How to Craft the Perfect Blog Post

Every blog post is an opportunity to get your business in front of potential clients and customers.

You want your articles to be engaging enough that readers will enjoy the content, but not so long that they lose interest halfway through. To help you craft the perfect article, we put together a list of things to remember when writing blog posts.

1. Keyword research

In the world of SEO, keyword selection is important. Every time you write an article it’s important to know how many people will be searching for that term, how often and how much competition there is around it.

It’s not enough to throw in some keywords just because you feel like you need them. This could end up being a waste of time and effort. It is wise to start off using tools such as Google Trends, UberSuggest, SEMrush, AnswerThePublic, Quora to get content ideas and see what kind of language people are using to ask questions on your topic.

It is often unrealistic to rank for very competitive keywords if you are new or have a smaller site, but this doesn’t mean that you can’t get some great results. You should look into creating content to try and rank for long-tail keywords. Often, they are lower competition and a higher buyer intent so don’t worry if the search volume is a little lower if you see this in tools such as SEMrush.

2. Write content

You should never write just to “impress” search engines. You should always aim to answer the user’s questions in as much detail as you can. However – don’t go down the path of repeating yourself or keyword stuffing as that is counterproductive.

There isn’t a “golden” number of words when it comes to writing content. There have been tonnes of studies stating different numbers. The truth is that each industry is different. Each topic has its own different complexities. So there isn’t a “golden” number. However, I would say that a minimum of 1,000 words is a decent place to start. But again, don’t repeat yourself or keywords too often, write until you feel like you have covered what you need to.

My best advice is always to:

• Research your topic well
• Add your own expert insights, share examples, case studies or original research
• Review the competition and use them as an initial benchmark

If you follow these steps, it can help you generate more backlinks, social shares and ultimately, more online exposure to help you generate more leads

3. Structure content correctly

When sectioning your page up, be sure to use the correct header tags. You want to make your first sub-point a <h2> (after using a <h1> for the title of the blog) and then any sub-points under that go to a <h3>.

When writing, always use clear paragraphing so that it breaks up the reading experience for readers. There’s nothing worse than long paragraphs! Using numbers to break up the page is a good idea too. People have a tendency to skim read once landing on a page.

When posting your article, make sure you add tags to your post and add a category. This helps with the organisation of your content and is good in the long run as you start to grow your content base.

Keep the URL structure simple for your readers and search engines. Personally, I like to keep them as short as possible and tend to avoid the date URL structure and opt for domain.com/blog-article-1 it depends on the structure of your site elsewhere too.

4. Include internal links