Documentary encyclobjects: 06 Content creation

Documentary encyclobjects: 06 Content Creation

Creating good and original content, that is the goal of every publication. In our case, we publish a digital magazine, even more so, since the internet is a world without barriers and robots (bots) detect at the minimum any copying, plagiarism or simulation that is intended to be carried out. That is why, for us, too, original content is simply : the goal.

There are other factors that influence us when it comes to maintaining this premise, such as: our own satisfaction and the audience. I really like it when a reader leaves a positive comment on one of my articles, and I guess readers also like to read (or view) good content, therefore, we are in the same boat.

• Editorial content

Creating good original content isn’t that simple. It requires prior work of searching for topics, inclusion in an editorial calendar, gathering information, writing the article, rating the editor, scheduling, publishing, content marketing, and monitoring the publication.

We follow all these stages step by step, and we do it as follows:

– Topic search. We limit our content to the world of accessories, complements and objects, and within this world, we refer to high-value products (not only economical, e.g.: a Zippo lighter is not excessively expensive, but it is excellent), and to highly prestigious brands. In the first stage (where we are now), the search for topics is selective, looking for impact brands, although not the most well-known, to provoke a certain curiosity. Later, we will alternate the contents to fill each of the containers of our publication.

– Editorial calendar. Our editorial calendar is the Newsletter. On a monthly basis, our newsletter presents new content every first of the month. We usually work a couple of months in advance, but it is not always possible to keep up the pace and it is necessary to readjust it for an article that is delayed (On these occasions, it is possible to hear a word louder than usual in the Editor’s office).

– Permissions: We usually request permission, when we decide to start an article, from the owners of the sites from which we intend to obtain the information. Both images and texts can be protected by copyright and we must not violate those rights. Therefore, we always advise you to request authorization for the use of content that is not from our domain. In the vast majority of cases, we have always been given permission to use content.

– Collection of information. The author in charge of writing (or recording) the article collects information about it, whether audiovisual, graphic or written. This information is stored in the assigned folders and in the defined formats (jpg, png, webp, docx, etc…).

– Preparation of the article. With the archived media that the author deems appropriate, he begins to write or record the article. Each time you use a medium, you record it in the Bibliography and media box. Media that is not used is deleted. The content is included in the post, the media is added ( Filebird Lite plugin, Youtube), translated (WPML) and formatted. It is saved and as appropriate, scheduled or reprogrammed.

– Editor’s assessment. The Editor is the editorial manager of the publication and is responsible for evaluating the publication and suggesting changes or not, in accordance with the editorial line.

– Programming. If the Publisher has given its approval, the publication is scheduled or reprogrammed definitively , adding it to the corresponding Newsletter .

– Content marketing. In addition to the publication in our Newsletter and its dissemination by e-mail (Brevo Plugin), it is also published and disseminated on Social Networks such as XTwitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Pinterest, Tumblr, Instagram, RSS and Youtube (via Nelio Content). In addition, sampling can be carried out by Whatsapp.

– Follow-up of the publication. The Brevo plugin provides us with valuable statistics about the sending, opening, clicks and activity of our Newsletters. Also, the Social Networks in which we publish content provide us with information about the activity. This information is unified in the Nelio Content plugin. The Monarch plugin does not give an overview of social media tracking.

• Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

WordPress is a content management system (CMS) and on its own, it allows you to add meta descriptions, titles, headings, alt text, tags, custom URLs, and other SEO-friendly tools. If you know SEO basics, have up-to-date information about the search algorithms used by Google, Bing and Yandex and have plenty of time, you can perform all the SEO actions of your website, without plugins (plugins), in search of “organic” positioning. And you might get good results.

Not me. I don’t have extensive knowledge of SEO, nor am I up to date with algorithms, nor do I have all the time in the world to dedicate exclusively to encyclobjects.com SEO. That’s why, in the first instance, I relied on the “WordPress SEO reference”: Yoast SEO. And I started with it, but it was very complicated.

