You just finished your post and took a sigh of relief. And, after a quick final rundown you publish it to your blog, and is waiting for the tweets, feedback, and shares or any sort of comments.
But once again, you got nothing. Probably, With around 1.4 million WordPress blog post published in a single day there may be no-one reading it.
So, what’s the worriment?
Of-course, it can be the deficit in writing. As it is not that much strong as it is required to be. But there is a fair chance it’s not your writing, indeed
“IT’S YOUR FORMATTING”.
Since past many years, I have reviewed numerous and distinctive blogs and posts, and they were fairly well-written. While some were really down to the list by poor formatting skills – simply “The post just didn’t appeared good”.
On one hand, it means opting for WordPress plugin development and continuing creating those websites that will host all those millions of post on daily basis.
But on the other side, aside from building sites you do a fair bit of publishing too, this makes the environment a real challenge. It understand the mind-bending number – 1.4 million posts daily.
- How to make your post stand out?
- What makes them worth noticing?
“Quality” is one fundamental parameter to craft a niche in the already established hierarchy.
You invest your hours curating the latest piece of writing, right?
- But, does it reflect the same?
- Is it easy to read or easy to skim?
- Are the main points out of the page, urging the reader to read more?
- And, the most important is “Did You Format WordPress Blog Post Correctly”? WordPress plugin development
Indeed, 40% of people will just leave without even scrolling down through your post (aka they will “bounce”). And, Of those left, mostly will get to the halfway of your content, if you’re fortunate. But you can make things better with WordPress plugin developers too.
Here in this article, I am going to unfurl the helpful yet exciting secrets to help you format WordPress blog posts right way, primarily based on 3 million words of experience in publishing content.
In case, you are sitting at the fence, that’s five years of writing with 5-7 posts per week with each having a count of around 2-3k words. So, let’s have a glimpse of what all those words have taught me.
WordPress Formatting Basics
To ace any trait, you must have a comprehensive understanding of the primitives. If still, you didn’t accomplish the mastery, you’ll be good at the basics that will put you leap and bound the average blog aloft.
By which virtue?
Start from formatting adds white space.
This makes page appear more scanable. As content is easy to read and understand if it’s in small pieces, with important points highlighted. Some more formatting tips are as follow;
- Short paragraphs (no longer than 3-4 lines)
- Sub-headings every 300 words or so (Try To include the keywords)
- Put pointers (Bullet and numbered lists)
- Bold and italics
- Highlighted texts and Quotes
- Internal links – linking to other content on your site (Trust flow factor)
Besides these formatting fundamentals, you should pay attention in adding strong and relevant images and graphs.
A Healthy Tip: While creating your blog and trying to format WP blog posts, assure to ensure everything looks perfect on mobile as well. Nowadays, Google is penalizing non-mobile-friendly sites.
Now, let’s have a deep dive for every know-how of the formatting skills to draw a clear and accurate picture.
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Breakdown The Big Paragraphs
Without any doubt long paragraphs look a writer is rambling or is writing a book.
But, this is not a book. It’s a content. We are writing for the 3’WWW ruling the world (World Wide Web). That’s the inception for small paragraphs.
Now, surprisingly you would have notice what big difference are crafted from small paragraphs. So, go through your post and make sure no paragraph is having more than 3-4 lines.
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Sub-Headings Are Imperative
Sub-headings help in reducing the bounce rate. As it helps readers skim your content and get to the section that relates precisely with their requirements ASAP.
Also, in PSD To WordPress theme 300 words is just a ballpark focalpoint. You can definetly go above or under that; it’s merely a game of digits to shoot for making things alluring.
So, as a pro tip: While developing your subheads, you can opt for one of two ways:
- Roll-out the vital information, detail exactly what the section will be about.
- Use copywriting tactics to engage your readers to go-through the entire section.
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Put The Main Takeaways In Points
While you scroll for a post online, what is the first and foremost thing you look for?
Ofcourse, images first. And after images, I bet the odds for heading and pointers. However, while crafting and curating bullet points, there are four things to keep in mind:
- Make the word limit consistent for every point.
- Just be sure the information you are listing is essential.
- Start with bolding your content at the beginning of the bulleted points. If you strive to adhere, make sure you do this with, front load bullets with the most crucial data or the information and follow the points.
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Use “Bold” and “Italics” To Call Out The Key Points
Bold and italics are the right approach to draw the subtle difference between the better and the good piece of writing, as they draw the attention and create emphasis.
Just imagine “If Everything is Bold, Nothing Is Bold”!
While me writing this post, I often pay attention to complete the article first, the have a rundown again and bold the important tiny bits. Sometimes they encounter my thinking process while writing, but what shines is the editorial process.
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Add Block Quotes
Did you paid attention in the starting section about breaking up paragraphs. I put up a box for the called out text, making it a little distinctive for the special information to be share and get noticed.
No-no, it not only call out important information, but it also act as a breakthrough from the monotonous text. You see, our brains “chunk-down” the provided information.
And, custom WordPress plugin development company works on this approach and make the chunking process a lot easier, helping you to easily scan the information and maximizing the recall.
Now, the question arises “Is adding a quote simple?”.
Yes! Following the words of Paul Rand:
Design Is So Simple. That’s Why It Is So Complicated.
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Add Great Images
As I am abiding by my promise to share more about using the images in your written piece, here it goes.
You know not to use cheesy stock photos, also you should not fall for the creepy clipart images you just pull of from Google. (It’s not the matter of just suck but it’s breaching with the copyrighting laws)
Rather, put up stats images, graphs, charts, screenshots, infographics and HD photos.
In The Nutshell
The success mantra of writing a good blog post is to get audience actually to read it, right?
Hopefully, with the practical formatting tips and tactics for WordPress discussed in the blog, you would mark an upsurge in your time on page, minimal bounce rate, and (if you track scroll depth) an unexpected greater scroll-through rate for your blogs.