I’ve highlighted over 18 surefire tips to write a perfectly optimized blog post in my last blog post. It was all about how to make your blog post more user and search engine friendly so as to leverage search engine optimization. And today I’m going to feature 15 blogging tips to make you a better blogger. Whether you’re a beginner or a professional wouldn’t matter, these tips will supercharge your next blog post. Guaranteed!
In A Nutshell: 15 Blogging Tips To Write A Better Blog Post
- It’s all About Quality, Not Quantity!
- Make Your Blog Posts Scannable
- Write Today
- Monetize Tomorrow!
- Word Count Matters, Be Consistent
- You Don’t Have To Stuff Synonyms Of Keywords
- Use Social Sharing Buttons
- Speed Up Your Blog
- Split Your Blog Posts
- Make Your Blog Personal
- Publish At The Right Time
- Update Your Evergreen Content Regularly
- How To Write A Blog Post Faster
- Write More Evergreen Content
- Write What People Want
1. It’s all About Quality, Not Quantity!
Always focus on quality and not quantity. Don’t write a blog post every single day just because you think you want to publish one. Write only when you’ve got something to share with others. Increasing your blog post counts may increase your traffic, your revenue, and your backlinks but if they’re of low quality then it’s going to hurt your credibility. For example, nowadays both Mashable and TechCrunch are “making” news rather than “reporting” them.
2. Make Your Blog Posts Scannable
I’ve already mentioned in my How To Write A Perfectly Optimized Blog Post about how to use sub-headings and bullet points in your blog posts to make it more user friendly. The idea is to make your blog posts more scannable because people don’t read your blog posts word by word they scan it. So use lists (numbered lists or bullet points), sub-headings, block quotes, and format the paragraphs by effectively utilizing text formatting like – bold, italics, underline, strikethroughs, or even colors.
3. Write Today, Monetize Tomorrow!
If you’re getting steady traffic then you can monetize it anytime. There’s a way to monetize your blog no matter what your blogging niche is. You can sell advertising, try affiliate programs (Tip: What is affiliate marketing?), brand yourself and offer your services, etc. when you’re ready.
4. Word Count Matters
An analysis by serpIQ suggests that the average word count of a web page that ranks top 10 in Google has 2,000 words. But it’s all about quality too so it doesn’t really mean that your blog post will be on top 10 if it has 2,000 words. For example, if you’re writing a Top 100 list post then you’re giving a lot of value in the first 10 points while you’re supposed to offer value in all your 100 points. Don’t just write to increase your word count.
5. Be Consistent
Yes, it’s all about quality but if you’re able to publish blog posts consistently then your traffic will also grow consistently over time. It’s important if you consider yourself as a professional/full-time blogger. For example, if you own a recipe blog then it’s a good idea to think about a publishing frequency. Like – a new blog post every day, a new blog post every Monday, or a new blog post every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. That way you’re keeping your blog active and your readers engaged so that they will subscribe to your RSS, Facebook Page, Twitter to get the future recipes.
But if you check my blog then you’ll see that I don’t have any blogging schedule (read my editorial philosophy) and I’m not consistent at all. Since I treat my blog as a personal journal I write when I’ve got something to share about things that I’m passionate about. It could be tech, marketing, or even mashups like this, this, or this. And that exactly is the reason why I don’t accept any guest posts or press releases.
6. You Don’t Have To Stuff Synonyms Of Keywords
In 2000s it was easy to rank a webpage for a keyword by adding the primary keywords in title, h1-h3 tags, paragraphs, meta description and keywords. Since Google sucked at understanding synonyms we had to stuff synonyms of the keywords in the title, description and content. Now Google understands synonyms (see LSI – Latent Semantic Indexing) so you don’t have to spoil the title by stuffing keywords.
For example,
If you Google “best iphone apps” OR “top 10 iphone apps” the #1 result remains the same.
7. Use Social Sharing Buttons
Make sure that you’ve integrated social media sharing buttons in your blog post so that it becomes easy for your readers to spread the love. If you’re using WordPress then you can try the plugins like Shareaholic, Sociable, Digg Digg, Pinterest Pin It Button For Imagesdepending upon your target audience.
