Blog Posting Instructions

1. GENERAL:a. Go to http://www.thecaselawfirm.com/wplogin1 and log in. b. Click on “Posts” on the menu going down the left side of the page.c. At the top of the “Posts” page – choose “Add New”d. Once in the new blog post, follow the instructions below.

2. FOCUS KEYWORDa. Before you post, identify a “focus keyword.” You can read more about focus keywords

here, but in general, what you want is a term that people might search for which you want to lead them to your post. So, for instance, some keywords I have used so far in updating our SEO are: paid sick leave, sexual orientation discrimination, gender gap, etc. You want it specific enough to be relevant to your post and general enough that someone might actually put those words in the google search box.

b. Once you identify your focus keyword, you want to include in several portions of your blog:

i. Your titleii. Your permalink

iii. Your subheadingiv. The first paragraph of your postv. Other places throughout the text of your post if it is natural

1. Don’t go crazy with this or google may penalize us for keyword stuffingvi. Your “snippet” in the “Yoast SEO” section of the page on which you post a blog

vii. The “Focus Keyword” field of the “Yoast SEO” sectionI have been going back through our old posts and editing them to include the focus keyword and revising titles and first paragraphs as necessary to do so.

NOTE: Tense and form of the word matters. So, if your focus keyword is “family friendly workplace” then using “family friendly workplaces” in the title or snippet will not boost the SEO. Similarly, if your focus keyword is “pay disparity” then you cannot use “disparate pay”. And if your focus keyword includes “discrimination” you should not later use “discriminate.” So be conscious of that when inserting it throughout, you may have to play with your wording a little bit to get the grammar right. This does not mean that you can’t ever use some other formation of the focus keyword. Most of our blog posts riff on the keyword throughout the substantive content. But in the title, permalink, subheading (and other locations identified above), you want to be sure that you are being consistent in using the same form of the focus keyword.

3. HEADINGSa. Title

i. Include a title in the “Enter title here” field of the page – here:

ii. Be sure that the title is concise and includes the focus keyword. iii. You want the main title to be 65 characters or less so that the entire title is

visible in the search results of a google search. iv. If you include the focus keyword in your title, it will automatically be included in

the permalink. 1. If, however, you go back and change your title at some point before

posting, you will need to manually change the permalink here:

b. Subheading i. You want to include a subheading which also contains the focus keyword – this

one can be as long as you want, so feel free to exceed the 65 character limit.ii. Just above the box in which you enter the substantive blog content, you will see

a drop down menu that says “Paragraph”. Click on the arrow to open the menu and choose “Heading 2” - like this:

iii. Then type the subheading at the top of the main blog post box. It should automatically appear in bold (because that’s how our subheadings are

formatted for consistency), so there is no need for you to play with the formatting. It should look like this:

iv. Hit “enter after you enter the subheading and the formatting should automatically change from “Heading 2” back to “Paragraph”. Now you are ready to enter the substantive content of your blog. It should look like this:

4. SUBSTANTIVE CONTENTa. You can cut and paste your blog content directly from Word to the blog post page. b. The font size and format will automatically convert to our consistent style, so you should

not change that. c. Do check to make sure that there is not excessive spacing between paragraphs though.d. Make sure to use your focus keyword in the first paragraph of the content.e. Bonus points if you include your focus keyword another time or two throughout – but

this is not the biggest deal.

5. HYPERLINKSa. External links:

i. You want to include at least one (and as many as seems reasonable) external hyperlink in your blog post. So, for instance, if you’re discussing a supreme court decision, link to the decision. If you’re discussing a news article, link to the article. If you’re discussing new legislation, link to the proposed act. It’s pretty hard to have a blog in which you cannot find at least one external link to include.

ii. NOTE: In selecting an external hyperlink, you want to avoid using a webpage that has a title which includes your focus keyword. The reasoning here is that you want internet users to find OUR page when they google a focus keyword,

not someone else’s. By including an external link that also includes that focus keyword in the title or URL, you are boosting the SEO for someone else’s page and likely ranking that page above our own in the search results. So, for instance, if your focus key word is “paid sick leave” you do not want to include an external link to the paid sick leave coalition page.

b. Internal links: i. You also want to include at least one link back to another page on our site. For

instance, if you are referring to a previous blog post and updating it, include the link to the earlier post. If you are discussing non-competes, link to the services page on our site where we discuss non-competes and other restrictive covenants. If you’re posting about an award that Kendra received, link to her bio on the webpage. The services pages are the simplest way to get an internal link included. Virtually all of our posts should relate in some tangential way to at least one service we offer, so figure out a way to include that.

c. Formatting hyperlinks: i. I’m trying to be consistent in how we include links to improve the aesthetics of

our site. So, rather than saying “to read more, go: and then including a long URL,” I think we should be hyperlinking words. So, for instance, if I am discussing a supreme court decision I will say something like: “Last week, in United States v. Windsor, ….” and then include the hyperlink in the title of the case – as I have here – as opposed to including all of this: http://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/12pdf/12-307_6j37.pdf .

ii. Doing this in our blog posting page is really easy. 1. First, find the URL you want to link to and copy it.2. Then, go into the blog post and highlight the words you want to be

hyperlinked – like this:

3. Once you have the terms highlighted, paste the copied URL and it will automatically create a hyperlink.

d. NOTE: As with all other SEO tactics, do not over use this in unnatural ways. We will be penalized for overuse of hyperlinks in ways that don’t make sense or that seem forced.

