You’ve written an article. Now comes the part where most bloggers miss opportunities: publishing it strategically.
Here’s the reality: Clicking “Publish” isn’t enough if you want people to actually find your content. Search engines look at dozens of factors when deciding what to rank—your title, your meta description, your internal links, even the time you publish. Getting these right before you hit that button can mean the difference between page one of Google and page nowhere.
We’ve spent years tweaking these settings, watching what works and what doesn’t. Turns out, a few smart decisions during the publishing process can dramatically improve your SEO impact without requiring technical wizardry.
What You’ll Need Before Publishing
Let’s make sure you’ve got everything ready:
- Your article written and edited (doesn’t need to be perfect, but should be mostly done)
- Access to your Badass Network WordPress dashboard
- A clear idea of what your article’s actually about—this sounds obvious, but you’d be surprised how many people can’t summarize their own post in one sentence
- Basic understanding of your target audience and what they’re searching for
- About 15 minutes to configure everything properly
The Pre-Publish SEO Checklist
Before you even think about clicking Publish, we walk through this checklist. Every single time.
Your Title Needs Work (Probably)
Look at your current title. Does it clearly communicate what someone will learn? Does it include the main keyword people would search for?
Most first-draft titles are either too clever or too vague. “My Thoughts on Gardening” won’t rank for anything. “How to Grow Tomatoes in Small Spaces” will.
Here’s what we’ve learned works:
- Front-load your keyword. Put the most important search term at the beginning. “SEO Tips for Bloggers” beats “Bloggers Need These SEO Tips” in search rankings.
- Keep it under 60 characters. Google cuts off titles around 60 characters in search results. You can go longer, but make sure your key message fits within that limit.
- Make it specific. “Content Marketing Guide” is generic. “Content Marketing for SaaS Startups: 7 Strategies That Work” tells people exactly what they’re getting.
Meta Descriptions Actually Matter
Scroll down to the Excerpt section in your post settings. This becomes your meta description—the text that appears below your title in Google search results.
Yeah, Google sometimes rewrites these, but writing your own usually gives you better click-through rates than letting Google pull random sentences from your article.
Here’s the formula we use:
Start with your primary keyword
Start with your primary keyword naturally integrated
Explain the benefit
Explain the benefit or solution in 150-160 characters
End with a reason to click
End with a reason to click (question, promise, or curiosity gap)
See? Keyword at the start, clear benefit, specific enough to attract the right readers. Write this before you publish—not after when you’ve already moved on to your next post.
URL Slug Configuration
Click on the title of your post and look at the permalink (URL) just below it. WordPress auto-generates this from your title, but it’s often messy.
Edit that slug.
Your URL should be:
- Lowercase with hyphens (not underscores or spaces)
- Include your primary keyword naturally
- Short and readable (4-6 words max)
- Match your content accurately
Bad URL: badassnetwork.com/yourblog/my-article-about-publishing-and-getting-seo-right-2025
Good URL: badassnetwork.com/yourblog/publish-seo-article
It’s a small detail that makes a surprisingly big difference. Clean URLs rank better and get clicked more often.
Internal Linking Strategy
This is where we see people mess up constantly. They write great content and forget to link it to anything else on their blog.
Search engines use internal links to understand your site structure and determine which pages matter most. Plus, internal links keep readers on your site longer, which signals to Google that your content’s valuable.
Here’s our approach
Link to 2-4 related posts within your article. Find natural spots where you mention a topic you’ve covered before. Don’t force it—if there’s genuinely no related content, that’s fine. But usually, there is.
Use descriptive anchor text. Instead of “click here” or “this article,” use text that describes what the linked page covers: “our guide to writing SEO-friendly titles” or “strategies for optimizing images.”
Link early and throughout. Don’t save all your links for the end. Spread them naturally where they add value. We typically include one link in the introduction, 1-2 in the body, and maybe one in the conclusion.
