Whether it’s your first time putting pen to paper or you’re an experienced content writer with years’ of experience, it’s not easy to begin writing blog content. For writers tasked with updating a website’s blog or small business owners new to blog writing who want to boost their site’s search rankings, these 10 simple steps will guide you.
Planning & Researching For Content Creation
- Have a lear focus topic
The first thing you will need to do before even writing a word, is to research. The first stages of your research process will of course include planning. Planning your blog post requires you to choose from a selection of topic ideas, so you can focus on one area of your business, service or any issues related to your industry.
- Choose your keywords/key phrases
Once you have narrowed down your topic, you can now hone in on the relevant keywords or phrases.
If it’s easier, you can always interchange this process. Choosing keywords first and then a topic.
With keywords in mind, you will be able to optimise your blog throughout the writing process and after to ensure it supports your website’s SEO strategy.
- Complete Competitor Analysis
For further information about your topic and to understand how your competitors are performing, it is a good idea to see what others have written about your blog topic. This could provide opportunities to include areas of discussion which your competitors have not.
If you are an expert in a particular field and can provide statistics or industry insights, it is important to do so, in order to make your blog as unique as possible.
- Research the topic thoroughly and find reliable sources
For writers with little industry experience, it is important to conduct research. Finding sources with reliable information and collating this before writing the blog. You may need to pull quotations from sources and link back to sources, so be sure to keep note of where you have gathered information from.
Writing A Blog
- Format your blog
To give yourself a good starting point, rather than just staring at a blank screen, consider formatting your blog first. The following points can be done in chronological order to create the foundations of your blog article:
- Think of strong title to incorporate your keyword
- Use headings and subheadings
- Consider where in the article you will make key points
- Assign sources to various sections of your blog
- Considering breaks in texts with images, infographics, lists and more
- Finish with a conclusion and concise call to action
- Consider readability
Now that you have a format, you can begin to fill the blanks. Writing your blog in a tone of voice that suits your brand. One thing to remember is that for a blog to resonate with your audience, and not just search engines, it needs to be readable. A blog that is well written will be made easy to digest for the reader. Consider things such as:
- Active voice
- Shorter paragraphs
- Making the text skimmable
- Keep sentences short
- Avoid complicated language or jargon
- Remember to incorporate your keywords
And while, of course, your target audience is incredibly important, you want to make sure you continue to use your keywords throughout your text. This will help to optimise your blog for search engines results pages.
Tip: Avoid keyword stuffing! This is an older SEO practice that is no longer accepted by search engines and Google in particular. Be sure to use your keyword throughout, but also use variations and broad keyword matches for variety.
Finalising Your Blog & Publishing
- Review and peer review your blog
As any good content marketer will tell you, the review stages of blog writing are just as important as the planning and writing itself. Once finished writing, it is very important to read back and review your content for grammatical errors, edits and more. It’s also recommended to ask a colleague or peer to review your content for a different perspective.
- Don’t forget to optimise for SEO
In order for your blog to be optimised for SEO, be sure to tick the following from your checklist:
- Meta description
- Meta title
- Headings
- Internal and external links
- Hit publish and use analytics to review performance
Once finalised and ready to go, it’s time to hit publish in your CMS. Give your blog a final once over and be sure to publish at a relevant time so that you can share your blog across your company’s social media platforms too.
Finally, after some time, you will have gathered enough data within your analytics tools to review the performance of your blog. Using tools such as Google Analytics, you can review how many unique site visitors your blog has had, the CTR of your blog, bounce rate and more. This information will help you to improve your writing for next time.