Failure is the best teaching tool. I am an educational coordinator for a business meeting that meets weekly. I typically choose between marketing or networking education topics. One week I chose to speak on how to write the perfect blog post and handed out a nice checklist on what to do. What I did not think through is that I understand all the technical jargon and most business owners assume I must be speaking another language. Well that failure has turned into this blog post. Hopefully making it through these 10 points will help you understand the free HOW TO WRITE THE PERFECT BLOG CHECKLIST.
STEP 1: RESEARCH KEYWORD
This is one of the most crucial steps. Before you write the first word, make sure you do your research. If you write a post that no one will find, you have wasted your time and that comes at the cost of lost potential revenue.
Click Here to Use Google’s Keyword Planner.
STEP 2: CREATE A TITLE
This seems easy but you only have a few characters to entice a potential visitor to click. The best title is between 40-70 characters long and contains the keyword you found in STEP 1. Research shows that including a number or statistic increases click-thru rates significantly. If you were your ideal client, would you click your title?
STEP 3. ADD KEYWORD TO THE POST URL
With WordPress this is so easy. The URL of your post is created automatically after you fill out your title. This typically works quite well, but if you need to edit your URL, you can click edit next to your URL and change it. One huge word of warning here. If you have already published your post or have linked to it from anywhere else, remember to update your links to show the new URL.
STEP 4: KEYWORD IN FIRST PARAGRAPH
Almost self-explanatory here, but your keyword should be an exact match in your first paragraph. I will say you should really think through the use though. Don’t just throw it into the sentence, make it fit naturally. You want to create good content for your user and not try to game Google, because Google doesn’t like that very much.
See the first paragraph of this article for an example.
STEP 5: USE KEYWORD IN HEADINGS
When writing a blog post, you have an option to choose your text style (paragraph, heading 1, heading 2, etc.). The heading styles are typically referred to as H1, H2, H3, and on by web designers. These are more than just styling options to Google’s crawlers. If you are using WordPress, then your H1 tag is most likely taken care of you by the title of your blog post. In addition to this, in the body of your blog post you need to use a H2 or a H3 tag with your keyword in it.
STEP 6: ADD KEYWORD TO BODY COPY
In the body content of your post, you want to use the keyword a few times as it naturally allows. When your deciding how to write the perfect blog post (you see what I did there), you want to make sure that your exact match keyword appears throughout the content.
STEP 7: ADD KEYWORD TO IMAGE TAGS
Do you ever wonder how google knows what an image is about? Crawlers can’t actually “see” the image, but they can see the code behind the image. When you add an image make sure you fill out the title and alt tag and include the keyword. Bonus points for including in the name of the actual file.
STEP 8: USE KEYWORD IN META DATA
We install the Yoast SEO plugin on every site we build for clients. It makes technical SEO a breeze and allows you to easily edit the meta data of the post. If you are using Yoast SEO, scroll down below your post and click “edit snippet” in the Yoast SEO section. From there you can edit the meta description and include the keyword.
STEP 9: ADD VALUE
Well if you’ve made it to the last step, you are being rewarded. This is by far one of the most important step. With every blog post you write, you want to give something valuable to the visitor. If they don’t find something helpful, they will leave. This means that your post needs to be of considerable length (500 words or more) and remain quickly scannable. To make this easier use bullet points and headlines for the user to easily navigate to find what is of value to them.
SUMMARY
I know that is a lot of information, that is why we provide a free HOW TO WRITE THE PERFECT BLOG CHECKLIST. The key to using this effectively is to remember to add value by writing content your ideal user needs. Share your expertise. Build trust.
If you need any help with building a business website with a blog, or other digital marketing assistance, sign up for a FREE CONSULTATION.