So, you have a blog, or maybe you write blog posts for a client (or you want to!). Either way, you need to create content that both resonates with your audience and ranks well on Google (so the people who need it can actually find it). That’s why I’ve created this guide full of blog writing tips to help you get started.
Let’s jump in!
The Cliff Notes
To write top-notch SEO blog posts, know your audience, start with SEO, create an effective title, don’t skip the outline, provide value, keep the reader in mind, check for mistakes, walk away from the article for a while, and then print and read it.
When publishing your article, copy it into your blog site without formatting, and then go through and manually add the formatting last.
Update your blog posts regularly for the best SEO results, focusing on the ones that aren’t performing well.
Helpful Blog Writing Tips
Blogging — called “content marketing” when you do it for a business or for the purpose of promoting something — is about more than spewing words onto a page. In order to be successful, you need a strategy behind your content.
Here are 11 content marketing best practices that will help your writing shine (and get found!) whether you blog for a client or yourself.
Know Your Audience
Before you can even think about blogging, you need to know who you’re writing for. Whether you’re creating your own blog or writing articles for a client’s blog, it’s crucial to understand who the target audience is.
Who are the people looking for the information you want to share? Or, if you have an existing audience (or your client does), what information are those people looking for?
To learn either of these things, take to the streets…of social media! Browse Facebook groups, Instagram pages, etc., in a niche or community similar to what you’re going to be focusing on. For example, if you’re working for a children’s clothing boutique, join a parenting group on Facebook and pay attention to what people are talking about.
You can also do some research using Google or Reddit to get an idea of the kinds of things your target audience is searching for, or even who your target audience is.
Start with SEO
First and foremost, you absolutely have to start your blog writing process with SEO. Otherwise, all your hard work goes down the drain. (Not to sound dramatic or anything.)
What Is SEO?
Search engine optimization — SEO for short — is the process of optimizing your content so that Google will push it to the top (or near the top) of the search engine results page for a specific word or phrase (called a keyword).
At its most basic, SEO is all about including specific keywords in your writing to signal to Google that this particular piece of content actually provides answers to what’s being searched and offers valuable information on the topic.
Why is this important? Simply put, if your blog post isn’t on the first page of search results (and close to the top, at that), people are less likely to click on it and read what you have to say.
Think about your own search habits. When you Google something, how far down do you scroll before choosing a page to open? Most likely, you’ve found your answer within the first few results. This is especially true now that Google provides an AI-generated answer to searches. If people don’t see your content close to that, they probably won’t see it at all.
Whether you’re trying to get results for a client or you have something helpful or profound to share, you need people to find what you’re writing or all your efforts are in vain.
(Helpful hint: If you’re interested in learning more about writing SEO blog posts, check out my free guide here!)
How to Use SEO
So how do you get started with SEO? Well, that question deserves an article (or 10) all its own.
But the first step is to choose keywords. Think about what people in your target audience are talking about, a common problem they need to solve, or a question they have, and then start doing some keyword research.
You can take advantage of free keyword research tools online. Simply enter a word or phrase that’s relevant for your target audience, and then see what comes up. You want to choose keywords that are high volume and low difficulty as much as possible.
Once you’ve found a keyword that works, you can start drafting a blog post (article) around it. I usually only focus on one keyword per article, but you can have a main keyword and work in a few secondary keywords throughout the content as well.
Here’s an example. Let’s say I choose the keyword “baby sleep safety.” My article topic might be a list of baby sleep safety tips. As you write your blog post, you want to make sure you’re including the keyword in a few places throughout.
Now, I feel like I should give a disclaimer here. SEO can get a lot more complicated than this. You could spend months and months trying to learn all there is to know about it. But as long as you have a basic understanding, you can start (or improve) your blog.
Tip: Check out my online course, Increase Your Impact: SEO Blog Writing for Business, for a more in-depth dive into SEO and how to use it to take your blogging to the next level.
