In order for your specific business to be successful when it comes to content marketing, you must be able to blog effectively. Blogs are a very important and essential aspect in your businesses digital marketing strategy during this time period. Along with this, blogs allow your online platform to remain solid and engaging for website visitors.
People who are just starting to understand SEO and digital marketing find it difficult to understand the true value of blogs. Think about it. A big part of the internet is just an accumulation and collection of blogs in either a form of text, images, or videos. If you navigate to Google and search up a keyword, most of the search results lead to blog posts or online publications.
Basically, if you are able to produce effective blog posts in a timely manner on your company’s website with the proper plan and SEO strategy, then you ultimately will receive a share of the searches on search engines, despite any competition.
Do Your Research Before Writing
Content creation is the most time-consuming aspect of blogging. In order to make the writing process easier, doing research is a must. After figuring out the topic of your blog, you can search Google using related keywords to your topic.
First, determine what other people are writing about on your topic. Determine what titles they are using, what kind of content they are generating, or if they are using image and videos. Then, analyze which blogs appear on the first search result page on Google and take some time to read through each of them.
Always remember that your end goal is to make your blog better than the ones that are already published about the same topic. It is important to differentiate your content in the best way possible from what is already published. Along with this, you can begin to take notes on what type of content appeals to you, and use this towards your own blogs.
Create A Blog Post Outline
After you have created your blog post title, and completed your research for SEO purposes, it is then time to create an outline for your post. A post outline includes creating headings for your post (H1’s, H2’s, and your H3’s. Also, your outline will include what each section of your blog post will be about.
Creating an outline from the start will save you a lot of time land energy once its time to create the actual post, since you will only have to create the content for each of the headings. You won’t be starting your blog post from scratch. Along with this, based on what y0ur post length is, you can have different headings for every 500 words.
This makes reading much easier, especially for those people who just like to do skim reading through the blog.
Blog Post Titles
Once you have defined the purpose of why you are writing your blog post, whether it is to make money, generate leads, or to blog for traffic, you must then decide on the title of your blog. Your blogs title must not only be interesting and catchy enough for someone to click on, but it must also be SEO friendly so that your blog can achieve higher rankings.
Some examples of the keywords that drive traffic to a page and are also considered to be beginner terms are “how to…” “tips and tricks,”10 ways to market…” After you decide on the general keywords that you would like to target in your blog, you can begin to search Google for these keywords and take notes on the suggestions that Google provides. It is important to use titles and keywords that will drive traffic to your page.
On-Page SEO
Blog SEO is the process of optimizing your blog’s content for search engines. Common SEO tasks include on-page optimization, installing plugins, internal linking, and loading speed. You do not have to be an SEO expert in order to get the basics right. Be sure to always keep these things in mind when working on on-page SEO for blog posts:
- Titles must always be less than 60 characters
- All descriptions between 140-150 characters
- Include ALT tags for all images
- H1 tag for the page title
- H2 & H3 tags for the headings
- Fast loading pages
- Internal linking
All of these factors are very important in order for your blog content to be understood by search engines.
Post Length Matters
Blog post size does matter! A blog post should contain at least 300 words in order to rank well in the search engines. However, long posts with 1000 words or more rank easier in search engines compared to short posts. Longer blog posts are more shareable and like-able. So, how long should the blog post be?
The simplest thing to do is to search Google for similar blogs and take count of the number of words each blog post has that appears on the first page of Google. This way, you can calculate the average number of words and make your post more insightful and informative.
Make Your Work Beautiful
After you have created a catchy title for your blog post and included all of your content, you’re not finished just yet!
Having a blog post filled with only words will not get you very far with visibility. You need to ensure that your post stands out as well. By doing so, you can make use of using bold words and italics. This really helps to highlight important points that you are trying to get across to readers. Furthermore, using images allows you to highlight important points. Along with this, using external links helps viewers learn even more in depth about the given topic.
Thus, these small adjustments can make your blog posts much more easier to read, can help them stand out more, and makes them more professional and more social. This will ultimately lead to a view staying on your page for a longer period of time.
Advertise Your Blog
If absolutely no one is reading, commenting, or sharing your blog posts, then there is no possible way that you can be a successful blogger or maintain a successful website. After you spend a ton of long hours writing and publishing blogs, receiving absolutely no engagement back is not the best feeling. So, what can you do about this?
You must get your blogs noticed by the public! And, the best way to do this is by advertising them. You market your blogs through advertising, social media platforms (Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, etc.), guest posting, email marketing, and several other ways. These marketing methods will ensure that your blog posts gain views and feedback. Consider blog advertising an essential aspect of the blogging process.
As soon as you click the “publish” button, create a list of steps that you must complete next as part of the marketing process of your blogs. Your list can look something along the lines of this:
- Share your blog post on your Instagram feed
- Share your blog post on your Instagram story
- Add your blog posts to the “highlights” section of your Instagram page
- Share the post (multiple times) on your personal social media pages
- Advertise your blog post Facebook (use Facebook ads)
- Share your blog post on your Facebook story
- Advertise your blog post on Twitter (use Twitter promotion ads)
- Inform other fellow bloggers or your clients/customers by email that you have published a new post
- Send out a newsletter to your email list
- Advertise your blog post on LinkedIn
To Conclude…
When it comes to digital marketing as a whole, blogging is a very essential aspect. Writing blog posts drives traffic to your website, allows you to generates new leads for your company, helps you nurture those leads, and even gives you increased insight into your customer base. Users, search engines (Google, Yahoo, Bing), social platforms (Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn), and content networks crave to see new content all the time!
Creating good and valuable content isn’t always the easiest thing to do. It takes a lot of time and energy to be created, which is why you must always be in a position where you are ready to create new, valuable content fast. Follow all of these steps and you are bound to succeed when it comes to writing blog posts.
Be sure to check out some of the blogs we have written for our clients Avon Cleaners and Red Hanger! Need further assistance with blog writing? We are here to help! Contact Digital Task Force today and schedule a call with us to discuss your needs in detail.
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