12 Blog Post Tips Every Article Needs

If you want to write content that is seen by lots of people and shared across the world there are some basics you need to be seen so i decided to write a list of blog post tips every article needs.

If you would rather watch a video then click play below otherwise jump beneath it for the full transcript.

Decide on your post content

Make it meaningful, make it helpful or make it inspiring. People aren’t interested on whether your bus was late or whether your cup of tea has gone cold. People are looking for ideas and help so make sure every blog post has a meaning. Posts under 300 words are penalised by Google so make you have enough to meet this criteria.

Research keywords

Research keywords on Google Keyword Planner or SEM-Tool.com. What you think your readers search for may not be what you expect. Search around your idea and find a keyword that has low competition with a high number of searches per month.

Create a catchy title using your keywords

Find a title that inspires people to want to click on your article and read the whole post. This must incorporate your chosen keyword above.

Don’t use over complicated language

You maybe clever as sh*t and have a doctors degree in quantum computing but its quite likely that your readers do not. Use simplified language that anyone can understand.

Spelling and punctuation

Make sure your articles are spelled correctly and that it reads properly. You don’t want to leave people guessing for what you mean especially as your article maybe interpreted by google translate or someone whose language is not the same as yours and things maybe lost in translation. Perhaps get someone to proof read your article before publishing it or if you have lots of money there are plenty of people online offering this service to a well written SEO standard.

Split your post out with headed sections

We live in an era where everyone is so busy that half the time people will nowadays skim through articles and look for something that interests them. If you split your articles out with bold headed sections people can dip in and out of the areas that interest them. “<h2>” tags also help with SEO.

Links

Link to other areas on your blog and outside pages. Not only does this help with SEO but if linking internally this will inspire people to read more articles and keep them on your site and who knows they may eventually like your site so much that they subscribe to you. (PS GetGeek has lots of other great articles just like this, hint hint 🙂 )

Images

As the old saying goes “An image tells a thousand words” so put something relevant on your article. This is so true nowadays with pin-able images so make something that people can share to Pinterest. You also want a “Featured Image” as this will feature on your main blog post page. Don’t forget alt text tags using your keyword. Not only do these help users with visual disabilities but they also help your SEO.

Finish your article with a question

Get a discussion going on your blog post. Find out what people think of your article or what they think of the article subject. Your knowledge maybe incorrect or missing in areas or your readers may require assistance. This will keep people returning to your blog and if you appear to be genuine and helpful they will be more likely to stick around.

Review your article against SEO standards

If your using WordPress then Yoast is a really helpful plugin to verify your blog post is written to current SEO standards. Make sure you use your keyword throughout your article but do not over spam it. This plugin will help verify that you are abiding by these rules as well as all the latest changes to Googles algorithm.

Social media

You want to get your post shared to as many places as possible. Again you want the title to inspire people to click on it. The more places its shared, then the more likely it will be seen. Use hash tags on applicable platforms e.g (Twitter, Facebook, Instagram) or appropriate words on Pinterest (not a hash tagging platform). If you want to know how to get more followers on Instagram then check out this post.

Going the extra mile

Create a YouTube video of your article. You can put it at the top of your blog post and if people don’t want to read everything then they can sit their and watch/listen to you instead. This also generates leads from YouTube. Did you know YouTube is the 2nd largest search engine in the world?