How to Write a Blog Post: 22 Actionable Tips
A blog post is one of the best marketing tools you can have in your arsenal. The process of writing a successful blog post doesn’t always come easily, and it’s worth taking time to figure out what works for you so that every single time, you’re hitting home runs with each piece on your site. What could be more complex than writing a blog post? Isn’t it true that if a teenager can achieve anything, so can you? Creating a blog post isn’t challenging in and of itself, but writing a fantastic blog post is.
22 concrete blog post writing suggestions:
1. Blog about what you’re passionate about.
Unless you are enthusiastic about the subject, blogging may be a pain. So, first and foremost, choose a topic you are eager about. Don’t simply choose a subject you “think” you’re interested in. Choose one that you are confident you will like. It must be a subject that you are passionate about and desire to learn more about regularly.
2. Break Free From Your Old Habits.
Do you recall writing term papers in college or high school? If you don’t, consider yourself fortunate! You’ll find that creating blog entries is a challenging chore if you do. You must disregard everything your teachers have taught you about writing. You’re not here to write a term paper; you’re here to start a dialogue! Wouldn’t you feel bored and upset with me if my blog entries sounded like I was talking to you instead of you? Make sure you’re doing the same thing: talking to your readers rather than at them.
3. Have a clear idea of what you want to write about.
You must know the final word before you begin writing the first word. I don’t mean this literally, but you need to know how you’re going to start your blog post, what points you’re going to make, and how you’ll tie it all up. It’s fantastic if you’re one of those folks that like being spontaneous. Unfortunately, as one of those individuals, I’ve discovered that blogging does not work well. It will simply lead to you spending more time writing than necessary. Plus, I’m guessing you’re already pressed for time. Right? So why squander any more of it?
4. Look for popular topics to write about on your blog.
Make a list of all the popular blogs in a specific niche you are interested in. You may readily get this information by using Google. If there aren’t many popular blogs in your niche, make a list of all the popular blogs that are somewhat in your place. Once you’ve compiled a list of all the popular blogs, make it a point to visit them at least once a week. Look for social buttons on each post that display how many people have tweeted or liked it while you’re viewing them. It’s preferable if the number is more significant. List the articles with more than 50 or 100 social shares in a spreadsheet as fresh ideas for the future. This might be your go-to list when you’re looking for something new to write about.
5. Make A Fantastic Title.
You shouldn’t start writing your blog article until you’ve come up with a great title. Even if your content is excellent, most people will not read it if the title is terrible. For example, assume we were looking for cake-making advice as a keyword. From an SEO viewpoint, you want this term to appear in the title and somewhere early in the title, and from a blogging standpoint, you want this keyword to be in the title and somewhere early in the title. Make sure the words around your keyword are compelling enough to get visitors to click through. For blog entries, I’ve discovered that numbers work incredibly well. Instead of just writing “cake baking advice,” you could write “25 fantastic cake baking tips.” OK? So there’s something that will tempt folks to go through because they’re intrigued about the number 25, and the word fantastic adds to their curiosity. That’s what I’d call a great title that should grab some attention!
6. Your Readers Will Be Hooked.
You just have a few seconds to pique people’s interest. You’ve lost someone’s interest if you can’t get their attention in the first few phrases. Additionally, from an SEO viewpoint, you want your keyword to appear early in the text, especially in the first, second, or third phrase of your article. Here’s an example of how I’d start a blog article with a few words that would entice most people to continue: What could be more complex than writing a blog post? Isn’t it true that if a teenager can achieve anything, so can you? Creating a blog post isn’t challenging in and of itself, but writing a fantastic blog post is.
You’ll note that I’ve changed a few items in the text above:
- This is because I initiated a dialogue with you.
- I demonstrated that anybody could create a blog article, so you believe you can as well (which you can).
- I lured you to continue reading by implying that not everyone makes excellent blog entries.
