Now that there’s so much content online (over 2 million new blog posts are published every day!), writing a good blog post is key if you want it to have any traction.
Here’s what every good blog post should contain:
Title
Your title needs to be compelling so that people will want to click on it. This is easier said than done, so try keeping a note of every blog post you click on and refer back to them when you’re writing your own titles.
Your title should also be optimised for search engines. This doesn’t mean stuffing it with keywords, but including any words or phrases that people might search for. For example, “How to exclude internal traffic from Google Analytics” is one of our most popular blogs because it answers a question that people frequently search for. In this case, the title is compelling because it solves people’s problems. For more information on this keywords, read our previous blog – What are Keywords and why are they important?.
Meta description
While we’re on the subject of search engines, you also need to write a meta description that piques interest and accurately explains what people will get when they click through. This post on marketing dates also did well in search engines; partly because the meta description was super clear on what to expect from the blog.
Content
Hopefully this should be obvious, but the best blog posts also have great content. Whether it’s a how-to, round up, report or just a diary of what you’ve been up to – it should be of interest to your intended reader. Because there is so much blog content available, it’s important that your content is the best it can be. Read this Moz post on how to create outstanding content that’s 10 times better than the competition.
Subheadings
Subheadings are important for blog posts for two reasons:
- They help make your posts more scannable. People tend to scan-read articles online, so subheadings help people to quickly scan and find the parts of your posts they are most interested in.
- For search engine optimisation. Correctly labelling your subheadings using H1, H2 and so on, will help Google and other search engine ‘bots’ get a clearer idea of the content of your article, helping them to index and rank it.
Images, videos and graphics
Images and graphics help illustrate your post and bring it to life. They also break up the text, great for today’s short attention spans!
Ideally, you should also create images suitable for social sharing, in the appropriate sizes for Twitter, Facebook and Pinterest.
Video and Slideshare presentations are also great ways to add interest to your blog posts – there’s no need to stick to the same format each time, break it up!
