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Amol Ghemud Published: August 14, 2018
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Each blogger needs to resemble an expert online and it’s so natural to do when you know how. When you are spic and span to blogging, it appears like everybody online talks about is about blogging and bloggers. “Don’t be a writer; be writing.” by William Faulkner
1. Pick up topics and title For your blog post.
The title is the most important part of any piece of writing – whether it is an article, newsletter, sales copy, blog entry, web page, and email or business report. Without a good title there is a pretty good chance, rest will not be read. “If you want your blog posts or copy to perform well, you have to create a magnetic headline.”– Neil Patel
By improving your titles you will find that your writing will no longer be ignored, dismissed or deleted as they will be hungry to find out more.
The titles is your first and sometimes only chance. Reader’s eyes will scan the title and an instant decision will be made. Does it interest them, intrigue them or amuse them or can it be ignored? There’s no second chance.
No appeal. Just one chance. There is no going back and the rest of your article, brilliant, amusing and informative though it may be will never be read.
If you are able to create a great title, battle is half won you can easily write the copy. While if you have poor headline no matter how great is your copy there are rare chances of it being read easily.
“A Poor Headline will render your article invisible”
2. What buyers think
Each blog you write should define and document the profile of their most important buyer segments. Outlining an ideal buyers profile is an indication of disciplined process which will help you to write the post smoothly going further. If you don’t have an ideal profile documented for your target buyers, do this immediately. First Who ?
Consider buyers around your blog, and their audiences, for whom content is important.
3. Brainstorm topics – FAQ’s , Competitors
Conceptualizing new blog content thoughts can be a difficult request, particularly if your content plan depends on frequent content.
Now and again this may entice you to convey crummy substance just to meet a due date. Or, on the other hand, in different cases you may basically be out of thoughts and need another strategy to kick off your ideas.
In such situations try to brainstorm ideas which you can easily find on different forums, faqs section and other articles written around the same subject.
In either case, you generally need to ensure you’re conveying quality substance to your perusers.
4. Do Keyword Research
With all the buzz in the SEO world today about content and social signs, it is very difficult to ignore even smallest detail while building foundation of SEO: KEYWORD RESEARCH.
Keywords are like a compass for your SEO campaigns: they tell you where to go and whether or not you’re making progress.
Keyword Research is the first and foremost step to follow before beginning with your optimization mission. It is simply, researching and zeroing down on those words which, a user will probably search (in any given Search Engine), which directly (or indirectly) is related to your products or services.
5. Which keywords buyer persona use
Relevance is a very important factor to consider when picking the correct keywords for SEO. Why? Since the more specific you are, the better.
Each search is an individual’s’ needs & interests. Find out how your business would benefit you find search terms that are related to your business domain and customize content on your website to serve the actual needs of your customers.
6. Add relevant CTA
A good call to take action will go about as another valuable extension blog.
In the wake of examining the advantages of picking up blog subscribers, give links to relevant articles you’ve beforehand written on same story.
7. Promote offersUse CTA in blog post and in sidebarInsert CTA after first few para in hyperlink Include CTA at end of every post
Approach your readers to agree to accept a free demo of your service or product. Your call to action ought to never appear to be sudden, or you’ll battle to get the response you’d trusted.
8. Include long tail keyword in title
Most best brands are starting to see the potential in longer watchwords, particularly long tail phrases.
Focused keywords, like “Growth Hacks” might generate the most search traffic according to their ranking in the long list of keyword ideas. In any case, focusing on such keywords viably is taking away the best utilization of your web search engine juice.
On the other hand, the “best Growth Hacks for my business” may not have as many monthly searches, but because it’s longer than the focused keyword, you could more easily rank on a search engine for it and start generating more blog traffic and leads.
9. Send clear message in post title
Come to the heart of the matter with titles which generat action.
Always try to choose a kind of title which triggers some “activity”. Think of blockbuster movies with good titles. They make you want to watch it, right? With an this typeof title, you’re conveying your message directly, since title gives a compact outline of the entire blog’s primary message in one sentence.
10. Shortened title to less than 60 characters – may cut off in SERP
Google displays upto 60 characters in the SERPs pages and you need to craft your titles for the maximum benefit which includes getting click throughs.
Also If you have 100 – 150 characters then each word is diluted in strength (to a degree) and if it needs to be that long then your page isn’t as focused as it could be, you may be better off with 2 pages targeting different aspects of the keywords.
11. Format and optimise the post – so SE and people can read
The blog’s design can have a huge impact on the first impression of new visitors
12. White space is your friend
The proper use of white space can shape your blog design in different ways. For example, white space makes text on your blog more legible.
