[lead]This article aims to help beginners get to grips with creating their first blog post in the WordPress admin area. We will show you everything that is needed to write your post and add images or links to the content.[/lead]
Before we start with this tutorial, if you are completely unfamiliar with the WordPress admin area, visit our previous blog post ‘WordPress Admin Area Basics‘.
Writing an article
Once the Design and Development stages of your website build are complete, the hard work really starts. Adding regular new content that engages your target audience can be the deciding factor that gets your website ranked above its competitors in search results. A higher position in search results will lead to more visitors, more visitors lead to more conversions or sales, so creating content is the single most effective tool when trying to create a successful website.
Use the following guide to help when writing your content:
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Regular Engaging Content
New content can be created in a number of ways, using a Blog or News section is often the most popular. This method allows you to create articles that are date specific and encourages your audience to interact and share the articles if they find them useful. Writing about subjects that encourage social sharing or interaction will make it obvious to search engines, like Google, that your content is engaging and visitors are finding it useful.
Writing Your Post
When writing your content you should consider all the following factors that will all help to increase the position of the article in search results:
- Make sure the article is at least 300 words long – if it isn’t the page may not be ranked at all
- Make sure you include headings and sub-headings to break up the content – nobody likes to read a huge block of text
- Use images – visitors are much more likely to engage with an article if it contains some visual cues
- Use a ‘Keyphrase’ to focus the article on – a good ‘Keyphrase’ will be something you expect your target audience to be searching for
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Once you have an article that meets all of the above criteria, we’re ready to start. Follow the tutorial to get started writing your first WordPress article.
Creating your first blog post
Login to your admin area
Log in to your WordPress admin area. If you are unsure how to do this, contact one of the We Manage Web team for help with your website.
Navigate to posts
In the WordPress admin area, you’ll need to navigate to the screen where you’d like to add a new Post or Article. By default, WordPress is set up to have a Blog section which is populated with Posts, if you have a custom set up the label in the admin area could be something different. Get in touch if you’re not sure.
Create a New Post
Once you have navigated to the Posts section you’ll see a list of all the current articles on your website. You can either select a post to edit, or select ‘New Post‘ to create a new one. New Posts can be created from two locations, either from the menu on the left or from the top of the page within the Posts section.
Adding Your Content
Once you have created your new post, you are ready to start populating it with your content.
Follow the steps below:
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1. Post Title
Add your title to this area. Remember to use a Keyphrases to help attract the correct target audience.
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2. Write your post
Enter your content into the main content area. Remember to make it at least 300 words long, and use these tools to help create something that’s engaging:
A) Toggle Toolbar – Use this button to display the styling options that can be seen in the image above
B) Text Styles – When writing your content use this drop down to select between Title Styles or Paragraph Text
C) Paste As Text – If you are pasting content from an email or Word Document, make sure this button is selected first. This will remove any hidden styling from the original source.
D) Links – Use the chain icons to add or remove links. Try to add links to other pages within your website, or trusted thirds party websites.
E) Add Media – To add an image to your post, simply place the cursor where you’d like the image to appear then hit ‘Add Media‘.
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3. Select a category
Once you are happy with your article content, add the post to a category or create a new one here.
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4. Add a featured image
Most websites use the featured image to display a small thumbnail image linking to the post. So for example; if your ‘Blog Page’ has a lot of images each linking to articles or posts, this is the image that would be displayed.
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5. Publish settings
Once you are happy with your post, there are a few options to finish off the article;
- Save Draft – Use this option if you want to save the post until a later date. This will not show the article on the ‘Front End’ of the website.
- Preview – Use this button to launch a preview of the post in a new browser tab. This will help you finalise styling issues before publishing.
- Publish – Once you are happy with the post, hit publish to make your first post live.
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Looking for help with WordPress?
No problem. The We Manage Web team are all WordPress specialists, we’ve been building sites using the system for years.
Get in touch with our website management team today >
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