Writing a great blog post takes hard work.

According to research from Orbit Media Studios, the average blogger spends four hours writing per post, and the most successful bloggers spend more than six hours on each article. They also found that bloggers who publish several times a week reported being the most successful.

This data tells us two things that bloggers must do to succeed:

Publish new content on a consistent basis.
Take time to ensure every post is high quality.

Sounds intimidating, right? Fortunately, there’s an easy way to save time while consistently publishing great blog posts: following this easy-to-understand blogging checklist.

It’ll help ensure every post you write is the best it can be. Every time.

In this article:

Your Complete Blog Post Writing and Editing Checklist

Here are some simple steps you can follow that will take your blog posts to the next level and ensure that everything you publish is set up for success. Together, each of these steps will add up to make a massive impact.

Use this copy-and-paste checklist:

[ ] Conduct topical research

[ ] Conduct keyword research

[ ] Write an outline

[ ] Write a compelling headline

[ ] Check keyword placement

[ ] Structure blog post with H2 and H3 subheads

[ ] Ensure sentences are 25 words or less

[ ] Check that paragraphs are three sentences or less

[ ] Review intro hook / angle

[ ] Check word count

[ ] Add internal links

[ ] Add external links

[ ] Add useful images

[ ] Optimize image file names and alt text

[ ] Check image file sizes

[ ] Optimize title tag

[ ] Optimize meta description

[ ] Choose a blog category

[ ] Add content upgrade

[ ] Include a call to action

[ ] Proofread and copy edit all content

[ ] Plan blog post sharing and promotion

Or make a copy of this free spreadsheet:

Understanding the Power of Habits and Checklists

What do surgeons and bloggers have in common? Both can rely on checklists to ensure they never miss an important step in their work.

The famous surgeon and author Atul Gawande believes in the power of checklists so much that he wrote The Checklist Manifesto: How to Get Things Right, a critically-acclaimed book that explains how written guides and processes help eliminate mistakes.

They’re not just for beginners, either. While writing and researching the book, Gawande talked to experts in a wide variety of fields and learned how repeatable processes and checklists were essential to their success. He even follows his own advice, telling NPR’s Morning Edition, “I have not gotten through a week of surgery where the checklist has not caught a problem.”

How Do Checklists Work?

What makes checklists such a powerful tool for consistently performing at your best? Gawande identifies two different types of mistakes:

Errors of ignorance caused by lack of knowledge.
Errors of ineptitude caused by failing to apply what we know.

Checklists help us avoid making mistakes because we simply forget to do something (which happens to the best of us). While blogging isn’t exactly open-heart surgery, it’s a complex process with lots of steps to remember.

And whether you’ve written one blog post or a thousand, it’s easy to miss a step.

Habits + Checklists = Your Key to Blogging Success

Good checklists are more than just lists of steps to follow. And they can do more than just prevent mistakes; they can also help us develop better habits, so success feels effortless.

If habits are things we do automatically, then checklists reinforce our habits, so we can focus on our work without worrying about missing a step.

As author James Clear writes in his best-selling book Atomic Habits, “Success is the product of daily habits—not once-in-a-lifetime transformations.” When we build positive habits, our small (but consistent) contributions to our future success compound over time.

In his book, The Power of Habit, New York Times reporter Charles Duhigg writes, “There’s nothing you can’t do if you get the habits right.” And that includes you too, an intrepid blogger.

Tips For Using This Checklist

Looking for more advice on how to actually implement everything on this list? We’ve got you covered below. This is a lot of information, but over time, it’ll feel like second nature.

Fortunately, none of these tips are difficult or too technical to implement. We’re confident you can learn how to do all of these items. It’s all a matter of building blogging habits so strong that you don’t have to think about them. But even then, this info may still provide a good mental refresher.

Conduct Topical Research

“Write what you know” is timeless advice. You need to know what you’re talking about before anyone will listen to what you have to say. Here are some useful reach tips to follow:

Check that your sources are accurate.
Link directly to the original source of information whenever possible.
Consider creating surveys using tools like CrowdSignal or Twitter polls to gather information and data that is unique to you.

Conduct Keyword Research

If search engine optimization (SEO) is part of your plan for generating traffic, then you’ll need to conduct keyword research. This process will help you understand what potential readers are looking for on search engines and make sure your content answers those questions.

There are several free and paid tools that can help you with this process:

While paid tools offer more power and in-depth features, they all provide a few basic functions:

Uncovering how many times per month a term gets searched
Revealing how difficult it is for new content to rank for that term
Other terms that are related to your primary keyword

There are a few more ways you can find terms that people search:

Use Google Autocomplete suggestions (enter a portion of a phrase and see what suggestions show up)
Look at People Also Ask results in Google Search (these usually appear after ads and before the blue links in search results)
Then check for Related Searches (these usually appear at the bottom of search result pages)

These tools and tips will help you know that what you’re writing matches what people want.

Write an Outline

A good blog post outline is like a roadmap for the story you want to tell. It illustrates where the story starts, where it ends, and all the destinations you’ll stop at along the way.

