Have you written a highly researched blog and yet wondered if it is going to make an impact? If you think that writing a good blog post just means using the right words, think again. There’s a lot that goes into the making of a successful blog; let us find out.
- Know your audience
Identify your audience and sketch out the key parameters like your blog’s aim, the issue you want to address, and how much your intended audience already knows. For example, if you are writing for a bank, the issues and tonality will vary for a customer aged 30 and another aged 50. Other parameters to look at while building a brand persona are gender, profession, age, nationality, culture, psychological, etc.
- Choose an interesting and trending topic
The first step towards writing an article is to choose a good topic that your followers want to know and read about. You can do a competition analysis or refer to platforms like BuzzSumo, conversations on Quora, Google Trends for trending topics. The next step is to hook your readers with a catchy title. Your first two lines should grab the reader’s attention immediately. BuzzSumo and SEMrush are few tools to check out catchy headlines and determine which posts have performed best by keyword or URL.
- Research thoroughly
After a topic is final, research, research, and research. Irrespective of the number of words expected for the blog, research should not be compromised on. Keywords give you a quick idea of which words people are searching for. E.g., SEO Book’s keyword suggestion tool will help you with some basic keyword research. If you are a beginner, you can plug in a few topics, see which words and phrases come as results, and you can then compile a list of five to seven phrases and use those to start creating an outline for your post.
- Use Your Target Keyword Throughout the Text
- Use the Focus Keyword in Your Title
- Include Keywords in Your Subheadings
- Shape up your wireframe
While you research, keep a wireframe ready to create a final structure of your blog. Include key structural elements like the page title, headers, URL, meta description, and content. It is a good practice to have one H1 tag of the HTML element to indicate the primary heading on a webpage, along with H2 and H3 for any relevant subheadings. - Make It Scannable
- Use Subheadings: Subheadings help your readers see the main topics of your post, help you stay organized and on track when writing.
- Write Short Sentences: Writing short sentences is another way to improve your content’s readability and SEO value. Keep the average sentence length between 14 and 18 words.
- Use Bullet Points: Use bullet points to make your message precise and clear and easy to scan instead of listing items in a sentence.
- Write Short Paragraphs: Utilizing white spaces and writing short paragraphs with just 2 to 4 sentences improves content’s readability. This makes readers stay for longer on your site; ultimately, reducing bounce rate and helping your content rank higher organically.
- Use Active Voice: Avoid overusing the passive voice in your writing. The Yoast plugin for WordPress is a great tool to control using passive voice in your content.
- Use Images for Visual Engagement
Images break the monotony of words and give a visual break to the reader. Research says that around 10-13 images per 1,000-word post improve the readability of a blog.
Adding an eye-catching and optimized featured image, infographic, gifs, or tables to your post is a great way to get more clicks, shares, and engagement. Make sure they’re the right size, sources and have descriptive names before you upload them. Unsplash and Pixabay are great platforms to help you find appealing royalty-free images, among many others.
- Include a Compelling Call to Action
To make your post a hit, convince the readers to take action. The call to actions can be to:
- Sign up for your email newsletter
- Leave a comment
- Share your post on social media
- Buy your product
- Resort to great tools
Before you are ready to publish, run your blog through tools like Hemmingway, Grammarly, and Copyscape to identify errors and check for plagiarism. If you are planning to promote your blogs on social media, keep the audience in mind and publish at the right time.
Sources:
https://www.forbes.com/sites/johnrampton/2017/11/08/a-10-point-checklist-for-writing-a-killer-blog-post/?sh=420a5d6e4897
https://www.pacific54.com/blog/essential-12-point-seo-content-writing-checklist/
– Team WordBerries