Writing a blog post is different than other types of writing. A post should be a quick, easily digestible read with at-a-glance formatting. Blog posts are meant to be conversations written by regular people with definite opinions, so don’t hold back giving your point of view on the topic you are writing about. Your ‘spin on things’ is what makes it a blog post and why people like to read blogs in the first place.
If you are writing a blog post about business, be the ‘expert’ and be the ‘authority’ because that is exactly what you are going after with Google and the other search engines. Readers want your ideas, expertise and perspective and you want to own the conversation, so go for it!
It’s a good idea to keep your blog post between 350-500 words if you can. Otherwise, it becomes something else. Remember, your are not writing a thesis, a dissertation or an e-book. Posts are short, opinionated and to the point. If you have more to say about a particular topic, you can always direct your reader to other related posts and pages on your site, which is better for the SEO of your site anyway.
When writing content on your blog, the more individual posts you write and publish, the better. A steady stream of relevant posts that support the pages on your site is what keeps your site at the top of the index. If the post you are writing is becoming to long, break it up into several posts and spread them out over a period of time. You can interlink each post as a series if you want, just make sure you make the titles different enough so that each post receives full authority from Google. DO NOT title your posts in the following way:
- WordPress Blog Post Writing Part One
- WordPress Blog Post Writing Part Two
- WordPress Blog Post Writing Part Three
Give each post a completely different title and let your readers know within each post that they are a part of series.
SEO Functions Within WordPress
There are specific SEO functions available within the All-in-One SEO Pack plug in for WordPress. If you don’t have this feature installed, you are not taking full advantage of all that WordPress is capable of doing for your site. The following functions are important for SEO as well as usability, which should be given equal consideration when developing your site.
- Title of Post - Smart, relevant and descriptive titles are best. AVOID cutesy, catchy non-descript titles that users would never search and the engines wouldn’t understand.
- Title Description - Write the description of your post as a marketing blurb because this is what users see in the index. Keep superfluous words to a minimum, don’t use commas and keep your description under 160 characters.
- Tags & Clouds - Google loves tags and so do users. Tags act as a quick visual aid for categories which help users easily find information on your site. Limit the number of tags and keep them succinct and relevant. Tags should be all upper case or all lower case, otherwise the ‘tag cloud looks sloppy, unorganized and confusing. Individual tags grow in size in the tag cloud as more posts get written under them.
- Categories - WordPress navigation is driven by categories, making them extremely important to your site. It is best to use only one catagory per post, otherwise the site gets confusing to users.
- Keywords - Focus on a maximum of three keyword phrases per post so that Google understands what the post is about. You can bold and/or italicize keyword phrases throughout the post. A Keyword phrase must be within the post at least three times before it will be recognized as a keyword and be given authority by the search engines.
- H2 Header Tags - Use them in your post at least once. Never use h1 tags because they confuse the search engines with your main title tag which is automatically an h1 header tag. Use the same main keywords in your h2 tag that are in the title of your post. If you want to further break down a sub topic under your h2 tag, use h3 tag(s).
- Linking Related Posts & Pages - Interlink relevant posts and pages within your blog whenever possible. You can also link to other website pages that are relevant to your topic as long as you use no follow tags, otherwise your visitor will leave your site as they follow the link out.
- Writing in WordPress - It’s best to write your content directly in WordPress or use a TEXT document and then paste your content in, doing all formatting within WordPress. DO NOT use a WORD document and then paste the content directly into WordPress or you will waste a lot of time removing erroneous code that interferes with formatting. However, you can reverse the process and paste your finished post that was written in WordPressinto into a word document to check for any grammar, spacing and/or punctuation issues and your eyes might easily miss. Then make whatever corrections are necessary directly in WordPress.
- Lists - Bulleted and numbered lists are excellent for at-a-glance formatting in posts. Lists make it easier for readers to assimilate content quickly, which is exactly what they want when reading a post.
- Spell Check – USE IT before publishing. Nothing turns users off more quickly than misspelled and poorly written content.
Follow the above pointers in writing blog posts and your WordPress blog system will become a powerful Internet marketing machine!