Changes

This page is a summary of how to effectively use the tools in WordPress to set up your blog post.

You can copy and paste your post's contents directly into wordpress's post editor. There are two ways to view your post - visual or text. Remember to check that there are no annoying tags in your post by checking the text view.

*'''No Span Tags''': If the post is copied and pasted out of Google docs, there will HTML span tags everywhere that can cause problems. The best way to avoid these tags is to copy and paste into a text editor (like Textpad on the RDP), and then copy and paste out of textpad into the blog.

We must link all of our sources within blog posts. To do this, highlight any word or phrase in your post and click on the icon that looks like a chain in the text toolbar above your content. Then past a link into the box that appears and press enter.

All graphics must be licensed for reuse. Contact the Graphics Editor for help choosing and citing graphics.

'''To place a photo within the blog post,''' click on the "ad media" button on the top toolbar in WordPress for the post. Upload your image. Once it is in the content, you can move it around as you please within the post. If you click on a graphic it will let you align it left, right, or center within a paragraph, as well as a standalone image. It is probably best to put a graphic at the very start of a paragraph. Every post should have at least one graphic.

Every post should be assigned to at least one category. Try to use existing categories when you can. When you have to create a new one, make sure you check with an editor that you are creating something sensible.

Every post also needs to be tagged. The tags help link the posts together, are used in the tag cloud, and are used by search engines. Use existing tags when possible but create new tags as needed. Make sure your capitalization is consistent. Don't use stopwords or very common words as tags. Try to be broad and descriptive with your tags.

Yoast SEO is a tool which analyses blog pages and attempts to identify areas for improvement, both in terms of how the text is structured and how it is presented in search engines. If you want a more in-depth description of Yoast SEO and some of its main features, you may visit their online webpage [https://yoast.com/use-content-analysis-yoast-seo/].

# Scroll past the content box for the blog. Below the content box, you should find the "Yoast SEO" tool

The Content tab uses algorithms to determine whether your text may be too complex for readability by a general internet readership. It will provide you with information about trends in your writing and offer suggestions for altering the text to make it easier to read and understand. Try to get the general score in this tab to orange or green. These are relatively straightforward, but more information on content analysis can be found at the Yoast SEO webpage [https://yoast.com/use-content-analysis-yoast-seo/].

*Other: Use your common sense.

This section describes some of the more common features of the SEO tab. More information on SEO analysis can be found at the Yoast SEO webpage [https://yoast.com/use-content-analysis-yoast-seo/].

The "slug" is the part of the URL that identifies your article (ex. for mcnair.bakerinstitute.org/wiki/taylor_jacobe "/taylor_jacobe" is the slug). To choose your slug, use the "Snippet Editor" feature and use the "Slug" box. The plugin will say something if you slug includes a stop word. See below for more information on stop words and whether they will hurt or harm you in your specific case.

'''Note:''' We think that focus keyword may not be used by Google anymore, even though the plugin says otherwise. Google meta tags function similarly to the focus keyword, and we are allowed to have multiple. Because of this, you should just make your focus keyword something that will make the plugin happy and can be included in your meta description.

Your focus keyword is the word or phrase that you would put into a search engine to find this post. Picking a good focus keyword requires strategy in order to increase your chances of having your post ranked higher in search results. See link [https://yoast.com/focus-keyword/] for more on how to choose an appropriate focus keyword. Please also note that your focus keyword must also be in your meta description, so it should be a word or phrase that could be used in a sentence (ex. "Egan dog" for a post about Ed's dog would not be a good focus keyword because the phrase would be hard to use in a sentence in your meta description). We cannot specify more than one focus keyword per blog post, so be thoughtful in your choice.

The meta description is what is shown in the Google description when a link to your page comes up as a search result. It is important to use your focus keyword (see above) in your meta description. If there is no meta description or the meta description does not contain the focus keyword, Google will grab a random piece of text (usually the first sentence or two) from your blog and use that as the description. This is not optimal in terms of drawing in readers. To create the meta description, use the "Snippet Editor" feature in the SEO tab and input the description in the "Meta Description" box. See link [https://yoast.com/meta-descriptions/] for tips on making a good meta description.

''Search for the title of your blog post, with stop words and without them. If the results are different in both the cases, then it is clear that Google is considering the stop words. So, it makes sense for you to retain stop words in your title'' [http://www.gobloggingtips.com/stop-words/].

This link has some details on how to tag your blog posts for Google search optimization through meta tags: [https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/79812?hl=en]

[[Category:Internal]]