You probably have heard how important the process of blogging is to the success of your marketing efforts by now. But do you actually know what the blogs are and what they are purposely created for?
If you're still not sure, you'd better spend some of your free time reading this blog.
We’ll explain to you why you should create a good blog, and how to optimize it so that you can bring more traffic to your website. So, let’s get started!
What is a blog?
A blog is an online journal that displays information in the reverse chronological order, with the latest posts appearing first. It is a platform where a writer is able to share his/her views on an individual subject.
The purpose of writing a blog for a business?
Retrieved from Hubspot
As a business owner, you will always want to look for new ways to capture more leads for your business. And you’re not alone! According to the State of Inbound report, generating leads and getting more traffic is by far business’ top marketing challenge. Of course, you want your customers to keep buying your products and services. But you’re not sure what you can do?
Writing a blog can do you a trick!
Blogging will help you connect with people and grab the attention of your audience. Without blogging, your website remains invisible, whereas implementing blogs will help ensure that you're searchable and competitive. So, the main purpose of your blog should be to connect with your relevant audience and boost traffic hence sending quality leads to your website.
Not to mention, great blogging will make your business look more credible and professional, which enhances the process of building a strong brand presence online. But now you might have a question “what makes a good blog post?”
So, here’s the answer. Before you start writing a blog, make sure you think about “Why would someone read this blog post?” and “what to include in your blog so that the audience wants to read for more?”
To give your heads up, here are a few easy steps…
Include Interesting and educational information: Your blog should be focusing on answering questions and helping readers resolve their problems they’re experiencing, but you need to do it in interesting ways.
Providing actionable steps: To make your reader continue reading your post, provide them with actionable steps, and use examples to keep your readers interested in what you have to offer.
Be engaging: Your blog should be engaging, meaning that you should use the right language that can appropriately convey your message to the reader.
Now, you should have a basic understanding of why you should write a blog post for your business. But that’s not enough so let me dive you into how do you actually go about writing one of these blog posts.
How to write a blog post: Step 1: Planning is everything
Before you hit “publish”, you might spend days or even a week “ writing” your blog post. But even before that, you would want to spend vital hours planning your post and thinking about what benefits you can create and offer to your audience as well as how your blog can appear on search engine results.
How to write a blog post: Step 2: Understanding your audience
The very first step you want to do is to understand your target audience.
Ask yourself some questions like “What do you want to know about?” And “What will interest them?” And this is why creating your buyer personas is important. Identifying your buyer personas’ interests helps you craft and think of what topic your blog post should be.
For example, if your readers are business owners looking to increase their revenue, you probably don’t need to provide them with information about how to start a business since most of them probably have that down.
Instead, you want to give them information about how to increase brand awareness through digital marketing. This kind of strategy is what really helps you get your head around the topics that fit the wants and needs of your audience.
How to write a blog post: Step 3:Choose a Topic That Interests YOU
Once you know your target audience and what information they need. Now, it’s time to think about what you can do. You should by now know what makes a good blog (Interesting, actionable, and engaging). But to do that, you need to pick a topic that actually interests you so that you can convey your message and enthusiasm effectively.
Readers can tell when a writer is bored by their subject, and you DO NOT want that to happen. Remember “No fun for the writer, no fun for the reader”.
How to write a blog post: Step 4: Write an Outline & Plan Your Post
Retrieved from Blogakbitious
When writing a personal blog, it’s absolutely fine to write whatever story you want. But, if your goal is to write a blog post to get more traffic to your website, then you need more than that.
Speaking of writing a blog to get more traffic, it involves SEO strategy and you are required to
write an outline or structure for your post. It can be a rough guide as to what keywords you want to focus on so that you can keep your messages on track and don’t ramble on something irrelevant to your topic.
Here is an example of an effective blog post outline…
Opening: Quick summary explaining what the blog post will cover:
Headings: Include target keywords in the subheaders
Content: The particular topic you are writing about
Links: You can include both internal and external links to increase user experience on your blog.