8. Speed Up Your Blog
As you may already know Google has incorporated site speed as a ranking signal in their algorithms. So if your blog takes more than say 3 seconds to load (Tip: You can use the tools listed here to check the speed & performance of your blog) then you should improve your site speed to improve your rankings on search engines. Here are 15 tips to speed up your website.
9. Split Your Blog Posts
Feel free to split up your blog post if it’s too lengthy to improve the user experience. But it doesn’t mean that you should split it if it’s over say 2,000 or 3,000 words. You can split up the article if you’ve covered two different topics in it. For example, this blog post was actually part of my previous blog post “How To Write A Perfectly Optimized Blog Post” but when I started I got a feeling that it’s worth to write as another article. So I split the content and made it two posts: one focusing optimization and the other one on tips. There are additional benefits if you split posts like it helps to reduce the bounce rate of your blog, will increase page views, and more page views means more advertising revenue. Optionally you canindicate paginated content to make it more search engine friendly.
10. Make Your Blog Personal
You’re writing a blog post and not a book so you’ve to make it personal by adding emotions. It’s a good idea to use “I” often as it builds trust. It’s absolutely fine even if you’re going to disagree with someone or if you’re genuinely writing about how you are feeling about something/someone. After all you simply can’t please each and everyone who is out there.
“Be yourself; everyone else is already taken.” – Oscar Wilde
And always respond to your comments and e-mails. I try to reply to as many e-mails and comments as possible. The only situation when I don’t respond to an e-mail is when I’m sure that they used a pre-written template.
11. Publish At The Right Time
Social media timing really matters. Just submit the same piece of content at different times and you’ll notice that you’re getting more traffic whenever you post during peak times. People usually read blogs in the morning but you can also check the statistics by publishing at different times and find the best timing.
12. Update Your Evergreen Content Regularly
You must update your blog posts (especially your evergreen content) whenever you can. It not only keeps your blog posts fresh and up-to-date but will also improve your search engine ranking. For example, whenever I come across good WordPress Plugins, or Apps, or Internet Tools, etc. I add them to Evernote so that when I have collected enough new information related to a blog post I update that post. Another example is my 101 Google Products & Services page. As you can see, it was first published in 2009 and had around 60 products at first but now it has over 150 products by Google.
13. How To Write A Blog Post Faster
I take at least 4 to 6 hours to write a 1,000 word blog post depending upon the topic but professional bloggers and freelancer writers are super fast. I’ve asked few bloggers on Twitter few months back and they told me that they can write an in-depth blog post that’s 2,000 word article in less than 2 hours.
Also, read how to write a blog post every single day by Ginny Soskey of HubSpot. She’s a staff writer at HubSpot and has listed 11 tips to write a blog post every single day. There are some cool ideas in that blog post but my favorites are “Skip to Easier Stuff” and “Organize Your Bookmark Bar With Resources You Use Every Day” as I follow that. I add the links required for the next blog post to Google Chrome’s Bookmarks Bar and it will be my starting point.
Ginny also wrote an interesting blog post about how she wrote a 1,000 word blog post in 10 minutes. The trick is to use Evernote (or your favorite note taking mobile app) and Siri (or a voice assistant). But I must admit that it didn’t work for me as Siri rarely understands what I’m saying. 
14. Write More Evergreen Content
There are over 52 types of blog posts that are proven to work like tutorials, news, lists, comparison, stories, memes, etc. Evergreen content refers to those timeless blog posts that remains valid at all times of the year. For example, when you write a news story about a trending topic then it’s more likely that your blog post will become out of interest when that topic is no longer trending. When you write evergreen content you will get traffic to those articles consistently as people search about it even if the topic/keyword is not trending. But make sure that the content is up-to-date because it’s almost impossible to write an article that requires zero maintenance since you have to offer as much value as you can.
15. Write What People Want
If you’re not sure about what to write then the best way is to analyze your traffic (Tip: Google Analytics is your friend). Because that’s the easiest way to find out what’s working and what’s not. For example, you can check the Analytics to find the most popular pages in your blog or you can check which blog posts are getting the maximum social media love so that you can repeat the steps. And yeah, use keyword research to further optimize those pages so as to maximize organic traffic.
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