A Guide To Blog Writing – What You Should Do

So, you want to write your own blog posts? 

Let us be the first to tell you – that’s fantastic. We mean that. Written content such as blog posts and case studies are essential to the growth of your brand and website. By taking it upon yourself to write about your area of expertise and post it, you’re showing a serious dedication to your business’s success (plus, Google is big on genuine content right now). Nice!

Writing quality blog posts isn’t easy and as the content exec here at Nu Image, I feel like I have grounds to make that statement. It’s a common misconception that all a blog post takes is writing a few hundred words and uploading it with a pic you found on Google, but this ain’t it. 

There is so much more to successful blog writing than that. 

Taking the initiative to write them in the first place is the main ingredient to a delicious, high-ranking content cake, but you can’t bake with flour alone. In this post, I’m going to share what else you should be adding to the mixing bowl that is your written content to help you delight your audience and the Google bots. (And yes… we may have been watching British Bake Off)

What to do when writing a blog post

Let’s look at what works when it comes to blog writing.

Do pick a relevant topic

What is your business about? What are you an expert in, or passionate about? What are your customers or clients here for? Whatever you decide to write about, make sure it’s relevant to your brand, services and readers. 

If you’re a local vet clinic and you write about the best way to change a car’s tyres, you’ll not only confuse your audience, but you’ll confuse search engines, too. The bots are looking for relevance as well as quality. Start writing about random topics and search engines will view you as spammy, giving you zero authority to help with your rankings in the SERPs.

Saying that, you don’t always need to write about your specific services or business updates. As a vet, for instance, you could write about the five best cat foods, how to properly brush your dog, or why hamsters love those plastic balls so much. As long as the search bots and your readers find what they’re expecting to see on your site, you’re on the right track.

Do be clever with keywords

Keyword stuffing: an unethical (and not to mention outdated) SEO process of overloading your copy with keywords to trick search engines. Search engine bots will hate it and view it as spam, and your readers will most likely grow tired of the repetition and click away.

Use several of your keywords at once but only if it makes sense and flows naturally. If you add 25 different keywords once each, chances are Google will still see that as stuffing. Stick to a handful and use them when appropriate for the best results. There is a strategy for proper keyword utilisation, which we can help with if you need blog support for your website.

Do include internal links

This is a big one for both readers and Google bots. Internal links help your audience navigate your site and get to the pages they want, or need, to reach. A blog post about the importance of MOTs with an internal link to the MOT booking page? Perfect, no notes. 

The invisible advantage of internal links is that they allow Google bots to understand and index the structure and hierarchy of your website. But what does ‘index’ mean? Good question.

When bots visit your site, they analyse its content, paying close attention to keywords and other signals that help them determine how to rank your content. They then take all this information and store it in Google’s ‘index’, which is basically a large database containing pages from across the web. Essentially, by indexing your site, Google is assessing and storing its content for its search engine results pages, making it easier for users to find relevant pages like yours. An indexed page will show up in SERPs, which is what you want.

Hot tip: avoid ‘click here!’ link wording. Create a link from a string of words already in a natural sentence. For example, I can pop a link in this sentence where I suggest you all go and read our blog post about why content marketing is essential for visibility. See what I did there? 

There’s actually quite a bit more to talk about when it comes to links and Google, so we’ll save that for another post. For now, add links naturally to help navigation for humans and bots.

Do utilise your headings

Use headings as an opportunity for keywords and clarity. Different types of headings are known by different codes:

• H1 – header 1, the title. This should only appear once in your post, at the very start.
• H2 – header 2, the heading of a major section. There is no set limit on how many of these you should use, so just ensure that you use enough to break up your post into sections without it looking crowded.
• H3 – header 3, the subsection heading used within a major section. Again, no limit here, so just use what’s sensible.
• H4 – header 4, the subsection heading of a subsection of a major section. You can probably see where we’re going with this list, so we’ll end it here.

It’s good practice to get one of the post’s main keywords into the H1 and attempt to get a few more into the H2s and H3s. 

Another good idea is to take a look at what people are searching for in relevance to your topic and use those phrases as headings if they work. I personally like to have a look at the ‘People Also Ask’ section on search engine result pages and use those questions as headings. Doing this can increase the likelihood of securing your post a Google SERP feature, which is a very good thing.

Let’s summarise

For all you skim readers out there, here’s what you need to add to your blog posts to increase the likelihood of short and long-term blog success (happy readers, happy bots, high SERP rankings, lots of authority):

• Do pick a relevant topic – humans and bots won’t be interested in a post that has little to do with your brand. Stick to what you know and a positive reception will follow.
• Do be clever with keywords – pick a handful of your keywords relevant to the post and add them in naturally. Avoid keyword stuffing that will get you seen as spammy.
• Do include internal links – help your readers navigate to relevant site pages, and help Google bots index your website.
• Do utilise your headings – use headings where necessary to split your post up, and pop keywords into them where they feel natural. 

What makes a good blog post?

Topic focus, keyword strategy, links and structure. Those are the sugar, eggs, butter and vanilla you need to mix with your flour (your post) to make the perfect little blog cake. There are a few more tips and ingredients to really push your post towards success, but they’re best left to the professionals, like us.

Would you like someone else to handle writing, optimising, and managing your blog? There’s no problem with handing that task over to someone else while you focus on other essentials. That’s what we’re here for, after all: to work with you and grow your business. Let us write your blog posts for you, utilising all the content marketing knowledge we have to craft successful pieces for you and your brand.

Interested? Call us on 01603 859007 and let’s talk content, or use our simple online chat feature to speak to a real person, right here in the studio.