Blog Post Review Before Publishing

Pull the original brief and check working title, target keyword, search intent, target persona, and key points are all present. Drafts that drift from search intent are the most common reason a post fails to rank against its target query.

Every statistic, dollar figure, and named source cited inline. Pull quotes from external interviewees must be approved in writing by the quoted party before publish — a Slack DM does not count.

Send the draft back with inline comments naming the specific claims, sources, or quotes that need work. Set a revision due date before re-routing through editorial and SEO.

Grammar, AP or house style, sentence-level cuts. Watch for tone-of-voice drift — guest writers tend to slip into their own voice on long sections.

Target keyword in the title tag, H1, meta description, URL slug, and within the first 100 words. Avoid stuffing — one natural use per zone is the bar Clearscope and Surfer optimize for.

Title tag under 60 characters; meta description 140–160 characters with the target keyword and a CTR hook. Preview the SERP snippet in Ahrefs or Semrush before saving.

Link to existing posts in the same topic cluster with descriptive anchor text — not 'click here'. Reinforces pillar-page topical authority and helps Googlebot discover the new URL.

Article or BlogPosting schema with headline, author, datePublished, image, and publisher. Run the staging URL through Google's Rich Results Test and Schema.org validator before approving publish.

One H1; H2s break up major sections; H3s nest under H2s. No skipped levels (H2 jumping to H4). Long-form posts above 1,500 words need at minimum four H2s for scannability.

Stock images from licensed accounts only (Unsplash+, Getty, Shutterstock). Record license type per image in the DAM. AI-generated images require an internal disclosure tag per FTC guidance.

Swap with a licensed alternative from the DAM or commission new artwork. Log the substitution in the asset record so the same source isn't reused.

WCAG 2.1 AA requires meaningful alt text — describe what the image conveys, not 'image1.jpg'. Decorative images get empty alt (alt="") so screen readers skip them.

Hero images under 200KB, body images under 100KB where possible. Use WebP or AVIF with JPG fallback. Heavy images blow Largest Contentful Paint (LCP) on Core Web Vitals.

Featured image at 1200×630 for Open Graph and Twitter Card previews. Test in LinkedIn Post Inspector and the Twitter/X card validator on staging before publish.

Every link opens to the intended URL with a 200 response — no 404s, no redirect chains over one hop. Screaming Frog can crawl a staging URL to catch broken links faster than manual clicking.

Use the shared UTM builder so source / medium / campaign match team conventions (e.g. utm_source=blog, utm_medium=organic, utm_campaign={slug}). Drifted UTM conventions make GA4 reports uncomparable across campaigns.

One CTA above the fold, one mid-content tied to a relevant section, one closing CTA. CTAs should match the post's funnel stage — gated download for TOFU, demo request for BOFU.

A fresh pair of eyes catches typos, awkward transitions, and tone slips the original editor missed. Read on mobile width — paragraph length issues only show up there.

If the post features a partner, affiliate link, or paid placement, disclosure must appear above the fold — not buried in footer. FTC Endorsement Guides require disclosure of material connection regardless of post format.

Legal confirms disclosure language matches the partnership contract and FTC Endorsement Guides. For regulated-industry clients (pharma, financial services), also confirm any required regulatory boilerplate.

Timestamped sign-off from editor and content manager before scheduling. This is the audit-trail record — Slack thumbs-up does not survive a compliance review.

Load the staging URL on desktop, tablet, and mobile. Verify featured image, embed renders (YouTube, tweets), pull quotes, and table-of-contents anchors all behave.

Use GA4 DebugView via the Tag Assistant Chrome extension to confirm page_view, scroll, and any custom CTA-click events fire. A misfired event maps to inflated conversion counts that distort budget allocation.

Schedule per the editorial calendar slot in WordPress, HubSpot, or Webflow. Confirm timezone matches the audience — a 9am ET slot published from a writer's PT-set laptop slips three hours.

After publish, request indexing via the URL Inspection tool in GSC. Accelerates crawl from Googlebot's default discovery cadence, especially for new domains or low-authority sections.

Newsletter segment matched to post topic; social posts scheduled in Sprout or Hootsuite for LinkedIn, X, and any platform-relevant channels with UTM-tagged links. Segment mismatch drives unsubscribe rate.