How to write the perfect blog post

You may think that writing a blog post is just making sure everything is spelled correctly, but there’s a lot more to it than that. Digital Marketing agency The Audit Lab’s Megan Crehan has 7 tips on how to write the perfect blog post every time, but also that you have the best chance of it getting seen by everyone else.

Captivating headline

This is what is going to grab your readers’ attention first and foremost, so make it good. They say you never get a second chance at a first impression, and when it comes to blog posts they’re right. Your goal here should be to make the reader stop dead in their scrolling. You need to come up with something so magnetic that they just can’t turn away.

Here’s some tips for achieving this:

• Convey that your blog post will be useful
• Create a sense of urgency
• Show that you have something unique inside
• Trigger an emotion – it could be anything

Subheadings

As you’re planning out what your blog post is going to look like, make sure you break up the bulk of the text with subheadings. You’re going to need these for three main reasons…

• When faced with a big wall of text, it’s enough to put anyone off. The idea of wading through thousands of words without a visual break will make them click off straight away. Subheadings help to make the page more visually appealing and easy to read
• They allow your readers to navigate easily to different sections of the blog post. The bigger your post gets, if it turns into a chunky guide for example, the more these will come in handy
• They are great for helping to boost search engine optimisation (SEO)

Good body (of text)

Now we come onto the main part of your blog post, the reason your readers are here to begin with. The type of post you write will depend on what you are trying to say to your audience – is it a funny story? Is it a thought leadership piece? Or a new observation about the industry? In other words, what goal are you trying to achieve?

You’ll also want to make sure you include a sufficient number of relevant keywords in your article. But while keywords are still important, Google focuses more on content for people rather than content for machines. Don’t stuff it full of robotic keywords, focus on explaining your topic well, and Google will get it.

Relevant pictures

Pictures and videos are the perfect way to break up your blog post, make it more visually appealing and help get your point across. It’s also helpful for when you promote your post on social media.

Good internal linking

While your main goal is to get people to your website or blog, the second goal should be to get them to remain there for as long as possible. Internal linking is almost like free advertising for your website, when it’s done properly, of course.

Internal linking is also great for SEO, too.

Call to action

Every blog post you write should have some kind of call-to-action at the end of it. It doesn’t necessarily have to be encouraging people to buy something, but it’s important that you encourage your readers to take a step further in their journey with you.

You could want them to comment or share your post on social, check out a product or service that you offer, or read another one of your blog posts. You could even ask for their contact information or get them to sign up to your mailing list in exchange for some exclusive content.

Meta description

A meta description is a snippet of a sentence or two that Google will display in their search engine results. If you don’t specify a meta description, then Google will choose a small chunk of text to display instead, which doesn’t look good. Avoid this by writing a specific meta description for each post. It should be the right length and be relevant to your post. Use this tool to measure your descriptions accurately.

Do you have tips on how to write the perfect blog post to share with my readers?