Have you ever read a blog post and thought that it was such a perfect blog post, that you were wondering how you could write a perfect blog post for your blog? Writing a perfect blog post isn’t easy, but that doesn’t mean that it isn’t possible.
Today’s guide will help you out with understanding what it takes to write a perfect blog post that’ll bring loads of traffic to your blog. Let’s first begin with some blogging basics to ensure you are starting from the right starting point.
Table of Contents
Blogging Basics
Before we dive into the 15 expert tips for writing a perfect blog post, you need to understand some of the important basics of blogging. Without these, even the best blog post ideas can get lost. These should serve as the foundation for all of your blog posts.
First off, there are different types of blog posts you can use…
Types of Blog Posts
There are loads of different blog posts types that you could use for your blog post. Having a good variety of these on your blog stops it from looking like every blog post is the same.
Examples include:
Written Tutorials & How-To's
Tutorials or How-to Guides are always a popular choice for a blog post template. They are a great way of answering questions or solving problems that your reader is looking for help with. Including thorough step-by-step instructions allows your reader to follow along with actionable steps.
Listicles
Everyone loves a list and they are really easy for your readers to digest. They are also the kind of content that works well in a featured snippet too.
Listicle blog posts can list anything really – tips, resources, do’s and don’ts, etc. Whatever adds value to your audience.
Product Reviews
If your intention is to make money online, then product reviews might be one of the preferred methods of blog post you are going after. Blogging is a great way of making an income through affiliate marketing, and having the best product reviews in your niche will help your readers get all of their questions answered related to that product.
Ensuring that your product review stands out is a must, as there will be many other blogs with reviews too. It’s your opinion and voice that will do that, and ensuring that you leave no question unanswered too. If they don’t feel like you’ve answered all of their questions or concerns they have, they will keep on looking.
Industry News
News related to your industry or niche can be a great way of building up your reputation, as they also show thought leadership. Providing your take on current events and giving your opinion on topics within your niche also demonstrate expertise. It’s a great way of becoming an authority within your chosen topic.
Case Studies
People love a good success story, as well as learning what goes on behind the scenes of your blog. It helps showcase there is a real person behind the screen, and it also generates social proof, and builds trust with potential customers, etc.
Keyword Research
Naturally, most people assume keyword research is only about SEO. Don’t get me wrong, it’s an extremely important part of your SEO strategies. SEO is critical for getting your content to the top of the search engines and driving traffic to your blog.
But it’s not the only reason why keyword research is important for you when it comes to content creation strategies.
There are other benefits to keyword research that can help you understand the intention of people searching for topics related to your industry or niche. By understanding these search terms, will help you understand what the best types of blog content to create for your blog.
Using a tool like Jaaxy can help you understand what is working well in your niche, what content you need to create, and who else is creating content so you can ensure your blog posts are better.
Write For Your Niche's Persona
If you’re just starting out, you may not have much traffic to go on to understand who your real audience is. You’ve probably already picked who you are targeting with your content. But that can sometimes change when real people start finding your blog and then you can start creating your content specifically for that audience.
So to start with, think about the persona of the type of reader you are going for. Blogging is all about conversational speaking as though you were talking to one person. Trying to do that without a persona to focus on, can make this really hard.
Content Strategy & Brand Message
You do need to consider what your content strategy is, what your ultimate goal for your blog is, and ensure you have a brand message to focus on too.
To be able to write a perfect blog post, you need to ensure it all makes sense and that you are sure of what strategy you are following.
For example, if you’re going to focus on teaching people how to get started with blogging, then the content strategy is about breaking down all of the different factors a new blogger would need and then creating content related to that.
Too many blogs get lost as they fluctuate between too many subjects, which often take them outside of the niche they were going with.
By having a content strategy, you will find that creating a perfect blog post will come to you much easier too.
What Makes a Perfect Blog Post
Let’s now get into talking about how to write a perfect blog post and the first thing to tell you is that it isn’t just about the words you use. There are many other factors to consider to ensure your blog post is perfect (or as close as you can get to).
One of the main things you should know is that it’s possible to be a great writer, and yet not so good when it comes to blogging.