Link to your cornerstone content. Got a comprehensive guide that you want to rank well? Link to it from multiple newer posts. Google interprets frequent internal links as a signal that the page’s important.
Categories and Tags (Yes, They Matter for SEO)
Over in the right sidebar, you’ll see Categories and Tags. These aren’t just for organization—they affect your site structure and how search engines crawl your content.
Categories
Choose 1-2 broad categories that represent the main topic. Don’t select five categories just because you can. Each category creates a separate archive page, and spreading your content too thin dilutes your SEO authority.
We recommend having 5-10 main categories total across your blog. More than that gets messy fast.
Tags
Add 3-7 specific tags that describe subtopics within your post. Tags help readers find related content and give search engines more context about what your article covers.
Think of categories as your table of contents and tags as your index. Both need to be intentional.
Featured Images and Alt Text
Upload a featured image if you haven’t already. Posts with images get more engagement, better social media shares, and slightly better SEO performance.
Click your image. In the settings panel on the right, you’ll find the Alt Text field. This is critical for SEO.
Alt text describes what’s in the image for screen readers and search engines. It’s also what appears if the image fails to load. Write a clear, descriptive phrase that includes your keyword if it’s natural.
Good alt text: “Person clicking publish button on WordPress dashboard for SEO article”
Bad alt text: “image123” or “publishing SEO publish SEO maximize SEO” (keyword stuffing)
Keep it to 10-15 words. Describe what someone would see if they looked at the image. That’s it.
Publishing Timing (Yeah, It Matters)
You can publish immediately or schedule for later. Here’s what we’ve learned about timing.
Best times to publish blog posts
- Tuesday through Thursday, 9-11 AM in your target audience’s timezone tends to get the most initial engagement
- Avoid weekends unless your niche specifically reads on weekends (some do)
- Consistency matters more than perfect timing. If you publish every Monday at 8 AM, your regular readers start to expect that
Google doesn’t directly rank posts higher based on publish time, but initial engagement (clicks, shares, time on page) sends positive signals that can boost rankings.
To schedule a post
Click the Publish panel
Click the Publish panel in the top-right. Select the date and time next to “Publish immediately.”
Pick your schedule
Pick your preferred schedule, then hit Schedule.
We usually write several posts in advance and schedule them to go live throughout the week. Keeps our publishing consistent even when life gets busy.
Readability and SEO Settings
Before you finalize, scan through your article one more time with fresh eyes. Not for typos—for readability.
Check these elements
- Paragraph length: Most paragraphs should be 3-5 sentences max. Giant blocks of text scare readers away and hurt your bounce rate.
- Subheadings every 200-400 words: Break up long content with H2 and H3 headings. This makes skimming easier and helps search engines understand your content structure.
- Sentence variation: Mix short punchy sentences with longer explanatory ones. If every sentence is the same length, readers zone out.
- First paragraph clarity: Your opening should immediately explain what the post covers and why someone should care. Don’t bury your point five paragraphs deep.
The Final Preview Check
Click Preview in the top toolbar. Open your post in a new tab and look at it like a stranger would.
Ask yourself:
- Does the title make sense and include my keyword?
- Does the first paragraph hook attention and explain what’s coming?
- Are images loading correctly with proper sizes?
- Do internal links work and open appropriately?
- Is the formatting clean on both desktop and mobile?
- Would I click through and read this if I found it in search results?
If something feels off, go back and fix it. You’ve got unlimited drafts—use them.
Hitting Publish
Alright, you’ve configured everything. Time to actually publish.
Click the Publish button in the top-right corner. WordPress shows a confirmation panel asking if you’re sure. Review the status, visibility, and publish date one last time.
Click Publish again. Done. Your article goes live.
You’ll see a success message with a View Post link. Click it and check your live post. Make sure everything looks right on the actual published version. Occasionally formatting behaves differently once published—better to catch it now than three weeks later.
Congratulations. Your article’s live and optimized for search engines.