Have you ever wondered why WordPress has so many boxes and options? I do, and on one occasion I asked this question to a technician who, surprisingly, answered: – I don’t know, but surely so that they are filled out or not and they choose one thing or another. Hahahahahahahahaha… But since I’m so stupid!

When someone, who knows what they are doing, puts a checkbox , it is for it to be verified or not, and if it contemplates options, it is simply for you to choose one. From that moment on, I devoted a lot more attention to my WordPress and its damn boxes and options.

This is what happens with SEO, to do good SEO you have to be super methodical and fill in all the boxes, or not, and choose one of the options (yes or yes). That’s why I needed to change plugins, because until I figured out what the hell that box was doing, it took an afternoon. All for not putting a link with a question mark next to it!

Weeks later, due to a query I made to Elegant Themes, I was recommended to try Rank Math SEO. And I did. What I liked the most was that, being free, everything was very tidy and all the queries (although in English) were at hand, with a very complete documentation ( the Rank Math videos are great). Installation was simple and, using the wizard, it was set up very quickly.

I soon discovered the Monitor 404 and my nightmares would begin. Although then I hatched it and started to perform Redirects and it was improving little by little. So much so that I quickly raised my ranking and everything started to make sense. The improvement was further increased when I upgraded the plugin to the Pro version, as I could fine-tune the posts more.

In general, Rank Math Pro is a very complete plugin, it acts on all the SEO chapters you need to consider. Its main qualities and settings are (in green the ones we have activated):

– Desktop: It is very complete and, in the first place, it presents all the modules that you can activate: Monitor 404, ACF, AMP, Analytics, bbPress, BuddyPress, Content AI, Image SEO, Instant Indexing, Link Counter, Local SEO, News Sitemap, Podcast, Redirects, Schema (structured data), Profile Manager, SEO Analyzer, Sitemap, Video Sitemap, Google Web Stories, Woocommerce.

You have a Help tab that will help you set up Rank Math, import data, and improve your SEO score. You also have the support with Online Documentation, Ticket Support and if you want, Affiliate Program. Another interesting part is the Configuration Wizard (follow it) and Import and Export (Very handy when installing the plugin elsewhere and taking the settings with you).

– Content AI: Paid extension although they grant you free credits every month. We only use it for keywords. At the moment, we don’t use it in content creation, first, waiting to know how Google is going to penalize websites where it detects content with AI, and second, we like original content better.

– Analytics: You need to connect Rank Math with Google Analytics. The information it provides is impressive: Dashboard (very comprehensive), Site Analytics, SEO Performance, Keywords, Score Tracking , and Indexing Status.

– General Settings: Links, Breadcrumbs, Images, Webmaster Tools, Robots.txt, Other, Blocks, Woocommerce, .htaccess, 404 Monitor, Redirects, Analytics, AI Content.

– Titles and Goal: Global Goal, Local SEO, Social Goal, Homepage, Authors, Other Pages.

– Sitemap settings: General, html map, Content types, Taxonomies, Special maps.

– Instant Indexing: Instant URL submission to Bing Webmasters Tools and Yandex, Settings, History.

– Schema templates: To create special templates.

– Profile manager: To give permission to other users and manage SEO.

– 404 Monitor: Very important, it helps to detect errors.

– Redirects: Troubleshooting URLs that cause errors.

– SEO analyzer: It analyzes the complete state of SEO in one fell swoop, it also gives you information about the competition.

– Status and tools: You have to check from time to time to find out if everything is going well. Important for database control, you can purge the analytic cache, recalculate data and scores, and delete and flush records.

– Help and support: One word: Awesome.

