Complete Guide: How to Write a Good Blog Post
Blog posts can be written for various purposes, whether it is to grow a blog’s traffic or to sell a product or service that you offer. Whatever the purpose may be, a good blog post should fulfill it.
Writing a blog post can be an easy task once you get the hang of it. However, if you aren’t there yet, you might need some help in writing a good blog post and we’re here to do that.
This article will include a complete guide on how to write a good blog post. So stick with us till the end as we discuss some of the steps you can take to create a blog post that stands out from the others.
1. Choose an Interesting topic
The first step you can take to write a good blog post is to choose a topic that is trending or one that interests you. Choosing a topic that is trending will increase your chances of getting higher traffic. However, it is not always the best practice to choose the most trending topic as you’ll have more competition.
You can choose a topic that you are interested in and knowledgeable about to make the process of writing better for yourself.
If you can manage to choose a topic that interests you and has less competition, the chances of your blog post getting ranked higher increase. Having a brainstorming session can help if you are facing trouble coming up with a topic idea.
If Brainstorming doesn’t work for you then here are some blog post ideas to help you get started. Remember that choosing a topic is the first step and the most important one because it will set the ground for what you’re going to write. So choose carefully.
2. Understand the Audience
After you’ve decided on a title for your blog post, the next thing you can do is try to identify your target audience. Target audience usually means the audience that your blog post can be helpful for.
Figuring out the target audience of your blog post can help you make content that helps the reader in some way. Addressing the pain points of the readers and providing them with solutions can lead to a great blog post. If the audience doesn’t feel like they’re getting anything from your blog post, why would they consider reading it?
Think of it this way, let’s say you’re writing an article on “The Best Juice Bars in Amsterdam”. This article will mostly be helpful for the people that are living in Amsterdam and the people that are planning to go to Amsterdam. These two groups of people will be your target audience.
Conducting audience research can be a great way to understand how these people talk and what specific word choices they use in their daily lives. You can then use this style of talking in your blog post when you’re telling them about all the good bars that are located in the city.
3. Research Information and take notes
Conducting thorough research on the topic of your choosing can be the most time-consuming step. But it’ll be worth it if you can gather enough information to use in the content of your blog post. You can research on Google or take a look at your competitor’s content.
Just make sure that you research from reliable sources since you’ll be using this information in your content. You can also try to improve on what’s already out there to make the content of your blog post better than others.
One thing that you should keep in mind is not to use the content that you researched directly in yours. It will be considered plagiarism and will negatively affect your blog post. However, if there’s a piece of information that you want to add to your blog post, you must mention the source along with it.
Taking notes while doing your research can be a great way of organizing all your findings. This is why having a notepad beside you when researching is always a good idea.
4. Start Writing your Blog Post
Now that you’ve gathered all the information you’re going to need to write your blog post. It is time to start writing it.
A blog post usually starts with an introduction, then comes the body and the conclusion. Try to write a compelling introduction so you can hook your readers into reading the content of your blog post. If the introduction (the very first part of your blog post) is boring, how can you expect the reader to continue reading it till the end?
When writing a blog post, the rule of thumb is to use a conversational tone. Writing how you talk can make the reader feel like they’re having a conversation with you. This will make your content engaging.
Apart from this, a good blog post is always easy for the reader to skim through. Try keeping your sentences and paragraphs concise and to the point. You can also use bullet points when listing and adding subheadings to the headlines. Doing these things can increase the readability of your blog post.
To make it easier for the reader to understand your point, you can add examples where needed.
And lastly, summarize all that you’ve discussed in the blog post and write a couple of lines in the conclusion. Remember that the conclusion is the crux of the whole content, so try to encapsulate everything when writing it.
5. Optimize it for SEO
Getting ranked in search engines requires the content to be optimized for SEO. Once you’ve written your blog post, you need to do a couple of things to ensure it’s visible to the readers when they search for it.
Keywords are used in the title, headings, and content of the blog posts to make them visible to users when they search for something related to it in search engines. You can conduct keyword research to find highly searched keywords related to your blog post. Then incorporate these in its content.
Note: Try not to add too many keywords to your blog post as it counts as keyword stuffing and can affect the SEO of your blog post negatively.
Search engines don’t like duplicate or plagiarized content. Plagiarism, if found can have negative impacts on the SEO of your blog post. These impacts include de-ranking in SERPS and even the blog post getting taken down, depending on the amount of plagiarism found.
Plagiarism can occur accidentally in your blog post as there is an abundance of information about everything on the internet about everything. Sometimes the content you put out can be similar to one that is already available on the internet. This becomes a classic case of plagiarism in the eyes of search engines.
So it’s important to check if your blog post has plagiarism before publishing it. The only method to check if there’s any plagiarized content in your blog post is to use a free plagiarism check tool online. These tools take a few seconds to check the content through huge online databases and reveal if your content is matching to some source.
6. Add Visuals
Believe it or not visuals are a great part of content marketing strategy. According to Optinmonster, Articles with images get 94% more views as opposed to those with no visuals.
Adding visuals to your blog post can be a great way for it to capture the reader’s attention. It doesn’t take the reader much time to decide whether they want to read the blog post or just hit the back button in their browser. This is where visuals come in clutch. If the reader finds an eye-catching visual incorporated into your content, it can raise their curiosity.
Remember to compress the size of the image that you’re going to be using in the content of your blog post. This can contribute to making the webpage of your blog post load faster for the reader, leading to a better user experience.
If you’re struggling to find royalty-free images, you can use a stock image too. However, it requires you to provide a source for the image.
7. Proofread and Edit
The last thing you can do after you’re done with everything is proofread the blog post to find any errors that might’ve been overlooked while writing it.
Grammatical, spelling, and punctuation mistakes can make the text look amateurish. It is recommended to look for them in the proofreading session and fix them if you find any. Along with these, you can also look for tone mistakes.
A good blog post requires the content to have a consistent tone throughout. Tone mistakes can ruin the flow of the blog post. If you find tone errors in the content while proofreading, then don’t worry as there’s a perfect remedy available for it.
A free paraphrasing tool can be used to fix any mistakes occurring in the tone of the content by choosing from the given modes. Simply copy and paste the text that isn’t reflecting the overall tone of the content, and select the mode you want it to give an output in. i.e. Formal mode to make the tone of the text formal. Hit “paraphrase” and Voila, you’ve got the text in your desired tone.
Conclusion
Once you understand how it is done, writing a blog post is a simple task. This article includes some steps that will help you write a good blog post without the need to ask for help.
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