Blogs are arguably one of the most effective ways to promote your brand on the internet. It provides countless opportunities to offer your audience relevant content, useful information and an exceptional boost to your website’s search engine optimization. However, getting started with your own blogs can be daunting, especially if you’re not confident in your writing skills or if you’re unsure what exactly to write about.
So to help you out, we’ve put together this helpful guide that will give you a step-by-step introduction to creating SEO-friendly blogs for your business.
Step 1: Where will you host your blog?
First thing’s first; decide where to host your blog. Is it going to be on a separate website? Will it have a dedicated section on your current website? What kind of blogging platform or Content Management System (CMS) will you use? These are important to define early on as it creates a foundation for your blog. We’re big fans of WordPress here at Breakaway for its ease of use and its great SEO plugins like Yoast drop us a message if you want to find out more.
Step 2: What is the purpose of your blog?
Decide what your blog’s purpose is going to be. Are you going to focus on using it as a content marketing tool, is it to increase engagement among users, or is it to provide news for upcoming products and services? Ideally, it should serve all of these purposes, but at the beginning, it’s good to focus on a specific purpose so you don’t spread your resources and content too thinly.
Step 3: Decide what you should write about
When it comes to creating a post, you should decide what you want to write about at an early stage. Are you trying to describe some new adventures? Are you reviewing a bike or a new product?
Step 4: Focus on topics that have the most potential
Although you might have an idea of what you want to write about, it’s important to look at its potential. We suggest using keyword explorer tools to check how difficult it could be to rank for specific keywords, then focus on the ones that you could take advantage of within your content.
Step 5: Create an outline for your blog post
Now it’s time to start on the post itself. First, create an outline. This should indicate the general flow of your article and the information it will cover in relation to your topic.
Step 6: Start drafting your blog post
This is where you’ll start writing. Follow your general outline and make sure you cover all of the topics that you feel are important. Don’t worry about writing too much here as you can always trim it during revision.
Step 7: Revise your post and check that it meets your goals
Once you’re done writing, revise your post and check that it meets the outline and hasn’t strayed too far. If it has, consider trimming it down or potentially spreading it into another post.
Step 8: Add images and other forms of media
If applicable, add images and other forms of media to your post. This could include embedded videos or even audio clips and podcasts. Lucky for us we have a great pool of photography, but you can check out sites like Unsplash for free images to jazz up your post.
Step 9: Begin optimizing it for SEO
Now it’s time to focus on optimizing your content. This involves making sure that your keyword is spread throughout the article, shortening sentences for readability and making sure images are tagged. There’s a lot more to optimizing a blog post for SEO, but it should ideally be done after the content has been finalized. Once again we recommend using Yoast to help this!
Step 10: Get a second opinion
Speak to a colleague or friend to ask for a second opinion about your blog post. Make sure you take on their feedback and listen closely to what they have to say!
Step 11: Revise it again
After getting a second opinion, revise it again based on feedback but keep in mind the overall outline of the article that you established before.
Step 12: Include sharing widgets
Make sure that you’re including sharing widgets (this is usually done via your CMS) and try to pose a question to encourage engagement in the comments section if applicable.
Step 13: Add the finishing touches to your title and URL
Make sure you tidy up the article’s URL by shortening it and ensure that you’ve revised the title to fit the content. Try to avoid clickbait titles and instead, create a title that is interesting and draws users in without giving false promises regarding the content within.
Step 14: Publish the piece
Now it’s time to hit publish! Revise your piece one more time for good measure then you’re ready to submit it.
Step 15: Share it on social channels
Now that it’s out on the internet, remember to share it on your social channels to give it more visibility.
Conclusion:
And that concludes our comprehensive SEO-friendly blog writing guide. You’ll likely spend the most time thinking about what to write and putting your thoughts into words, but it’s also important to research important keywords that you want to rank for in order to increase your SEO performance. As always get in contact with us if you want any help setting up your blog or simply a bit of inspiration.