• Categories and tags

Categories and labels, generically taxonomies (RAE Dictionary: 2.f. classification, the action of classifying), are used in WordPress to structure posts (articles). Just like a library categorizes its books into topics, countries, reading type, or language or authors, WordPress structures content into categories and tags. They are very important for users as they will make it easier to search for content. They are also important for SEO, as they will allow search engines to “understand” the structure of the site and the localization of the content.

– Categories can be hierarchical, i.e. you can create categories that are integrated into a higher category (e.g. Superior category: Sports; Subcategories: Football, Tennis, Athletics, etc…). In principle, it is better not to create many, since if you do not have much content it is not positive to have categories without content. Our magazine, encyclobjects.com, has the following categories: News, Design, Style, Home, Brands, Flash News, Leisure, People, Reports and Work. I have designed broad, generic and stable categories over time, because they are the basic structure of the magazine. I will consider adding subcategories later.

The News category is a “passing” category, where posts enter your publication and leave the category after a while, thus showing in “News” the really recent publications. The Brands and People categories are located in the Protagonists container, while the rest of the categories, except News, are located in Tickets. For a simpler and more graphical location of the categories I have created a Categories page, within the Taxonomies tab of the Posts menu. Also, in the sidebar there is a drop-down widget with all the categories and the number of posts they contain.

At the SEO level, some advise not to include an entry in several categories (it is more of a warning to navigators to avoid mistakes that can affect search engines). Our posts, from the first moment, belong to at least 2 categories (one: Current affairs, a second theme and even a third subsidiary). Our idea is, until we have a large number of entries, to always show the containers full, to count, from the outset, with the indexing of all the categories.

– The tags are located on the Posts page, within the Taxonomies sub-tab, on a page that keeps them sorted alphabetically. Tags allow you to identify the content in a more precise way (if a category is style, a tag can be ties or sunglasses), therefore, by indexing them, we can have presence options not only by the meta title and the keywords of the posts, but also by the tags where we have included them.

The labels are not hierarchical. They are dynamic, anarchic, and even rebellious. You can assign an entry to 3, 4, 5 or more tags, it all depends on the reach you want to achieve. You don’t want to have empty labels. Like categories, tags must contain sufficient content.

You also have a tag widget with an image that links directly to the tag page.

• Multimedia integration (images, videos, etc.)

In order for our publications to be attractive to the user, it is necessary to provide them with appropriate multimedia content that reinforces our editorial line. Although we consider the didactic and informative nature of our publications to be of vital importance, it is no less true that we take care of the multimedia content of our publications. And it is not easy, since, sometimes, it requires arduous research to transmit, in a graphic way, the written content.

The localization of images and videos can be achieved through: free or paid image banks (free: Unsplash, Freepixel, etc…), image searches with a Creative Commons License (with attribution), own production (the images we make ourselves) and with original content (prior authorization on websites or digital platforms).

In any case, it is advisable to provide a visible image caption and title in each inserted media to comply, firstly, with the attribution of the medium, and secondly, to provide truthful information to the reader, which is always appreciated. It is also advisable to maintain a balance between text and multimedia content, since, for example, an article with too much text can seem tedious, so alternating images will give it a faster pace to read. Also, an article full of images can make the written content minimal, and therefore, disposable.

The images and documents that use the posts must be included in our WordPress media library, where we will organize them into folders (Filebird) for quick location. It is better to upload the optimized material, both in size and quality, although there are plugins that optimize the images and convert them into lightweight formats for a better optimization of our website (Imagify, Siteground Speed Optimizer and others).

In the case of images that can be enlarged to better visualize some detail, it is advisable to use the “light box” image box to enlarge the image in the same place.

Videos have another treatment, since, due to their size, it is not advisable to store them in the WordPress media library, so we will embed them in our posts using their Youtube or Vimeo embed code. Videos that are produced in-house should also be published on YouTube and also used with their embed code.

Finally, we must also consider the graphic impact of our advertising content, which can affect the display of our posts and sometimes distract the attention of our readers. It is necessary to design and define the ideal areas for the insertion of advertisements.