button.
Another checkbox you can select is the “Search engines should ignore this link (mark as nofollow).” The “nofollow” rel tag instructs search engines not to follow the link and is often used for links to pages you don’t want to endorse, such as untrusted content or paid links.
Adding External Affiliate Links to Your Content
You add the affiliate links the same way as you add the regular external links with one change in the [Advanced] link options. You must check the option “[V] This is a sponsored link or advert (mark as sponsored).”
The “sponsored” tag should be used for links that are part of advertisements, sponsorships, or other compensation agreements. It’s a way to explicitly tell search engines that the link is a part of a commercial arrangement. Properly tagging your external links helps search engines understand the nature of your links and can prevent your site from being penalized for improper linking practices.
You don’t have to use the “nofollow” tag when using the “sponsored” tag. The “sponsored” tag is a more specific tag. Previously, webmasters used the “nofollow” tag for sponsored links to avoid passing “link juice” or page authority to the linked site. However, Google introduced the “sponsored” tag in 2019 to provide a more granular way for webmasters to indicate the nature of their links.
Now, you can use the “sponsored” tag for all sponsored or paid links, implying that you don’t want to pass page authority to the linked site. If a link is both sponsored and you don’t want search engines to follow it, it’s sufficient to use only the “sponsored” tag.
Google Docs About External Links
You can always get updated information about which tags to use in external links of different types on Google Docs.
Add Images and Media
In the block editor, click on [+] in the bottom right corner, select an “Image” block, or search for other media blocks. There is an option to upload or choose from existing files in your media library. Once you’ve added media, click on it to resize, align, or add captions. Before uploading the image, optimize it with the RIOT program.
When you upload the image to the “Image” block, click the image block, then click the [Settings] button square icon on the right side of the [Publish] button.
Then click the [Block] tab.
Find the “Alt text (alternative text)” option and input the text describing the image for Search Engines.
Configure Post Settings
To get to the post settings:
Click the [Settings] button square icon on the right side of the [Publish] button.
Then click the [Post] tab.
Post Summary Settings
The Summary settings in your WordPress post editor contain three crucial settings:
Visibility: With this setting, control who can view your post. The visibility is set to “Public” by default, meaning anyone can view the post. You can also select “Private,” which means only site administrators and editors can view the post, or “Password Protected,” which means only people with the specific password you set can view the post.
Publish: This setting allows you to set when the post is published. You can publish it right away or schedule it to be published at a future date and time.
URL: You can customize the URL slug of the post. WordPress uses the post’s title as the slug by default, but you can change it here if you want a different URL. Choosing a URL slug that is relevant to your post’s content and is SEO-friendly is essential. Before the post is published, you can’t change the URL Slug. However, you can do it in the Yoast SEO Settings under the content box. Find the “Slug” textbox.
Categories
Technically, in a single post, assigning multiple categories is possible. However, selecting only one category that suits this post is best. You should create categories before you create a post in WordPress.
You can read about tags and their creation process in our Complete SEO Guide Box.
WordPress automatically adds a tag to your tags list when you add a non-existing tag in this Tags menu while creating or editing a post.
When you add tags in WordPress’s latest versions, you can’t paste them as text. You must write them manually and select them from the list if they exist. If the tag doesn’t exist, you can write it as text and add a comma after the text you wrote. Then, it will convert to a tag. If you want to paste several tags from Microsoft Word, you can do it while you “Quick Edit” the Post.
The newly added tags from this section in the post won’t have a description initially.
You can add a description to these tags after you publish your post.
Head to the Tags list on your WordPress dashboard.
You can find this by navigating to the “Posts” section and selecting the “Tags” submenu.
Once there, locate the tag you added and click “Edit.”
Here, you can describe the tag, which can be helpful for both SEO purposes and providing context to readers browsing posts by tag.
Click “Update” to save the tag description.
Featured Image
The Featured Image setting allows you to set an image representing your post. The image will be displayed in your blog feed, social media shares, and often at the top of your post. A well-chosen featured image can grab attention and get more users to click on your post. If you use the “Default Featured Image” WordPress plugin, the image you set there will be displayed.
Excerpt
The Excerpt is a summary or description of your post that will appear on your blog feed, archives, and in SERPs. You can write a custom excerpt in this setting, or WordPress will automatically use the first few lines of your post. An engaging excerpt can entice readers to click through to the full post. When we set an “Excerpt” variable in Yoast SEO plugin settings, this is the Excerpt that will be used.
