What makes a good blog post?
Writing blogs is the basis of good search engine optimisation. But not everyone has the ability to create well structured articles. The alternative is to pay a copywriter to write blog posts for you. Some small businesses may not be able to afford a copywriter, so what alternatives are there? SEO experts say that the reading level to target is around the Year 8 Level. This means your articles should be simple enough for a 14 year to digest. Technical articles such as those in a medical field, are an exception. But for general marketing blogs, you need to keep it simple. If you want people to read your article, keep it simple.
Why should I write simple articles?
We are lucky to live in a very diverse country. For many people English is not their first language. A huge portion of our population were born overseas, and may not have a high reading level. You want to be able to market to as many people as possible. Writing simpler articles, will make it easier for people to read. Having to concentrate hard on reading something is exhausting. You are more likely to lose your readers if you are too complicated. It is very rare that you will have someone’s complete attention. People could be reading off their phone while watching TV, or while eating lunch. Your goal is to have a reader easily digest your writing.Is your blog simple enough to be read on the go?
How to learn to write
I’ve been watching a lot of videos on SEO. Blogging is always mentioned as a huge tool to boost your rank. From that I learned about “Hemingway Editor”. If you paste whatever you are writing into the website, it will analyse your english. It will highlight long or complicated sentences, suggest word alternatives to improve. Most importantly, Hemingway editor will give your writing a grade. I like to read a lot, and I thought I was a good writer, but I was wrong. As you work through all the recommendations, you will start to learn more about good writing. I’ve been using it for a little while, and I’ve found it to make writing blog posts much easier. There’s less meandering around in sentences. Short, to the point articles.
Hemingway App provides a clean user experience for writing.
Structuring A Blog
Your article should flow well. Planning out the points of your article before writing will help. Once you have written out all the points you’d like to cover, begin filling them out in more detail. As you keep adding to each point, you’ll see the article begin to form. Working like this will stop you from getting lost. Everything in your post should link back to the title of the blog. Users will want to read your article based off of the title, if you move away from that, they will most likely close their browser.
Picking A Title
The title of your article should some up the overall theme of the article. A 1 sentence summary of 1000 or more words. It should make people curious to read the entire article. This is why many news websites resort to click bait. Titles like “You won’t believe what they did”, “Unbelievable jury ruling” will help get eyes on your post.
Picking An Image
Everyone knows the cliched saying, “A picture is worth a 1000 words”, and it’s true. The cover image of your article is vitally important. Our eyes respond to visual stimuli. Selecting the right image will help attract readers. People do judge a book by its cover, the same is true for articles. There are great sites like Shutterstock or iStock, but you can also use free resources like Unsplash or Pexels
Free stock image libraries can make your posts look professional
How long should an online blog be?
There are many varied recommendations on the perfect length of a blog for SEO. The required length will depend on how much your competitors are writing. If the businesses ranking on page 1 of Google are posting 1000 words, you should write 2000. Unfortunately most small business owners don’t have the time to write this many words. 1000 words seems to be the most common suggestion by SEO experts.
What else can you do?
Having a friend or family member proof read your article is invaluable. This is useful if you are writing for an audience who are unfamiliar with your field. If your reviewer can understand what you are trying to communicate, you have done well. Work with any feedback they give you. Once you’ve done all this, your article should be of high enough quality to post online. If your interested in blogging, but don’t currently have a blog, contact Sites On Fire today and we will get you up and blogging in no time!