The Ultimate Guide to Writing a Blog that Ranks and Drives Traffic

Blogging forever changed the information distribution paradigm by granting a widespread publishing platform to virtually any business, thought leader, or content producer looking to speak directly to their fanbase or client. Yet, all these years later, blogs are still the best way to reach a wider audience and drive more traffic to your website. Better yet, with writing optimized for Google Search, you can leverage an organic ecosystem that drives content up the SERPs. The full mechanics behind the Google algorithm will remain a black box, but LP has years of experience in testing and refining digital strategies in accordance with Google blogging best practices to help drive rankings and increase traffic. So, if you want to know how to write a successful blog, check out our tips and tricks below!??

Research Topics for Your Blog?

What should your blog be about? The initial step in generating content that holds the potential to attain high rankings and draw traffic to your website involves a deep understanding of your intended audience and the objectives of your content. Start with your target demographic and what you want to accomplish with them. This might be establishing brand trust or laying out product tutorials, but use this information to get in front of what your target audience is actively searching for. Tools such as AHREFS and Google Trends prove invaluable in pinpointing subjects with substantial search volume and minimal competition. Cross-reference these findings with what your competitors are doing to ascertain viability and opportunity. Then input these concepts into Google and utilize the Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs) to assess if it's a viable topic to pursue.?

Additionally, take time to peruse some of the highest-ranking articles and delve into the Google Knowledge Graph to unearth supplementary, tangentially-related subjects that might be viable options in the future. You can use these to backlink between your content when certain subject matters cover similar issues. Moreover,? listen to your audience. If you don’t have comments turned on, you might consider doing so. When you receive recurring comments or queries, it's worth considering generating more content on that subject. Although not obligatory, it's crucial to tackle subjects that you possess a solid comprehension of and can infuse with personal insights. Google assesses search quality based on factors like user experience, expertise, authority, and reliability. This level of personal connection to your writing can be the decisive factor in achieving a first-page ranking as opposed to landing on the second page.

Place Relevant Keywords Throughout the Content ?

When thinking about a blog you should use your topic as the primary keyword and find the most searched problem for that topic/keyword. If it’s pet related, take food for example. Discover what aspect of that topic garners the highest search volume. For the pet example, are pet food search queries based on price or ingredients? It can help you to think about what question you are trying to answer with your post and use that as the topic of your content.?

Example: Samantha owns a holistic dog food company and she wants to point out that typical dog food ingredients contain known allergens. Since she’s determined her product differentiator, she writes a blog titled: “Common Dog Food Allergens: What to Avoid'' — where she can introduce shorter-tailed keyword variants that provide additional search engine signals to help get her content indexed quicker and higher in the SERPs. Search term variants: common dog food allergens, allergens in dog food, and food that dogs are allergic to. Using these variations of the same phrase within your content serves as repeating the keyword without feeling as redundant to the reader. This helps avoid keyword stuffing, which can lead to unintended consequences.??

Apply Blog Writing Best Practices

The best way to answer any question is by repeating the prompt in your answer. The same holds particularly true in blogging. But don’t stop there! As mentioned above, be sure to use phrase variants at least twice in the subsequent content. Additional guidelines for creating content:??

• Use phrase variants at least twice per 500 words
• Keep titles clear and concise between 30-60 characters.??

• Determine your tone, but try to keep language natural
• Read it outloud to hear how it sounds?

We also want to apply these same principles to our subheaders. In blog writing, it can be beneficial to structure your subheadings hierarchically. Start with a broad topic in your H2 subheadings, and then drill down into more specific subtopics in your H3 and H4 subheadings. This will help readers scan your post and find the information they're looking for. It also helps Google identify what your content is about.??

Link Like a King

Writing a successful blog means including relevant links. Google uses links as a signal to determine the relevancy of pages and find new content to crawl. However, only links that provide value and additional insights will benefit your ranking, and if your links are irrelevant, the detriment can be severe.

There are two types of website links:

• Internal links are used to increase navigability and help define overall site structure. These not only create a better user experience for site visitors by making it easier to cross-reference content, but they also communicate areas of priority on your site to search engines by incorporating user behavior into the equation. A good rule of thumb: every page that is important should have at least one internal link. Consider what pages your readers might like to refer to to learn more about the topic at hand. Having more relevant content on your site can potentially increase engagement and helps Google and your readers understand the relationship of your content and how you would ideally like them to navigate your site.?
• External links that direct traffic away from your site, which might seem counterintuitive, because it is. So do-so sparingly! However, when done properly, they can build trust with your reader by citing sources and providing additional context to the user on where said link leads. Best practices’ suggest no more than one external link per page, but there is no golden rule for how many is too many, depending on the nature of the content, such as a directory. You get it, just don’t overdo it.

Consider These Additional Guidelines:?

1. Make your links crawlable — Google can only crawl your link if it's an <a> HTML element (also known as anchor element) with an href attribute. If you are using a CMS, like WordPress inserting a link typically makes this happen automatically.?
2. Write strong anchor text — be descriptive, concise, and relevant to both the page it is on and the page it links to. Remember this is supposed to help your readers navigate your site and give context to understand the pages.?
3. Avoid general phrases like article, site, and read more — those are played out. Being more original is going to gain favor with search engines and users alike, and in terms of enticing clicks, consider where in the story is most impactful. It’s typically in the problem or strategy sections, but that’s up to the blogger's discretion.?

Write Meta Descriptions ?

What is a meta description? The meta description is a short snippet of text that appears below the page title in search results. Meta descriptions are important for SEO, but they are not a direct ranking factor. This means that they do not directly affect your website's position in search engine results pages (SERPs). However, meta descriptions can have a significant impact on your click-through rate (CTR), which is an indirect ranking factor. A high CTR tells search engines that your website is relevant to the search query that a user entered. This can lead to improved rankings over time.?

Additionally, meta descriptions can help you to attract more visitors to your website by accurately describing the content of your pages and enticing people to click. Try to think of your meta description as a preview for that page on your site. Here are some tips to keep in mind for writing meta descriptions:??

• Try to include the keyword you are focusing on in your meta description.??
• Keep the meta description concise. Aim for a length of 160 characters or below.??
• Use a call to action in your meta description.?
• Have a different meta description for each blog post you write.??

What isn’t relevant?

A common misconception in the blogosphere is inputting keywords in an SEO plugin. This particular form of snake oil might be called a meta or focus keyword. Practices like this seem to stem from an old SEO practice that Google has long gotten rid of called meta keywords. Despite that change taking place waaay back in 2009, the myth has somehow persisted. We caution anyone to safeguard their blog or website from anyone eluding to such erroneous strategic claims.

In Conclusion

Okay, we just unpacked a lot and you might feel overwhelmed, but don’t let that deter you from having fun writing a successful? blog. At the end of the day, that’s what it should be. Some of the most popular blogs today serve as a steady stream of consciousness from a brand or individual to the user. Brands can react in real time to events/happenings and offer tips and tricks that are timely and relevant. Furthermore, for many readers, a well-curated blog is an opportunity to hear directly from a brand or organization with intentional content messaging. We hope you’ve enjoyed this blog about how to write a blog!