6. PICTURESa. Find an image that relates in some way to your post either within the stock photos we

have saved in Z:Blog/Stock Photos or at https://pixabay.com/ i. It is fine to reuse an image for posts pertaining to similar things. So, for

instance, I have a picture saved of the U.S. Supreme Court which I am using for all posts discussing supreme court decisions. I have a rainbow flag that I have

been using for most of the LGBT related posts. Some of these images are applicable across posts, so no need to reinvent the wheel.

ii. If we don’t have a stock photo saved, download a new one from pixabay. So far, we have been able to use just the free stock images on that site. KC and I have discussed purchasing some if this proves to be too difficult going forward. We shouldn’t have to spend hours trying to find appropriate photos. So just let us know how this is going for you guys. Once you select a photo, download it in its original size and save it to Z:Blog/Stock Photos with a name that helps identify what it is.

b. In the blog post page, go to “Featured Image” in the bottom right corner of the page – here:

c. Click on “Set featured image”d. Then you can choose from either one of the photos in we have already uploaded in our

“Media Library” or you can go to “Upload Files” and choose the newly downloaded image from the Stock Photo folder.

e. Once an image is selected, you want to make sure that you include the focus keyword in the “Alt Text” field of the image properties – here:

f. Then click, “Set featured image”

7. CATEGORIESa. NOTE: You don’t want to choose too many categories. I would limit it to 1-2 main

categories and 1-2 subcategories. Most blogs will only need a total of 2-3 categories and subcategories combined.

b. The Categories menu is here:

c. Main Categories i. Your options here are: Blog, Employment Law, Executive Counseling, Firm News,

Firm Victories, or Workplace Discriminationii. For each post choose a type of post: Blog, Firm News , or Firm Victories

iii. If applicable, also choose a content area category: Employment Law, Executive Counseling, or Workplace Discrimination

d. Subcategories i. You want to choose one subcategory within the content-area main category

1. Note: You can create a new one if it doesn’t already exist and it’s something you think we will write about more than once in the history of the blog.

ii. You may want to choose a subcategory within the Blog category as well – this only applies if it is a “Practical Tips” or “Legislative Advocacy” type post. Otherwise, just leave it at Blog.

8. TAGSa. Enter any relevant keywords in the Tags box here:

b. You can separate them by commas and then hit “Add” and the page will automatically separate them into separate tags.

c. Here is where you want to identify other things that people might search for that are related to your post but different from your focus keyword. So if your focus keyword is “paid sick leave” you might want to include “paid sick days” or “FMLA”

d. Do not stuff your post full of unrelated tags that you hope will increase traffic. Google doesn’t like this. KC and I had started to put “Chicago employment lawyer” and “Illinois employment law” on every post, but that is not something we should be doing unless the post is about Illinois law or about one of us specifically.

9. YOAST SEOa. Below the substantive content, you will see a section of the page titled “Yoast SEO” - it

looks like this:

There are several important SEO tools you need to use in this menu, including: Snippet, Focus Keyword, and Content Analysis

b. Snippet

i. First, you need to click on “Edit snippet” to open a window in which you can include a “Meta description”. This is the short subtext that appears under a title in the google search results.

ii. You will note that the “SEO title” and “Slug” are automatically generated by our website – so no need to play with those.

iii. In the Meta description field though, you want to include a short snippet that tells the reader what the post is about. You want it to be between 130 and 155 characters and you want it to include your focus keyword. For some additional tips on drafting a good meta description, take a look at this article.

c. Focus Keywordi. Enter your focus keyword in the box under that same heading, here:

d. Content Analysisi. Finally, wordpress is pretty great and will tell you ways in which to better

optimize SEO on the post.

ii. Once you have entered your title, subheading, content, meta description, focus keyword, image, and everything else, go to the portion of the page labeled “Content Analysis” – here:

iii. This list shows you things you are doing well in SEO (indicated by a green bullet point), things you are doing okay (indicated in orange), and things you haven’t done or have failed at (indicated in red). We are likely never going to have all green. For instance, our keyword densities are usually pretty low (that’s fine) and the Flesch Reading Ease test is usually pretty poor for our posts (I think because we are usually talking about legal issues) – but the goal here is to have as many green points as possible and, always, to have more green than any other color. This is an indicator that you have best optimized your post to draw traffic to the page.

iv. This is nice because it serves as a reminder of most of the items outlined above.

10. AUTHORa. If you are posting as yourself and have logged into the webpage as yourself, then no

need to do anything with the author.b. However, if you are posting for someone else – or if you are logged in using someone

else’s login and posting for yourself – you will need to be sure that the correct author is chosen.

c. Just choose the right name in the drop down menu located at the bottom of the blog post page, here:

d. NOTE: If we are posting a firm victory or firm news, I think that the author should be Becca for consistency. Whereas, if we’re posting a substantive blog entry, the author should be the author!

11. PUBLISHa. Once you have done all of the above, you are ready to publish.b. The “publish” field on the blog post page is in the upper right hand corner, here:

c. Just click “Publish” in blue and the post should automatically be sent to our webpage and our social media sites.

d. NOTE: If you have done a good job with the SEO tactics included above, the circle next to the word SEO at the top of the page should be green. Like this:

i. At a minimum, you want the circle to be orange. If it’s red, please go back to the post and try to work on getting your keywords better implemented, etc.