In this course, you’ll learn exactly how to find and choose the best keywords, where to place them in your writing, as well as how to refine your writing so that it’s irresistible to both readers and Google. And when you enroll, you get immediate access to all the lessons as well as downloadable resources to help you work smarter.
Create an Effective Title
Once you know your target audience and you’ve done some keyword research, it’s time to come up with a title. But you don’t want to just slap any ol’ thing up and call it a day. Your title needs to be catchy but not sleazy (no click-bate, please!), draw people in, and, ideally, include your keyword.
For the “baby sleep safety” example keyword above, your title might be something like “10 Baby Sleep Safety Tips for Your Peace of Mind.” It tells the reader exactly what to expect, and it’s engaging (every parent wants peace of mind!).
Importantly, this title is also something you can deliver on, meaning it reflects the actual content you’re going to write about. It doesn’t mislead people.
Pro tip: “How to” titles, listicles (like “10 Baby Sleep Safety Tips” above; this could also be an “X best” list), and guides work really well.
Don’t Skip the Outline
I always recommend starting with an outline…and a detailed one, at that. It’s simply the best way to ensure you get the information across that you’re aiming for.
Of course, you’ll want to brainstorm and research first, but you’ve probably already got a pretty good idea of the info you want to include based on the SEO research you did when finding keywords. Now you can organize that info and see the shape your article’s going to take.
As you outline, go ahead and create the formatting you want to use in your final article. So, for example, format your section headings as actual subheadings (H2, H3, etc.), and include images and graphics or, at the very least, note where images/graphics will go in the finished piece.
This serves two purposes:
It helps you visualize what the final blog post will look like so you can make sure the information is organized in a way that makes the most sense logically for readers.
Adding formatting to the outline document makes it easier when you go to write your first draft. You can simply fill in your copy under the existing subheadings, rather than starting from scratch.
I know outlining this way is an extra step in the writing process and will take you more time upfront, but I promise it’s worth it in the long run. Writing the draft will be easier, and you’ll end up with a much better finished product.
Provide Lots of Value
As you’re drafting your article, remember that you’re not writing a journal entry. Back in the day when blogging first came onto the scene, that’s what it was about: documenting your life.
But now? Searchers use blogs to learn something, find quick information, get motivated, or be inspired. Sure, you can work in bits and pieces of your life throughout the article (depending on your audience, whether you’re writing for your own blog or a client’s, etc.), but make sure every sentence serves a purpose.
For instance, if you’re writing an inspirational piece and you want to tell a personal story, that’s totally fine as long as it helps drive home the point you’re trying to make.
Lastly, if you’re writing a more informational style of article, consider adding stats and other relevant (and reliable) data to give your copy more authority.
Keep the Reader in Mind
A philosophy to live by: Readability before SEO. Yes, SEO is important (as we’ve now discovered), but if the article’s messy, the writing’s clunky, or it’s just not easy to digest, people won’t bother to stick around and read it — even if your SEO efforts worked and they clicked on the page.
And, ironically, that can affect SEO, too, because Google sees that people are leaving the page quickly, which signals to them that the article isn’t answering searchers’ questions. And when that happens, Google will stop pushing it to the top of the search results page.
How do you make sure you keep the reader in mind or, put another way, focus on readability? Here are a few tips for blog writing that keeps people on the page:
Break up the text with images/graphics, bullet point lists, and subheadings.
Keep paragraphs short (2 to 3 sentences max).
Use simple, easy-to-understand language.
Be conversational (write in active voice, avoid jargon and sounding too technical or formal).
Say what you mean and mean what you say.
If you do these things, you’re on your way to amazing content that people will actually enjoy reading.
Check Your Spelling (and Everything Else!)
There’s nothing worse than doing all the work of SEO, researching, outlining, and drafting only to have people brush off your writing because of a few spelling mistakes or typos.
Ouch!