In the second paragraph, I utilize social evidence to show that I’m not just any old guy offering advice. You may require that evidence if you’re new to this blog. I’ve launched two blogs in the last several years. Although being a Technorati 100 blog, my first blog had terrible content. Readers were uninterested in reading the information or participating in the discussion (comment on the blog). You’ll take my counsel a little more seriously now that you know I’m a top 100 blogger. At the same time, admitting that I made a mistake demonstrates that I am not perfect and that you can continually improve. Because everyone writes differently, I don’t expect your introduction paragraphs to be the same as mine, and that’s great. Your viewers will be interested if you employ some of the things I used.
7. Start a Discussion.
Have you ever noticed how often I use the words “you” and “I” in my blog posts? This is because I’m attempting to strike up a discussion with you. I don’t want you to have the impression that you’re reading an essay because that would be tedious. I’m aware of this since it would be boring for me. I’ve been writing blog articles for years, attempting to make them as human and accessible as possible, which is why each of my blog entries receives so many comments. I’ve never done an A/B test of essay-style versus conversation-style postings since I’d never published an essay-style blog post. Even if I didn’t have the test, there’s one thing I know for sure about utilizing a conversational approach in blog posts: it improves readability. You prefer that I receive emails like this every week: I simply wanted to express my gratitude for all of your blog articles. They are enlightening and have aided me in my understanding of web marketing. Your site is quite simple to read and understand. There’s no need to respond.
Cheers!
Your blog entries will be read more, and people will be more inclined to comment if you start a dialogue.
Consider this: if you enjoyed reading a blog article and the author of the piece asked you a question at the conclusion… What would you do if you were in this situation? Isn’t there a strong probability you’d answer with a comment? I’m sure I would. By posing a question to your readers, you will encourage them to write more words. People will spend more time on your site since leaving a comment takes more than a few seconds. It also allows you to react to comments and encourage your visitors to return to your site. This is why I reply to every comment left on Quick Sprout. It’s one of the key reasons why repeat visitors account for 40% of my traffic.
8. Open Up.
How much do you know about the person behind the blog when you read it? Isn’t it just a little? If you’re fortunate, the blogger’s bio and a picture of herself will appear on the sidebar… But that’s all there is to it. If you don’t open yourself, you can’t expect your audience to connect with you. You may do this by creating an About page. One is about you, the person behind the site, rather than your blog or business. You may construct an About page for each author on your company blog if you have one.
You should think about the following things while creating an excellent About page:
- Tell your whole life narrative, beginning with your birth and ending with the present.
- Don’t hold back — express everything, from the embarrassing moments to the triumphant ones. It will enable others to get to know you on many levels.
- People won’t connect with you until they can see you, so provide a photo. You may use your image or make a cartoon version as I did on your About page.
- Discuss your objectives – just as you assist your readers with your material, they may help you. Then, on your About page, talk about your future dreams and goals. For example, my ambition is to one day establish a non-profit organization.
9. In most cases, longer content is preferable.
You’ll have to agree with me if you look at the statistics below. Longer postings are typically more successful on all levels. Let’s look at some of the reasons behind this. The first is that a larger word count usually means more traffic from search engines. More than 200 criteria determine where your content appears in the SERPs. According to research, the more content your website contains, the higher chance of ranking first in Google search results. SerpIQ looked into how search results were ranked depending on the length of the material. What they discovered was as follows:
The more material on a page, the better its Google SERP rank. Every single one of these first-page results includes over 2,000 words of substance. Googlebot, Google’s web crawler, is in charge of indexing your site. When it does so, it examines every word, tag, and pixel of data (with a few exceptions like rich media files and dynamic pages). Page titles, headings (H1, H2, H3, etc.), metadata, alt tags on pictures, and other sorts of information are all indexed. The more material you have, the more of it will be indexed by search engines. The more indexed content there is, the better it will perform in searches and results. That’s all there is to it. Another advantage of lengthier content is that the more words you have, the more link-backs you’ll obtain. I’ve already said that longer material attracts more link-backs. The following is evidence from a Moz test:
The link between the two couldn’t be more obvious.
