If you’re reading this, you’re probably aware of how important blogging is for your online marketing strategy. Creating high-quality and engaging content is a sure-fire way to get attention and rise in search engine rankings. But, if you’re new to this realm, it might be challenging to figure out how to even start creating blog content. It’s not uncommon for a new business to utilize the services of experts in the field by hiring an SEO agency Miami to help them get started.
But not everyone has the economic resources at hand to bring in the big guns.
The purpose of this article is to provide you with a rubric for writing blog content that meets the needs of your company. By following these suggestions, you’ll have at your disposal the tools you’ll need to create the type of content and a clean strategy that you’ll need to improve your SEO.
So, let’s get started.
Choosing the Right Topic
When trying to identify the best topic for your blog, you’ll want to ask questions that are relevant to the industry that you are writing about. This will require you to understand your audience, so you’ll need to do a little research. You can go about this by looking through industry forums and blogs or doing a keyword search to find trending topics that your audience will be intrigued by and want to read more about.
Think about who your reader will be, and when you’ve narrowed down topic options, choose the one that your potential reader will want to read. It’s all about striking the right balance between entertaining and informative. If it’s not fun for you to write, then how can you expect anyone to want to read it?
Now That You Have a Topic, Create Your Title
The first draft of any writing exercise is never going to be the best version. The same goes for your title. Don’t commit yourself to a title from the beginning. Instead, start brainstorming and form a list of working titles for you to choose from, then when your writing ideas are more defined, you’ll have several options to choose from.
When creating a title, you’ll want to make sure that the value of the post is clear so that when a potential reader stumbles upon your blog, they’ll know precisely what they will be able to take away from reading.
A couple general title guidelines to keep in mind:
- Keep the title around 60 characters, this will ensure that the entire title is visible in the list of search engine results. If your title happens to be longer than that, try to include the keyword at the beginning and consider using bracket clarifications.
- You’ll also want to keep in mind where your post will most likely be promoted and tailor the title to fit the trends that perform best in the site in which it will be seen the most. Titles with eight to twelve words tend to perform better on Twitter, while titles with twelve to fourteen words do better on Facebook.
Formatting Your Blog
Now that you have your topic and working title to guide your blog post, it’s time to choose the format that will work best for your intentions.
- Are you explaining a process? Consider a How-To article with detailed steps to guide your readers.
- Educating the reader on a new topic in the industry? Consider writing a long-form article with extensive research to assert your expertise on the subject.
- Providing tips on how to approach a strategy or practice? Consider writing the article in the classic listicle format, numbering each topic to keep the reader engaged.
- Want to condense a lot of information in a more approachable format than a lengthy article? Consider an infographic or SlideShare post to pack a lot of data into small, bite-size slides or graphics that are easy for the reader to digest and remember.
Your Blog’s Structure Matters
Once you’ve decided on which format will work best for the topic you are exploring, you have to be aware of the structure of the post and how it will look on the page. Your content should be appealing to the eye and feel comfortable to read. The best way to make your writing approachable is by breaking up dense paragraphs into shorter pieces. You’ll want to utilize the white space on the page to let the reader’s eye quickly skim down without being deterred by overwhelming mountains of text.
Keep in mind that the purpose of writing this type of content is to have your readers engage. If you make your content interactive, you’ll keep people on the page for longer. Do this by adding links to internal articles that expand on the topic you briefly touched on. Using media such as video is also a good practice to break up the text for the reader and keep their attention.
Finally, when you are finalizing your article, do so with an eye for what it will look like on mobile. Mobile users account for 52.2% of all web traffic online. Based on those numbers, the chances are that half your audience will be seeing your content through their phone screen. With that in mind, you should be aware that how you structure your content should be appealing to look at both on the web and mobile.
An SEO Agency Miami Can Help
Content creation can be equal parts interesting and intimidating, especially if you don’t know where to begin. Many companies prefer to hire a professional and experienced SEO Agency Miami to produce content on their behalf. However, if you choose to create your content in-house, keep in mind the methods outlined above, and you’ll be well on your way to distributing high-quality content that your audience will want to read.
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