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A Guide to Uploading Your First WordPress Blog

By admin 22 January 2016 SEO
A Guide to Uploading Your First WordPress Blog

As blogging is growing more and more in popularity, people are setting up their own personal blogs to talk about a number of things from fitness to travel, cooking and even dogs have their own blogs these days.

At The Whole Caboodle we thought we would provide all you newbie bloggers with an easy to follow step by step guide on how to upload your first blog to your new fancy WordPress site. It won’t take you long as there are only seven simple steps to follow, which will make sure you include everything needed for your blog to be indexed in Google and to attract people to start reading what you have to say.

Let’s begin;

'LOGIN'


How To Add A New Post To WordPress

Step 1 -

Once you have logged onto WordPress the main dashboard will appear with the main menu positioned to the left hand side of the page.

Hover your curser over 'posts' and click 'add new'.

This will open out the area to start adding a new blog article.

Step 2 -

Have the blog that you will be uploading on a separate word document so that all the information is ready to copy over and easy to access. Make sure you have proofed and spellchecked your work (says the teacher).

Copy and paste the title of the blog where it says 'Enter title here'. Make sure your title will attract readers, something intriguing works well.


Where To Add Your Blog Title

Step 3 -

Copy and paste the rest of the main article in the box which looks like this below;


WordPress Main Body Text Location

Ensure that any paragraphs are spaced out correctly, with equal spacing between them. You can also add your structure to your article by using the Word Document style task bar at the top. This will make your article look more appealing to readers.

Step 3.1 –

Adding an image to a blog - click your cursor on the location you would like to add your image and then click the 'Add Media' button (top left)


Adding Image Media To A WordPress Blog

From here, you can upload files or select an image that is already in the media library.

When uploading a new image, click 'Upload Files' then 'Select Files'. Here you can select an image that has been saved onto your computer. Once you have selected the image you wish to upload, the box below will appear on the right hand side of the screen.


Adding Meta Title & Description To Your WordPress Blog

The important details that need to be filled in here are the Title and Alt Text.

Both of these are important because Google doesn't understand images (they are working on this) and can only read text at the moment. You basically have to describe what is in the image to Google so it can be picked up when crawled.

For example, this Qashqai image on the left should have the title 'New Red 2016 Nissan Qashqai N-Tec + model' and the Alt text should be 'Nissan Qashqai N-Tec + model 2015 red'.

Both of these will turn out very similar, but they should always be worded different to prevent any duplicate issues from occurring.

Once you have added the Title and Alt Text to the image, click 'Insert into Post' in the bottom right corner. The image will now be added and will look like this;


mage Location On Body Of Content

You can now align the image by using the indicated areas above, set the image left, right or centre to suite your content layout.

Step 3.2 -

Adding a video, if the blog requires a video to be added from YouTube, then you will need to locate the embed code from the YouTube video. To access this on YouTube click 'Share' below the video, then click 'Embed'. This will bring up an embed code which you need to copy. Once you have copied this, go back to your WordPress CMS page where you are uploading the blog.

You will need to click 'text' tab on the top right hand corner (circled below). This will bring up the coded text version of the blog, don't worry it looks scary but it's not. Scroll down to the area where you would like the video to be inserted and paste the embed code - in this tab you should be able find the text you want the video to be placed above or below.


Uploading a YouTube Video To WordPress

Once you have done this, click the 'Visual' button next to the circled 'Text' button above and this will bring back the visual version of the blog. You will now see that the video has been uploaded which should look something like this;


YouTube Vidoe Location On WordPress Blog

The yellow box in the middle is the video. Don't forget you can align the video within your content layout just the same as you can with an image.

Step 4 -

Once the title, main blog text, images and/or video have been added, the next step is to add in the Meta title and description. This can be done in the 'Yoast' section below. If you're looking at this and unsure what we are talking about when we mention YOAST, we would recommend adding the YOAST SEO plugin.


Adding Meta Title & Description To Your New Blog

You have two main areas to fill in, Meta Title and Meta Description.

The Meta Title limit is 55 characters. It needs to state what the text/blog on the page is about, and it should also include the brand name for consistency. Each first letter of a word in the title needs to have a capital letter.


SERPs Meta Data Example

An example of what Meta title should look like;

As you can see this title has a capitalised first letter on each word, and it separated by a pipe (|). A pipe should always be used to separate the text in the Meta title. The Meta title is what appears at the top of a SERPs result and when you hover your mouse over the tab. It’s important that the title no more than 55 characters otherwise Google will cut it short. If the title you have written is too long, adjust it so it fits into the character length.


SERPs Meta Data Example With Cut-Off Text

The Meta description is also very important as it can improve the click through rate (CTR) and help user engagement. This needs to be no longer than 150 characters long, otherwise it will be cut short as you can see in this example below; Add New example

Here is an example of what the Meta description should look like;

The Whole Caboodle are a team of digital marketing experts committed to deliver the best results for their clients. Give us a call for a chat.

As you can see it only has a character length of 147 characters, so when it appears in Google's search results it won't be cut short. The description should give a brief snippet of what the on the page.


SERPs Meta Data Example

Step 5 -

For every post, you will need to set an article featured image which will appear on the main news section of your new blog. When you click 'Set Article Featured Image' the image library will appear. You can either select an image that is already in the library, or upload it from your files.

If you're uploading a new image, make sure you add in the image Title and Alt Text (see step 3).

Click 'set featured image' to upload the featured image.


How To Add A Featured Image To Your First Blog

Step 6 -

If you want the blog to appear in a specific category, tick the boxes where you would like the article to be accessed on the site.


Adding and Selecting Categories

Step 6.1 –

Creating a list of categories for your blog. You will find categories under the 'Posts' section of WordPress, right where you upload new blogs. Click on 'Categories' and you will be taken to a new WordPress section where you can begin adding whatever categories you like.

Locate the 'Add New Category' section see below;


How To Add Categories To Your Blog

Begin by filling in the fields, so Name your category something like 'Travel'. Then you need to provide a 'Slug' name WordPress explains what this is, make sure you follow their guide lines. This will be a lower case version of the category name.

Choose if you want to add a 'Parent' category. This should be only done if you want to add sub categories under a main category. An example would be under the category 'Travel' you would have ‘Europe’ and 'The World'. The majority of the time you will have this set to ‘None’. All you need to do now to finish is click ‘Add New Category’ and then you will see the list of categories appear on the right hand side of the WordPress CMS.

Step 7 -

Before you publish the blog, you should have a quick look at what the page will look like to ensure that the layout is structured well. To do this, click ‘Preview’ (top right hand corner). If you wish to make any alterations to the page you can simply go back and edit.

Here you can also save the blog as a draft or schedule for it to be uploaded at a later date.


How To Publish or Schedual Your First Blog

Once you hit publish, the blog will be live - you can always go back into WordPress and make any alterations.  


CONGRATULATIONS!

You have just uploaded your first blog to your new WordPress site. High Five!


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