Monday 31 March 2014

How to create a Blog | course - 4 | create a blog post


We had covered three courses on 'how to create a blogger blog' in the previous posts and this course is an extension of the three. The three courses being :


Before learning 'how to customize the design and template' of your blog, it's always better to create a post (be it is a sample post) so that by looking at the article (post) you may come to know the best way of re-organizing gadgets as well as design your blog. So in this session we will learn to 'create blog posts', that is helpful to publish articles in blogger. As usual we will see the proceedings in step-by-step process.

Step - 1


Sign in to your blogger account and go-to blog > posts as shown in the below picture. Click that post link.


Step - 2


Now, as shown in the above picture, click that pencil icon (numbered 2), clicking this link will display the following screen. This is how the window looks for writing posts.


Step - 3


Now, before you start writing your article in the space, the best thing to do is to set some initial settings that is a part of SEO process. The first concern is the Post Title, as you can see in the below picture, you have to give a good title in the space provided.
Learn the best page Title practices for better SEO here



Step - 4


OK, since you are seeing this window for the first time, please do some quick research about the editable options that are provided for editing content in this window.

The functionality of options (from left to right) have been explained below
  • Font - allows you to customize the font of whatever you write in the space. You are also allowed to use multiple font across your writings. Remember you can only edit the font off those letters only inside the article (called text body), you cannot change the font of letters that appear on the side bar, tabs and blog Title's here. Of course you may do that in the template section (we will learn about that in the next session). 
  • Text - Allows you to change the size of the text - small, large etc.
  • Heading - allows you to select the nature of line - normal, sub heading, heading etc
  • B - Bold - Bold en a letter
  • I -Italic)
  • U - underline
  • ABC - strike a line
  • A - Color of the letters or words
  • brush icon - color of the background of letter
  • Link - Hyperlink - link to n external URL
  • The remaining icons are explained in the following order (left to right) - add image, video, page break, align text, numbering, bullets, include quote, remove formatting, check spelling, language change, alignment - left to right, right to left


Step - 5


After understanding the basic options for editing your text in the content pace, now look over the next SEO steps. (SEO here reefers to Search Engine optimization is the technique of optimizing your content so that your content will get noted in available in search engines.
Learn more about Search engine optimization here

Notice the right options bar named 'Post settings' as shown in the below picture. Click over 'Labels', which will display a space for entering the labels. Labels helps the search engines as well as users to identify the keywords in your content (article). So, it's always better to give as many number of major keywords. Say for this post, I can include some labels as shown in the picture. Those labels are more or less related to my post content. They can also be termed as keywords. Using any of these words, users search in the search engines (SE) and SE robots will identify your post easily if your posts have optimal number of these words. 


So, do enter some major keywords in the space and click 'Done'

Step - 6


The next option 'Schedule' allows you to publish post in time bound, like you can create and set the time to post so that blogger will automatically publish the article as per the set time. Setting 'Automatic' will have your own control on publishing, i.e unless you won't publish, the post remains as draft.


The third option is 'Permalink'. This allows you to change the default URL of individual post as per your requirement, thus enabling you to have full control on how it appears, what keywords it include etc.
Learn more about How to change the default URL of each blog posts.

As the name suggest, Location option allows one to include the location of posting, this is of no use. The next important setting is 'Search description'. This is one important tool in SEO process and I covered more about this in one of my post 'Best Search description practices and how to add this'.


The final setting is 'Options' which is set by default. Anyway just click that and ensure that under 'Reader Comments', the 'Allow' option is checked. By allowing the comments; blogger allows the visitors to comment on that particular post. In other words, you can also control the exclusion of comments (if you don't wish to listen further comments) in any specific post.

Step - 7


OK, The blank space that you see (as shown in the below picture) is where you need to paste your article. And, yes instead of creating your article here, use notepad or even MS word to write your article. Once you are done with writing as well as grammar/spelling corrections, copy them and paste in this space. After pasting, just use the above 'editable options' to align it or organize it. Remember even if you include headings in word, the same when copied in this space will appear as plain text. So, organize the content (by giving colors, headings, alignment etc)  only when you copy in this content space. I always prefer Notepad instead of MS word. 

Step - 8 


(additional information)
You can always save your work and use the same after a while. Just ensure that you click 'Save' setting (provided at the top right corner of the blogger account) as shown in the picture numbered one. The preview setting allows you to visualize and see how your post appears in the blog. Just click 'Preview' button (numbered 2 in the below picture) and you will see your blog. It's always advisable to preview multiple number of times to identify any correction like alignment, picture size, text appearance etc before publishing any content.


Whenever you feel like going back to your blogger dashboard or settings page, just click over your blog name provided at the top left corner. For example; for our Test EBS blog, I have to click like shown below.


Step - 9


OK, Now you understood all the settings features while creating a post along with the SEO settings, if your content is ready and you are satisfied with the preview appearance, finally click 'Publish' orange button to deliver your content to the world (example shown below). That's it. The same steps apply for all of your blog posts.



Hope this helps.

Feel free to share your thoughts and suggestions by posting a comment below. 

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4 comments:

  1. very good post, I will be reading because I really liked your blog

    regards

    ReplyDelete
  2. Nice post and more information you have given Thanks

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. welcome, go thru the complete "Make your blog" series for more info:)

      Delete