You could write a well-researched and detailed post and yet get it wrong when it comes to stuff that’s important when it comes to online blogging. For example, writing walls and walls of writing which is too detailed or impossible for anyone to understand would be a poor start.
Forgetting to do any keyword research for SEO, or not targeting a keyword or anything like that would mean no one could find it online anyway.
Blogging is about informally engaging with readers, like chatting to a mate. If they wanted a proper essay on the subject, they would go and find one like that. They want to be able to understand the concepts in a blog post.
So, walls of text don’t do that. The perfect blog post includes making sure that the post is:
- easy to read (by anyone)
- visually engaging (include images and videos, etc.)
- it answers the questions that your readers have (as in why they searched for it and clicked on that post)
Our expert tips will help you break down and understand all of the different things you need to consider to ensure you are writing a perfect blog post. Or you could also check out our ultimate blog post checklist here.
15 Expert Tips: How to Write a Perfect Blog Post
It takes a lot of practice to become a good writer. Most bloggers will tell you that it takes time to create better blog posts. I sometimes look at some of my early blog attempts and cringe… But practice makes perfect, I suppose.
So, here’s what you’ve been waiting for… Here’s how you can write the perfect blog post that you’ve always wanted to create when you started a blog.
1. Choose the Right Topic
The first thing you need to consider when starting to write a perfect blog post is the topic to base it on. Knowing what your readers will want to know and then ensuring you write the best piece of content to answer that question or to solve that problem they are having is key.
It can be easy to focus more on writing a blog post to please the search engines to try and increase rankings for it. But the key is to ensure that your blog post ticks all of the boxes for your target audience.
Write for the people and the rankings will come naturally from that anyway. To do this, you need to base your blog post on reader feedback, a known problem in the industry, or by doing some competitive analysis.
There are a few ways you can start to see what topics are relevant in your niche. Google Instant is a good starting point, as you can see what people are regularly searching for via Google.
There are also several platforms online that can help you with topics for you to create content on. Platforms like Buzzsumo can help you understand what topics are trending.
Another great tool is Answer the Public, which gives you a list of the most popular questions people are asking based on your blog’s main topic.
Check out our list of SEO tools for more suggestions on how you can come up with blog post ideas that are optimised for the search engines.
If you need some help, here are some blog post ideas to get you started
2. Do Your Research & Check Out The Competition
Once you’ve decided on the topic that you want to create a blog post for, you need to see what you’re up against. This is the point where you check out what is ranking already at the top of the search engines.
Go ahead and see what is ranking #1 on Google for that particular keyword. Take the time to see how they have gone about their blog post, but particularly focus on what you could improve in your blog post. Are there some bits of it that you could expand on if it’s relevant to your reader?
If you aren’t going to be able to write a higher-quality post that trumps there blog post, then it probably isn’t worth your time.
But there are always opportunities to create a much better version, so then yours gets clicks and climbs up the rankings.
By doing your research on the topic and what others are offering, there will be an opportunity for you to do a better job.
3. Take Notes & Put Together an Outline
We use Google docs, but a good old notebook is always worthwhile to ensure you can put your notes onto paper to ensure you don’t lose any ideas. It’s easy to be reading a blog post that leads to loads of ideas for you to do something with later. If you don’t capture those ideas, you may lose them.
It’s always a good start to think about the different topics that you are going to cover in your blog post. This will help you break your blog post into the relevant sections and that will help you come up with the different headings to break up the text.
This is how I put a blog post together – I start with the header (more on that next) and then I break up the different topics into subheadings, and then sometimes that gets broken down again.
4. Choose a Clickable Headline
When checking out keyword research, the main thing is to include the keyword you are targeting within the headline for your blog post. But that doesn’t mean you can work on it to ensure people know what your blog post is about and something that entices people to click it.
Think about when you search on Google for your question. There will be ten search results on page one. Plus all of the paid ads and even featured snippets. How are you going to make people want to click on yours?
That is where you come up with a catchy header to bring them to want to click your site. If your click-through rate (CTR) is higher than sites above yours, Google will reward you by taking you up the list. Making it easier for you to get more traffic.
So, make sure your Post title is more than just a keyword. Make them wanting with your blog post title.
