Here’s a 20-Step Guide to Writing the Perfect Post on Your Blog

There is a perfect blog post.

One that attracts new audiences, keeps readers interested, builds your brand image, improves your SEO rankings and converts customers.

Each month, there are over 70 million blogs. Most of these blogs get little to no traffic.

Your blog posts can achieve exactly what you want, whether it's to build readership, grow subscribers, improve market position or increase conversions and sale.

Your content can be leveraged to help you take control of your destiny.

You think it's impossible? We will show you how it is possible. How to write the perfect blog post. You can measure how it generates pageviews and engagement.

Quick Take-Aways

• High-quality keyword research and proven formats are key ingredients to planning high-performing blog content.
• Personas and customer journey maps allow you to create content that is relevant to your customers' needs and goals.
• The "Anatomy of a Perfect Blog Post", provides key components for every blog post.
• How well your content performs depends on how you use best practices in SEO, readability, and SERP optimization.
• This final checklist will ensure that you don't miss any details when publishing content.

Bonus: This is a link that will allow you to create your own editable copy of our perfect checklist for blog posts. To create an editable copy, click on File, Make A Copy.

Blogging Basics

Before we get into the details of writing the perfect blog post we need to know some basics.

• Types of blogs
• Keyword research
• Customer discovery tools
• Brand message

These are essential for any blog. These are the foundation of all your blog content.

Types of blog posts

How-Tos

Because they provide specific instructions, how-to posts are very popular. These posts provide step-by-step instructions that allow readers to take action to resolve a problem or challenge.

Ultimate Guides

Ultimate guides provide a detailed overview and explanation of a topic. These guides include examples and research, and are intended to increase knowledge and understanding.

Listicles

Lists are simple to understand and enjoyable to read. Blog posts on Listicle can include tips, resources, and examples.

News and Opinion

Opinion pieces and news can build brand reputation because they demonstrate thought leadership. Your expertise can be displayed by sharing your thoughts on current events or voicing your opinion on topics within your industry. This will allow you to build your brand's personality.

Case Studies

A case study is a great way to showcase the capabilities of your brand by sharing a story. These case studies highlight your strengths and show real success stories, building trust and social proof with potential customers.

Keyword Research

Most people associate keyword research with SEO. It is an essential part of the internet. SEO is essential for search engine visibility and driving traffic towards your website.

Keyword research has other benefits that can shape your blog posts to provide valuable content for your readers and increase conversions.

Keyword research provides insight into your customers, their search terms, and the reason they visit your website or blog. This helps you to allocate money to the correct keywords and create marketing and advertising campaigns around them.

Keyword research provides a bird's-eye view of the traffic in your industry.

Ahrefs and Semrush are tools that allow us to do high-quality keyword research. This allows us to create engaging, hyper-relevant content and position our brand optimally.

PS: These 10 tips will help you optimize your content marketing. Click Here to Watch Now

Persona and Customer Journey

Customer-first thinking should be the norm when creating content. There are two great tools to help you better understand your customers: personas or customer journey maps.

Personas are fictional representations of real buyers that can help you develop strategies to sell your products and/or services. Personas that are based on what customers want are called personas. Your personas will be actionable for you brand if you focus on your customer goals. This will also help make your content more actionable for customers.

Customer journey maps show the customer's journey, from first becoming aware of your brand to purchasing. These maps include all interactions customers have with your brand during their journey.

These videos provide a deeper guide to creating personas, customer journey maps and more.

Brand Message and Content Strategy

Your brand message is what ties all your marketing efforts together. This is your brand message, your core value proposition. You need to know it to make great blog posts or any other content.

Once you have a clear understanding of your brand message, you will be able to create a content strategy that communicates it in different ways. Blog posts are one example.

Your brand message and content strategy are key to planning what type of blogs and topics you will write. It also creates a consistent content library, which is complementary over time.

PS- Get our weekly blog content service and grow your website traffic!

Anatomy of a Perfect Blog Article

While every brand has a different blog post, there are some key elements that should be included in all posts. You can download the anatomy of a blog post by clicking here or see it below.

Blogging Best Practices

The perfect blog post will have all the elements it needs. There are some important things you need to remember to make sure your blog is enjoyable and engaging to read.

Readability

Your blog should be easy to read and avoid any mistakes. (Even one mistake could turn off readers). Here are some things to look out for:

• Grammar – This should be obvious, but it's surprising at how many great pieces of content have simple errors that are distracting or off-putting. Before you publish, proofread it for grammar.
• Conversational tone – Blogs allow customers to communicate with brands in a casual setting. It's best to speak directly to your readers in a conversational tone.
• Language Complexity – This is where you will need to find the right balance. Some industries may be more technical than others. It's best to keep your content simple and avoid jargon.
• Avoid the fluff – Be respectful of your readers' time and only include relevant content that adds value to the blog. You can make your content less valuable by adding fluff content to get word count.

