Before You Hit Publish: A 10-Minute Blog Post Checklist

You wrote the thing. It took about twice as long as you figured it would. Now you just want it off your desk and live on the site.

That's exactly the moment most small business blog posts get quietly ruined.

Nothing dramatic happens. The post goes up with a title nobody would click, no link to the page where somebody could actually hire you, and a last line that says thanks for reading. It sits there. It does nothing. And six months later you decide blogging doesn't work.

Ten minutes of checking beats another hour of writing. Think of it like the walk-around you do before a long drive. Two minutes on the tires beats an hour on the shoulder.

Here's the list we run before a post goes live.

1. Read the title like you've never seen it

Open your own blog page and look at the new title sitting next to the ones already there. Would you click it? Be honest.

Titles that work usually do one of two things. They name a problem the reader has right now, or they promise a straight answer. "Spring Lawn Prep" does neither. "When to Put Down Crabgrass Preventer (It's Earlier Than You Think)" does both.

Count your characters too. Google usually shows somewhere around 60 before it trims the rest, so put the words that matter up front. If your business name is the first thing in every title, you're spending your best real estate on the one thing the reader already knows.

2. Make the first two lines answer one question

Somebody landed here from a search. Their only question is: is this about my thing?

Your first two lines have to answer yes. Cut any opening that starts with a history lesson or a definition. Start where the reader already is. "Your gutters are overflowing and it hasn't even rained hard yet" beats "Gutters are an important part of home maintenance" every single time.

3. Read only the subheads

Skip the paragraphs. Read your section headings top to bottom, like a list. Do they tell the story on their own?

Most people scan a post before they decide to read it, so the subheads are doing more work than you think. If they read like a table of contents nobody would follow, the writing underneath is probably wandering too. We made the whole case for building your subheads before you write a word, because it prevents about half of these problems before they start.

4. Add the two links you forgot

Almost every draft that comes across our desk has zero links in it. Two kinds are usually missing.

First, one link to the page where somebody could actually hire you for the thing you just wrote about. If the post is about crabgrass, link the lawn care service page. Not the homepage. The homepage makes them go hunting.

Second, one or two links to your own older posts on related topics. This is the step everyone skips, and it's why so many decent posts end up sitting alone with nothing pointing at them. We got into why that quietly hurts you in our post on the pages nobody can find, including Google.

5. Put one real thing in it

Find the sentence in your post that only you could have written. If there isn't one, add it.

A real number. A real season your customers actually feel. A real thing people say on the phone. Something like "we get about a dozen calls the first warm weekend in March, and half of them are already too late for preventer" is worth more than four paragraphs of general advice, because nobody else in your town can say it.

It's also the fastest way to sound like a person instead of a generic article, which matters more now that so much of what's online reads the same.

6. End with one ask, not three

Look at your last paragraph and count what you're asking for. Call us, and follow us, and download this, and leave a comment below. Pick one.

Then make it specific. "Call us if you want a quote before the first warm weekend" is a real ask. "Contact us today" is furniture. The same rule applies to social posts, which we picked apart in the piece on fixing your last line.

7. Write the blurb Google shows

The little description under your link in search results comes from your meta description. Most blog platforms have a field for it, usually tucked into an SEO tab in the post settings. Leave it blank and the search engine grabs whatever sentence it feels like.

Keep it to roughly 155 characters, write it like something a person would actually say, and work in the words somebody would have typed to find you. It takes about forty seconds. Almost nobody does it.

8. Look at it on your phone

Most of your readers are on a phone, so open the post on yours before you tell anybody about it. You're looking for three things: a wall of text with no breaks, an image that got cropped weird, and links that are hard to tap with a thumb.

If you want to be thorough, Google Search Console has a URL Inspection tool. Paste your live post URL into the search bar across the top, then click Test Live URL. It'll tell you whether Google can actually see the page. That's a two minute check that saves you from wondering for a month why the post never showed up anywhere.

The bottom line

None of this is writing. It's the ten minutes after the writing, and it's usually the difference between a post that brings you calls and a post that just exists on your website.

Print the list. Tape it near your desk. Run it every time, and you'll notice the posts start pulling their weight.

And if this sounds like one more job you don't have time for, that's fair. Writing blog posts for small businesses is one of the two things we do most, along with running social media. If you'd rather hand it off, here's how our blog writing works, and here's how to reach us.