Then when you are breaking down your blog post, think about your H2 headers and again let your readers know what you’re going to be going through…
5. Start Drafting Your Blog Post
Right, so you should have a topic and outline for your blog post ready for you to sit down and write your blog post. I personally write straight into my WordPress dashboard. It saves a lot of time and effort of writing it elsewhere and then copying and pasting it later…
I would also suggest that you get rid of any distractions before you start writing. That means I turn my phone onto silent, the tv goes off, and anything else that might get in the way. There is also an exercise I was taught when I got started about setting a time of 30 minutes when writing, to prove how much you can actually get done if you get rid of all of the distractions.
The longer you blog, the easier it is to write content. But when starting out, it can be hard to focus. But that comes with practice.
We have further tips relating to your content style, etc. as you continue the list. But remember to keep your target audience and the particular topic or question you are answering within your blog post, as you write.
6. Write An Attention-Grabbing Introduction
Having a great headline is a key start, but how are you going to hook them to stay on your blog post and read your content. You spend a lot of time creating content for your blog, but people have really short attention spans. They will make a decision on whether to continue based on your introduction.
You might find it interesting to know that many bloggers actually write their introduction last. They focus on creating the content and then go back and write a killer introduction, as they now know what is in the content of the blog post.
A tip for writing a great introduction is to pose a question addressing the reader’s problem. Then you can tell them how reading your blog post will come up with a solution that helps them.
Grabbing their attention is really important if you want people to stay on your blog and read it.
7. Keep It Informal and Conversational
A barrier to some getting into blogging is that they think that they need to be good at writing. But this isn’t about writing an essay for college. It’s actually about writing informally and writing like you are having a conversation with one person. If you can make it easy to understand and write it like you speak – you will actually have a great blog post.
It makes it feel like you are just speaking to the reader one-on-one, rather than them feeling like one of many. It also helps build up a loyal readership.
8. Make It Scannable
Most people don’t read every word in a blog post. They typically scan the post for the exact information they are looking for.
When you are formatting your blog posts, you want to ensure they are scannable, as best you can. This will help your readers get the information they are looking for quicker, which means they are more likely to stick around on your blog too.
Here are a few ways that you can use to make your blog posts scannable.
- Use Subheadings: breaking up your content into different sections with subheadings will really help your readers understand what you’re going on about in a specific section, but also help them find the section they need quicker too
- Try to Keep Your Sentences Short: Shorter sentences are easier to read. Longer sentences can make it more complicated to understand
- Use Short Paragraphs: Long paragraphs are harder to read, let alone scan. I would recommend keeping them to about 2-4 sentences in the majority of your paragraphs. With the odd single-sentence paragraph to really grab the attention.
- Use Bullet Points: Using bullet points for when you have a list is also a great way of breaking up your content and making it scannable.
These tips will help your text look more visually engaging, and this will bring the benefit of them reading the entire blog post.
Include Visuals for Better Engagement
Images and videos are great additions to any blog post. They help you get across your ideas better and break up the writing as well. There are also studies that show that using relevant images increases the number of views.
Whether it be screenshots showing a step-by-step process, or even a video that shows the process for your readers to follow. Or maybe just an image to catch the attention of someone scrolling to ensure they don’t miss a point. Images are essential to having a perfect blog post.
10. Include a Compelling Call To Action
To have the perfect blog post, you need to nail the call to action. What is it you want your reader to do after reading your blog post? Getting them to follow your desired action is what will determine if your blog post is essential or not.
What your CTA or Call to Action is, will depend on your desired outcome. Are you looking for them to:
- leave you a comment or ask you a question?
- sign up for your email newsletter?
- share your post on social media?
- buy your product?
Try and focus on one CTA, so that your readers aren’t easily distracted. For it to be an ideal CTA and get your readers to follow it, you need to put yourself in your readers’ shoes and talk about the benefits of taking that action. What is in it for them? Why is it going to be the right decision for them?
11. Add a Featured Image
Did you know you have only 2 seconds to grab the attention of a potential reader? They will decide that quickly on whether to click on your post, or whether to stay on your blog post in just two seconds.
Adding a stunning featured image to your blog post is a great way of getting more people to click, share, and engage with your blog.
