How To Write A Blog Post The Right Way!
In the world of SEO high quality content reigns King – and you need to make sure your website has enough of it! Knowing how to write a blog post can make all the difference, and that’s what you’ll be learning to create today.
How to write a blog post of high quality informative content is a talent that one needs to sharpen over a long period of time and through many failed attempts. Just like any skill, practice makes perfect – and authoring blogs is no exception. Don’t let that deter you though, since the benefits that you can enjoy from your well formulated content has the potential of driving massive amounts of traffic to your website and is pretty much a staple practice for any healthy online business.
The first thing people ask themselves when deliberating on how to write a blog post is where do i start? If you’ve done any writing in the past, then you might just relate to how difficult overcoming that initial writer’s block can be. In an effort to help combat all things uncertainty, we’ve thrown together this handy and informative guide to enable you on how to write a blog post the right way!
To start off, it’s always useful to get a plan of action organized before you set out to write that masterpiece brewing in your head. To streamline the process, we’ve decided to break this guide into 7 seperate parts logically outlining and explaining every step along the way!
Learning how to write a blog post really is as easy as 1 to 7 – here’s the process:
- – Decide What Impact You’d Like Your Blog Post To Be Designed For.
- – Decide Which Target Market You Wish To Cater Your Blog For.
- – Perform Keyword Research.
- – Check What Your Competitors Are Up To.
- – Start Creating Your Masterpiece.
- – Strategise The Best Amplification Methods.
- – Gather Data And Try Again.
How to write a blog post – Your Desired Impact
This will be the first step in learning how to write a blog post, and that’s deciding what you want your blog to be used for.
Every blog that you will write will inevitably be designed to be SEO friendly/optimized and that’s great, but there’s many more uses that you can get from writing high quality content. Here’s a example of what I mean – If you’re writing your blog posts with the express intent of getting it viral or getting a lot of new views, then consider how you’re going to structure your content for that express intent in mind. Audiences respond differently to varying writing styles and blog topics, so make sure your impact is completely decided before you start the rest.
If you’re still confused with what we mean by “desired impact” here are some examples to get you on the right track –
Attracting New Audiences – If you don’t already have an audience yet, you’ll most likely need to cater your new blogs to create one. The best way to do that is by starting off your content plan with blogs that are easy to digest and fun to read. For example, a ‘Top Ten’ blog would serve this purpose well or perhaps a step by step guide type blog post where you walk a reader through a task in a fun way. Not only are these types of blogs fun to read, they are also fairly simple (and fun) to write. Make sure you encourage social sharing so that your blog always has the potential of going viral, and that audience interaction is always possible, you never know who might share your content. For a more comprehensive guide on this topic, check The Definitive Guide To Growing Your Blog’s Audience.
Share Important News – As a blogger, it’s important to always look out for the next topic that readers would love to jump on, and keeping up to date with what’s happening in your industry is a great way to do that. If any form of industry specific events occur, scandals, new research etc and you think your readers might enjoy the info, then consider dedicating a blog to informing your audience about these happenings. Giving them a rundown of what happened, your opinion on the matter or possible future ramifications would be good topics to discuss. Of course, this is a blog type that’s dedicated to individuals with an active interest in your industry, so just keep that in mind before setting off.
Persuade An Audience – Every business has their own unique identity and professional philosophy, so which better way to showcase this via a blog post? If there’s a specific way to dealing in your businesses industry that you either agree or disagree with, why not tell your customers? Perhaps you prefer using certain products over others or how the services you offer differentiate from your competitors, whatever the case may be state it here and get readers hooked. For more nuanced information, check How To Write A Persuasive Blog Post.
Answer A Common Question – Perhaps in your business dealings you’ve noticed that either clients or your fellow professionals have a consistent set of questions that keep being asked. Why not write a blog post catering specifically to answering those questions? For an excellent blog idea tool, check out Answer The Republic’s Content Idea Generator.
Each of these desired impacts will require your blogs to be written in specific ways, and knowing how to write a blog post in many differing styles will end up being super beneficial to your blogging campaign. We’ve only listed a few of the more staple blog types, but feel free to experiment and try whatever you think might work best.
How to write a blog post – Decide Which Target Market To Cater Your Blog For
This step is very related to the first one, but it’s importance cannot be overlooked! Time and time again we see certain businesses or clients run specified campaigns and find that they barely have any form of client/target interaction and impact.
