Are you wondering how to write a great blog post? Perhaps you’re new to blogging or looking to breathe new life into your current—or lapsed—blog.
Blogging remains one of the most effective ways to generate organic traffic to your website through search engines. It can help with getting listed in both AI results and the list of specific URLS (web pages) that follow the AI.
In addition, blogging regularly can help you grow your email list. You can send out a newsletter each time you publish a new blog post. Blogging enables you to connect with your readers, provide real value, and develop long-term relationships, making them more likely to hire you when they are ready for your services and more likely to purchase your book once it is published.
Blogging was one of the most effective moves in my career as a book coach, as most people discover my services through my website, which ranks well on Google due to the numerous relevant posts (addressing my readers’ needs) that I’ve created over time.
This case study in writing posts for a parenting blog will help you prepare, organize, draft and polish your post to be informative, SEO friendly and irresistibly compelling!
A Retired Physician Resurrects Her Blog
Recently, a client of mine, Pam Oatis, MD, returned to blogging after a literary agent I introduced her to expressed interest in her book. During our joint call, the agent shared that Pam needed to start blogging again, as her last post was several years ago. Publishers would look at the blog and expect to see it current.
Even though Pam had blogged before, she struggled with her first draft, so I put together some guidelines on how to write a good blog post and provided her with specific feedback on the post she’d drafted. I was thrilled at the result! Pam’s first and second posts drew me in as a reader, and after one long-time participant in my Get Your Writing Done Program read the posts, she reached out to Pam for more details as she had just become a grandmother! Clearly, the posts were compelling!
After putting together the guidelines for Pam, I realized that many of my clients and subscribers are new to writing blog posts. Others who have blogged for a while may be frustrated that their posts aren’t getting more traction. Perhaps you could use a guide to blogging and writing a great blog post!
How To Write a Great Blog Post
Step 1: put yourself in your readers’ shoes
One of the biggest mistakes I see with those new-ish to blogging is that the writer is writing what they want to say, rather than thinking about what readers want to hear!- Think about what questions your readers, clients, audience members or students often ask you—that’s a perfect place to start.
- Or, you might consider writing about a specific challenge a client faced and how you helped them (just be sure to obtain their permission first).
- What are their pain points and challenges? What are their goals? What are they looking for in terms of results?
The answers to these questions should guide you in developing your ideas.
Step 2: Outline
Step 3: Start with a story
Step 4 (or 3): Motivate your reader
Step 5: Teach
Next, you can tie the story to the teaching points you want to share. In this post I offer these teaching points in steps. You can also provide teaching points with bulleted lists of:
- Actions
- Items
- Reasons
- Examples
- Goals
- etc.
Following your bulleted list, you can use headers to break down each item in more detail, as I do in this blog post about
Alternatively, you can skip the bullet points and create various sections using headers, which makes your post easier to read and helps with SEO (more on headers later in this post). Here’s an example of a blog post that uses headers to break up the material into several sections, where each section offers one example: Even Before You Write or Publish, Your Book is Making an Impact: Here’s How
For Pam, I suggested that she share the answer to a question or problem and provide some teaching, mentioning relevant research and linking to it (open in a new window).
Step 6: Conclusion or Summary
End with a conclusion, a summary, or both.
Step 7: Your Call to Action (CTA)
It’s always beneficial to know what action you want your readers to take. Do you want them to:
- Create and commit to a new habit?
- Comment on the post and share it?
- Download a lead magnet (free offer) and join your mailing list?
- Buy something from you?
If you want them to comment and share, ask them a question or be specific about how they might comment and engage with the post. If you want them to commit to a new habit, provide a list of possibilities to choose from, in addition to allowing them to add their own. If you want them to make a purchase, consider offering special pricing. In this post, I’m going to invite you to comment by sharing your questions about blogging or your own tips and insights about blogging. And, yes, please share on social media by using the buttons above or below your comment.
For Pam, some of the calls to action I suggested were a step for her to take, such as inviting readers to post comments. For comments, I advised her that the more specific the better: ask about their experience, ask for more questions, or ask what their takeaways are. I also suggested she work on a free offer that would help her grow her email list. We brainstormed some ideas that would be appealing to readers of her blog and future book.
I suggest you vary your CTA from post to post. Be sure to deliver value to your readers.
Optional step: add media
Later in this post, we’ll discuss adding images or video to enhance readability, enjoyment, engagement, clarity, and SEO. For now, I’d like to share that you can add images or video. This post on How the Earth Breath Can Inspire and Support Your Writing offers an example of embedding video to enhance the reader experience.
How to get your post to show up on Google and other important tips
Blogging Tips
For every post, use these tips to make your post professional:
- Include links to other posts. Search engines like to see “inbound links” to your website, other posts or web pages that are relevant, as well as “outbound links” to other websites, particularly sites with high authority: universities, trusted news sources (if that’s not an oxymoron at this point) or research institutions, for example.
- Make your links professional: Use hyperlinks instead of typing out a URL. Also, cut off the cookies/garbage on longer links (anything after the actual URL of the page).
To make your posts easy to read, use these guidelines:
- Use frequent paragraph breaks for easy reading online. Break up posts more than you would in a book, for example.
- Use bullet points to break up blocks of writing and make it easier to read on a screen.
- Add images —try unsplash.com and look for pictures without the plus sign (which you have to pay for). There are other sites with free images as well, or you can use your own photos.
- Make sure headers are registered as headers: choose the header size from the text menu for each header.
- The length of your posts will vary depending on your readers’ preferences, age, distractibility, and other factors. If you feel inspired to write something longer than what works well for a post, consider writing something that could fit as a chapter in your book. Then shorten it for the blog post itself.
Make your post SEO-friendly and keyword-rich
SEO friendly blog posts and websites get picked up by search engines when people search for your main keywords! This will bring you more visitors over time. Be patient; it won’t likely happen overnight. I was amazed to see how, over time, my bi-weekly blogging and the use of these SEO-friendly tips have helped my website become a high-ranking authority site in Google and other search engines.
Choose keywords well for better searching
What’s a keyword? One or more words, or a phrase, that are in the post frequently and are terms someone searching for this information (in the post) is likely to search for.
When I spoke to Pam, I suggested that one of her posts consider the phrases “crying baby” and “soothe yourself,” and then use Yoast SEO to see what other suggestions it might make for optimization.
- Try to use your keywords in your title, in the first sentence (or paragraph) and throughout the article.
- Use keywords as “Alt text” for your images; that will help your visibility when potential readers search online.
- Don’t go overboard on the keywords. You want your post to be reader-friendly—flowing well and easy to read. Overusing keywords can actually harm your SEO. This is another area where Yoast SEO can help you strike a balance.
Improve sharing
Improve sharing- Choose a featured image to be used in social media shares.
- Ensure your posts include a share plugin, making it easy for readers to share on their preferred social media sites. This will help get more readers and improve SEO.