Discussion
The Discussion settings allow you to control the comments on your post. You can turn on or off the comments and pingbacks/trackbacks. Comments allow readers to engage with your content, ask questions, or share their thoughts. Pingbacks and trackbacks are a way to notify other bloggers that you have linked to their content. We already turned off the trackbacks and pingbacks in the WordPress Discussion Settings (of our Complete Seo Guide Box) as default behavior, so there is no need to enable them here.
Create a Post in WordPress: Yoast SEO Settings
The Yoast SEO plugin is installed from our WordPress Recommended Plugins article. We must also configure its settings for the best SEO results. There are two ways of accessing the Yoast SEO settings. One way is to access these settings under the content box. The second option is to use the Yoast SEO icon on the top right menu near the [Publish] button. For us, it is easier to use the right menu since you can view it in correlation with your content in the middle, whether the bottom section is more problematic in this case. Since you want to see how the Yoast SEO metrics change when you update your content to fix the issues.
In the Yoast SEO Settings, under content, you can create a URL slug for the post.
Focus Keyphrase
The “Focus Keyphrase” is a central feature in Yoast SEO. It’s the keyword or phrase you want your post to rank for in search engines. By entering a focus keyphrase, Yoast SEO can analyze your content to see how well it’s optimized for that specific term. It checks factors like the frequency of the keyphrase in your content, its placement (e.g., in headings or the introductory paragraph), and whether you’re using synonyms or related keywords.
SEO Analysis
The “SEO Analysis” feature evaluates the overall SEO quality of your post based on your focus keyphrase. It considers keyphrase density (premium feature), meta description length, outbound and internal links, image alt attributes, and more. The analysis is presented as a list of problems, improvements, and good results, helping you understand what changes you need to make to improve your content’s SEO.
Readability Analysis
“Readability Analysis” assesses how easy it is for people to read your content. It uses metrics like sentence length, paragraph length, use of subheadings, passive voice usage, and more. Like the SEO Analysis, it presents its findings in a list of problems, improvements, and good results, helping you identify what you can do to make your content more reader-friendly. Some suggestions are necessary, and some aren’t for seamless text and idea flow. It’s up to you to follow all of them.
Inclusive Analysis
The “Inclusive Analysis” is not a standard feature of Yoast SEO but may refer to tools or features that evaluate the inclusivity or accessibility of your content. It could include factors like language complexity, cultural sensitivity, or design elements that affect users with disabilities. We enabled this feature when we walked through the Yoast SEO Plugin Settings Guide.
The “Add Related Keyphrase” feature, available in the premium version of Yoast SEO, allows you to enter additional keyphrases related to your focus keyphrase. The plugin analyzes your content to see how well it’s optimized for these related keyphrases. This can help target semantic search queries and improve your content’s topical relevance.
The “Internal Linking Suggestions” feature, also part of the premium version, automatically suggests your other posts or pages on the website related to the content you’re currently working on. These suggestions can help you easily add internal links to your content, which is beneficial for SEO and user navigation.
Google Preview
The “Google Preview” feature shows how your post will appear in Google’s SERPs. You can see the title, URL, and meta description as it will be displayed on the search engine results page. This helps you optimize your meta tags to make them more attractive to searchers.
Advanced
The “Advanced” section in Yoast SEO allows you to configure advanced SEO settings for your post. Here, you can set canonical URLs, specify meta robots attributes (like “noindex” or “nofollow”), and more. These settings should generally only be adjusted if you understand SEO well.
Cornerstone Content
“Cornerstone Content” is an essential concept in Yoast SEO. Marking a post as cornerstone content, telling Yoast that it’s one of your site’s most important, comprehensive pieces. Yoast SEO will prioritize it in its internal linking suggestions and hold it to a higher standard in SEO and readability analyses.
Create a Post in WordPress: Preview and Publish
Before publishing your post, click the “Preview” button at the top right of the screen to see how it will look on your website. Once satisfied with the preview, click the “Publish” button to make your post live.
After publishing your post, consider sharing it on social media or sending it to your email subscribers to drive traffic to your new content.
Create a Post in WordPress: Conclusion
Finally, you can easily create and publish new posts on your WordPress website. With a bit of practice, you’ll find the process becomes second nature, and you’ll be able to regularly add engaging, high-quality content to your site.
The current article is "8.7. Create a Post in WordPress" of our Complete SEO Guide Box.
Previous Article: 8.6. WordPress Featured Images. Next Article: 8.8. Paste Word to Gutenberg
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