If you are looking for great-looking images to use for your featured images, you can try Shutterstock, Unsplash, or Pixabay. Then. you can use a tool like Canva to edit them for your featured image. They offer some fantastic templates for you to use.
12. Get Your SEO Strategy Right
Writing a really good blog post is all well and good, but if your SEO strategy is wrong, who’s going to read it?
To be able to get traffic to your blog and for them to read the perfect blog post that you’re writing, you need to ensure you are doing SEO the right way. If SEO is still new to you, then we’ve written a separate blog post all about SEO for bloggers. It’s filled with tips to get the most out of your blog!
Many SEO plugins make your job a little easier, we use All in One SEO. It makes the whole process much easier.
Using the AIO SEO plugin means you can choose a focus keyword. This will then help analyse your blog post as to whether you are on the right track for your keyword.
For starters, you want to ensure your keyword is used in your blog title and your meta description. You’ll also want to ensure you include it in some of your subheadings, and as an alt tag within your images.
Ideally, you want to have a blog post of greater than 1,000 words. Longer blog posts, with more detail, tend to rank better in the search engines.
Site speed is an important factor regarding SEO. So, ensure your images are fully optimised too. Don’t use huge images, they only need to be big enough for a screen.
You also need to consider your link strategy. You want to include an external link to an authority site and then build a network of internal links within your blog too.
For more details on this, check out our SEO for bloggers guide.
13. Proof-Read Your Blog Post
Once you’ve got your blog post written and looking how you want it to. You’ll probably want to just hit publish! But my advice is to wait a minute first…
I would recommend you go and grab a coffee and not hit publish right away.
The reason I say that is that it can be easy to miss errors with an initial glance. So, take the time to go away and then re-look at your blog post with a fresh set of eyes. That way, you can spot any glaring spelling or grammar mistakes. Or, where you find one of your images or videos isn’t loading correctly.
There is nothing worst than finding people are turning away from your blog post because something isn’t working as it short does.
Whilst I’m talking about that point, it’s the reason why you should go back and review your existing content as you may have been using a YouTube video as a tutorial, and then finding the video had been deleted ages ago and it’s costing you traffic.
A great tool to help with your writing is Grammarly. You can get it as a free extension for chrome. Or as a desktop app and it checks for spelling or grammar mistakes and corrects them.
The rest will be down to you to spot any glaring issues before you hit that publish button.
14. Publish at the Right Time
There will be a couple of factors you need to consider when deciding when to publish. That could be time zones, SEO consistency, or if it’s part of a series.
Depending on your audience, etc. will depend on when is the best time to publish your blog posts. I’m based in the UK, but most of my traffic comes from the US. That means I need to factor in the time of publishing to coincide with stateside.
Most guides I’ve found will typically stop there and tell you that those are the steps to writing a perfect blog post. But there is an important step that you would do well not to miss…
15. Remember To Keep it Up-to-Date
Just because the content is perfect today, doesn’t mean it will stay that way. Things change, and you need to ensure that you keep on top of it all. Ensuring your blog post stands the test of time, will depend on whether anything new needs adding.
Or, you might find that people are finding you for a different search term, which shows your blog post to be lacking a little in that area. Take the time to go and add additional content to it to keep it up-to-date. Check to see if the videos are still working.
A prime example would be screenshots of a training platform that has had an overhaul of its website. Your screenshots would be out-of-date and so people would go elsewhere to find a better guide.
If you want the perfect blog post, it means going back and reviewing it regularly to see if it is still good enough. If you do get to rank number 1, others will be trying to topple you from that spot.
How are you going to ensure your blog post doesn’t get trumped by others? Always something that you should factor into your blogging strategy. Creating new content is important. But just as important is updating your older content too.
And, that’s how you write a perfect blog post! Not too difficult, I hope? Just follow these steps and see how well you can create great-looking blog posts in no time!
But if you also want to learn how to get more traffic quickly, then here’s a guide that you might find useful…
Examples of Perfect Blog Posts
It wouldn’t be fair to finish this post without sharing some of the perfect blog posts that I’ve seen whilst browsing the net. So here are some examples we found…
40 Most Common WordPress Errors and How to Fix Them
This is a great example of a perfect blog post. It’s an ultimate guide by WPBeginner. It’s comprehensive but easy to read. It’s a prime example of a perfect tutorial post for beginners.