You can’t disagree with this based on evidence alone. Longer content attracts more backlinks. More backlinks equal higher SEO. More conversions and income equal better SEO. Longer material are also shared more regularly! A prominent online publication crunched the stats to see how shareable their material was in terms of length. The study noticed that lengthier articles were shared more often.
It’s in the golden sharing zone after the word count reaches 1,500 words. My study on Quick Sprout supports this. My articles with more than 1,500 words get 68 percent more tweets and 22 percent more Facebook likes than those with less than 1,500 words. So despite all the hype about making articles “shareable,” it turns out that content length is the determining factor.
However, duration is simply one element to consider when it comes to digital content. You must also think about a slew of other difficulties. Consider how all of these additional elements will affect the length of your article.
- The most fundamental concern is substance. What exactly are you attempting to say? What exactly is the significance? If you can state it in 100 words, you may wish to do so. However, it’s also acceptable if it takes 2,000 words.
- Style — some writing styles are more suited to short, sweet, and to-the-point information. At other times, the tone is more conversational and participatory. The length of your material will be affected by your style.
- The frequency with which you publish impacts the length of your postings. Some bloggers may only write once a week, but it is usually a lengthy article when they do. Every day, other websites publish short ones. It’s just a question of how much the content marketing staff can handle. It takes time to create good material!
- The way an item is structured significantly influences how easy it is to read. I like to utilize a lot of subheadings, a few graphics, and short paragraphs in my writing. It’s critical to divide your material into bite-sized portions so that visitors can skim it.
- Purpose – every excellent content marketing strategy has a goal in mind…or many goals in mind. The ultimate aim is conversions, although there are sub-goals within this broad goal. Other objectives might include increasing brand exposure, increasing social interaction, growing email lists, providing education, or improving SEO. Different applications will inevitably need different lengths.
- Knowing your audience, including their requirements, interests, passions, and issues, is essential for content development. You aim to develop content that your target audience will read.
- Words aren’t the only kind of content. I usually use roughly 100 words to introduce the subject in infographic. The remaining words are in the infographic, which does not convert into a precise word count statistic. The number of words in a video, meme or infographic is immaterial.
By no means am I implying that the length of a piece of information is unimportant? Instead, I suggest that duration isn’t the only consideration you should evaluate.
10. Make confident that what you write is unique.
Everything you post for your blog or website must be unique. This implies the information cannot be reused, reproduced, or stolen. I use the term “redundant” to describe stuff that essentially repeats itself. For example, let’s imagine you produce an article on 14 SEO copywriting ideas one day and a post about SEO copywriting advice the next. If the two pieces essentially say the same thing, you should delete one or update the other to make it distinct.
11. Provide relevant research and practical advice.
Consider difficulties or concerns that your viewers are suffering with, and then produce how-to articles or tutorials on that subject as one of the most acceptable methods to bring value to your users and earn beautiful links. If it turns out to be something your audience wants or needs, original research might serve the same function. The term “original research” refers to information that contains facts and ideas from unknown sources. You conducted the interview or uncovered the story on your own, and you’re offering not just the facts but also the analysis. You may also integrate or study other critiques and statistics to create unique content. Kaspar Szymanski, a Google Dublin Search Quality Strategist, suggests: If the findings of a survey or original study prove to be beneficial to the target audience, they might serve the same role. Both strategies improve your community’s perception of you and raise your visibility. This may assist you in gaining long-term, merit-based connections as well as dedicated followers that create direct traffic and “spread the word.” Offering a variety of answers for various situations might turn into a blog that has a beneficial impact on the site’s reputation. Before you sit down to create an article, look for pieces similar to yours on the internet. One of the things I do is type the title I’m considering into the Google search box. Then I examine what appears. Do I have a unique theme, or are there hundreds of titles identical to mine? If that’s the case, how can I make mine stand out? This sometimes necessitates me narrowing my attention. However, after I’ve checked my target, I need to make sure I’m presenting information that goes beyond the surface. For example, I didn’t include apparent SEO practices like page optimization or handling PPC ads in my 7 Habits of Highly Successful SEOs piece. Instead, I discussed intangibles like innovation, risk-taking, and the unexpected: extremely successful SEOs don’t only depend on SEO! I provided you with something unique and thought-provoking that you won’t find anyplace else.
