Top Tips for Creating the Perfect Blog Post
Posted on 1st December 2021
It’s important to have a blog for your website. It not only drives traffic to your website but helps with links building, allows you to index a new page and share your latest news.
A blog can also allow you to be a voice of authority and build credibility and trust within your sector. In addition, you can also use it for your social media pages.
Here are some of our top tips to create the perfect blog:
Producing blog content
Writing
Forget keywords and phrases at this point. You can go back and put them in once you’ve finished. Just write naturally to begin with.
Using content naturally is great because it means people will want to read your blog. A good way to write content is as though you are answering questions your customers might ask.
Topics
Think about your customers and what they would want to read about. What would be helpful, interesting, for them?
Good subject matters for blog posts include, How To type posts, Case studies and Top 10 lists. News updates in your industry is another good subject matter.
Then again, you could have company updates. This is a great way of telling your customers you’ve won an award, to introduce a new member of staff or let them know when you get a new consignment of goods in store, or are holding a promotion. Maybe you’re celebrating a year in business, 10 years or even celebrating your centenary!
What are your competitors writing about – and are they getting much engagement? If they are then use a popular post as inspiration i.e. don't copy it verbatim but use the idea, maybe even a similar theme and always do your own research. You already know people like reading about the subject so that should enthuse you to do a little work around it.
Length
Write around 500 words mimimum. Less isn’t a great amount for SEO purposes. However, would recommend 1000 words plus, but only if you write in short paragraphs and divide the text up, preferably with pictures and with interesting subheadings and bullet points to give your reader’s eyes ‘a rest.’
Images
Professional photos will strengthen your brand and are great for adding interest to a blog. If this isn’t an option then use free stock photos from sites such as Pixabay or Unsplash. Don’t take images off Google as you’ll be penalised. Most images are copyrighted, meaning you need the owner’s permission to use them. If you really love an image and want to use it then you could ask permission and offer to give them image credit with a link back to their site.
Screenshots are good when you want to show examples of great advertising content if you’re a branding company, for instance.
CTA
Always have a Call to Action at the bottom of your blog post. This could be to call you or take a look at your website. It’s important because it gives you the chance to motivate your reader to do something ie click on to your website to look at a new product, download free guide etc.
Discover more about creating great content for your website.
Adding links to your blog
Link building is important because it helps search engines find new web pages, and determines which pages should rank higher in the SERPs.
Tags are a way of labelling your blog post and grouping similar blog themes under the same heading, making them easy for the reader to search for. I usually add 2 or 3 tags per post and they should be one to three words long. Don’t use more than six tags per post. No need to hashtag or to add several tags around this same topic.
Anchor links are when you put a particular word in the blog post that links back to a page on your website.
External links are reference links i.e. they take the reader to an authoritative site on the subject if they want to read about it in more detail. Guest blogging can involve relevant external links (i.e. to other blogs in the same or similar sector) – but that’s a whole other topic and worth a separate presentation in its own right.
Optimise for Search Engine Optimisation (SEO)
Meta data
This is content that isn’t visible on your blog but is written for the search engines i.e. to tell them what your blog is about so they can sort it for relevance. You’ll find a box for it on your blog. It can increase click-through rates to web pages and boost engagement with your content. When you share the blog on your social media this is content you see. Remember to include an image too.
Alt text
This is a description for an image and is like putting a caption to a photo. It's used by search engines to return search results. Remember to also save your image using a relevant file name.
Key words and phrases
These are good for SEO purposes but don’t overdo it, otherwise your blog could be considered ‘spam’ and be ignored by the search engines and demoted by Google. A good standard is one keyword or phrase every 100 words. The higher up the blog, the better. Use long tail keywords and try and also localise your keywords eg "Ladies colour hairdressers in Windsor" and "Electrician for garden lights in Ascot."
How to promote your blog
Let people know about your blog by creating a post in your Google Profile and also adding a teaser to your social platforms with a link back to the blog. You can also add a link to blogs in emails to clients or new prospects.
It’s a good idea to repurpose your content, create video or produce a podcast. You can post on forums related to your sector. Re-editing your blog is beneficial, so too is linking your blogs to one another. This gives readers more information and it’s also good for your own SEO.
Need more support to get started, there's a good article on hubspot on how to get started with a blog.
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