Weeks are spent trying to figure out exactly what went wrong, and the end result is usually always the same… They targeted the wrong sort of market for their campaign. How can you ever expect to know how to write a blog post for your market if you don’t even know who that ideal market is?
You could have the best written, most informative, fun to read blog that’s ever existed, but if you aren’t sending that blog through the right channels to hit the right market, your blog posts might as well not exist at all…
So, how does one go about deciding which target is the best for you to market to? Well, there’s a couple of ways, but we find that identifying your market through the use of a Client Avatar Sheet is the best and most direct way. The client avatar worksheet is used to specify the absolute ideal blog reader, the one reader who your blog post would resonate the most with. You’ll need to ask yourself questions such as what types of hobbies does this person have, what websites does this person frequent, what’s their yearly income and what sort of other blogs this person may have an active interest in. The whole point of this exercise is to gain an absolute ideal target, optimize for that target, and watch as the rest of the community who may be similar to this target get influenced in the same manner.
For a more in depth guide on this topic, check our post on ‘How to Define Your Perfect Target Market’.
How To write a blog post – Perform Keyword Research
Keyword research and implementation is pretty much the bread and butter of any text that sits on a website, especially your blogs! If you don’t already know what keywords are, then here’s a quick rundown.
Keywords are nifty little words or statements that allow Google to understand what any given bit of webpage text is about. Keywords allow Google to attribute some form of relevance to a piece and match that piece up with a search terms in Google’s search bar results. Without properly optimizing your blog’s text, no one will be able to find it through organic means – effectively reducing your blogs impact into irrelevance…
It can be fairly difficult to discern what sort of keywords you should be targeting in a given piece, and without specialised (often quite expensive) third party software, this task can be borderline impossible, forcing you to assume targeted keywords in the hopes that you’ll target the right ones. To perform your own rustic keyword research, you can use KWFInder.
Obviously this isn’t ideal, but that’s why we’re here! Using these specialised bits of third party software; we effectively scan through your possible search terms, discern which keywords have high search rates with low competition, and compile those for you so you can start optimizing all of your text.
Once these target keywords and LSI keywords (Latent Semantic Indexing Keywords) have been fully identified, you’ll be tasked with using them in specified manners throughout your blogs text in order to give Google the clearest understanding possible of what you’re text is saying.
This step will covered more technically in the ‘Start Creating Your Masterpiece’ section of this document.
How to write a blog post – Check What Your Competitors Are Up To
Now that we have a comprehensive idea as to what your goals are, what keywords you’re targeting and who you’re willing to broadcast your message to, we can start the final task before you get to actually writing the blog. Having a look into what sort of strategies your competitors are using is an extremely valuable task to undertake, and will allow you to assess how your chosen piece of work may perform out in the competitive market place of content.
The fact of the matter is, the piece of content that you’ll write (along with your chosen keywords) will already have been covered many times prior, and no one wants to re-read old information over and over again. By checking what your competitors have already written about, you’ll be able to solidify a unique perspective/idea that may not have been addressed yet and centre your content/writing style around that.
Another advantage to performing this exercise is that you can usually get great content ideas for your next blog, and you’re able to discern how competitive your industries blogging sphere actually is.
We would encourage you (if you aren’t already) to become an active member in your industries blogging sphere, as this way you’ll always stay up to date with the latest competitor blogging trends and writing styles.
How to write a blog post – Start Creating Your Masterpiece
Finally the fun begins!
After all of that preparation you can finally start to put some of your ideas into words. This is the stage where you can let your creative (or analytical depending on the blogs topic) side take over and perform.
This is also the stage where you need to understand what to do with all of the keywords and LSI keywords that you’ve compiled, since this is probably the whole reason you’re writing the blog in the first place.
Keyword Placement – Where you choose to place your chosen keywords can have a real effect on how Google views your content. If you place the keywords in the wrong spots or you use them too often, it could incur spamming penalties, use them too little and you won’t have any SEO effect. Research has shown that the ideal keyword density for any given bit of content is at around 0.5% – 2%, giving you something to aim towards while you write your bit. The ideal length of a blog has shown to be around 1500 – 2000 words, so try and aim higher rather than lower (though a 500 word blog will work as well). If you’ve never heard of keyword density before, you can use this Free Keyword Density Tool checker to ensure you’re making the most out of your keywords.
