1. Maintain the Basic Blog Post Elements
Great blogs start with basic features that encourage people to not only read, but take action. Your blog should include an eye-catching title, relevant and unique content, links to other pages or resources, sidebars with calls to action such as “subscribe” or “contact us” and social media sharing buttons.
Other important elements include:
- Search Box
- Tags
- Subheadings
- Images / Infographics
- Videos
2. Utilize Blog Post Categories
Creating and maintaining blog categories will structure your blog and help you provide content that is meaningful and interesting to your readers. They also help your readers find what they are looking for more quickly.
3. Write a Blog Post Description
Writing a blog post description is essential because it provides readers with a sneak peek of what your article is about. If you don’t write a custom description, the search engines will create their own description (usually the first 160 characters of the blog post), and that may not adequately explain to readers what your post is about. A good description will help draw your readers in, so remember to write an engaging description for each post.
4. Optimizing Your Blog Post
If you want to increase your change of being seen by the search engines, you will need to know what search engines (like Google) are looking for. Search engines value text, formatting, freshness, accessibility, linking and content that appears to provide expert advice. Incorporating these items into your posts will help your blogs become more successful with the search engines.
5. Think Like a Journalist
Just like a journalist, you must remember that it may take some time to gain the trust of your readers. However, there are things you can do to start to build trust. Start with making sure your facts are correct, give credit to your sources and edit and proofread your content. Mickie Kennedy with erealease.com writes in his article 5 Things Bloggers Can Learn From Journalists that journalists use what is called the Inverted Pyramid to write articles.
Consider this:
Journalists know how to write articles that will engage readers and provide them with good information. While the writing style may differ, why wouldn’t the same principles apply to blog writing?
6. Create Lists
There is certainly a time and place for long and detailed blog posts, but successful blogs incorporate different formatting and content structure. This helps keep things fresh and unique. One great way to engage readers is to utilize lists when organizing your copy. People love making and reading lists because it condenses information into brief points that can be read or skimmed quickly. Lists also create structure and order, organizing information in a meaningful way that is easier to digest.