SEO and SERP Optimization

Search engines account for more than half of all website traffic. 93% of online experiences begin with a search engine. If you don't optimize your blog for search engines, then you are writing for no one. These SEO strategies will ensure that your blog posts become traffic magnets to your website.

Internal Links

Internal links are hyperlinks within your blog content linking to other pages in your domain. Every blog post should contain at least one internal link.

Article Title

Your blog title should contain your key words to improve your SEO ranking. It's what users will see in the SERP. A catchy title can have a significant impact on click through rates (CTRs).

Meta Description

Your meta description will appear below your title. It should include your focus keywords. Your meta description should not exceed 160 characters. It should describe your article in an engaging way that grabs readers' attention.

Featured Snippet Optimization

Featured Snippets are taken from the top five search results for a particular search. They appear at the top SERP to give the most relevant and direct answer to the query. Clear and concise language should be used to address questions relevant to your keywords. This will increase your chances of being included in a featured Snippet.

Hub Pages

Hub pages are central repositories of content that covers a particular topic. These pages are a central repository for content that you can link back to or send to users searching for keywords related to the topic. There are many hub pages that you can use to best fit your content strategy and organization.

Skyscraper Content

Skyscraper content reverse-engineers traditional SEO and keyword research. Instead of searching for new keywords opportunities, you will find high-performing content and rank for relevant keywords. Then, create an even better piece and share it with others.

Length

The length of your blog should be as long and as relevant as it takes to cover the topic. However, the best blogs are between 1000-1800 words. Some blogs may be longer than others depending on how they are formatted. That's fine! ).

Lead magnets

Brands offer lead magnets in return for contact information. They must offer something more than free web content.

When thinking about lead magnets, a good question is "What would my readers want next after reading this content?" Your lead magnets should not only be high-value, but also specific, accessible, and easily actionable for your reader.

You can access gated content, buy discounts, PDF checklists, guides, ebooks, digital tools, video resources, and video (like topic webinars) as lead magnets.

Engagement

Your content shouldn't be boring. But it doesn't take much more than a great topic or writing to make your content interesting. These are just a few of the many ways you can make your content more interesting. These techniques will make your content more engaging and interactive for readers.

Contrary or strong opinion

Strong, informed opinions are important about any topic (even controversial) as your reader will be looking for expert commentary to help them understand the subject.

It doesn't mean that you should dive into sensitive or politically charged topics. However, that is fine if your brand uses it and your industry allows. Controversy could be a way to address hot topics in your industry from a new perspective. For example, when we suggested that a lot of buyer personas are really suck, or when Justyna Polaczyk said that the customer is sometimes wrong.

Comment

You can leave comments and reply to others who comment. Your blog's comment section is where industry professionals share their thoughts. You can also get feedback from readers and answer questions.

Social sharing options

First, you must create content that people want to share. Your blog content should be engaging and interesting. This will increase the likelihood that your readers will share it with friends or post it to social media. This will help you drive more traffic.

Your content should also be easy to share. You should make social media buttons visible and enable Click to Tweet tools so that people can repost your blogs.

Call to Action (CTA).

Do not just publish content and pray for the best. Remember your customer journey? Your readers must be guided to the next steps.

CTAs inform readers about the next steps for engaging with your brand. They can improve conversion rates by 121%. Calls to action include a free trial, signing up for an email list, and scheduling a consultation. No matter what you do, don't leave your customers without an option.

Interactive Element

Interactive elements can be used to create a content experience that encourages readers to participate in some way. You can use tools to allow readers to vote, to include video content, and to call out specific items for them to comment in your comments section.

Design

• Font – Don't overlook your blog font! It is a great way for your brand to be seen. Make sure it is easy to read. Consider the top blog fonts and how to choose one.
• Mobile viewability – More than half the content is viewed on mobile. Mobile-friendly content is best, but not the only way to make your content mobile-friendly.
• Visual CTAs/Banners – Visual CTAs, such as clickable buttons and forms, can be used to break up long texts and increase conversions.

Timing of publication

Your content is as important as the content you put into it when you share and publish it. There won't be a perfect day or time for you to publish your blog. However, there are some important timing considerations that you need to keep in mind when managing your content calendar.

Time Zones

Where are they located? This will impact when and where you publish your content.

Do not think of the time zone in which you are publishing, but the one in which your target audience is. Your tweets and social media shares will be lost if you publish and share during their sleep.

Type of content

What time would your audience like to read your content and what are their preferred times? You could publish your content earlier if it is a how-to that they will use during work. You might wait to publish a longer opinion piece if it is more complex. This will allow people to sit down and digest the information.