Design elements surrounded by white space reinforce those elements’ proximity to one another, attracting attention to that part of your blog.
13. Don’t write long para
Traditional Media – One idea per paragraph Web Writing – One point about the idea per paragraph On the web, people are not patient enough. If the paragraphs look like big blocks of hard-to-read text, edit the post to break them into shorter sections.
The general rule for web writing is to keep your paragraphs short.
14. Use numbers, list
By virtue of their formatting, numbered lists stand out from the regular text and are more likely to catch a reader’s attention. So, be sure to use the numbered list format only when the list format will add clarity to the text.
If the items on the list are not complex and the list itself does not warrant special attention, consider running the items into regular text.
15. Use section headers
A single post needs another heading structure than your blog’s homepage or your category archives.
The main purpose of categorizing your content with different headings so that your design become more user-friendly and people will get a notion about your website more easily by just reading the Sub-headings.
16. Bold important text
Is there anything more attention-grabbing than bold text? Writing an entire piece of content in bold would definitely be overkill, but using this tactic to highlight important sentences is a brilliant formatting technique.
Occasional bolded sentences have a place in the perfect blog post, and can improve the stickiness of your content marketing.
17. Include image to visually grab attention – related to content
Your blog posts should always include – at a minimum – one piece of visual content. Pick an image, infographic, embedded video, Slideshare or meme to catch the eye of your readers.
“In a desert of text, images are like water. Give your readers a sip!” Be sure to support your graphs with text to get the most SEO credit possible for including fresh research and facts in your content.
18. Optimise for SE
After you finish writing, go back and optimize your post for search. Don’t obsess over how many keywords to include. If there are opportunities to incorporate keywords you’re targeting, and it won’t impact reader experience, do it.
19. ALT tag
A commonly accepted best practice in the email world is the inclusion of alt attributes (frequently known as an “ALT tag” or “ALT text,” which is shorthand for alternative text) for images.
Search engine robots can’t read images without text, and there is a missed keyword opportunity. Not labeling images is a poor user experience for those who have disabled images in their browsers.
20. Title
Most blogging software uses your post title as your page title, which is the most important on-page SEO element at your disposal.
21. Post Page URL
If you can make your URL shorter and more keyword-friendly, go for it. But don’t cram keywords or shoot for some arbitrary keyword density — Google’s smarter than that!
22. Description
Meta descriptions are the descriptions below the post’s page title on Google’s search results pages – they do give searchers a snapshot of what they will get by reading the post and can help improve your clickthrough rate from search.
23. Include relevant internal and external links
Internal links on a web page will help a viewer to stay engaged with your website longer. This may encourage them to become a customer or follower.
Adding trustworthy and informative external links to your pages will help improve the credibility of your website, whereas adding poor-quality links will hurt your site.
24. Promote your blog post
Getting views and shares involves a whole lot more than writing awesome content and putting it out there for people to see.
25. Add blog on your website
The first step would be to upload the blog on your website and make sure it appears the way you want it to be.
26.Add blog feed to relevant pages
A great way to boost blog traffic is either by offering partial feeds, or by customizing your feeds in such a way that you can include a note and link to your blog/article below the feed.
27. Link internally to blog posts
Have an old blog post that’s wildly popular? Go back and edit it — sneak in a link to your new post. This will help draw secondary traffic to the one you’re promoting, keep people on your website by offering them related content, and help the newer post gain visibility in search.
28. Share on Share on social media
Develop a social media strategy by focusing only on key social networks, engaging with influencers and top pages, and, interacting in groups to grow your social media reach.
Also make sure you constantly post updates, and regularly recycle old articles on social media; simply sharing your article once, or once in a while, won’t make any difference.
29. Use Social media share buttons in the blogs
Include social sharing buttons on blogs for increased number of social shares, exposure and traffic.
30. Reshare after few days
You can and should re-promote your blog post throughout the month following publication.
31. Promote blog through emails
Create an email that gives a brief overview of the new post and links back to it. Don’t give too much detail, but instead encourage readers to follow the link.
32. Analyse your blog post
The key to blogging success lies in identifying what’s working and doing more of it; once your blog starts to gain traction and get some readership, start paying special attention to your blog traffic to see what kind of content is getting the most views.
If you notice a trend with a certain type of content, do more of that type of content and you can be assured of increased traffic. One blog’s audience might really respond to insightful, informative long-form content.
Another blog’s audience might find long-form content a bore, preferring quick, to-the-point articles. The same applies to most of the points – font, list posts, short paragraphs, etc.
