Anyone can create a blog post, but how do you create top quality blog content that your customers will want to read as well as boosting your website’s search engine presence?

Before you start writing your blog post, you need to know your audience and of course, the topic you are going to write about.

Ask yourself; What is it that makes people tick? What are their interests? Or what are their pain points that you can solve for them?

It is estimated that most people only read a blog post for two minutes before exiting. Similarly, content creators have only a few seconds to spark the reader’s interest.

Read on for some useful tips that will help you produce quality blog content for optimal engagement and SEO.

1. Be Strategic When Choosing Your Keywords

You should write your article around one primary keyword, for example, “cosmetic dentistry” with 2 or 3 secondary or “supporter” keywords that you can use throughout your text.

For example, “veneers,” or “teeth whitening.”, your text should be easy to read and not too “dense” with your keywords.

It’s up to you to pick your keywords and a great tool is Google Keyword Planner which will give you plenty of ideas on your chosen topic or industry.

Learn how to use Google Keyword Planner tool in this article and the key is picking a keyword with a high search volume yet little competition.

2. Write For Your Audience

Write content that appeals to your target audience or answers their questions. Think about your customer’s pain points and what problems you can solve for them. Make sure your content is relevant to your industry! Also, ensure you use wording your customers will understand. Try to avoid jargon!

3. Write for SEO Purposes

You’ve done some keyword research and have your primary keyword in mind. But now, what do you do with it? Here are some hints of where you should put your primary keywords for the best SEO effect.

• Put your primary keyword in the title then the search engines know exactly what your article is about
• Try to use your primary keyword in the first and last sentence of your article.
• Use your primary keyword in a subheading
• Don’t overstuff your article with keywords. You still want your article to read naturally. Keyword density should be kept to around 1%.
• Sprinkle your supporting keywords throughout the article.

4. Catchy Headlines Are a Must

Statistics suggest that 8 out of 10 people are reading headlines but only 2 of them will read your article!

Headlines should be able to engage your audience straight away. Headlines are also very useful for SEO. Put your primary keyword in your headlines! The search engines see these headings and will identify these keywords quickly.

You should also use subheadings throughout your text to make it easier to read and avoid having large blocks of text, plus utilising H2/H3 headings is essential.

5. Add Links For an Extra Boost

It’s true, adding internal and external links into your blog content give your website and its pages a decent SEO boost.

Firstly, what is an internal link? An internal link in your blog content links to another page within your website. An external link links out to another website.

Why should you add these links? Every time the search engines crawl your website, they read your links too! They look at the words in your link (hint: they should include some keywords) and they look at where your links are going to.

And of course, at the end of the day, you want to direct your readers to more quality content whether that is on your website or to another reputable external source.

TIP: Put your keywords in your links – it all counts!

6. Optimise Using Categories and Tags

Think about categories and tags like having a bunch of folders to store your things in. It provides organisation to your blog and helps people find the information they need. They also serve as an excellent introduction to your website and gives it good structure.

As a blogger, you need to make sure the categories you plan on using are built into your blog’s structure from the outset.

7. Use Engaging Photos or Images

In order to improve the amount of times your blog is seen, you should include engaging photographs or images, or both in your posts. Making use of images can boost your readership by 94% or more, according to data from the Skyword content marketing tool.

TIP: Make sure you use royalty free images to avoid copyright issues

8. The Right Content Length – How Much is Enough?

We often get asked how long should a blog post be? Essentially, it depends on your industry. If your industry or competition average 1000 word articles – then that’s what you need to be doing. It will be much harder to compete with your competition if you are only producing 500 word articles.

If you write good content of reasonable length it can be a powerful tool for getting organic traffic to your website through link building and calls to action.

Final Words

When you write your blog posts, remember they need to be created for a specific audience. Your content should offer useful, search-engine-friendly information that engages your readers. We hope this helps you in creating some top-quality content to give your blog a good boost!