Blogging may feel like an outdated term, it’s been around since the 90’s so surely no one cares about blogs anymore, right? Well not according to marketers, “93% of marketers say blogging is important- or very important- to their strategy”. There must be a reason that such a high percentage of marketers still use them to this day
What is a blog?
It is defined as a regularly updated website or web page, typically one run by an individual or small group, that is written in an informal or conversational style. Blogs can be written about absolutely anything for absolutely anyone. Even the most niche topics you can think of probably have a blog post written about them.
Why should I have a blog?
Have you ever been browsing a website and had a burning question that you needed the answer to?
Did you leave that website to find the answer and never go back to it?
I know I’ve done this many times. If this was a visitor on your website, you could have lost a potential customer. Blogs are the easy fix in this scenario. If you provide useful information that your audience will be looking for on your website, they won’t find a reason to leave. Not only does blogging make it easier for your customers to find answers to their burning questions but it gives them value.
Providing your potential customers with useful information for free, all in one easy to find location will make them more likely to be interested in your products and services. With strong posts, consistent uploads and relevant content, your customers will come to you for all the answers they need, solidifying you as an expert in your field
What makes a good blog post?
It’s easy to understand why blogs are so useful but understanding what makes a good blog can be difficult. If you use these 10 top tips when you write your own blog posts, you’re guaranteed to not only please your customers but improve your SEO (search engine optimisation) too.
1. A strong title
The first thing that any person browsing google or your blog page will see is the title. You need to make it short, to the point and engaging. The title of this post could have been ‘Writing a good blog’ but that doesn’t draw anyone in, nor does it score well in terms of SEO. Some tips for writing an engaging title is to include a number, a positive or negative statement, and a power word such as ‘Free’ or ‘Successful’.
2. Compelling opening statement
Your opening statement has to hook your audience straight away. Not only this but it needs to sum up what this post will give them, what will they learn, why should they bother reading it. You don’t have to work as hard as at this point, your audience member has already clicked on the post, they’re interested in what you have to say. You need to keep them interested with the opening statement.
A compelling statistic is a great way to open a blog post, give your audience evidence that what you’re saying is proven to be true and that it has a big impact.
3. Subheadings
Subheadings are something that is often an afterthought, it’s easy to get carried away writing your post and forget that some people may be coming to your post for one small snippet of information. You yourself may have jumped down to this point. You were able to find the tips easily because of the subheadings, if I didn’t include them and make the information easy to find, I can almost guarantee that you would have left this post without reading any of it.
Not only does it make it easy for people to navigate but it improves your SEO. Pages are much easier for search engines to crawl when they can make use of the subheadings. It’s also always a good idea to include the keyword of your blog post in a few of these subheadings. Can you guess the key word for this post?
4. Informative & engaging Text
At this point you’ve got the audience hooked, they’ve started reading your post, they’ve found the section that’s going to tell them exactly what they needed. Only the text reads as flat and boring, nothing pulls them in and they give up reading before they ever reach what they were looking for.
Making the body of your post engaging as well as informative is a great way to keep people coming back for more. Of course it’s important to provide the information that you have promised in the title, this will solidify you as the expert they were looking for, but it’s just as important to keep them engaged whilst reading it.
5. Relevant imagery
There are few things more daunting than a huge, unbroken block of text. No one is going to look at a long, never ending page of text and want to read it. A great way to break up your text is by including images. Images can convey information just as well as text if you use it in the right place and use the right image.
Not only this but again, your SEO will improve if you include images in your post. Images have a feature where you can add ‘Alt text’. This is used as a description of the image for those who are visually impaired. It can also improve your SEO score, if you include the keyword of your post in this description, search engines recognise it as relevant content and will boost you up in the results.
6. Relevant links
Another feature of a blog post that can help up your SEO is including relevant external links. Linking to websites or even other people’s blog posts can help search engines recognise that your content is related to theirs. It is also great if people link to your blog posts or pages in their own blog, this improves the credibility of your website.
Links also help your audience learn more about the topic, one post can only provide so much information and if there is a sub topic that you aren’t as informed about it can be helpful to provide someone who has already provided that information.
7. Strong call to action
A blog post is all well and good when your goal is to bring customers to your website to find answers to their questions but you can’t have their journey stop there. You need to encourage your visitors to take some kind of action, whether it’s commenting on your post, reading another blog post on your site or exploring your products and services.
You could even generate new contacts by asking for emails in return for more information, this would improve the reach of your other marketing efforts (such as email marketing).
8. A strong keyword
Keyword are the number one way to drive organic traffic to your blog. Every blog has the option to rank for a relevant keyword in search engines. A keyword is a great staring point for writing a blog post. It can be a good way to generate ideas if you’re not too sure where to start.
It’s also a good idea to not overuse the same keywords for multiple blog posts, this makes it harder to rank as high as you have multiple of your own posts to contend with.
9. Good meta description
A meta description doesn’t effect the content on your blog post but it does effect the way it is presented in search results. A meta title is the bold top line that will show up in google search results. It’s often a good idea to just use the title of your post for this so as to not confuse visitors. If they click on a link that says ‘What makes a good blog post?’ and then the title of the blog is actually ‘Why keywords are important’ it could be confusing and irritating.
The meta description needs a lot more thought put into it. You need to sum up what the post is about and entice people to click all in a couple of sentences. It can be hard but always start with a simple, one sentence description of what they will learn from you.
10. Conclusion
It’s important to include a short summary of what you have discussed in the post, especially if you discuss a lot of different areas of a topic. Reminding the audience of certain key points that you discussed will remind them what level of value you have given them and it may remind them about a point they forgot about. A conclusion is also a great place for a call to action or a relevant link.
Conclusion
A good blog post has a lot of thought put into it and it can get confusing and overwhelming to think if you’ve made it as good as it can be. If you use these tips for your next post, your SEO scores will fly and audiences will be more engaged in your content.