12. Make Use Of The Correct URL Structure.
Your term should be present in the URL. This is vital for SEO, but you also want a short URL for the sake of user experience. In the URL, I propose using just your target keyword. For example, if your article were on the most excellent web hosting, your URL would be https://www.quicksprout.com/best-web-hosting/. That’s crucial for SEO because Google wants to see your term in the URL. Still, it’s also critical for user experience since if the URL is too lengthy, users won’t share it on various platforms because it will exceed the character limit.
13. Your post uses a variety of related keywords.
The sheer number of words available is another crucial component that might help you enhance your SEO. Let’s pretend you’re writing a short blog article on “writing fantastic headlines.” You’ve set a goal of 200 words. You’ll probably utilize the search phrase “writing fantastic headlines” and maybe one or two variants on the topic in a post of a few hundred words. Enough is enough.
But what if you were writing a 2,000-word article? You’ll be able to employ a range of relevant terms, including:
- “How to Write a Great Headline”
- “writing catchy headlines.”
- “I’m going to start creating better headlines.”
- “suggestions for a superb first line”
- “a well-crafted title”
- “Your post’s title is significant.”
- “It’s a winning headline,” says the author.
- “Because the title contains these terms….”
- “the magnetic power of those initial words”
- “sizzling hot titles” is a term used to describe a set of titles that are both
- “some of the most widely circulated headlines….”
When you have a lot more material, you can employ more variation. The more diversity you have, the better your search results will be. Keep in mind that Google isn’t only returning results that are a perfect match for your query. It generates semantically linked outcomes. For example, I looked up “making a terrific headline” on Google and found the following:
The first outcome concerns the creation of “magnetic headlines.” The second result is about “interesting headlines.” I didn’t mention the words “catchy” or “magnetic” in my search, but Google knows what they mean. It knows I’ll be pleased with the outcomes. You’ll be able to use the power of long-tail keywords and latent semantic indexing while writing lengthier content. The greater the number of keywords, the more influential the search engine ranking potential matrix becomes.
14. Headings, bullets, lists, and block quotes should be used.
What makes books, so simple to read? Because they employ chapters, headers, and bullets to break down their material into bite-size chunks. The exact usage of content guides and dividers will enhance your blog postings. Headings, bullets, lists, and block quotations were used in the original, whereas headings, bullets, lists, and block quotes were used in the modification. Are you able to figure out what the difference was? I boosted the average time you spend reading each blog article by 31 seconds by adding headers, bullets, lists, and block quotes. Your time on site rose by 17.8% due to that tiny change. As you may be aware, the more time people spend reading each of your blog entries, the more likely they are to read the whole piece. Headings are also significant from a search engine perspective since they assist Google in understanding what your content is about. Always remember to add at least one H1 and one H2 tag, as well as a few H3/H4 tags where appropriate. The H1 is usually the headline of your blog article, and the H2 is the subheading. H3, H4, and so on may be utilized throughout your content if it makes sense. Be sure you use your keyword or its version in your headlines.
15. Increase the size of your fonts and the spacing between them.
You may make your blog entries easier to read by raising the font size and spacing. I have access to over 13 blogs to conduct testing and experiment. So I wanted to do a small test to see whether raising font size would increase total time on site. What I discovered was fascinating. If you choose a legible font like Arial, Times, or Georgia, raising the font size will improve the amount of time your visitors spend on your site. First, I boosted my average time on site by 13 seconds by changing the font size from 8 to 9. Next, I lengthen the duration on site by another 8 seconds by raising it from 9 to 10. Finally, I was able to gain another 6 seconds by increasing from 10 to 11. Increasing your font size from 11 to 12 or higher won’t help you spend more time on the site; at least, that’s what I discovered. It’s most likely because your writing usually is simple to read at a font size of 11. It won’t help much if you make it much more significant.