An effective outline should include:

A brief paragraph summarizing your topic and your angle.
Each header and sub-section your blog post will include.
Two or three bullet points you’ll cover in each section.

Here is a copy and paste template you can use to get started:

Post Summary
Introduction
Subhead 1
- Subpoint 1
- Subpoint 2
- Subpoint 3
Subhead 2
- Subpoint 1
- Subpoint 2
- Subpoint 3
Subhead 3
- Subpoint 1
- Subpoint 2
- Subpoint 3
Conclusion

Write a Compelling Headline

You may have heard this famous quote from advertising godfather David Ogilvy about the power of headlines:

“On the average, five times as many people read the headline as read the body copy. When you have written your headline, you have spent eighty cents out of your dollar.”

That’s a lot of pressure put onto seven or eight words or so. Headlines are the first thing people see and are often what motivates people to engage with your content or keep scrolling.

Here are some tips to make your headline stand out:

Include an action verb and a benefit.
Use emotional words.
Keep it concise.

CoSchedule’s Headline Analyzer Studio (freemium) is a great tool that can help you write better headlines with data-backed analysis and suggestions for improvement:

Place Your Keywords Strategically In Your Blog Post

Once you know what keywords your content should include, you’ll need to apply them to your post. Now, it’s important that you use keywords naturally throughout your content, so it doesn’t look like you’re trying too hard, like the kid in class rudely waving their hands all over to get called on.

Here’s how to use your keywords in a way that’s useful without being annoying:

Include your primary keyword in your headline, slug, and title tag (more on what slugs and title tags are in a bit).
Include your primary keyword somewhere in your introduction and in at least one image file name.
Include related keywords throughout your content and in subheads.

No need to overthink it. Following these steps will help search engines and readers understand what your content is about.

Use H2 and H3 Subheads

It’s hard to read writing that’s cluttered and disorganized. Using subheads can help make the structure of your blog post easier to follow and read.

Controlling subheads in WordPress is easy:

In general, use H2 subheads for subpoints in your article. Then, use H3 subheads for sub-points below H2s. This blog post uses H2 and H3 subheads, and you can see how it’s (hopefully) easy to skim to find the main points of the article.

While you can use smaller subheads than H2 and H3, these can be hard to read.

Write Easy-to-Skim Paragraphs and Sentences

Large walls of text are also hard to read. Aim to keep paragraphs to three sentences or less and keep each sentence under 25 words. This will result in crisp sentences and paragraphs that are easy to skim and read.

Give Your Introduction a Hook

Once your headline sparks your reader’s attention, your intro has to hook them in. Writing a great introduction can feel as tough as writing the entire rest of your article.

So, if this feels like a struggle, you’re not alone.

The folks at Zapier have put together a simple blog post introduction framework you can follow that will make writing them feel a bit easier. They break down intros into four sections:

Opener: One or two attention-grabbing sentences.
Problem: Introduce the real reason people care to read your blog post
Solution: Then introduce the solution or hint at the answer the reader will find in your post.
Expectations: Finally, explain what the outcome will be after reading your article.

This isn’t the only way to construct an introduction, but it is an effective way to make sure your intro captures your reader’s attention and motivates them to keep reading.

Here’s a look at how this very blog post implements this introduction framework.

Watch Your Word Count

Your blog post should be as long as necessary to cover your topic without leaving out important information or your reader losing interest.

How many words is that, exactly? It depends on a few different factors:

How complex is your topic?
What type of blog post are you writing?
Are you optimizing your post for SEO?

Research shows that blog posts should ideally be 1,500 to 2,000 words long in order to rank on Google. For in-depth topics, that’s generally solid advice. But it could also be a byproduct of bloggers seeing similar statistics and then aiming to write within a similar range.

As John Frigo from Best Price Nutrition tells Databox:

“It’s not really important whether that’s 200 words or 2,000 words. I feel like when people shoot for a specific length the quality of their content suffers as they are dragging out a post just to read a certain word count.”

In order to know what works best for your blog and audience, test blog posts of varying lengths, and evaluate your results. Worry less about word count and more about whether you’ve provided all the information the reader needs.

Add Internal Links to Other Posts on Your Blog

Do you have other posts on your blog that are related to the one you’re writing right now? Link to them! This helps readers find more useful content while supporting the points you want to make in your current post.

Links also help search engines identify what your posts are about and which posts are more important. If a post gets linked too often, this tells search engines that they’re important and increases the likelihood that they will rank.

Add External Links to Other Blogs and Websites

Readers and search engines alike want to know the sources for your information. Linking to trusted sources helps you support the accuracy and validity of your blog post by citing information that has been vetted for accuracy.

Just like having links directed at your blog can help your posts rank, linking out to other blogs can help search engines associate your blog with quality sources. This builds a virtuous cycle where great content helps support other great content, and everyone wins.

Add Useful Images and Graphics

Images don’t just look nice in blog posts; they can also help tell your story and communicate important information (like stats, graphs, and charts). Including a graphic or visual element every 200 to 300 words can also break up long stretches of text and make your post easier to skim.

