How to write a blog that people will read and enjoy!
So you want to know how to write a blog properly? You may have heard by now how important blogging is to how you market your website. If you want to have any success in the search engine optimisation scene, you need to have blogging that complements it. What exactly makes an adequately written blog, though? What are the important things to identify, the factors that equate to success? Let us dig deeper to help to uncover some of these details. These concepts even work for Shopify SEO!
How to write a blog – Google is Smart
Why do we care so much about proper blog writing? The main reason is due to the intelligence level of the search engine giant Google. The company continues to push the way their algorithm works. They have advanced it to the state where it is looking at far more than just keywords.
Google launched an algorithm update known as Hummingbird a few years back, and it was that shift that started to focus on quality content. The search engine is now able to read contextually what the blog is about, how authoritative it is, the quality state. As a writer or a webmaster, have an awareness that Google is getting to that level of depth and working its search engine results pages as a result.
How to write a blog – Know the Target Audience
The first step to writing a proper blog is to know your target audience. Before you even start to write a word, have a clear picture of who you are writing for. What does the audience want to know about? What are the details they will care about most? What is going to strike a nerve with the audience?
One of the best ways to do this is to work to create buyer personas. If you are writing for a service provider or a company selling products, what types of buyers do they attract or hope to? Work with buyer personas to help to figure out where interests are going to lie.
How to write a blog – Figure Out the Topic
What is the topic you are writing about? Before you get into the details of the post, know the subject. You want to take it back to almost elementary school when you were taught to start with the main idea in a sentence.
The topic does not have to be detailed, just general. Once you have the topic, though, you can begin to flesh out all of the different points you are going to want to hit on as you compose the piece.
How to write a blog – Pen the Introduction
The introduction is one of the most important pieces of a blog post. It has to grab the reader’s attention immediately. If you lose the reader in the introduction, they are never going to get to the meat of the blog post below.
You can grab the attention of a reader in some different ways. You could use a joke, tell a story. You could also figure out how to be empathetic to the target audience or give them a tidbit of information that leads them to want to learn more.
How to write a blog – Organise with Subheading
You are at the stage of the blog post where you have the topic, and you know your audience. Now it is a matter of taking that topic and blowing it out into much more detail. You want to start to figure out the subheadings.
The subheadings are going to provide you with the outline of the rest of the blog post. Think about the post you are reading right now. We gave you an introduction, queued up the idea of writing a proper blog post, and started to fill out the details below. Do the subheadings before you write the details!
How to write a blog – Write, Write, Write!
You are now in the position where you can start to write away. Do this in a quiet setting so that you can fully concentrate! Work through each of the subheadings so that you are adding in adequate detail to each. Be sure that you are referencing the sources you utilise as well with links. If you are utilising facts from studies and such, cite them to further validate, in the eyes of Google and readers, the facts that you are putting out there.
Writing is the fun part. You want to use your creativity and think outside of the box. Focus on the buyer persona and give them the facts that they want and nothing more. Readers will know when they are wasting their time on poor content!
How to write a blog – Avoid the Fluff
Google is not a fan of fluff. Fluff is adding a bunch of sentences that lack meat, details. You can tell if you have fluff by reading your blog post once complete. If you have sentences that could be deleted and have no impact on the value of the blog post, that would qualify the content as fluff.
Google and other search engines are no longer concerned about the length of blog posts. They are far more concerned about the quality of the post and the details embedded within.
How to write a blog – Quality Control
Quality control also has to be practiced once you are done writing the post. Read it over a few times and try to revise as you go. Make sure that if you are focusing on keywords embedded throughout the article in a natural flow. Use plenty of the editing tools across the Internet as well to ensure you have proper sentence structure, avoid passive voice, and other blog pitfalls.
Proper blog writing is as much about attention to detail as it is about known which focal points to strike. You want to take your time when writing blog posts, especially when they have search engine optimisation in mind. Google, more than ever before, is valuing quality content. You could have more blogs than any other site on the Internet, but if they are not high quality, Google will know that and demote you in the ranks as a result. Take your time and start to practice attention driven blog writing, today!