25 Email Marketing Best Practices That Too Many People Ignore
Neil Patel is an expert when it comes to blogging and online business. So many of his blog posts are examples of a perfect blog post, so I’ve just picked one. But his blog is filled with great information. This is a detailed blog post which is easy to read. Has plenty of graphics to help get his point across.
Do you Have a Perfect Blog Post?
Have you ever written a blog post that has gone viral and brought about tons of awesome results? I’d really love to hear about it and how you achieved it!
Hopefully, the steps in this guide have helped you understand what it takes to write a perfect blog post. But before you publish your next post, use our ultimate blog post checklist to ensure you have created the perfect post!
If you’re just considering getting into blogging and wondering how to write a perfect blog post before getting started, then you might find this blog post useful…
If you have any questions or anything you want to add to this guide, then please write them in the comments below. 😉
The valuable information you have included here is great for both new and experienced bloggers alike. Keep up the amazing work.
And to answer your question, yes, I have a couple of blog posts with great engagements and ‘viral’ appeals that have brought in a lot of organic traffic, which is what I love to see.
It’s hard work but man, it’s such a good feeling when this happens.
When it comes to writing, I believe in giving people content that is both informative and engaging, and it’s great to see my readers responding positively to that.
The best way to make sure your blog post stands out is to make sure it’s authentic, informative, and engaging. Write about topics that interest you or that you’re passionate about, and try to be as personal and candid as possible in your writing. And don’t be afraid to experiment with different formats and styles – sometimes the most successful posts are the ones that are a little out of the ordinary.
Thanks for sharing!
Cheers,
Femi.
Hey Femi,
thanks for checking out my blog post!!
I know what you mean, the feeling you get from finding a blog post and getting lots of engagement is amazing. It helps motivate you in doing more of what you love. The key is to ensure you bring your personality to what you write. People need to feel that you’re a real person behind the keyboard and that all comes from ensuring your audience gets how much you have put into it. Mixing it up and using different formats and reaching out to people!!
Thanks for sharing your thoughts
All the best
John
Hi John
This a very important topic and well written article about blogging. So detailed. I have been blogging for a long time and I can honestly say if you are consistent with what this article says you will get connected with your clients no doubt. Thank you for this I have also kept this article as a future reference. This is gold information here.
Cheers
Angee
Hey Angee,
thanks for checking out my blog post! I’m glad you found the information useful!
Consistency is key to making anything a success, but making sure you’re following the right advice makes it a much easier path!
All the best,
John
Awesome tips!
I often spend more time thinking of a good introduction and that is the one paragraph that gets more editing and tweaks, so reading that some bloggers write the introduction after writing the post was like the light bulb that went on over my head – like in the cartoon 😉 – except that you turned it on 😉
I will try that technique for my next blog post, writing the introduction after the post is written.
The other tips are great too!
Sometimes I hit the publish button right away – if the post is short – but if it’s a longer blog post I take my time and often take a break of a few hours or even a day to re-read and proofread it from a fresh perspective.
Hi Christine,
thanks for checking out my blog! I remember taking ages to think about what to write in my introduction, but then when I’ve written the rest of the content and go back and proofread my intro, I then went and changed it! So, this has not only helped with my writing. But it has also saved me loads of time as I’m not having to rewrite my intro every time.
It’s definitely a winner!!
All the best,
John
Hi John,
SEO plays a critical role for new bloggers, and it’s the best strategy to build an online business. I love your recommendation, All-In-One SEO, which I also install for my blog. It helps me check every element in one blog post, saving me tons of time doing all SEO stuff by myself.
I make my writing templates to shorten the time I write for one blog post, and setting a 30 minute is a great idea. I might use this strategy for my content creation. 🙂
Matt
Hey Matt,
thanks for checking out my blog! Yes, writing templates are a massive winner as long as you understand your blogging voice. Once you have that and then add some blog templates, you can save yourself tons of time!
All-in-One SEO is a great plugin and definitely helps you understand how you can improve your blog to get it ranked higher…
All the best,
John