Need help finding images? Here are a few places where you can find photos that are free to use:

Pexels
Unsplash
OpenVerse (integrated with WordPress.com)

Need help creating images? These free and low-cost tools make it easy to create high-quality images even if you’re not a super-skilled graphic designer:

Optimize Your Image File Names and Alt Text

Search engines can’t actually “see” your images, but they can crawl file names and alt text. Including useful keywords in these places can help Google and other search engines understand that your images are relevant to your content (and maybe even serve them in image search results).

Screen readers rely on alt text to tell their users what an image is too. Using descriptive alt text can make your images more accessible.

Check Your Image File Sizes

Images should be sized appropriately. Oversized images can take a long time to load, slowing down your blog and negatively impacting your reader’s experience. This can also make your blog less appealing to search engines.

You can make sure your image files are an optimal size by doing the following:

Upload them at the largest possible size they’ll appear on your blog.
Use an image compression plugin like Smush Pro.
Use Photoshop, GIMP, or other image editing software to compress images.

Write Well-Optimized Title Tags

Ever wonder where the blue article titles in search results come from? Those are title tags, and they’re extremely important for telling readers and search engines what your blog posts and website pages are about.

It’s important to know that title tags are different from headlines. You may write or edit your headline to fit in your title tag, but they exist in two different places on your blog post or webpage, and they serve (slightly) different purposes.

Article titles are (usually) an H1 header. They tell readers what your article is about. Search engines also crawl your H1 header but they don’t display them in search results.
Title tags are coded in your web pages. They tell search engines what your page is about (and readers too when search engines serve your articles in search results).

Title tags are important for readers and search engines alike.

This isn’t a super detailed nor technically perfect explanation, but it’s all you need to know for now.

In order to edit title tags on your WordPress blog, you’ll need a plugin. Here are a few popular options:

Yoast (if you have a WordPress.com account, you can purchase and activate Yoast SEO Premium right from your site dashboard)
All In One SEO
Rank Math

Write Engaging Meta Descriptions, Too

Meta descriptions appear below the blue highlighted links in search results. Unlike title tags, they don’t directly influence search engine rankings. However, they do influence click-throughs by informing users about your article’s content (and hopefully inspiring them to read your blog post).

Meta descriptions should be:

Less than 920 pixels wide (or between 120 and 160 characters). Less than 120 characters may be too short, while anything over 160 characters will get cut off in search results.
Relevant to your blog post. Provide a useful summary and incorporate keywords and terms that a reader searching your topic would expect to see.
Descriptive and emotionally resonant. What would make someone want to read your blog post? Use emotional adjectives and action verbs to inspire readers to take action.

You can test and preview your meta descriptions (and title tags) before you publish your blog post by using this free tool:

Choose a Blog Category

Categories are important for organizing your posts. They have important implications for helping users and search engines understand and discover your content. Learn how to optimize blog categories here.

Consider Adding Content Upgrades to Your Blog Post

Content upgrades are downloadable bonus resources that can make your blog posts more helpful to your readers. Common content upgrades include:

Templates
Cheat sheets
Checklists
Reports
Swipe files

You can add content upgrades to your blog posts on WordPress sites by using the Downloadable Files block.

Include a Call to Action

Including a call to action (CTA) in your blog posts can turn passive readers into a more engaged audience. Here are some common calls to action to consider adding to your posts:

Sign up for an email newsletter
Register for an event
Download a resource (like an eBook or a report)
Create an account for a service
Start a free trial for a product

Which types of CTAs you include in your content will depend on what type of blog or business you’re running.

Proof-Read Your Entire Post (Without Taking Too Much Time)

Having someone else edit your work can be invaluable. But, if you don’t have someone you can trust to review your post, there are plenty of ways you can edit your own work.

After you finish writing your blog post, wait until the next day to proofread your work.
If you use a word processor like Google Docs or Microsoft Word, use their spellcheck functions. This is simple advice, but it’s easy to forget.
For more advanced editing, use tools like Grammarly and Hemingway to ensure your writing is easy to read.

Hemingway is a useful and low-cost tool that makes self-editing easy.

A little extra care with your post can save you from an embarrassing mistake later.

Prepare Your Blog Post Promotion Prior to Publishing Your Blog Post

Having your blog post promotion planned prior to publishing your blog post can save you a ton of time and stress. Follow these simple steps:

Choose which networks and channels you’ll share your blog post on.
Then, write all your social posts, email content, and other copy you’ll need.
Next, set up and schedule your social media posts and email promotion using social scheduling tools or by planning them in a spreadsheet.

You can also integrate your WordPress blog with social networks and effortlessly share your posts when they’re published.

Build Your Blog With WordPress.com

Did you know that WordPress powers 42% of all websites on the Internet? When you build your blog with WordPress.com, you’re choosing a platform you can trust, with the power to choose all the themes and plugins you need to make your blog your own.

You might also like: Point of View in Writing: How to Choose the Right One for Your Blog

Your Site. Your Content.

With WordPress.com, you always own your content. No lock-in. Export it any time. Wherever life takes you, your content follows.

Get your content online now

Blog Post Checklist: How to Optimize Every Post You Publish

Your Complete Blog Post Writing and Editing Checklist