With 10’s of millions of website visitors, we know how to write a blog post and get results from it.
I’ve published over a thousand blog posts over the past few years and every time, I learn something new about blogging.
A lot of blogging is down to common sense, write a blog post and then look at it and ask yourself, why wouldn’t I read this. Perhaps it’s because you have no pictures, or because the title doesn’t sell you into it, there is always something that can be done.
A “perfect” blog post will receive a lot more traffic, will be shared more, rank high in search engines, improve your brand and of course, make you more money.
Want to be a better writer?
-> Use this Grammar Checker. [Highly Recommended]
How To Optimize Your Blog Posts For Better Results
1. Write About Something People Want To Know
One of the biggest reasons for a successful blog post is picking topics that people are most interested in.
To find good blog post ideas, try:
- Asking your readers
- Looking at what subjects are most popular already on your blog
- Doing keyword research (more about this below)
If your website is about cycling, don’t start blogging about running, although some people may be interested, most won’t be.
Another thing I wouldn’t recommend doing is talking about the same subject too often.
2. Research The Best Keywords For Your Post Topic
You should always write for your reader. I hate reading a post that’s sole purpose was to get ranked in Google, it’s pointless. Having said that, it’s important to optimize it as well as possible.
If you could only do one thing to improve your search engine rankings when you write a blog post, it would be to do keyword research.
Keyword research involves looking up which search terms get what amount of traffic. A Keyword Research Tool is best for that. Here is a list of the best keyword research tools.
This will help you figure out what to call your post to get the most traffic possible.
Don’t underestimate this tip.
Often I find myself nearly writing a post that gets under 100 searches a month until I do my keyword research and find keywords that get 10,000 searches.
To get started, head over to SEMRUSH and create an account. They currently have a free 14-day trial, so you can test it out to see just how good it is.
Once you are logged in, go to their Keywords Explorer tool and type in search terms and it will then tell you all the information you want to know.
What I find most helpful is looking at the articles that already rank high in Google for the search term I want to use. You are able to see all the keywords their posts rank for and how much traffic they are getting. It’s very helpful for figuring out other great topics for your blog post.
3. Write a Blog Post Headline People Want To Click
The majority of people reading this post will come from either social media or search engines. Almost everyone that visits the post, will do so because of the title of the article.
If the blog post headline was something boring like “Writing Content”, not as many people would open it. The same could apply to blog post headlines that were very long.
When I write a blog post headline, I like to include both the explanation and the benefit.
Using this post as an example: How to Write a Blog Post (explanation) + To Get Incredible Results (benefit).
Here are some examples of good blog post headlines that you can use:
- 10 Reasons Why No One Is Reading Your Blog Posts
- How To Optimize Your Blog To Rank No.1 in Google
- 30 Most Influential People In Web Design 2021
Always remember that your title has to entice people to read your post, otherwise, no one will click your link and that includes search engine readers.
4. Start Writing Your Post With The First Sentence
According to Copyblogger, the second most important element in copywriting is the first sentence.
As they put it, the point of the headline is to get them to read the first sentence. The point of the first sentence is to get them to read the second sentence. And so on and so forth.
Then, if they get through the intro, they’re likely to keep reading.
How do you Write an Introduction?
- Hook
Start with a quote, ask a question, reveal a stat, elicit imagery, and otherwise inspire curiosity. Oh yeah, and make it short. - Rapport
Make yourself relatable. Empathize with their hopes, dreams, and struggles. - Problem
Reveal a common problem and make sure they understand why it’s a problem that’s important to fix. - Promise
Promise to solve that problem if they continue reading the post.
5. Write a Long, Incredible Blog Post
The average website that ranks in the top 10 of Google has at least 2000 words.
Why?
Because Google wants to send their users to the best content possible and it’s unlikely that a 300-word article will be that good.
Of course, search engine rankings aren’t just down to word count. The better your post, the more backlinks it will get and this probably has an even bigger influence on rankings.
Another thing, if you are investing a lot of time into an amazing article, you are also more likely to work on SEO and find good keywords to rank for.
6. Improve Your Blog Post Readability
Readability is so important if you want your post to be read. Take this post, for example, each headline is an h3 tag, it’s big and bold and you can clearly see which the 10 steps are.
A lot of people just bold their titles, which makes it hard to pinpoint where each step starts and finishes.
Some people will group together several points within a paragraph instead of using bullet points.
I love bullet points because people like to skim content.
Bullet points are short and to the point and nearly always get read.
Another thing that is important is grammar and spelling, make your content easy to read and understand.
7. Use Images To Sell Your Blog Post
People really do judge a book by its cover, we all do. Another saying that is really true is, a picture speaks a 1000 words. Adding a picture is like adding a lot more text but they can consume it in a second.
Think about this, if you have two blog posts about how to clean a car, one had pictures, one didn’t. Which would you be more likely to look at? The one with pictures, even if you can’t get any decent pictures, just you in front of an old car with a sponge brings it to life.
8. Include Links to Related Posts (For SEO and Usability)
There are two main ways to use links in blog posts and both influence SEO.
- Interlinking. This is when you link to other pages on your website. This is good to reduce bounce rate and make your website more user-friendly.
- External Linking. Linking to authority websites.
Both types of links help Google figure out what your content is about. When you link to a post about SEO from another post about SEO, it helps Google to understand your blog post topic.
As for how you should link? We like to set our links to open in a new window. If you are reading a post, it’s not going to be easy if you keep being redirected every time you see a new link that you want to look at.
9. Make Sure Your Blog Post Design is Consistent
Here are some example of things to make sure are consistent throughout a blog post:
- Size of images. Styling of images.
- Styling and text of links. For example, if you write visit website after point one, don’t link to it under point two as visit site.
- Like links, make sure numbers are consistent in your headlines. For example, if I said Step One, then the next headline was Step 2, well one is a word and 2 is a number.
- If you use a capital letter for a headline, do the same for all headlines in that article.
10. Optimize Your Blog Post To Rank High In Search Engines
Once you have done all of the above, you need to optimize your blog post for search engines. The best way to do this is with a free WordPress plugin called Yoast SEO.
Once you install it, you will see a box appear at the bottom of your blog post editor.
It will ask you what your keyword is and then tell you what you need to do to optimize your post to best rank for that search term.
Make sure to read: 10 SEO Blog Post Publishing Steps that Most Bloggers Forget
11. Publish Your Post At The Busiest Time of Day
I use to just publish posts the second they were ready, it could be early Sunday morning for all I cared, I just wanted to put it online. I still sometimes slip up and publish a post late in the day which isn’t the best thing to do in my opinion.
The time of the week that IncomeDiary has the most people on the website is Tuesday between 2 pm and 5 pm GMT. Overnight traffic is about half and traffic always drops off on the weekends in my experience.
If you look at when internet marketers launch their products, it’s nearly always either 2 pm or 5 pm GMT, this usually is the best time around the world for people being online with the least amount of distractions. In America, people are just getting up, in the UK people are just finishing work.
Using WordPress you can schedule when you want the blog post to be published.
Remember, when it comes to how to write a blog post, your biggest focus should be on how to make the post as great as possible.