16. Please provide a link to your other related posts.
Internal links to other similar topics are something that search engines like, and they’re also precious to your viewers. For example, let’s pretend you have another article regarding cake decorating skills on your website. This is a great time to add an internal link to that content, which improves user experience by allowing visitors to view another resource on your site. It’s also beneficial for SEO since it aids in ranking the page to which you’re linking.
17. External Links to Useful External Resources.
It’s also a good idea to provide a few links to other comparable sites and resources that you find valuable for SEO and your visitors. For example, let’s imagine you wanted to add information on dry measuring cups to your site. Still, you didn’t have anything on there already, or there was another resource on the web that you wanted to link to and share with your visitors. So, all I do is search for that specific term and see what comes up. In this situation, Wikipedia offers a handy page on measuring cups that includes information about dry measuring cups. Linking to this external website from inside my piece will assist my viewers in locating more information. In addition, Google will note that I’m linking to another authoritative site in the area, which will enhance my rankings.
18. Make Use Of Photos And Videos.
Multimedia is critical for the user experience since people don’t only want to read text when they visit your blogs. Images and videos are what they want to see. That also helps with SEO since it produces more exciting and media-rich content, which Google favors. Make sure your photos include well-written alt tags that explain the image. This will assist with SEO and will be handy for readers who cannot see pictures. However, although integrating photographs and video is strongly advised, utilizing too many pictures might make your blog entries less readable. It may cause your viewers to get distracted from reading your material. I discovered that articles with more than three photos were read 15% less than those with less than three images after performing a few scroll map tests on Crazy Egg. Surprisingly, time on site for articles with three or more photographs was also reduced by 26 seconds or nearly 15% of the time you spend on my site on average. When it makes sense, use visuals. If you’re not running an image blog, make sure you don’t go overboard with distracting ones. Your objective should attract readers to read your material, not gaze at photos.
19. Do not overcrowd your blog post with CTAs or advertisements.
Taking a step back and looking over your site will help you figure out whether it’s crowded. Where do you think your gaze should be drawn? Where do you want the reader’s gaze to be removed? Is it clear what you want them to do? WebProNews, for example, was one of the sites I was visiting as I was writing this blog post. This is what I noticed when I first arrived at the website:
Do you pay attention to all of the advertisements? So, how about the title? What happened to it? On my screen, it’s below the fold. Unfortunately, an excellent article is obscured by advertisements and other third-party content. This may not be perplexing to search engines, but it is mysterious to readers. As a result, please maintain your website’s design basic and straightforward, which readers like.
20. Correct any grammatical, spelling, or factual errors.
Did you realize that poor spelling might hurt your website’s ranking? Matt Cutts said in a video from 2011 that he and his colleagues saw a link between sites with high ranks and improved spelling and areas with low rankings and bad spelling. So always double-check your information and put your piece through a spelling and grammar check before publishing it.
21. Before you publish your post, have someone else read it.
Not only should you review and double-check your blog post for content and design errors, but you should also have someone else read it before you publish it. If feasible, have it reviewed by many people to verify that nothing is overlooked and there is no space for improvement before publishing.
22. Make a decision (Like This One)
Have you ever noticed that each of my blog entries ends with a conclusion? I do this for one reason: if you don’t have time to read the whole blog article, you may skip to the end and receive a concise summary. I didn’t always write down or identify my findings. I learned from scroll testing that by including a conclusion and correctly naming it, you might encourage your visitors to scroll farther down the page since that one piece will clarify what your blog article is about. I attracted 10% of you to scroll farther down the page by including a conclusion section in my postings. It’s also developed a pattern in which many of you browse to the bottom of the article before scrolling back up to the top to start reading it. Remember how your teachers advised you in school to summarize everything you wrote in your conclusion? That’s OK for an essay, but it’s not appropriate for a blog post.
My findings are based on a three-pronged approach:
- First, keep it concise — excellent conclusions are brief and to the point.
- Add your concluding remarks – don’t simply repeat what you said in the blog post; instead, express something unique and significant.
- Leave things open – if you want more comments on your blog, you should leave your conclusion unfinished. The simplest method to achieve this is to pose a question to your readers.
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