Just because something is generally accepted by the blogging community, doesn’t make it true 100% of the time. Until you analyse how your audience responds to something, you won’t know with any certainty.
Try organizing and formatting your content in different ways, to get a clear picture of what your readers want. You can use a tool like Google Analytics to track metrics such as time on page and page reads to test what approach your audience prefers.
By doing deep analysis of your blogs after publishing and promoting it, will help you to determine which author, or topic gets maximum response. With the help of these insights you can quickly design a plan for your next blog post.
33. No of views on your blogs
It is important to keep an eye on what kind of blog gets most number of shares and engagement. It will help you to choose a theme for next blog.
Measure number of clicks on CTA you have put on the blogs. This will give you a clear metrics of conversion performance.
Don’t let your effort spent writing the perfect blog post go to waste by failing to format!
User experience matters in the age of content saturation, so honor your reader’s time by using subheaders, engaging images, visual content, varied text sizes and lists to keep them engaged and reading.
Do you format your blog posts before hitting publish? What are your favorite ways and techniques for making a successful piece of content marketing? What else would you like to add ?
Keyword research provides essential direction for your content, guiding your SEO efforts to ensure you are targeting terms your audience actually uses. It moves beyond a technical checklist when you align it with your buyer persona, as this process uncovers the specific needs and interests behind each search, allowing you to create content that directly addresses customer problems and motivations. This strategic alignment ensures your content is not just discoverable but also highly relevant and valuable to your ideal reader.
To effectively merge keyword research with buyer personas, you should:
Define Ideal Buyers: Document the profiles of your most important buyer segments, focusing on their goals, challenges, and the language they use to describe them.
Brainstorm from Their Perspective: Move beyond generic terms and consider what questions your persona would ask. Use competitor FAQs and forums to find these exact phrases.
Prioritize Relevance: Select keywords that show a clear intent related to your products or services. A more specific term, while lower in volume, often attracts a more qualified audience ready to engage.
By personalizing your keyword strategy this way, you create a direct path to the people your business can best serve, improving both traffic quality and conversion potential. For a deeper understanding of how this impacts your content's performance, explore the full post.
Targeting long-tail keywords offers a significant strategic advantage by attracting a more qualified and motivated audience, even if the search volume is lower. While broad terms generate high traffic, they are intensely competitive and often attract casual browsers. In contrast, long-tail phrases signal a user with a specific need or question, leading to higher engagement and better conversion rates because the content can be tailored to their precise intent.
Consider the trade-offs between volume and specificity when choosing your keywords:
Lower Competition: It is far easier to rank on a search engine for a longer, more specific phrase, allowing you to start generating relevant blog traffic and leads more quickly.
Higher Relevance: A search for “best Growth Hacks for my business” indicates a user who is actively seeking solutions, making them a much warmer lead than someone just searching “Growth Hacks.”
Improved Conversion: Because your content can directly answer the detailed query, visitors are more likely to see you as an authority and take a desired action, such as signing up for a demo.
While high-volume keywords seem appealing, focusing your web search engine juice on long-tail keywords is a more efficient use of resources. Discover how to identify and integrate these powerful phrases by reading the complete guide.
Crafting a title that performs well in search results requires a blend of creativity and technical precision. Because Google typically displays only the first 60 characters of a page title, you must deliver a clear, powerful message within that constraint to avoid getting cut off and losing impact. The most effective titles are those that generate action by directly conveying the blog's primary benefit in a concise sentence.
To create optimized and compelling headlines, implement these strategies:
Be Direct and Clear: Come to the heart of the matter immediately. Your title should provide a compact outline of the entire post's message, leaving no doubt about the value inside.
Incorporate Keywords Naturally: While including keywords is important for SEO, focus on readability. If possible, add a long-tail keyword to improve relevance without sacrificing clarity.
Focus on Action: Think like a movie title that makes you want to watch. Use words that create intrigue or promise a solution, compelling users to click to find out more.
Keeping titles focused not only improves SERP appearance but also helps keep your content targeted. A title longer than 150 characters may suggest the page lacks focus. For more examples on writing powerful, compact titles, see the full post.
Integrating Calls to Action effectively is about creating a natural extension of the value you have already provided in your blog post. A good CTA acts as a helpful next step for an engaged reader, not an abrupt sales pitch. To achieve this, you must strategically place relevant offers throughout your content, guiding the reader toward a conversion goal like signing up for a free demo or downloading a resource.
Here is a four-step implementation plan for adding valuable CTAs:
Place a Hyperlinked CTA Early: After the first few paragraphs, once you have established the post's value, insert a text-based CTA in a hyperlink. This can point to another relevant article, building credibility before presenting an offer.