Nowadays, having these kinds of errors doesn’t have to be an issue. You can do a spell check in Google Docs or Microsoft Word, run your copy through the free version of Grammarly, or use one of the numerous other tools available online.
It’s also a good idea to have a friend or family member that you trust read over your work before publishing it.
Walk Away from Your Work…Temporarily
One thing I’ve learned after six published books and a decade of working in the content marketing industry is that, sometimes, we’re simply too close to our own work to catch mistakes.
This applies to the easy fixes, like typos and spelling or grammar mistakes, as well as the big stuff…like using the wrong character name halfway through a novel (yes, this has happened to me).
It’s also a lot harder to check readability when we’ve been staring at a screen for hours on end and looking at the same words over and over. We know what we’re trying to say, so we can’t look at a piece objectively.
So what can you do? Walk away.
Get the article as good as you can, and then let it breathe for a day or two if you have the time. When you come back to it later, you’ll be reading it with fresh eyes and will probably be able to catch instances of awkward wording, typos, etc.
Print It and Read It
One of my favorite blogging tips? Print your article out and read it on paper. I know, I know. This is super old-school, but, y’all, it works! There’s just something about reading words on a printed page that’s different from reading them on a screen.
In fact, recent research shows that reading comprehension is better when text is read on paper. And I’ve found, in addition to that, my eyes tend to catch the little errors — like typos and spelling mistakes — much more easily when I’m reading something in print.
So if you have a printer and are able to print out your work before publishing it or submitting it to a client, I say go for it! It’s a great last step to check that your writing’s as clean as can be.
Copy the Article into Your Blog without Formatting
Okay, you’ve gone through this entire list and created a helpful, educational, or inspirational article that’s optimized for both SEO and readers, and is super clean and mistake-free. That’s awesome!
Now it’s time to upload (publish) it to your platform of choice. Word of caution: formatting can get a bit tricky here. What looks perfectly acceptable in a Google or Word doc can come out all wonky when it gets copied to the backend of your blog site.
I recommend copying and pasting everything into your blog without formatting. I know that seems counterintuitive since you’ve spent so long getting the formatting just right in your document, but trust me on this. It will save you a lot of time in the long run!
Once everything is on the blog post, you can go through and add the formatting manually (links, images, headers, etc.). This just ensures you don’t end up with weird little symbols or awkward spacing in the final product.
Update Your Posts Regularly
Congrats! You now know the best blogging tips for creating content that resonates with your audience, gets found on Google, and looks amazing. But you’re not completely done.
For the best SEO results, you want to go into your existing blog posts every once in a while and update them. I’d say anywhere between 6 months and a year is a good time frame.
To update your post, you can add more content to the article (this works great for listicles because you can simply include a few more list items), rewrite portions of the copy, swap out images, or add FAQs at the bottom, to name a few options.
Pro tip: If a blog post is performing well (getting lots of clicks), you might want to leave it alone. Instead, focus on older posts that don’t seem to be doing getting good results.
Happy Blogging!
With these blog writing tips, you’re well on your way to creating engaging, relatable, and helpful content that can be found by the people who need it.
And at the end of the day, isn’t that the goal? You want your work to mean something. You want to impact people, whether it’s a client who needs to grow their business so they can continue supporting their staff or a mom who needs encouragement on a hard day.
One last note. If you’re reading this, you’ve probably considered writing professionally at some point. Or maybe you already write for clients but you don’t seem to get the results they want. Or, on the other side of things, maybe you’re trying to get your own blog off the ground.
Whichever one of those applies, you absolutely need my course. It’s full of helpful, practical bog writing tips — from how to handle SEO to where to find clients and everything in-between. The course is divided into 8 short, easy-to-follow lessons that come with downloadable resources.
Learn more about the course here, or go straight to the course platform here. See you on the inside!
(Not quite ready to invest in a course? Check out my completely free guide to writing SEO blog posts here!)