Other than keyword density you need to have an understanding of where and when to place your keywords to gain the maximum SEO effect:
Page Title Tag – It’s vital to use your full targeted keyword at least once and as soon as possible in the Page’s Title tag of your blog. Not only will this make it easier for potential searchers to immediately understand what your blog will be about through Google’s search results (effectively preventing a high bounce rate), it will also allow for optimal keyword usage in terms of SEO, since Google has shown to be more responsive to this form of keyword placement.
Headline / H1 Header – The same rules apply here as prior stated. Keep the entire targeted keyword as close to the beginning of your heading as possible. Try not to use the exact same wording for both your headline and your title tag as any form of duplication can spell some problems in the future. For a more detailed guide on this, check our blog “How to Write The Perfect Landing Page Headline”.
The Text Body – Your chosen targeted keywords and LSI keywords will be used throughout the entirety of this section, but there are some things to be careful about. Try not to use your keywords more than the recommended 2%, as your run the hazard of Google pinning you with ‘Keyword Spamming’ which may result in a penalty. The second thing to take into account is that the content should still read fluidly. Bad keyword placement/usage causes your text to read in a disjointed and unnatural manner – which Google can and will pick up along with a real reader.
Other than those two factors to keep in mind, feel free to use your keywords in whichever manner you feel fit. Try to use the target keyword in the first paragraph of your written piece and strew your LSI keywords (along with your targeted keyword) throughout the rest of the body up to a 2% density.
URL – Your target keyword should be included in your blog posts URL. This not only helps the search engine determine your blogs content but it also helps users identify the same.
Images – If you don’t already know, SEO is also applied to pictures through the images Alt-attributes. These are handy little tags that allow Google to discern what a given picture is about since Google doesn’t have eyes (duh). Using your keyword in your given images Alt-Attributes will aid in your SEO quest and make you more visible in Google’s image search functions
Meta Description – Though Meta Descriptions have no real bearing or impact on your actual SEO results, that doesn’t mean that they’re not important. Your meta descriptions should be written in a manner that will entice a potential reader to come read your content, and using the targeted keywords is one of the best ways of doing this since not only will the reader get an immediate sense of what the content is about, it also causes the targeted keyword to be bolded in search results, drawing more eyes to your link.
Now that you have keyword placement ticked off and your content is all written and checked, it’s finally time to post your hard work!
Strategise The Best Amplification Methods
It’s often assumed that that the most difficult aspect to blogging is the actual text creation and optimization stages, yet we beg to differ. Getting your content seen is arguably more difficult, yet still absolutely doable!
There are a couple of avenues that a prospective blogger can go with in order to draw attention to their work:
Posting To Niche Groups – Broadcasting your message to the world can be a fairly pointless exercise unless you have an actual targeted audience you want to hit. Scanning through the web and finding all of your relevant niche groups, then hitting them with your content is one of the most successful ways to broadcast your content. With regular posting (and depending on the quality of your work) you can even start to build up a regular reading audience. These groups can range from specific forums, social media groups, linkedin articles and anything the like.
Reaching Out To Influencers – If you’re at all active in your businesses online blogging sphere, then you might have noticed that there is an active blog poster who carries a lot of reputational weight and has a large reading base. These certain individuals usually love to interact with their audience and may even make reference to or even post other creators blogs to their audience if they like the content. Reaching out and trying your luck with these certain individuals can lead to some wonderful results. Of course, being active in the community and gaining prior interaction with these people is advisable, as no one likes to be taken advantage of – before asking for cooperation, try leaving comments on their posts for example or starting a conversation through social media/email.
Running Paid Ads – The power of social media is something to be harnessed and doing it with paid Ads just might give you the desired effect you’re after. Amplifying your blog through a paid campaign will allow you to effectively target the exact target market that you know your content will resonate with. This is probably the easiest way to get eyes on your blogs, yet also the most expensive.
How to write a blog post – Gather Data And Try Again
Chances are, most of your blogs will be falling on a deaf audiences ears, yet your SEO gains through proper keyword usage will absolutely become evident as time goes on. It’s important that you don’t become demotivated! After every blog post, you should try and collect as many analytics as possible and then have a look at works and what doesn’t.
Most social media platforms should allow you to see how many clicks your post received and how often your blog was seen, but not clicked. If you’re making use of Google Analytics, you should be able to tell how long people stay on your blog pages on your actual website and where this traffic came in from, giving your more data to lean on in the future.
Explore as many of these data avenues as you can and try to troubleshoot exactly what your audience is responsive to – then try again!
Rome wasn’t built in a day and neither will your blogging style, philosophy and success. Keep at it and you will learn how to write a blog post and watch your audience grow!