Use a Sidebar CTA: A visual CTA in the sidebar keeps your offer visible as the reader scrolls without interrupting the flow of the text.
Add a Prominent End-of-Post CTA: This is your primary opportunity to capture a highly engaged reader. After they have finished your post, they are most receptive to a clear next step, like a free demo of your service.
Link to Relevant Content: Use your CTAs to connect readers with other articles you have written on the same topic, keeping them on your site longer and deepening their engagement.
This multi-layered approach ensures your calls to action feel helpful, not intrusive. To learn more about designing CTAs that convert, explore the full guide.
Systematic formatting is essential for making your content digestible and engaging in an era of content saturation where readers often scan. Proper structure not only improves the first impression for new visitors but also helps search engines understand the hierarchy and key points of your content. Using visual cues like headers, lists, and bold text breaks up large blocks of text, guides the reader's eye, and makes your main ideas stand out.
Follow this checklist to format and optimize your post effectively:
Embrace White Space: Surround design elements and text blocks with ample white space to make your content more legible and draw attention to important sections.
Use Section Headers: Organize your post with a clear heading structure. Subheadings make the content user-friendly and give readers a quick notion of what the article covers.
Keep Paragraphs Short: For web writing, stick to one main point per paragraph. Break up long, dense paragraphs into shorter, more scannable sections.
Bold Important Text: Use bolding to highlight crucial sentences or key takeaways. This attention-grabbing technique can improve the stickiness of your content marketing.
Incorporate Numbered Lists: Use lists to present information in a format that stands out from regular text and adds clarity, especially for step-by-step instructions or multiple points.
Failing to format your content properly can waste all the effort you put into writing it. Discover more advanced formatting techniques in the full article.
The shift toward scanning behavior means that visual structure is just as important as the written content itself. Your long-term strategy must prioritize scannability to honor the reader's time and hold their attention. This involves designing posts that allow a user to grasp the key takeaways in seconds, which builds trust and encourages them to read more deeply or return in the future. While keywords get them to the page, the format determines if they stay.
To adapt to this trend, focus on these formatting pillars:
Create a Visual Hierarchy: Use section headers, sub-headers, and varied text sizes to create a clear path through your content. This allows scanners to quickly find the sections most relevant to them.
Leverage Visual Content: An image, infographic, or embedded video acts as an oasis in a desert of text. At a minimum, include one piece of visual content to break up the monotony and grab attention.
Write for the Web: Adopt the 'one point about the idea per paragraph' rule. Short paragraphs are less intimidating and easier to digest on a screen.
Highlight Key Information: Use bolded text and numbered or bulleted lists to make important information pop. This ensures that even the fastest scanners leave with valuable insights.
By focusing on a user-friendly design, you cater to modern reading habits, which improves engagement metrics like time on page. For a comprehensive look at optimizing for reader experience, check out the full post.
A common mistake is believing that writing awesome content is enough; in reality, promotion is just as critical as creation. Many bloggers simply share a post once on social media and move on, which is not nearly enough to gain traction. A successful promotion strategy requires a sustained, multi-channel effort that includes social media, internal linking, and email to continuously drive new and existing audiences to your content.
To avoid these pitfalls and build a stronger promotional plan, follow these steps:
Recycle and Reshare on Social Media: Do not just share your article once. Re-promote your blog post multiple times throughout the month following publication across your key social networks.
Leverage Internal Links: Go back to older, popular blog posts and edit them to include a link to your new article. This drives secondary traffic and helps the new post gain visibility in search.
Use Email Marketing: Create an email for your subscribers that gives a brief, intriguing overview of the new post and a clear link back to it. Encourage them to follow the link without giving away all the details.
Include Social Sharing Buttons: Make it easy for readers to share your content by including prominent social sharing buttons directly on your blog posts.
Getting views and shares involves a whole lot more than just putting content out there. To develop a complete promotional playbook, explore the insights in the full article.
The most significant mistake in post-publication analysis is failing to do it at all or focusing only on vanity metrics like total views. The key to long-term blogging success is identifying what content resonates with your audience and creating more of it. By using a tool like Google Analytics, you can move beyond surface-level numbers and track meaningful engagement metrics like time on page and CTA clicks to understand what truly works.
To avoid these errors and build a data-driven content plan, you should:
Track More Than Views: Monitor which topics, authors, and formats get the most shares and engagement. High views with low time on page may signal a misleading title.
Measure Conversion Performance: Track the number of clicks on the CTAs you have placed in your blogs. This provides a clear metric on how well your content is contributing to business goals.