Conclusion: What benefits the reader has gained from reading your blog
The purpose of this outline is to make sure you have a plan to cover. It will keep you in what order you need to do and to ensure all the bare-bone details are included in each section of your blog.
How to write a blog post: Step 5: Write a blog post!
Now let's get started writing a blog!
Writing a great headline
While most writers let headlines take the back seat in their writing process without realizing that it can wind up as a quick afterthought. The fact that you should know is the headline is somewhat more important than the article itself. And who cares how great your blog post is if no one even reads it?
Out of all the people who read your headline, only 20% will read your article copy. So you really need to focus on creating a powerful and sexy headline to attract those online readers.
You probably ask “Why is the headline so important for the blog”
The answer is “A great blog headline acts as a promise to your readers, and that’s what attracts more readers to blog”.
The modern online blog headlines are pretty tricky as they need to be SEO keyword-friendly while maintaining a unique and creative. With that said, your blog headline needs to be super clickable and irresistible and that’s one of the most important things you need to pay attention to if you want to increase your blog traffic.
Be strategic
You need to craft your content based on your readers' journey.
In this step, you should know what your audience is looking for in your blog already. For instance, the audience who is looking for a digital marketing program for his hotel lands on your blog, that means he already started his journey.
Retrieved from CoSchedule
Your content will need to discover your audience problem until including the best solution to help your audience solve their problem. It should also provide actionable tips where it encourages them to take action.
So…
Your content strategy must be structured based on what your audience is looking for.
Improving blog UX (User Experience)
We are In an online world where there are so many blogs competing for reader attention!
If you want to stand out, you have to make sure your blog post is different from others and is best on the topic. Also, you have to make people love to stay on your blog for more.
To do that, your blog needs to be optimized for the best UX (User experience). And here's what you can do…
Increase font size: Font size is one of the little details that can make a huge difference in how people consume your content. According to UsabilityGreek, it says that some people won’t even bother reading a blog post of the font size is too small or difficult to read
Add design elements: Your design elements like image or video will make your content easier for the reader to consume
Cut down options: No one likes to read a cluttered busy blog with tons of banners and unnecessary links.
Space things out: Give space between sentences so people can sit back and read your blog.
Optimize your blog posts for SEO
Retrieved from Mimicdigitalmarketing
Now, you should have a great picture of how your blog will look like. But that’s not enough if your purpose is to increase traffic to your blog.
You need to know how to optimize your blog post to make them more search engine friendly.
And I’m here to give 5 SEO practices that you can do that will get your blog noticed and more traffic.
There are so many tools out there that will help you in finding the right keywords for your blog topic. Here are some tools that I recommend…
Ubersuggest
Google Adwords Keyword Tool
KWfinder
Extra tips: You can include a few Long-tail keywords to your blog as well. This will help you find the audience who used a specific keyword searching for something they are exactly looking for.
Try to include them in the following places:
Blog title
Headings
Introductory sentence
Concluding paragraph
Anchor text (Hyperlinked texts)
Title tags and meta descriptions
Important tip: keep in mind that you DO NOT overuse your keywords also known as keywords stuffing, meaning filling your content with too many keywords. Not only this will irritate you, blog readers, it will also get penalized by Google.
So, several keywords placed in a natural manner will do the trick.
This will allow you to tell the search engine what’s your picture is all about!
Not only is it good for UX purposes, but you might also get lucky and receive a backlink. Quality backlinks are a valuable commodity for any site looking to rank higher in search engine pages.
It is your long-term value and never gets old. So why not make your next blog an Evergreen Content?
Are you ready to write a blog?
Blogging can help your business build stronger brand awareness and brings more traffic or leads to your site. Follow the steps and tips we’ve covered above, and start creating your next effective blog post. Let us know how it goes, and we’ll be ready to help you.
