Adding Articles to your Blog

Before you add your 1st article:
  1) Create at least one Category 
  2) Create at least one Author

1) Login

2) Click the "Blog" admin menu.  (NOTE: if your blog has been renamed to something like "Financial Services Blog" you will not see "Blog" in your admin menu, you will see "Financial Services."

3) Click "Write a new Article" link.

4) Complete all Fields in the Blog.

1. Title - (required) Page Title is the most important place Google looks to index the keywords for the article, so enter a meaningful phrase that people search.  This field also creates the URL for the page, also known as the Permalink. 
   The URL for the page is considered the 2nd most important keyword area for Google.  After you save the page, for the 1st time, you can change the Blog Title but you can never change the URL.  If you want to change the URL for the article, you will need to create a new article.
   1. Tips when creating Article Titles:
      1. Have your Article Titles be two parts.
      2. Part 1: Popular Keyword Phrase
      3. Part 2: Hook Phrase
      4. Example Title: Best Content Management System - Compare the top 5 CMS
      5. NOTE: If you have a catchy Article Title that does NOT include a Keyword Phrase then the chances of your article being found are very slim :-(
         
         
2. Author - You must assign an Author to each article.  If you don't see any Authors in the dropdown list, please visit this page to learn how to add an Author
   
   
3. Primary Category - You must assign each article to a Primary Category.  If you don't see any Categories in the dropdown list, please visit this page to learn how to add Categories
   
   
4. Body Content - This is where you type your article.  If you are copying your article from a word processing application, like Microsoft Word, we highly recommend you Copy the document into the Blurb field, then Copy it out of the Blurb field before Pasting it into the Body field.  This will strip away all the junk formatting from Microsoft Word.  If you have problems formatting your articles, 99% of the time it's because you did not paste clean text into the Html Editor.
   
   
5. Blurb - The Blurb text is what you see on the article index page that displays all your articles.  The text you place in the Blurb field can be as much as the entire article, or no text.  We recommend you put part of the 1st paragraph of your article in the Blurb field.  This whets the appetite of the reader to want to read the entire article.
   
   
6. Short Description - This field is used as the "META Description" for the article.  META means "behind," so this text is not seen in the article but is displayed behind the article for Google to index.  Think of it as the Cliff Notes for the entire article, for Google to understand what the article is about.  You should strongly consider using keywords in this section that support the Title of the article, so you will be more highly ranked in Google searches.  Try to keep the length of your Short Description to 2 sentences.  Google will not look at any characters beyond approximately 150-160 characters.

SETTING ARTICLE DATE:

1. By default the publishing date of the Article is the date you 1st save the Article ("Publish Immediately").
2. You can change the publishing date by clicking the checkbox on the "Publish this article on" and filling in the desired date.