When it comes to writing a blog, there is a specific format you need to follow. Whether you are writing a corporate blog post, a B2B, or a B2C blog, there are certain things you must do.
I bet how you write your blog has a massive impact on your blog search engine ranking, engagement, social socials, and even conventions rate in the case of a blog post aimed at selling.
To be frank, it makes no sense to write a blog that doesn’t bring you any traffic. it’s wiser to take some time and do some research before writing and distributing your blog posts.
Doing this will get people to read, share and recommend it to others and, over time, rank on the first page of Google for even more organic and quality traffic.
So here in this blog post, You will learn how to write a blog that goes viral and make you money. Make sure you read till the end to have full knowledge of what it takes to write a good blog post.
So let’s jump into it.
Blog writing guide step by step
#1. Keyword research
Keyword research is the first and most important aspect of your blog post, and it should always be. Your entire blog post’s visibility in the search engine depends on your keywords.
Choosing the wrong keywords is as good as just writing an aimless blog post with no meaning and specific target audience, making it difficult for search engines to understand the aim of your blog post to rank it.
Take Keywords to be the foundation of your blog and do your best to optimize your blog post based on your chosen keywords.
This means placing your focus and related keywords in specific places on your blog.
Make sure your keyword is found in your blog URL, Blog title, Subtitles, and numerous times within the body of your content.
For example. I am able to rank numbers on the keyword “How to get cheap PPC traffic” as you can see in the image below.
This was not an accident or magic, it’s simply the effective and strategic implementation of keywords. Having keywords in the right position matters a lot.
How to do keyword research
Whenever you decide to do keyword research, here are things to consider,
- The search intent of the keyword
- The search volume of the keyword, and
- The competitiveness of the keyword.
All these matters and it’s important to pay attention to each of them.
Keyword research tools
There are several keyword research tools. Some of them are free, while some require payment. In any case, you may be able to use the free versions of these tools to get what you want.
Here are my favorite keyword research tools. I can’t stress enough how important it is for you to get all the necessary information about your chosen keywords before starting your blog post.
#1. LSIGraph
LSIGraph is one of my favorite keyword research tools with a free and paid version. LSIGraph provides you with most of the information you need, such as the keyword trend, volume, cost per click (CPC), and competitive level.
This makes it very easy for you to pick the most relevant keywords for your blog post. It’s important to always pay attention to the competitive percentage shown on the right side of the tool here.
#2. Ubersuggest
Ubersuggest is owned by Neil Patel, one of the best heads and the most popular SEO expert in the field. He has made a lot of videos about Ubersuggest on his YouTube channel. It has a free and paid version.
This tool has a lot of benefits when it comes to keyword research. With Ubersuggest, you can have all the information listed on the LSIGraph plus other valuable information such as your competitor’s backlinks sources, page and domain authority, number of backlinks, etc.
Keyword ideas you can choose from are all shown during keyword research on Ubersuggest. This helps in making the right decision when choosing keywords to write on.
Apart from the above, social metrics such as Facebook and Pinterest shares are also shown to provide you will all the valuable information you need on a particular keyword. Currently, it’s one of the best tools in the market.
#3. Google keyword planner
Google Keyword planner is provided by Google free of charge. It’s a great tool as well to get valuable information about your chosen keyword. However, the keyword planner is designed to provide information for Google ads advertisers.
This makes it limited when it comes to SEO analysis and searching for keywords that will enable you to rank in search engines.
So that’s been said. Make sure you select a low, competitive keyword with high traffic volume when you don’t have high domain authority. It will be easier for you to rank on such keywords before going to high competitive keywords.
#2. Writing your blog title
So you might have heard people saying that your blog title matters when it comes to SEO and getting people to click on it. Well, it turns out your blog title is super important, and you should take it seriously.
Here is why? The way you frame your blog title might attract people to click on it, which significantly increases your click-through rate (CTR), which is an important ranking factor.
The more people engage with your content, the more you will be favored by search engines, which help you rank faster.
So how do you write your blog title? Well, Blog titles that tend to have informative words like “How to,” “What to,” “Top 10 way to” Ultimate Guide to” or “Complete guide to” “Step by step guide,” etc.
Some examples of great blog titles
- How Our Side Project Generated $51,365 in 60 Days
- How Lua’s CEO Built an Enterprise Messaging App That Boosts Open Rates From 20% to 98%
- Top 10 Advertising techniques for online advertising
- Can an Algorithm Write a Better News Story Than a Human Reporter?
These titles work wonders and have proven to be very effective and you should always try to frame your blog title around these examples. Take a look for example at the AdsTargets blog shown below.
Apart from the title, make sure you have relevant subtitles aimed at making the entire topic more informative and valuable for your audience.
This will make it easier for them to consume your content as we motivate them to spend more time on your pages, which reduces the bounce rate significantly and positively impacts your SEO rankings.
#3. Writing the introduction of your blog post
Once you are done with your blog post’s title, the next thing to work on is your introduction.
You can’t just start writing straight to the topic of your blog post. It’s important to understand you are dealing with people, and psychology should be applied.
People are curious by nature, which presents a massive opportunity for salespersons and marketers.
You should be trying to sell your blog post to them, which requires some motivational efforts.
For example, You can start your introduction as follows, “Do you want to know how to write a blog post that goes viral?”.
