Website content creation is a challenging task.
It requires regular updation, promotion and much more.
This is a detailed post on website content checklists that you may need at various stages of your content creation journey.
I will cover the following:
- Content creation checklist
- Content updation checklist
- Pre-launch blog checklist
- Post promotion checklist
Suppose you’re looking for a one-pager to cover all your website content checklists. This post is for you.
Let’s get started.
Content creation checklist
Content creation involves researching, writing, organising and editing content effectively. Here’s a quick website content checklist to help you start creating content right away.
Keyword research: Keyword research is the most important part of content creation. If you’re writing great content but not around the keywords you want your business to rank for, it will only bring irrelevant traffic or maybe no traffic.
You can use the following tools to make the best use of keywords:
Title Creation: Once you have your keywords figured out, the next step is to create a title that is creative and grabs the attention of your readers.
You need to check whether people are writing list posts or guides for the targeted keyword you are trying to rank for or simply creating service pages for that.
It is better to follow the trend.
Create an outline: Before you start writing content, it is better to create an outline for your content piece. The outline includes the title, intro, and headings (H2, H3, and so on).
Write quality content: When doing keyword research, also do competitor analysis. This will give you insight into content that is ranking on the first page. Your goal should be to create content ten times better than that.
Add media: A picture is worth a thousand words. Add quality images and infographics where necessary to enhance your content. Media includes:
- Images
- Infographics
- Videos
Bullet points: Use proper bullet points and headings to make your content skimmable and easy to read and comprehend.
Internal linking: Interlink your content to other relevant pages of your website.
Introduction and conclusion: Don’t forget the importance of an engaging introduction and a fruitful conclusion, ideally including a CTA.
Move to WordPress: Only a few people write directly on WordPress. For those who use different tools like Google docs or Dropbox Paper to write the content, the last step is to move the content to WordPress.
This is a simple checklist to have the first draft of your content ready. We’ll go into more detail in the pre-launch checklist.
Pre-launch blog checklist
Creating content may sound like the most difficult part, but it also requires effort to publish it properly. Here’s a quick content checklist to go over before publishing your content.
Content Formatting:
Moving to WordPress: Moving a content piece to WordPress is more than just copy-pasting it. You need to make sure the content formatting is not compromised, and it should be moved preferably brick by brick.
Headings: Double-check the headings; these should have a proper hierarchy (H1, H2, H3). Also, make sure there’s only one H1 heading on the page.
Links: Internal/External linking is an important aspect of content creation but make sure to properly set them to do follow/ no follow according to the requirements.
All links to your own site should follow, but it is not recommended to have all external links do follow as well.
Author: If you have multiple authors on your site, make sure to select the right one before publishing.
Images:
Source:: Properly source and credit all images. Also, pay attention to the caption and Alt tags of the images as they can help you with SEO as well.
Compress images: All images should be properly compressed so that they don’t affect the speed of your website. Moreover, it is recommended to always use SVG, PNG, and JGEP only.
TinyPNG is a good tool that you can use for this.
Image file names: Image file names must be optimized before uploading to WordPress as they reflect your content and support it.
Features Image: You should add a featured image for your blog or page. So you don’t have to add images separately for social media.
SEO:
Keywords: You should have the main keyword and relevant keywords in the title, introduction, and headings, ideally.
Headline: Run your headline/title through the EMV value test. Scores above 20 are considered good. Here is a good headline analyzer. tool.
URL: Write your URL carefully, and make sure to include your main keyword in the URL.
Alt tags: First of all, don’t forget to add alt tags for the images and media. But also make sure to have your keyword in the alt tags (Avoid keyword stuffing)
Keyword distribution: Evenly distribute your keyword and relevant keywords throughout the article, depending on the length of your article. You can use Yoast to guide you through the process.
Post Category: Select the post category before publishing your article.
Links: All links must open in a new window, whether they are links to your own site or others.
Meta Description: Define a meta description to show what your content is about. This helps Google understand your content better.
On-page SEO: Complete the on-page SEO using Yoast SEO Plugin. It guides you at every step and helps make on-page SEO as easy as possible.
Editing and Proofreading: Once you’re done with all of the above. Pay attention to proofreading your content:
- Checking for grammatical errors
- Flow of content
- Fixing punctuations
- Check for plagiarism (As it has a negative impact on SERPs)
This is a quick yet detailed website content checklist that you need before publishing your post. The work is still not done yet. Once you have published your post, it requires regular promotion.
Post promotion checklist
After you have created spectacular content for your website, all there is left to do is promotion. Content promotion is one of the essential parts of content creation.
Here’s a quick checklist to go over right after you have published your content.
Newsletter: Send out the newsletter when you publish your article. You can either schedule it for the desired time or send it right away.
Social media shares: Website content gives your regular content to publish on your social media platforms. There are hundreds of platforms out there, but you should post on the following straightaway:
Share in groups: There are many relevant groups, no matter what your niche is. Always share your best content there.
Email marketing: We are not talking about cold email outreach here. But if you mention any tools, plugins, platforms, or people in your article, make sure to send them an email along with the article.
Content updation checklist:
Google considers fresh and updated content as one of its many ranking factors, which is exactly why you need to not only publish regular content but update it regularly as well.
You can follow the website content checklist below to keep your content fresh and up to date.
Process comments: If you’re writing remarkable content, you’ll have lots of comments as well. Always respond to those comments so you can stay connected with your readers.
Update stats: Keep updating your stats regularly if you have used any in your content. The stats and sources keep changing, so it’s important to keep an eye on that.
Update dates/years: Similarly, keep updating the dates and years in your articles as well. For example, if you have an article containing information from 2021, make sure to update the information as well as the year.
Keywords: Review the search console for keywords you have the potential to rank for, and try to include the missing keywords in your content.
Fix broken links: Sometimes you link to an external site, but it’s no longer there. In that case, it will give a 404 error. Not only is that annoying for the users, but bad for SEO as well. Keep an eye out for the broken links and replace them with better ones.
Images: There is always room for improvement. Even with images, if you have included dates, they need to be updated. Or even an image altogether may be outdated and needs to be replaced.
Check for grammatical errors: When updating your content, you may find some grammatical, formatting, or punctuation errors. Fix those as well.
Delete outdated content: It is not always possible to replace outdated content. When you don’t have that option, remove the content.
Check the links: You should always double-check your internal and external links and correctly set them to do follow/no follow. Also, it should be opening in a new tab.
Include new headings: If you see an opportunity to rank for a relevant keyword, create a new heading for that. This will keep your content updated and increase your chances of ranking in SERPs as well.
Conclusion
Website content is the backbone of SEO. Content needs to be created in the best way possible, carefully published, and updated regularly.
The above lists are step-by-step website content checklists to take care of all your content needs.
Leave a quick comment below to share your thoughts on the above.
You can also check out our content creation service if you need help creating content and growing your business.
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