By now it’s no secret that SEO is a game changer for ongoing traffic to your website. But before you focus on paid ads or invest in SEO tools, we recommend you follow our Blog Post SEO checklist to cover all the basics.

A few things to mention before we get started with today’s article. This article covers the essentials before posting as well as after you press publish. Google has shifted a their overall UI. “Page 1” ranking isn’t a true metric as on their mobile app, users function within an infinity scroll mirroring social media UI. Google is also taking notice to heatmaps within your site and the UI/click events. This is will have stronger priority in ranking than solely focusing on SEO keywords. Both are important but make sure to track click events and have cookies enabled on your site to keep a pulse on the analytics to your site. (Need help past the basics? Hire our team at 3816 Creative to help.)

Before you post:

1. Use SEO tools to research the kinds of content your users are looking for?
2. Make sure to check permalink structure.
3. Name all images and alt text within the post.
4. Include H2 tags for segmentation within the article.
5. Include links to other relevant pages on your site (relevant articles, contact page, sales funnel, etc) and external links (LTK, affiliates, etc.).
6. Add a unique social share image to your post.
7. Include a featured image.
8. Proofread. Nothing will tank SEO faster than typos.

Pro tip #1: ChatGPT can be great for creating prompts for blog posts on your site. However, you never want to copy and paste. If you do, your website will ineligible for copyright protection and duplicates open content on the web. However, it is a great starting point. When infused with brand voice and specific SEO keywords, it can be a fantastic tool to increase efficiency in content writing.

Pro tip #2: Are you ideal customers on Pinterest? If on WordPress, use the plugin WP Tasty Pins to have hidden images on blog posts that are more Pinterest friendly to drive traffic to the site.

After you post:

1. Pin all images onto Pinterest.
2. Schedule onto relevant group boards using either Tailwind or Later.
3. Post to Facebook business pages and in relevant Facebook groups when users are asking for content the article speaks to.
4. Create carousel posts on Instagram and then post to Instagram Stories. (We love using the link feature to link directly to the post in Stories.)
5. Post an excerpt as a LinkedIn article and then drive traffic to the read of the post on your website.
6. Include blog post content in email and/or SMS marketing.
7. Check the analytics and referrers of your posts to see how items are performing.
8. Repin images to relevant boards 1-2 months later.

Pro tip #3: If you are an influencer/content creator, make sure to include backlinks to your website in addition to your social media channels. You’ll notice we haven’t included TikTok, Threads and YouTube platforms in the list above. Why you ask? These are all top of social funnel platforms that drive traffic to Instagram or direct purchases rather than drive users to your website. We encourage with SEO focusing on linking to platforms where users are ready for long-form content.

Looking for further ways to repurpose your content? Check out our guide here.