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How to improve your blog in 5 easy steps

5 tips to help you write you blog

If you are using content marketing to improve your search rankings then a cornerstone of this is probably your blog and you want this to be a good as possible.

Here are my 5 tips to make your blog postings more effective as part of your digital marketing strategy.

Tip #1 – Have a clear plan to write to

It’s important that you don’t simply start writing and firing off blogs left right and centre.

Instead you need to think about what you are trying to achieve and set your keywords accordingly.

When you have a plan and a set of keywords then you should write posts around your keywords but I’d suggest only writing a post around one keyword at a time.

Trying to pack too much in will destroy the way the article reads and may even lead to Google thinking you are keyword stuffing, which is a bad thing.

Tip #2 – Use short sentences and simple words

You are probably going to be writing for a fairly mixed audience and Google understands this.

Short sentences are easier to read, especially on a mobile device and the vast majority of web content is accessed on mobile devices.

Google also likes you to use simple, accessible language and so unless you are writing something very technical for a professional audience then you are better off using short words.


Check out these handy tools for finding keywords and the questions your customers are asking – click on the image

% tools you absolutely need for your blogs

Tip #3 – Answer the questions that your audience are asking.

If you are writing general pages for your website then you can get away with simply writing copy that is about your company.

But if you are wanting to attract people to your site and of course rank highly on Google then you need to answer questions.

There are number of tools that will help you do this and I have done a separate post about my favourites which you can access here.

Essentially you need to find questions that people ask about your keywords and write to them.

For example, if you sell kitchen knives then you could answer the questions “What knife do I use to fillet fish?” or “How do I sharpen a kitchen knife?”.

By doing this over a series of posts Google will eventually get to think of you as a subject matter expert which helps your ranking.

More importantly if you have a wealth if information on particular subjects then your potential customers will also come to think of your site whenever they have a question they need answering.

Tip #4 – Structure your post.

I always like to use a simple structure that works really well, especially when you are suffering from writer’s block!

Start off with a striking headline

Set up the reason for your post

Answer the question you have asked

Summarise

Call to action.

In other words, tell them what you are going to tell them, tell them, then tell them what you’ve told them!

By doing this you will find that your posts are actually easier to write and fall into a comfortable rhythm that readers prefer.

Tip #5 – Don’t forget a call to action

You shouldn’t forget to tell readers what you want them to do as a result of reading your post.

“Call me for more details”

“Check this related post”

“Email me and book an appointment”

That sort of thing.

I see lots of posts that don’t include a call to action and that’s really missing a massive opportunity.

I’ve spoken to people who feel that this is somehow being too ‘salesy’ but actually when I read a post that has a call to action at the end it actually makes me feel a sense of certainty about what they want me to do.

A call to action doesn’t have to be ‘buy now’ but it can be more around giving people more related content to read or letting them know what they need to do to get more information.

Here’s your summary

So look back over this post and think about my post structure.

I’ve told you what I was going to tell you

I’ve told you

And now I’m telling you what I’ve told you.

And that’s how post structuring works.

The great thing about using this method is that if you have your keyword that you are going to focus on then the post almost writes itself.

Here’s my call to action

I’ll admit that not everyone has the time to write their own content so if you’d like help setting up your marketing plan, writing the content or you want someone to take over the whole shooting match then why not give me a call?

I’d be happy to talk over your options with no obligation at all.

If you’d like to find out more about SEO then why not check out the rather excellent Neil Patel here

Writing a business blog? These are the 5 tools you absolutely need

I write blogs for businesses

If you are setting up a blog for your business then why make life difficult for yourself?

There are some epic tools out there that are either free or very cheap and they save you a whole heap of time and money.

So here are my five favourite tools that I swear by when I am writing business blogs for my clients. Check them out.

Tool #1 Ubersuggest

This is an epic tool that I use all the time.

Ubersuggest has a full suite of options to analyse your website and keywords but much more importantly it helps you analys YOUR COMPETITORS too!

Why is this important?

Well if you want to rank highly on search engines but your competitors are doing better than you then you can use Ubersuggest to find out why.

It’s also got the ability to track websites and keywords too so you can watch how things change over time.

Admittedly it takes a bit of time to learn how to use this properly but the investment is worth it and Neil Patel includes some absolutely epic videos and blogs that help you on your way.

The free version is pretty feature packed. Naturally as a professional writer I pay for the pro version but it’s not that expensive and it’s worth every penny in my opinion.

Find Ubersuggest here https://app.neilpatel.com/


Want to know how to go about writing a small business blog? Click the pic below!

I write blogs for businesses

Tool #2 – Google keyword planner

We all know how important keywords are to the success of our blogs so having a tool that helps you find the best keywords is essential.

Personally I use Ubersuggest to get me to a place where I understand the sort of things that my competitors are ranking for then use the keyword planner to give me stats on the various options and importantly suggest more keywords.

Much of this is available in Ubersuggest but I like using the Google console directly.

It’s not as massively use friendly as some of the tools here but it is effective and that’s what counts right?

This is an absolutely free tool that anyone with a GoogleAds account can use and you can find it by setting up your own GoogleAds account and searching for the keyword planner.

Tool #3 Answer the public

This is a pretty epic tool if you have a set of bare keywords but need to turn them into long-tail keywords for your blog titles.

You can take a simple keyword such as blog “writing for accountants” enter it into the search box and ATP will give you a full report which details the sorts of questions that people are asking about your subject.

Answering questions is a great way to drive traffic and increase your blog ranking on the major search engines so this is an absolute must.

In fact it is so good that you can devise almost an entire blog campaign based on a single report from this tool.

The basic version is feature rich and free although you are limited to numbers of searches per day. If you need more then the pro version is a bit pricey at $99 per month although if you are a professional blog writer then this will definitely be worth it for you.

Oh and I love the homepage videos they have going on too.

Find Answer the public here https://answerthepublic.com/


Struggling for subjects? Check out my post on how to choose what to write about by clicking the image below

How great content can boost your SMEs sales

Tool #4 – A great free pic site

Now look, pinching pictures off the web without permission is a bad thing to do so you have a couple of choices.

The first is to pay for a subscription to one of the stock image libraries like Alamy or Shutterstock which makes sense if you are producing a lot of content.

The other is to find one of the open licence libraries that have sprung up.

I use Pexels and Unsplash and between the two of them, they pretty much have everything I need.

The licence is open so you can use it on your blog with no legal problems and whilst the range of images is much smaller than the paid-for libraries both are still quite extensive.

You can find pexels here https://www.pexels.com/

and Unsplash is here https://unsplash.com/

Tool # 5 an awesome synonyms site

Seriously how many times have you found yourself searching for a multiple of ways to write the same word?

If you are writing your blog then I can promise there will be days when you need to find other methods of saying that something is AWESOME (Beautiful, Epic, Formidable, Impressive).

Finding a decent synonym/antonym site is a life-saver so I use thesaurus.com.

It’s no-frills, simple to use and produces a list of synonyms and antonyms with examples of usage.

It even speaks the word for you if you want!

Totally free you can find it here https://www.thesaurus.com/

Your business blog shouldn’t be hard work

So these are my recommendations if you want to write your own business blog.

They are generally free and work really well although to be fair you may need to invest a little bit of time to fully understand how to use them to their full potential.

I hope this post has been of use for you and if you have enjoyed it then please feel free to share and link as it’s all good.

And if you have decided that your time could be better spent elsewhere than writing your own business blog then why not give me a contact me and see how I can help you by writing your content for you?