how to blog.

Blogging is a vital part for your digital marketing campaign and showing visitors your website is active to boost online brand trust. Below are 16 top tips on how to blog like a pro!

why should you blog?

1. Google wants to see websites grow with quality, relevant content. The best way to do this is to create regular blog posts.

2. If you’re selling anything online today then the user must trust your brand and website. Showing them that you are publishing new content all the time is a big way to win their trust.

3. Gaining more website visitors to your blog posts, which could lead in to them making a purchase.

4. If you are producing high quality content that users think is valuable and informative, bloggers will start linking to your post (backlinks) as a reliable source of information, which will have a positive effect on your Google rankings.

5. After someone has read your post they could share it across their social media platforms, generating more traffic and social followers.

should i hire a blog writer?

Yes and no! You are an expert in your industry so only you can write the best quality blog posts that will give readers valuable information, which will then lead to all of the above 5 points. This is very very time consuming to do on a regular basis.

Hiring a blog writer will save you hours and hours of time every week but the quality will not be as good as what you can produce. The best way to get the best of both worlds is to give detailed instructions to your writer outlining what you want them to write about. Then they can go away and research specifically that information.

You may need to add/edit slightly what they send you to make your post pop!

what should i write about?

Realistically, you’re not going to write something new that has never been published anywhere on the internet before! If you can then great but 99% of the time this wont be the case. Here are a few ideas to keep your blog posts flowing:

1. Do It Better! – very simple and easy to do. Perform a search on Google for something specific in your industry (like asking a question), see what posts are ranking in the top 3 results, read them and rewrite it… but better! You can include surveys, data, videos, images… just make it 10 times better than whats already ranking on Google. This will eventually mean that your post will out rank whats already there over time. This method is known as the Skyscraper Technique in the SEO biz.

2. Tutorials – Write tutorials on how to do specific tasks within your industry. Be as specific as you possibly can as this will free up more ideas and posts for the future. Again, use the above point, make it better than whats already out there. Creating a self hosted video with a full step by step write up will be perfect.

3. Reviews -Everyone loves reading an in depth product or service review. How many times have you read reviews before you made a purchase?

4. Latest News -Publish latest news within your industry. If you use this method you have to be the first to write and publish it before any of your competitors do!

come up with a great title.

Having an amazing title for your blog post will get your click rate sky rocketing! Your title needs to stand out from all the others. Don’t be afraid to push a few limits with this either! Having a title like ‘why such and such is great’ is absolutely pointless. It doesn’t matter how amazing your content is, if your title is shit nobody will want to click on it. Simple as that!

planning.

Planning your post is vital. Here’s what i did last night…

I wrote headers for the points i wanted to include in my post. Basically just asking questions for me to come back to and answer.

Here is a great blogging tip… make sure you do this the night before, go away and sleep on it and come back to it the following day. You will find you can add more great points along the way!

should i promote my products or services?

Absolutely not! Your blog is all about providing people with informative content within your industry. Nobody wants to read page after page about your business and how great it is. Today, readers can see through the bull shit! Nobody is ever going to write about how wank their business is are they? Adding self promotional paragraphs in a blog post along the lines of:

‘Here at Tony TwoDicks Plumbing we pride ourselves on providing the best plumbing services that any plumber can plumb”

Nobody has come to your blog post to find out about your company. They have clicked on your post to find out more information about the specific topic you have written. If they want to find out more information about you as a company or what you have to offer then they will click through your about us page and services/products pages.

Use your main landing pages for self promotional content and your blog for industry informative content.

how long should my post be?

Anything over 1000 words will give you the best results on Google but its important you don’t go on and on just to push to 1000+ words. Everything you write must be high value and informative.

At the same time you don’t want to bore the fuck out of people with having a 10,000 word essay. Nobody wants to spend an hour finding out a piece of information. They should be able to read what you but within a few minutes, get the answer they searched for and be entertained along the way.

should i copy someone else’s blog?

Nope. Never. Everything you write must be written by you and never copied and pasted from anywhere else off the web. This is called duplicate content. If Google sees that any piece of content (even a small percentage) they will ignore the page and won’t index it in their search results.

add images and videos.

Adding images and videos to your post will keep users interested in reading further. Avoid using boring stock photos. Try and use images that are funny and entertaining thats relevant to your post. On the other hand… here is Chuck Norris

include internal links.

Add links in your post to other posts you have written if its a useful extension for the user to find out more information. For example, earlier in this post i linked to another post we have written about backlinks. You may or may not of clicked on it….

… but you have scrolled back up to it now to check it!

Not only does internal linking allow users to read more of your blog posts, it allows Google to crawl more of your web pages and gives higher authority to other posts and pages.

should i write for seo purposes?

A lot of people blog for Google. Spamming keywords so they get ranked and trying to make other important landing pages on their site rank higher with internal linking (above). This never works.

You always write for the reader, never for Google. If a user searches Google, clicks on your post and sees its a load of shite because you’re just repeating keywords over and over again then the will just click the back button to the search results and visit another website. This has a massive effect on your rankings if this happens a lot.

link out to other websites.

The same as internal linking but you link out to other websites that have useful extensions on what you’re writing about. This is also good for Google as they want to see your posts linking out naturally to websites.

optimising your post.

Make sure your posts has a bespoke featured image that will look great on social media, your catchy title in the meta title section and a kick ass intro about your post in the meta description.

editing.

Before you click publish, have a final read through of everything to make sure you haven’t made any spelling mistakes or sound like a total dickhead then click publish.

what to do after you click publish?

Now you need to get people to read your post. Get it on your social media accounts and ask your friends to like and share.

Remember your linking out to other websites? You have given them a free backlink so drop them a message letting them know you mentioned them with a link in your latest post. Its in their interest to make sure this post goes viral as it will give them a stronger backlink for their Google rankings and SEO.

Submit your blog to relevant blog networks to get more exposure.

Blogging done.