Writing a Good Blog in 5 Steps: Your Formula of Success

If you want to start and promote your blog, you have to fill it with great content – that’s a fact. But what does that really mean? Moreover, not all of them know how to do it right.

Let’s start by putting you, the content creator, in the reader’s shoes. Would you read an overly long post? Would you stick with it if it was difficult to follow or boring to read? No, of course, you wouldn’t. You’d give up after a few lines and find a more interesting blog elsewhere.

Every blog post faces stiff competition from the hundreds of other posts on the same topic or any topic for that matter. The trick is to make your content stand out from the crowd so the reader chooses your blog post over the others and reads it from beginning to end.

Google, of course, knows exactly how long readers stay on your page. If, say, your blog post is 2,000 lovingly crafted words long but the average dwell time is only around 1 minute, Google will know that the quality of the information you are providing is poor, and this will affect your page ranking.

And this is really the crux of the matter. Writing a good blog will improve your website’s visibility in search engine results. It’s one of many SEO techniques that can produce tangible online results. Rather than wasting your time writing ineffectual blog posts, follow these 5 blogger marketing steps to producing top-performing content that will captivate your readers and boost your Google ranking.

1. Write unique content

Rule Number One is that your writing a good blog you should use original content. Copying other people’s work is a total no-no, while the dubious practice of content spinning is to be avoided at all cost. The consequence of not heeding this crucial bit of advice is that your site will be punished by Google. Your rankings will plummet so low that no-one will ever find you again, or your site may be removed from search engine results altogether!

On the other hand, if you put the effort in to write fresh, unique content that is relevant and of real value to your readers, you’ll be rewarded by seeing your hard work climbing up the rankings. By all means research other blogs for inspiration, just make sure that the article you produce is your own work.

2. Write for humans, not bots

Writing a good blog should follow this simple mantra: ‘Blog posts are written by people, for people’. At the end of the day, it’s the reader who decides whether your content is any good. His decision to carry on reading (or not, as the case may be) will inform the search engine’s interpretation of the value of your content which, in turn, will determine how well you will rank.

In days gone by, keyword stuffing and over optimisation of content were popular tricks used by SEO savvy content creators to boost their site rankings. This is no longer the case and the practice is highly likely to be penalized. Google is much more interested in providing the best possible value to its users, so this is where your content should be aiming.

3. Writing a good blog stay simple

Content writing is not about showing off your advanced vocabulary skills or creating poetic prose. It’s about engaging the reader and providing relevant information. To achieve that, your use of language needs to be uncomplicated, inclusive and to the point.

Keep the tone upbeat and friendly, using words that everyone can understand and sentences that are reasonably short. Remember that the internet is for everyone, whatever their level of education. What’s the point of alienating your readership by using difficult words? You’ll only lose them.

Apparently, the average human attention span is now shorter than that of a goldfish, meaning nobody reads long paragraphs. TLDR – too long didn’t read – sums up most reader’s unwillingness to persevere beyond two or three sentences before a line break. Most will simply click off the page.

4. Write a catchy headline and first paragraph

Having a catchy title for your blog post is as important as the rest of the article. Think about it – if the title doesn’t sell the article, no-one will click through to read it and all your writing efforts will have been in vain.

A stand-out headline, on the other hand, will lure the reader in. Here’s an example:

‘Careers advice for content writers’

‘Top 5 skills you need to become a successful content writer’

Which title would you rather click on? It’s worth spending some time crafting catchy titles.

Once on the page, your reader should be kept engaged with a strong opening sentence or two to keep him there. If interest is not sparked high up on the page, and certainly before he has to scroll down, he is likely to hit the back button and go elsewhere.

5. Write in bite-sized chunks

The days of long pages of text are long gone. Internet users are visual readers with a short attention span. Everyone wants the information to be quickly accessible in bite-sized chunks. Written content must be scannable and easy to the eye – that is, broken up into sections with subtitles, or using bullet points and lists.

Nor does all content have to be in written form. Web content marketing in the form of pictures, infographics, graphs or tables can be invaluable to help break up long text passages and keep writing a good blog in a more user-friendly format.