Test Different Formats: Do not assume one style fits all. Analyze how your audience responds to long-form content versus quick, to-the-point articles, or posts with lists versus those without.
Deep analysis helps you design a plan for your next blog post based on proven success, not guesswork. To learn more about the specific metrics you should be tracking, review the detailed guide.
With search engines like Google becoming smarter, the old tactic of cramming keywords into your content and URL is no longer effective. The modern approach to on-page SEO is more holistic, focusing on providing an excellent reader experience that search algorithms are now designed to reward. This means optimizing for humans first by creating clear, valuable content with a structure that encourages engagement, which in turn sends positive signals to search engines.
Your evolved on-page SEO checklist should include:
Optimized Page Titles: While your blog post title is crucial, ensure it is also used as your page title, as this is a powerful on-page SEO element. Keep it under 60 characters.
Keyword-Friendly URLs: Make your URL shorter and more readable if possible, but avoid arbitrary keyword stuffing. Clarity is more important than density.
Compelling Meta Descriptions: Write meta descriptions that give searchers a snapshot of your post's value. A well-written description can significantly improve your click-through rate from search.
Strategic Linking: Include relevant internal links to keep visitors on your site longer and external links to trustworthy sources to improve your site's credibility.
Don't obsess over keyword counts; instead, focus on creating a valuable and seamless user journey. Dive deeper into these advanced on-page SEO tactics by reading the full article.
Strategic linking serves two primary functions: internal links boost on-site engagement and SEO, while external links build credibility and trust. Internal links guide visitors to other relevant content on your website, encouraging them to stay longer and signaling a well-structured site to search engines. External links to trustworthy, informative sources back up your claims and show that your content is well-researched. The key is to ensure every link adds tangible value for the reader, serving as a natural extension of the content rather than a distraction.
To balance your linking strategy effectively:
Prioritize Relevance for Internal Links: Link to your other posts only when they offer deeper insight into a concept you have mentioned. This keeps people on your website by offering them related, helpful content.
Choose Authoritative External Links: Only link out to high-quality, reputable sites. Adding poor-quality links can hurt your site's credibility.
Use Descriptive Anchor Text: Instead of generic phrases like "click here," use anchor text that clearly describes what the reader will find when they click the link.
A well-executed linking strategy enhances the user experience and strengthens your post's authority. To learn more about mastering internal and external links, read the full post.
Adding a blog to an existing website is a powerful way to attract new visitors through search engines and engage your current audience with valuable content. The first step after uploading your post is to ensure it is integrated into your site's structure and then to begin a systematic promotion campaign. Simply publishing a post is not enough; you must actively guide both site visitors and external audiences toward your new content to generate traffic.
Here are the initial steps for promotion and integration:
Add Blog Feeds to Relevant Pages: Customize your feeds to show partial content on key pages of your website. Include a note and a link that encourages visitors to read the full article on your blog.
Link Internally from Popular Pages: Identify high-traffic pages or older blog posts on your site. Edit them to add a relevant internal link to your new post, channeling existing traffic to it.
Initiate a Social Media Campaign: Develop a sharing strategy focused on your key social networks. Share the post immediately, then reshare it after a few days to reach a wider audience.
Announce via Email: Send a notification to your email list with a brief overview of the post and a strong call to action to read more, driving your most loyal audience to the content.
This initial push is critical for giving your new blog momentum. To build a comprehensive promotion strategy from the ground up, see the full guide.
While including images visually grabs attention, many bloggers miss the crucial step of optimizing them for search engines and accessibility. The most commonly overlooked optimization is the ALT tag (alternative text), which is essential because search engine robots cannot 'read' an image without a text description. Properly using ALT tags creates a significant keyword opportunity and ensures a better user experience for individuals who have images disabled in their browsers or use screen readers.
Beyond just visual appeal, image optimization is a technical necessity. To get the most SEO credit and provide the best experience, you should:
Write Descriptive ALT Text: Your ALT text should accurately and concisely describe the image. If relevant, naturally incorporate a target keyword, but avoid keyword stuffing.
Support Graphs with Text: When using graphs or charts, always include text that explains the data. This allows search engines to crawl and index the fresh research and facts you are presenting.
Choose Relevant Images: Always pick an image, infographic, or video that is directly related to your content. This reinforces your message and keeps readers engaged.
Not labeling your images is a missed opportunity for both SEO and user accessibility. Explore the full article to discover other on-page optimization details that can make a major difference.
Amol has helped catalyse business growth with his strategic & data-driven methodologies. With a decade of experience in the field of marketing, he has donned multiple hats, from channel optimization, data analytics and creative brand positioning to growth engineering and sales.
