Realtors, you might never guess this one either …
and it's so blatantly obvious to those of us "in the know".
How many of you create your posts and pages in Microsoft Word?
Do NOT, repeat DO NOT compose your blog post in Microsoft Word and then just copy it directly into the WordPress editing box.
That's it – the one biggest mistake, or cardinal sin blog writers can make, period!
Why is this vitally important?
Search engines get confused by all the gobbledegook (I thought that was only a Brit expression?) that gets inserted into your text markup. Want to see what it looks like? Click here for a PDF of this blog post output pasted directly from Word.
This is what the search engines would see when they crawl your blog post – all the text marked in red was added by Word - when the mark up should only be about half a page long!
Text editor problems
Because pasting from Word brings over a whole enchlada of html encoding, this stuff can also cause problems with the text editor.
The text editor is basically an html page inside of your blog, so if you add additional code you could potentially screw up the whole blog page.
Sometimes this extra code will effect the way the editor works and prevent the page from being edited.
What to do if you have been committing this "cardinal sin"
If you have bloated source code (you can click the HTML tab to take a peak to see if it looks anything like my PDF) you can copy all the text in the editing box and then click the paste as plain text button (one of the editing tools) see graphic.
There is another button that allows pasting from Word, but I refuse to use it because it still adds unneeded "crap".
Once you have pasted your content back into the editor box you will need to format your text for SEO (Platinum lesson) with the WordPress editing tools – but your code will now be as clean as a whistle!
So, my fellow real estate marketing disciples, now you know why some blogs just don't do too well in Google (I won't tell them if you don't).
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{ 7 comments… read them below or add one }
I just copy and paste into the html editor instead of the visual editor. If you want to use the visual editor, just switch back. works for me. You're dead right though, if you paste directly into the visual editor, it's gonna mess you up!
Hey Christian .. thanks for the comment! Do you spend most of your time in the html editor section? if so I take it you are comfortable with HTML?
Peter and Drew…. thanks for the tip! I really like the PDF showing what Word does to the post.
Yep, all that extra stuff sure is a nasty sight!
If you use note pad to write your web posts you won't have any of the problems that creating a document in a word processing program would cause.
So I guess my question would be. When you are either writing your own blog or commenting on one like this. What is the best way to spell check your response and quickly add it back into the blog?
I guess if the above comment is true then you could simply type it in word… paste it into note pad and then copy it from there and paste it in?
I only ask this because I am a terrible speller.
… copy and pasting through notepad is one way out.
If you use Firefox as a browser any spelling mistakes are underscored in red – right clicking on the misspelt word brings up a list of alternative spellings – it works for me …
Hope this helps!
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