No matter how you got your WordPress site working, you are now looking at the empty void that is your new website. To use a gardening metaphor, you now created a pot and filled it with dirt. It is time to plant your seeds in the form of articles. But how does one write an article with WordPress? What should a good article include? What is the ideal length? Let’s find out together.
Articles in this series so far:
1. The Introduction
2. How to create your first blog
3. How to write your first post
4. How to design your blog
Other Blogging Tips:
1. Tying your domain name to your Bluehost hosting
2. How to never run out of blogging ideas
3. WordPress plugins for every blogger
4. How to make money blogging
5. The best and cheapest hosting for bloggers
How to create a new post?
Once you are logged into your WordPress account, you want to look at the left side at your Dashboard. Here you will see several tabs. What interests you now is the tab called Posts.
You might notice a tab called Pages as well. What is the difference? It’s pretty simple.
The difference between a post and a page
Posts are your articles, basically your product that you create for the blog.
Pages are pretty much everything on the side. When a person comes to your website, they want to see the posts. When they want to know more about your or the terms of use, privacy policy etc. they’ll go to the pages.
So, pages are pretty much a static content that will very rarely change. Some examples would be pages like About Me, Contact Us, Terms of Service, Privacy Policy, FAQ, Author’s Recommendations and more.
Add a new post
Now that you know the difference, let’s come back to our panel and click Posts. It should open up and show you the “Add New” button. As soon as you click it, you’ll be moved to the WordPress text editor, where all the magic happens.
How to start?
First of, you need to have an idea. Make it simple. You just started. The rule of thumb is to do some introductory article first and then make articles about the rest. Is your website about any sort of hobby? Make an article about the first thing you did and how can people do it as well. For me, my first article on this site was So you want to make money online. In this article, I wanted to set the tone for this blog and still give some valuable information. With your niche, it can be the same thing, but it doesn’t have to be.
Read this article to see how to never run out of blog ideas. You can use it to even start your first one. Anyway, let’s begin.
Keywords
No matter what article you are writing, you always focus it on something. This something is a phrase or a word that describes the main point of your article. For example, the keyword I focus on in this article is “post”. Anytime people look for anything about posts on google, there is a higher chance that they will find this article. This is because I mention this keyword a lot in a valid context. Try to do the same. Now let’s see what your posts should include.
Structure of the post
Title
Your title is the reason why people click on your post. Make sure it’s descriptive and conveys exactly what you will find in the article. If you will also make it catchy, that’s a bonus!
Very effective titles can be questions that people would search. For example, “How to create a blog?” or “What happens when …”. Other popular titles are also lists. Things like 10 best places for a vacation. 15 tasty recipes. Top 50 WordPress plugins and so on…
Whatever title you chose, make sure it includes your keywords.
First paragraph
Your first paragraph should serve as an introduction to the article. It should summarize the problem or the question that is the sole reason behind you writing the post or people searching for it.
You should also give a promise to the reader about what they will find if they keep reading on. Remember, this paragraph is incredibly important and serves as a hook for your readers. Without a good hook, a reader can just leave.
Once again, your first paragraph should include the keyword phrase.
Following paragraphs
You want to have your paragraphs to be short and to the point. Make sure you separate the paragraphs enough to make them readable. Just look at this article at how many paragraphs there are. Full blocks of text are hard to read and easy to lose track in.
Whatever you are writing about, try to keep a cohesive structure. Imagine it like a one-way journey or a story. You want to start with something simple or a question at the start, then you want to answer it or show how to do more complex stuff and then you want to transition into the final words.
Subheadings
Remember to insert a lot of subheadings. Whenever you are discussing a point, add a subheading that describes it. A lot of people skim through your articles and they will look for the stuff that interests them. Make sure that they find what they are looking for. It also makes it easy to navigate. Use different sizes of subheadings as well. I use H2 for the main topic and H4 for subtopics. Bonus points if you manage to put your keywords into the subheadings in a way they make sense.
Images
This comes to personal preference. I’ve seen people posting blog posts without any images and people that post images with every paragraph. I honestly believe (unless you are making a tutorial) that one or two images should be enough. This includes your featured image. It pretty much depends on how long your post is.
If the post seems boring at a first glance or that there is just an overwhelming amount of text, put in an image. Another good point of insertion is when you are talking about something that is hard to imagine through text. The picture, in this case, is a must. You can insert pictures by simply clicking the plus button and selecting the image. Then you drag it in.
Remember that the size of a picture shouldn’t be too big. It makes the page too big to load. There are WordPress plugins that can make images smaller for you. I myself use a plugin called Smush. You can read more about plugins in this article.
Other Media
Some articles can be made even better if they have some a video that a person can watch or some sort of an interactive element. A programming blog would have a code for example, that you could run on their page and see what it does right there. A travelling blog can put in videos to show the beautiful places they travelled if they also made vlogs during it. Think maybe if your article can use some of these as they make your posts instantly more interesting.
Last paragraph
The last paragraph should serve as a quick summary of the article and most importantly, your call to action. You’ve shared your knowledge and hopefully gave people some value. It is now your time to ask for a favour in a form of shares, signing to your mailing list or checking out your other articles or writing a comment. Some people have a donation button in this place as well. It’s pretty much up to you what you will use.
How long should a post be?
It is generally recommended that a post should be at least 300 words. Now, that’s a bottom limit. The top limit varies. Some people recommend 1000 words at most, as that seems to be the amount people most often read until the end. But, as you can see from most of my articles, I constantly break this rule. In the end, the top limit will be up to your taste, but I wouldn’t go shorter than 300 words. Just make sure you communicate what you need as effectively as you can.
Summary
And that’s it! I hope this has been helpful. I wanted to make an exemplary post with this one but I figured you can look at any other post on my site and see the things I write about, including this one. This way seemed way cleaner. Let me know if you’d rather see screenshots of articles as an example.
Anyway, thank you for reading this article which is part of a bigger series. Hopefully, you’ve learned something useful and if you’ve written your first blog post, feel free to post it in my comments below. I’d like to read them. Now, have a wonderful rest of the day you beautiful person.
