How to Write an Effective Blog Post

July 10th 2024

One of the most cost-effective ways to promote your business is by blogging. Setting up a place where you can share information with your target audience regularly is a smart marketing tactic. That’s probably why 7.5 million blog posts are published daily in 2024, according to Earthweb.

But before you invest time and money in setting up a blog, either standalone or connected to your business website, start planning what you’ll write about. Blogs can have different purposes, from education to entertainment to establishing credibility, improving SEO, demonstrating thought leadership, or monetization. Make sure what you plan to write about addresses a pain point your target market is experiencing, too.

No matter what the purpose of your blog is, however, there are some tried-and-true best practices for your posts that you’ll want to be aware of. Following these guidelines will help you attract more attention and achieve better results from your writing.

Compose an eye-catching headline

Since 80% of readers skim a blog post’s headline but only 20% read the entire article, according to Copyblogger, make sure yours is strong enough to get them to keep reading. 

Some of the best headlines include some or all of the following elements:

• Leading with a number, such as “3 Ways to Increase Your Prices”
• Speaking directly to your audience’s pain or interests, such as “Retire Early with this One Hack”
• Including a target keyword, such as “gift” if you’re a retail gift shop
• Explaining how to do something successfully, such as, “25 5-Minute Dinner Recipes”
• Incorporating emotional words to trigger a response, such as, “Reduce Feelings of Overwhelm and Anxiety”

If you’re not sure how strong your headline is, put it through a headline analyzer to test it.

The ideal blog post title length is 60 characters, says Hubspot.

Write a compelling Meta Description

Your post’s Meta Description is a summary of what your post is about. It’s important to Google, so it should be important to you because it will help attract readers.

It’s essentially a preview of your post.

There is a spot on WordPress where you can type the Meta Description in as part of publishing your blog post. It won’t appear within your post, but on Google.

Says, Yoast, it should:

• Be no more than 155 characters long
• Relate directly to the topic of your post
• Speak directly to an individual’s interests or needs
• Include a call-to-action
• Feature a keyword or phrase

When done well, your Meta description will invite people to check out your blog, because of the appealing way you’ve described the content.

Feature an image

Jeff Bullas reports that posts with images get 94% more traffic than those without an image, which should underscore just how essential including some type of visual element is.

Although photos are perhaps the most popular visual tool, there are several other options, including:

• Chart
• Infographic
• Diagram
• Screenshot
• Video
• Art/Illustration

But don’t limit yourself to only one image. Orbit Media reported “Bloggers who add more visuals get better results.”

Craft a compelling lead

Your lead, also spelled “lede” by traditional journalists, is the first sentence of your post. It should quickly introduce your topic and your main point using at least one keyword.

That first sentence also needs to be interesting – intriguing even, so that blog visitors continue reading. It should hint at what the post is about without telling the whole story.

Leverage links

Blog posts should cite external sources where appropriate, to give credit and to align your blog with respected information source. For example, if you include a statistic you found in a recent government report, include a hyperlink to that particular report so that readers can get more detail if they are so inclined. If you fail to cite sources, you could be accused of plagiarism, for claiming others’ ideas as your own.

These are considered external links because the information resides outside of your blog. Whenever possible, link to well-known media, government, or educational sources that have credibility. 

But also include links to other posts you’ve written on your blog, called “internal links,” as often as possible. Linking to related but older posts is another way to attract traffic to your blog.

Include FAQs

At the conclusion of your post, add another header called “FAQs,” where you address commonly asked questions on the topic of your blog post. You can find what FAQs to include by conducting a Google search using your keyword and then looking on the search page under the heading “People Also Ask.” There are usually 3-4 related questions listed that you should use as a starting point for your FAQs.

For example, a Google search of the word “popcorn” lists these questions that “People Also Ask:”

• Are popcorn a healthy snack?
• What is the healthiest popcorn to eat?
• What are the benefits of popcorn?
• How much popcorn is okay?

These are some of the most commonly asked questions about popcorn, which you can then add to your own blog post’s FAQ section.

Don’t copy the answers to those questions, however – write your own. But do use the list of questions as your starting point.

Including all of these elements in each of your blog posts will attract attention and help you build a following. The next step is blogging consistently, preferably, at least once a week.

The more you blog, the more Google will recognize your site as a useful source of information for people interested in your blog’s topic, whether it’s popcorn, plumbing, or puppy care.