How to Write Great Blog Posts
The key to writing effective blog posts is to keep in mind that you are writing for two audiences – search engines and your customers.
Writing for Search Engines
Search engines love blog posts because the content is fresh and usually focuses on one subject per post. Every post you write about a topic or product relating to your business gives you another chance to come top in a Google search.
Here are a few tips to make sure your blog posts get you lots of targeted search engine traffic:
- Decide on one key phrase or word for each post you write and include it in the post’s title, content and tags.
- Write titles full of kewords. Eg. “Lego Trucks for Boys” instead of “Get Building with Lego”
- Think about what potential customers will type when searching for your business. Use their language, not yours.
- Write in a friendly conversational tone, as if you were talking to a client over the phone.
- Leave advertising and brochure text out – this is not what blogs are for
- Provide links to more info, supporting video clips etc
- Include photos or screen shots if appropriate.
Writing for Customers
In this instance I refer to customers as people who have subscribed to your blog posts via the Post Notification Plugin or via Feedburner. Your subscribers will receive an email (formatted like an e-newsletter) everytime you write a new blog post.
Here are a few tips to make sure your subscribers click through to your website when they get an e-newsletter from you:
- Insert the “Read More” tag into your post somewhere after the first paragraph (go to code view to find this) so they only get part of your post via email.
- Include a prompt to enquire or purchase something on your website.
- Include an appropriate affiliate product (such as a book) to earn your commission
- Add the Related Categories plugin to your website so a list of posts in the same category appears under each post you write.
- Include questions on your post to encourage readers to make comments.
- Include a teaser sentance about your next post
Keep an eye on your statistics to see which posts are your most popular and which links are being clicked on the most (My next post will be about a great feature in Google Analytics called ‘Site Overlay’). You can then tweak those posts, add updates via the comments section or write more posts on the subject at a later date.
Other Posts About SEO Articles
- Search Engines Love WordPress! - November 2nd, 2010
- Use Specific Keyword Search Phrases - May 26th, 2009