Six Steps for Better Blogging

Six Steps for Better Blogging

If you own a website you need traffic from search engines and, love it or hate it, blogging may be the single most effective way you can increase your business’s chances of showing up in the ever-important search engine results.

Six steps for better bloggingThe term “blogging” is often mocked and misunderstood, but when used effectively, blogging can engage your visitors, keep them interested in your business and increase sales. This week we’re sharing some tips to help anyone become a better blogger!

Emphasize headlines

Marketing professionals know that headlines need to grab people’s attention right away and peak their curiosity enough to want to read what else you have to say. People skim headlines to see what interests them, and you only have a second to make them decide to choose yours.

When writing your headline, avoid using all capital letters or punctuation. Using all capital letters will make your headline appear more like a rectangular block of text, and will likely be skimmed right over by the reader.

Have a call to action

Once you have your headline, and before you start writing your article, you should decide what you want your readers to do once they have absorbed your wisdom. Do you want them to subscribe to your mailing list, like your Facebook page or check out that diamond bracelet you have on sale this week? Having a call to action in mind before you write will make it easier to incorporate into your article.

Make an editorial calendar

Having an editorial calendar may seem like a bit of overkill to many people, but planning out what you are going to be writing about ahead of time will save you mounds of frustration down the road. If you know what you’re going to write about, you can hammer out a few blog posts the next time you’re having one of those creative days and schedule them ahead of time. Talk about a stress reliever!

Get your links in order

Having some links to other related content in your posts not only helps your extra-curious visitors, but search engines like it too, and will reward you for it with better search engine results. Try to link to previous articles you’ve written, or other online articles that offer additional information. Two or three links are all you need, so try not to go overboard.

Write!

Now is the time to let your creative juices flow! If you have troubles at first, write what you think is most important about your topic and then expand on it from there. Grammar and spelling are important in your final product, but don’t let that stand in the way of getting your thoughts down on paper. You’ll take care of the details when you’re satisfied that you’ve gotten your message written down.

A good goal to set for the length of your articles is around 350 words. Much longer than that and you risk having your visitors lose interest, but much shorter and you’ll start to get less benefit from the search engines.

Edit and review

This is when you turn the creativity off and focus on the quality of your work. Read it, fix it and read it again to take care of those pesky spelling errors and make sure it’s easy to read. Make sure your links that we talked about earlier have been added and your call to action stands out. It’s also a good time to make sure you have links to your social pages to make it easier for your visitors to follow you.

If you’re not comfortable checking these things yourself, ask a trusted friend to look it over for you. It’s a good way to get feedback on your article overall as well.

Publish your masterpiece

You’re done! Now share your knowledge with the world and bask in the glory of your own creativity because you are well on your way to improving your search engine rankings, increasing your visitors’ interaction and ringing up more sales!

Do you have tips for blogging better? Share your blogging tips on Facebook or Twitter!

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