It’s frustrating when you put time and effort into a blog, and it hardly gets seen and read – or even worse – if you don’t even know where to start when it comes to blogging for your business.

Here are some practical tips to increase your blog viewings to get more of the right people reading it, and get it found in search engines.

Audience

Buyer Persona

Think about who buys from you – you’re not writing for yourself, you’re writing for them!

Having a clear idea of your buyer persona gives you a goal.

What is their job? What is a typical day? What are their challenges? What blogs do they read? What social networks do they use? How old are they?

Hopefully, this kind of thinking will get you into their mindset.

Google

The other ‘person’ you’re writing for is Google, so having a keyword in mind and keeping that as a goal will keep your writing in line with good SEO practises.

You don’t want to keyword stuff, but you want to make sure the keyword (s) in mind has traffic volume, and the right kind of traffic. You may also want to research similar words.

This graphic from ahrefs sums it up pretty well!

It’s not all about you

So now you’ll realise they don’t always want to read about your product or service.

They may be interested in it, but posts just full of special offers are only interesting to those who are already considering your business.

It would help if you appealed to those who don’t even fully know about you yet. What else would they be interested in? Do you have any insight into the industry or related issues?

This kind of wider content also tells Google that you are an expert in the field.

For example, if you own a Kitchen company, you can post about top recipes for the season, new fashion styles, coordinating the right colours, and tips for picking the suitable taps/chairs.

The list is endless, and none of it needs to be directly about your company.

It provides useful or interesting info to your potential buyer, so the benefit is two-fold.

It shows you are an expert in the field, making you an industry leader – which boosts credibility. And regular blogging on these expert topics also makes you more likely to be found by search engines. Win-win!

Types of posts

There are many ways to approach a blog post once you have a topic.  Her are few a quick format ideas

A Case Study

Have you completed a project that would make a great case study, write about it. It will give prospective clients a real insight into what it’s like to work with you, and they can see the results.

A Free Offering

If you offer something for free, it needs to be genuinely helpful

List Post

A list post is a very popular and easily digestible format for readers. It’s easy to get a few ideas and make it a listable

An In-Depth Guide

A step by step guide is a great resource to have your website: they are very helpful and will likely to be shared and bookmarked. They will typically be longer which is also great for your SEO.

Just make sure to update it in time so that any new steps are quickly added or adapted.

Problem Solving

People often search in Google with a question or query. So how can you solve their problems? Is there a common question you always asked?

Be prescriptive and give real help or advice – if applicable, explain how to do something, or go about it, not just describe a process superficially.

You can use ahefs or google keyword planner to check that the keywords in mind have traffic potential

As an example, queries about the cost of video production and animation are widespread on Gooogle, so we wrote a post going into the details of what makes up the cost of animated video production.

Images and videos

You really should add images to your blog posts. It makes them look more engaging, exciting, and it will aid the memory of whoever is reading, whilst also helping to establish credibility.

There are plenty of places where you can get free stock images for your blogs. But it’s also advisable to use your photos where they are relevant, as they may be much more relevant.

If you can afford to purchase them, then that’s even better as they will be less likely overused

Using an online graphic design DIY service like Canva to create interesting images is helpful too, you can create your own graphics.

Generally, a photo every 350 words is considered acceptable – a recent study showed the world’s 100 most popular blogs followed this rule. But if you can’t reach that, just use it as an aim.

My conclusion from this is that it breaks up the text a little and give the reader a small rest with something visually engaging, before the carry on reading.

Videos are also great in blog posts to add further information on a topic or to give a quick example.

Here’s an infographic video on the Picture Superiority effect – for info on image retention too.

Statistics

Where possible, give evidence for your statements. This isn’t applicable for all blog posts, but if you’re trying to convince people of an idea and you’re making bold claims, then you need something to back this.

It doesn’t need to be metric-based, though it helps if some figures and facts relate to your idea. You can also give real-life examples (like a case study) as evidence.

For example, here’s a quick one from Hubspot this year – “Video remains a key priority for marketers with usage and spend both, overall, increasing slightly throughout 2020, and plans to increase again in the next 12 months..” (Source Hubspot) So if you don’t already, consider a marketing video for your next campaign

Length

The old guidelines for blogs posts used to be around 300 words minimum. Now, the average blog post should around 700 words minimum. Many of my favourite blogs have posts regularly 1000 words or over.

Long-form blog content gives readers and Google a better understanding of what you’re about.  A post that is 2000 words plus is genuinely informative and can be a real resource to refer back to.

You always don’t need to write quite this much, but you can see the trend is for more in-depth knowledge.

If you’re struggling to reach the target word count, please don’t waffle or use over-complicated words! More research around the topic might help you find additional points or points of view.

Title

Your blog title and first few lines matter more than you think. They are the first thing viewers see before they even decide to read more, so keep it exciting and relatively short (less than 70 characters).

Lists with numbers always work well (though the post should reflect this), and don’t be afraid to use strong words to create excitement. ‘How to’ type titles or questions are also popular devices.

Generally, I have 3-4 attempts at the title before settling on one – it’s worth spending some time on. Think, would I read this post, based only on this title?

This topic deserves a whole blog in itself, so read this good one from Hubspot – A Simple Formula for Writing Kick-Ass Blog Titles.

Linking

You can link to your relevant pages and pages on other website – it will help boost your page, guiding the viewer.

But please don’t spam the page and add lots of links that have no relevance! Keep it just to a few.

Internal Linking

Here’s a quick example of a Printing company—the example link in the text that is bold and underlined. It would go to a case study that’s related to the post topic. 

Here’s a recent leaflet print project we did, that demonstrates this example of paper folding and cutting well.

Adding links allows the viewer to explore further if they want to, and is directly relatable to the blog post. It also boosts SEO if the links are relevant and helpful. 

Another way of linking is to link to similar blog posts you have written on the same topic.

Another example

If you’re interested, you can learn more about designing flyers in our in-depth post How to Create the Perfect Flyer

External Linking

Linking to other websites on a similar content will also give your blog post more credibility, just don’t link to a competitor.. and check that the website is genuinely informative and have a high domain rating.

These links all aid the viewer, and lets them discover more, but interlinking also boosts your site SEO.

Formatting

People don’t read online; they merely skim. Many usability studies over the years have shown that people do read very differently online to printed materials. So long paragraphs get entirely missed.

Use Headings to separate large pieces of content; this is for SEO purposes and accessibility. The title should be H1, then any major subheadings are H2, and lower than that H3, H4 etc – it adds much-needed structure.

It helps the user to decide what they want to read very quickly.

As well as short paragraphs wth clear headings, it’s best to keep sentences short – usually under 20-25 words.

If you’re making a list, then you can use bullet points to aid reading. They catch attention and are often well-read.

If you want to bring emphasis to particular words or phrases, you can also make them bold.

These factors allow a user to scan through your post – finding just the parts they are looking for and the main features you want the user to read.

Next Steps

If you incorporate these ideas into your future posts, soon enough, you will get the type of results you’re hoping to achieve from your blogging, both from the reader point of view and for SEO purposes. And if you want a hand, to boost your marketing – then just let us know.