You create a great business blog post, hit Publish, and send your embarrassing moment into infinity and beyond. Or perhaps it’s a brilliant post, but you are the only one reading it.

Whether you are new at business blogging or a veteran, you are certainly not alone in these red-faced moments. A little business blog post protection comes in handy.

The following are tips for protecting your post from an oops moment and creating a better business blog post.

1. Start With Keywords

Before you craft your post, consider your keywords – the words someone types into a search engine to locate something on the Internet. After you come up with words you think work for your blog post, do a little research.  A tool, like Google Adwords, provides a reality check on your selection.

For example, the keywords “business blogging” showed 18,100 searches per month, while “business blog” had 110,000 searches.

2. Read the Post

Sounds simple (and we know I’m all about simple), but deadlines and other work pressures tempt us to dash off a post and hit Publish without doing a final walk-through. Don’t do it! Read the last version.

Here are bonus tips for reading:

• Read it out loud to check flow
• Have others read it- if you have this option
• Check for spelling, grammar and formatting errors – copying to a word editor helps, but remember it’s not perfect
• Make your own common errors checklist and use it

 3. Link Sources

Linking your sources does more than protect you from copyright issues. It provides your business blog with credibility and helps in Search Engine Optimization (SEO).

Don’t hesitate to link to other posts within your own business blog. Besides tooting your own horn, it builds more traffic. You can look for older posts that relate, but a great tool is Yet Another Related Post plugin. I use it on this blog and like it. I still, however, use links within a post, if appropriate.

4. Review for SEO

There is a funny piece, written by Clint Osterholz at All Freelance Writing, about the dangers of overworking SEO in your blog content. It provides an exaggerated (although not for some bloggers) on overloading your content with keywords so you appear high on the search engine results.

While, at a minimum, it’s annoying, it also destroys the credibility of your business blog. However, you do want to be strategic about using the keywords. Here are a few tips for using keywords:

• Include keywords in the title
• Use keywords in your description of the post
• Use your keywords in the body – don’t overdo it (like Clint’s example)

Unless you are an SEO expert (and I definitely am not!), consider using tools like All in One SEO Pack plugin and ScribeSEO.

All in One SEO Pack is a free WordPress plugin, although there is a professional version upgrade for a fee.

ScribeSEO is a fee-based SEO software tool that analyzes blog posts (and any other kind of business writing you choose) for SEO optimization. It is very easy to use, especially for non-techy users, like me. I love it (and, no, I am not an affiliate).

5. Add an Image

Images enhance business blogs. A great image, coupled with a catchy title, pulls in readers. Images also help the readability factor. We humans do not like cluttered text – especially on screen.

Be careful about copyright laws for photos and images. You cannot grab a photo anywhere and slap it into your business blog. Jonathan Bailey at Plagiarism Today had a great post recently about licensing information.

6. Check Links

You polished your words, checked spelling, grammar and format, and have great SEO optimization. Publish, right? Not quite yet.

Hit that Preview button before you Publish. Besides doing one last read, check your blog post links. There is nothing more aggravating than clicking on a link and getting that ugly 404 or Item Not Found message.

7. Publish and Check

Finally! You can Publish. If you are paranoid like me, do one more read-through after you publish it. Even after going through my checklist, I still find occasional problems. I like to blame it on my Baby Boomer eyes, but if you move fast enough, you can catch it before “normal” eyes fall on it.

What’s in your business blog post protection plan?