In the last lesson, we learned how we can use the tools section of the WordPress blog. In this blog post, we will learn how to use the link tab “Posts” of your WordPress blog and I will also share a few simple tips on how you can create & publish SEO-friendly posts that can increase the chances of getting your blog post ranked on top positions of search engines and get a good amount of traffic to your blog.
You will find the tab of ‘Posts’ on the left-hand side of your WordPress blog dashboard (as shown in the image below):
The tab ‘Posts’ has further options of ‘All Posts’, ‘Add New’, ‘Categories’, and ‘Tags’.Let’s talk about these options one by one:
Option One: All Posts
In this section, you will find the list of all the posts which you have already created (this includes both published and unpublished posts) along with their respective details like Title, Author, Categories, Tags, Stats, Number of Comments, Liked by & Date of Post Creation. You may view all the posts together and select any of them to edit their Text, Title, Author Name, Categories, Tags, and Date. You may delete any of these posts by selecting it and clicking on the ‘Trash’ link which is present below each post title and you may even delete all or some of them together by selecting multiple posts from the check-box on the left-hand side of each post and selecting the option “Move to Trash” from the drop-down of “Bulk Actions”(as shown in the image below):
Option Two: Add New
This is the section where you can add your new post with new thoughts. Be free to think and write in this section, only then you will be able to post a highly creative post. While adding a new blog post, you will be asked to select the categories and tags from the right-hand side blocks which would be helpful to classify your blog post. I have shared some more information on tags and categories later in this post.
You also have the option to save your post as a draft if you are not able to finish your blog post on the same day and don’t want to publish it yet. Other than draft, there are a few more options like Visibility (which decides whether to make the blog post visible to the public or not), Preview ( to view your blog post before you publish it to the public), Publish (through which you can decide the date and time of publishing your blog post), Publicize (to share your blog post with on social networking sites like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Tumblr, etc.)
I would also like to share some tips with you while adding new posts on your blog, please see below:
a) Usage and linking of keywords & key phrases While writing any text in your post, do remember to relate some keywords or key phrases with other posts published within your blog. This practice will help not only users to get more & relevant information based on those phrases but also helps search engine spiders to crawl your other blog posts as well. This process will also help your blog posts to get placed in higher positions in search engines for those phrases on which you link the other relevant posts.
b) Selection of appropriate categories: While adding a new blog post, you will see a block of “Categories” on the right-hand side of the page. You may add several category topics in this block through the link “Add New Category” and assign an appropriate topic to each of your blog posts. Do remember to select the most appropriate and relevant category for your blog post which will help users & search engines to understand the right category of your blog post and increase the chances of getting more traffic for your blog post.
c) Selection of relevant tags: Tags work as keywords for WordPress users. When you assign a set of specific tags to your blog post, the WordPress users who are looking for those topics will find your fresh blog post under those tags/topics and will visit your blog. Isn’t this a useful tool for getting users to your blog who are really interested to read the information on your topics? So, try to use generic keywords which are closely related to your blog post so that you can get maximum readers for your blog post.
d) Blog post title and URL: Last but not least, try to use the topic of your blog post based on your keywords which will help your blog post to rank in higher positions in search engines. Along with the title, I would also suggest that you use the URL of your blog post which has your topic however you will see that WordPress.com will automatically use your blog post title as its URL.
Option Three: Categories
Here you will find the option to add as many categories as you want. You may also add sub-categories under their respective parent categories. These added categories can further be assigned to your blog posts (as I already explained above).
Option Four: Tags
Similar to ‘Categories’, you may add as many tags as you want which you can further assign to your blog posts. As I already explained about the benefits of tags above, these tags help WordPress users to find the information they are looking for.
Option Four: Copy a Post
This option is helpful when you don’t want to write a blog post from the scratch, instead, you want an existing post to be modified. You may copy any of the existing posts and then modify them as per your requirements. When you click on this link, it opens a page like “Add New” with the difference that it also displays the existing post titles which you can select and it will be copied in your blog text area for you to modify it further.
Happy Posting!