Let them know
Questions help get the attention of your audience, and then you can throw a follow-up line as such “Well, in this post, I will walk you through a step-by-step guide on how to write a great blog post from start to finish.”
Another way to make your blog post introduction is to use statistical proof for example, “As of 2021, there are more than 570 million blogs on the internet, based on activities reported by WordPress, Tumblr, Blogger, Wix, Squarespace, and Medium (and this number is constantly growing)”
This will make your audience curious and will want to know more. Your introduction’s primary goal should be to make sure your audience engages with your content as much as possible.
#4. The body of your blog post
The body of your blog post holds most of your content. This means it has to be treated with care and arranged so your audience will be willing to spend much time engaging with your content.
There are several ways you can make the body of your blog valuable, attractive and engaging, and here is how.
#1. Use subtitles
Subtitles make your blog post easier to follow and understand. Each subtitle holds valuable information and is specifically focused on explaining a subsection of your main heading.
A typical example is using this post right here. The main title is “How to write a blog post that goes viral” I then subdivided the post into several sections under multiple subtitles such as;
- Blog writing guide.
- Writing the introduction of your blog.
- Writing your blog title.
- Writing the body of your etc.
This makes your content more valuable and easy to follow and understand. It is easy, to set subheadings with WordPress, and you should always ensure using subheadings in your blog posts.
#2. Sentences and paragraphs
You won’t believe that making short and simple sentences makes it easier for people to read and understand your blog posts.
Do every in your power to avoid long paragraphs and sentences. Having your text choked and long paragraphs will increase your bounce rate.
This is because people will find it boring and leave your post without reading half of it.
The goal here is to try and space your content very well, avoiding having paragraphs longer than three lines. It will help if you keep things short and clean.
#3. Use media (Images, infographics, and video)
Images, infographics, and videos in your blog post are a necessary evil. It would help if you made your blog post images, infographics, or videos embedded in it.
At least one is required, and you should not underestimate it. You can use tools like Canva to create awesome images or even in form of Pins to later Pin on Pinterest.
Videos can be from anywhere, either from YouTube or your original video uploaded to your blog post.
The reason why media is essential is this. Images invoke emotions making your audience to be visually attached to your post, and increasing the engagement rate.
This is just an image
The use of infographics is underrated. Search engines love large images, which could have a significant impact on your rankings. Also, attractive and informative infographics get you a lot of backlinks.
On the other hand, the video adds value to your audience by teaching them more visually. Also, videos can make your audience stay more on your page while also contributing to your posts ranking better and faster.
Blog SEO Optimization
Considering that every day, there are over 10,000,000 blog posts per day. There should be no room for laziness and also no reason to write a blog that won’t be competitive in search engines.
It is important to get your blog SEO right before publishing. This means doing all the right things to make sure search can easily find and index your content and rank you over time.
Here are the things to consider when optimizing your blog post for search engine rankings.
#1. Focus keywords positions
Just like we start with keywords, it is important to position your focus keyword in the heading (H1), Subheading, in meta description of your blog post and should be mentioned several times in the body of your blog post.
However, do not overuse your keyword so it won’t look spammy. This might have negative consequences on your ranking.
#2. Image Alt attributes
It’s important to have Alt text for all the images used in your blog post. Google recommends this in case your image fails to load. The alternative text will show your audience an idea of the text that fails to load.
#3. Number of words
It is recommended that your blog posts be at least 600 words, longer post tends to do better in search rankings.
It is imperative to have detailed information about the topic you are writing about. This way, search engines will help your content rank because of the quality of your content.
We recommend you make your blog post to at least 1,700 words if you can make it up to 2,500 words, awesome.
#4. Meta descriptions
A meta description is a summary of your blog post. It’s important to write a meta description that can motivate people to click on your results when you eventually appear in Google search results.
Good meta descriptions increase click-through rates and ultimately impact your ranking in search engines positively.
#5. Internal linking
Internal linking seriously impacts your SEO effectiveness. A lot of people don’t know this, but this is real. Having a good internal link structure helps your blog post rank better than a post without internal links.
Each time you write fresh content related to your previous content, ensure to link the two posts together.
For example, Since I have previously written about “How to start a blog,” I will link this post too, as seen here, and other blogging-related posts.
This gives a boost to all my blogging-related posts here. Do ensure to have a good internal link network.
#6. External linking
External give your post more credibility and in a way tell search engines you are making more information accessible to your readers.
Search engines want to show the most relevant content on their first page, which means you link to other sources and tell their algorithms that your page is credible and has a lot of relevant information.
Another benefit of linking to other relevant pages is that you stand a chance to get backlinks to the people you have linked to in the future, increasing your credibility in search engines.
Use many examples in your blog post linking to other relevant pages to increase credibility and network.
Table of content
While this might not be necessary, it helps your readers or audience navigate your blog post easier, especially if your blog post is long and has many subheadings.
In WordPress, you can simply download and install “easy table of contents” plugin and set it up to automatically display your table of contents in each blog post.
Conclusions
This has covered almost everything you need to write a blog post that may rank in search engines and get shared on social media.
You should treat your blogging as a business and do it to the best of your ability. Blogging had become very competitive, and it’s better to do it right if you want to get some good results.
Do your research to understand your audience, keywords to use, your competitor’s strategies, and so on before start writing each blog post.