Post-Publish SEO Actions
Publishing isn’t the end. Here’s what we do immediately after:
Share on social media. Post your article to Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook—wherever your audience hangs out. Initial traffic signals to Google that people care about your content.
Monitor analytics. Check your traffic in the first 24-48 hours. Are people clicking? Staying on the page? Bouncing immediately? Early engagement data tells you if your title and intro are working.
Update older posts with internal links. Go back to 2-3 related articles you published before and add links to your new post. This helps search engines discover your new content faster and builds your internal linking structure.
Submit to Google Search Console (if you’ve got it set up). This isn’t required—Google will find your post eventually—but manual submission can speed up indexing.
Common Questions We Get
Depends on your site’s authority and competition for the keyword. New blogs might take 3-6 months. Established blogs with good domain authority can rank within days or weeks. Usually, you’ll see your post indexed within a few days, but ranking well takes longer.
Nope. Spread them out. Publishing 5 articles on Monday and then nothing for two weeks signals inconsistency to search engines. One or two posts per week, published consistently, works better than batch publishing.
Yeah, absolutely. In fact, updating posts with fresh information can improve rankings. Go to Posts > All Posts, find your post, click Edit, make changes, and hit Update. Just don’t change your URL slug after publishing—that can mess up existing links and rankings.
Edit your post and add them now. Better late than never. These optimizations can still help even if you add them after publishing. We’ve forgotten plenty of times and gone back to fix things later.
No. Use what makes sense. We typically stick to 1-2 categories and 3-5 tags per post. More than that dilutes your focus and confuses readers trying to browse your archives.
If every other sentence is a link, that’s too many. Aim for 2-4 relevant internal links per 1000 words. Quality over quantity—link where it genuinely adds value for the reader.
What Actually Moves the Needle
After publishing hundreds of posts across our network, here’s what we’ve learned makes the biggest SEO impact:
Write for humans first, search engines second. If your content genuinely helps people, engagement signals will improve your rankings naturally. Keyword-stuffed nonsense ranks poorly no matter how “optimized” it is.
Consistency beats perfection. Publishing regularly matters more than publishing perfectly. A good post published today beats a perfect post you never finish.
Internal linking is underrated. Most bloggers ignore this. Don’t. Spending five minutes adding internal links often improves SEO more than spending an hour tweaking keywords.
Titles and meta descriptions drive clicks. You can rank #3 and get more traffic than the #1 result if your title’s more compelling. Click-through rate matters.
Your first paragraph is critical. If people bounce in five seconds, Google assumes your content doesn’t match the search intent. Hook them immediately or your rankings suffer.
Your Post Is Live—Now What?
You’ve published an SEO-optimized article. You configured your title, meta description, URL, categories, tags, alt text, and internal links. You scheduled it strategically and checked the preview.
What’s next? Write another one. SEO rewards consistency. One optimized post is good. Ten optimized posts published regularly is exponentially better.
And don’t obsess over rankings daily. Check your analytics weekly or monthly. Focus on creating valuable content and the rankings will follow.
Want to go deeper? Check out our guides on keyword research, writing SEO-friendly titles, and optimizing images for search engines. But honestly, just publishing consistently with the strategies above will put you ahead of 80% of bloggers.
Related Resources
- Writing SEO-Friendly Blog Titles — Craft titles that rank well and attract clicks from search results
- Internal Linking Best Practices — Build your site structure and improve SEO with strategic internal links
- Optimizing Images for the Web — Compress, resize, and configure images for faster loading and better SEO
- Using Keywords Effectively — Research and integrate keywords naturally without keyword stuffing
Need Help?
Something not working? Your post not showing up in search results? We’re here.
- Contact Badass Network Support with details about your issue
- Include your blog URL and the specific post you’re trying to optimize
- Let us know what you’ve already tried from this guide
- Screenshots of your settings help us troubleshoot faster
We typically respond within 24 hours.