Social sharing

Sharing blog posts immediately after they are published is a smart idea. Use automatic social sharing via your content management system whenever possible, and then schedule follow-up posts for an added boost.

Blog Frequency

Organic traffic is directly affected by the frequency of blog posts. You should post between 2-4 times per week to get the best results.

Driving traffic is all about consistency. Therefore, it is important for your brand create a schedule that you stick to.

Social Media Platform Trends

There is no one best time to publish a blog. However, each social media site tracks engagement trends and traffic. It is possible to align your content with the most popular times on the platforms you use. However, you run the risk that you will be competing for more traffic if you post at the busiest times.

Promotion

• Email – Include blog posts in your email marketing strategy
• Social media – Share posts on social media at the same time as they are published.
• Influencers – 75% percent of brands with a content marketing budget dedicate resources to influencers. Influencers can help increase your visibility, shape your brand personality and build trust with your followers.
• Link Building – If you blog regularly, you can establish your brand's reputation and improve your rankings. Other brands will then share your content on their blogs more often. This will help to improve all the metrics mentioned above.

Repurposing

There is no need to reinvent the wheel each time you require new content. It's actually a smart strategy to repurpose content that you already know is popular.

Repurpose content can be done in a variety of formats, including infographics and e-books. Or, you can syndicate it as we have discussed.

PS: Check out our most recent case study to see how we helped one company double its leads!

The Perfect Blog Post Checklist

To ensure that you don't publish poor content, use our blog post checklist. It is important to read it carefully before you begin. We always go through it before we publish any blog posts. ).

Did your keyword research help you understand the intent of the search? What are the top Google articles that cover your keyword? Get a better understanding of the context and what people are looking for when they search for a query.

Have you outlined the article using key information from top-ranking articles? Look at the top performing Google searches for your topic. You might find similar topics and follow a similar format if they are ranking high on Google.

Have you answered who, what? why, how and where? Providing holistic answers to your topic will help visitors get more complete answers to their questions.

Have you included 3-5 key takeaways in your article? These can be pulled out and added to the beginning of your article as a bulleted list, or simply incorporated throughout your piece. Make sure they are easy to remember and digest.

Did the focus keyword appear in the title? To rank for that focus keyword in search engines, it is important to include it at specific places within your blog posts. This will make Google and your visitors more familiar with what you are covering in your article.

Did the focus keyword be added to your meta description? This is another place where you should add your primary keyword. Your meta description should not exceed 160 characters. It should describe or summarize the article.

The focus keyword in the alt tag for the image is Your keyword should be used naturally so it doesn't feel forced.

Did the focus keyword appear in the first paragraph or sentence of the article? This helps readers know that they are at the right place. This tells search engines that your blog post covers what it claims.

The focus keyword in a subheading. Include your keyword naturally in at least one of your main Subheadings.

Did you use semantic variants of the keyword throughout your article? To give search engines greater insight into your page and topic, add some closely related keywords. You can also address related queries to get more information on the topic.

Did your search for the focus keyword yield a relevant image? Visuals are a way to draw attention and tell a story. The featured image should give readers an idea of what they can expect from your post.

Did a focus keyword search result lead you to embed a video and cite it? 69% prefer to watch a video when learning about a product.

Did you include at least two links within the content? You're creating a hierarchy by linking to articles that cover the same or complementary content. This will show Google how your website is structured in order to improve crawlability.

Do you have at least one link that links to an external source with high domain authority (DA), which connects readers to a quote, statistic, or research? Experts agree that external links are the best source of ranking power. External links are considered "third-party votes" by search engines.

Did your article include a call to action (CTA), that is relevant and contextual? This will encourage readers to take further actions to help them move down the sales funnel.

Do sentences have 2-4 lines of text? Short sentences make it easier to understand. You'll lose people quickly if you are too wordy.

Paragraphs should not exceed 4-5 lines. Short paragraphs make it easier to understand and less intimidating than longer ones.

Have you used bullet points to break down large blocks of text or summarize key points? The bullet points will help keep your page organized.

Did the article you wrote in active voice? This voice sounds confident and direct, while still keeping it concise and easy-to-understand. Your message will be communicated more effectively and with fewer words than if it were written in passive voice.

How long is the blog post? A blog post should not exceed 1000-1800 words. Blog posts should only be as long as it takes to cover a topic thoroughly. The most popular blog posts contain more than 1000 words. Blog posts entitled "What is" should not exceed 1300 words. Articles on "How to" should not exceed 1700 words. Listicles should be more detailed.

Are you ready for great blog posts?

It can be difficult to write a blog post that is perfect. But our writers are trained to do it for your every week for a whole year. Get started by learning more about our Content Builder Services or scheduling a consultation today!