How do you create a blog that successfully gets those results? Let's dive into some blogging strategies and best practices.
1. Think before you start writing about catchy titles and topics
The first step is to pick a topic and a title. At a high level, write educational content. In order to attract someone to your blog, you need to answer the questions and problems that they're searching for answers to. Put yourself in the shoes of your buyer personas. What are they going to be searching for? What do they want to know about? What will resonate with them? Consider what YOU KNOW about your buyer personas and their interests while you're coming up with a topic for your blog post. And when it comes to a topic, make sure to write about your industry, not yourself. Remember, you're trying to attract strangers to your blog who have never heard of your company before - so they're not going to find you through search engines if you're just blogging about yourself. You have the rest of your website to provide that information.
2. Create Structure of blogpost
Next, brainstorm a list of specific topics that you could blog about. If you're looking for a place to start, then ask your co-workers from other teams like sales and services for some ideas. Here are a few questions that you could ask and they could answer: what are the most frequently asked questions you hear? What do our customers need help with? What do you wish people knew about our industry? What are industry bloggers, social media, and even your competitors talking about? Before you even write anything, you need to pick a topic for your blog post. The topic can be pretty general to start with.
For example, if you provide running shoes, you might start out thinking you want to write about running shoes. Then you might be able to expand off of that -- in other words, iterations or different ways of approaching that topic to help you focus your writing. For example, you might decide to narrow your topic to "best running shoes for marathons" or "lifetime of running shoes." When picking your topics, do keyword research. Keywords are the words and phrases typed into search engines. They're the topics that people are trying to learn more about. Which keywords do your buyer personas use? Which are associated with your industry? Optimizing your blog posts for keywords is not about incorporating as many keywords into your posts as possible.
3. Do Make Use of Keywords But Not Keyword Stuffing
Nowadays, this actually hurts your SEO because search engines consider this keyword stuffing. It also doesn't make for a good reader experience -- a ranking factor that search engines now prioritize to ensure you're answering the intent of your visitors. You should use keywords in your content in a way that doesn't feel unnatural or forced. A good rule of thumb is to focus on one long-tail keyword per blog post. While you can use more than one keyword in a single post, keep the focus of the post narrow enough to allow you to spend time actually optimizing for just one keyword.
4. Use Longtail Keyword
Why long-tail keywords? These longer, often question-based keywords keep your post focused on the specific goals of your audience. Website visitors searching long-tail terms are more likely to read the whole post and then seek more information from you. In other words, you'll generate the right type of traffic: those visitors who convert. And for your blog post topic, don't try to solve every problem in one fell swoop. This will make each post clearer for your readers and for search engines. It will also make sure that your post gets more qualified traffic because you'll know that the people clicking through are looking for information about that specific topic.
5. Create a List of Blog Ideas
If you're brainstorming your topics, there's a good chance that will create a long list of ideas for topics you can cover and posts you can create. This will help create a longer-term blogging strategy, make a list of topics that support a specific conversion. For example, if you have a long-form guide that you want to create and promote, then consider making a list of blog topics that support this guide's content. This way, if someone finds your blog post and finds the blog helpful, it increases the chances of them wanting to click a call-to-action to access a relevant offer.
Think of your offer as a heart and your blog posts as the arteries. Your blog posts keep a steady flow of relevant prospects connecting with your offer. Now, let's talk about picking a title. Think about how you read things online. You read the title first before you commit. It needs to catch your interest. And the title is one of the first things that your prospects will see. Start by creating a working title for your blog post. A working title is something to "work" off of as you begin to write your post. Start here to narrow your topic down and focus on one single angle.
A topic, like "social media" could breed multiple different blog posts. A working title, like "social media channels for live video" is now specific. Next, include the long-tail keyword in the title. Be sure that the keyword fits as a description of what the blog post is all about. Also, make the value of the clearest in the title. Your title should help readers and search engines understand what your post is about. Set the right expectations - what is the reader going to get out of your blog post? What information is covered? What format is the blog post going to take? In this example, the blog post title explicitly tells you that you'll be reading about how to create an infographic.
Not only that but it sets the expectations that it only takes an hour to do and there are also free templates included. You know exactly what you're going to get from this blog post - how it's valuable to you, and how much information it contains. When it comes to the art of the perfect blog post, HubSpot did some research and looked at how our own titles have performed.
6. Optimize Blog post Title Length
Here are the consistent principles that were found: The ideal blog post title length is 60 characters. Headlines between 8 and 12 words are shared most often on Twitter. Headlines between 12 and 14 words are liked most often on Facebook. HubSpot also found that headlines ending with a bracketed clarification -- for example, like the earlier example -- performed 38% better than titles without that clarification. If you're having trouble trimming down the length of a title, run it through Moz's title tag preview tool and Twitter to see how the title will appear on a search engine results page and when it's shared on social media. Technically, Google measures by pixel width, not character count, and it recently increased the pixel width for organic search results from approximately 500 pixels to 600 pixels, which translates to around 60 characters. Is the title too long?
That's okay! Make sure to create a title for your reader first. When you have a lengthy headline, it's a good idea to get your keyword in the beginning since it might get cut off toward the end on a search engine results page. In this example, the title got caught off, but the focus keyword "data visualization" is at the front. Moving on to the body of your blog post, format and optimize the post so that both people and search engines can easily read and understand it. Write an intro and make it captivating. If you lose the reader in the first few paragraphs -- or even sentences -- of the introduction, they will stop reading even before they've given your post a readthrough.
Grab their attention, use humor, be empathetic, or grip the reader with an interesting fact or statistic. And describe the purpose of the post and explain how it will address a problem the reader may be having. It should be a follow-up to the title that they found interesting. Nobody likes clickbait, so you want to make sure your post is about what the headline says it is. This will give the reader a reason to keep reading and give them a connection to how it will help them improve. If you read the first few lines of this blog post, would you want to keep reading? What about this blog post? Keep your buyer persona in mind and think about what would entice them to keep on reading. And what about the rest of your blog post?
7. Optimize the Length of the Blogpost
The body of your blog post is where your readers will undoubtedly derive the most value. HubSpot did an analysis and found the ideal blog post length is roughly 2,100 words, but that will vary depending on your topic. Always solve for the reader first. Make sure you cover your topic in full and have met the expectations that your blog title promised. Mention your keyword at a normal cadence throughout the body of your post and in the headers. That means including your keywords in your copy, but only in a natural, reader-friendly way. Don't go overboard at the risk of being penalized for keyword stuffing. Whenever you create content, your primary focus should be on what matters to your audience, not how many times you can include a keyword or keyword phrase in that content.
And no one likes an ugly blog post. Use formatting and visuals to make your blog post that much more appealing. When you blog, whitespace is your friend. Whitespace is the empty space on the page. It allows the visitor to focus on the content, not the clutter. Don't write long paragraphs that form into huge blocks of text - this will make your information look dense and hard to read. As you can see in this example, there's plenty of whitespace on the side margins of the post, around the title and first image, and between the paragraphs of text within the post.
The space makes the post more easily digestible - nothing is crammed together, and though the post is long, it doesn't feel overwhelming or hard to read. You can also break up the text in your blog post by using sub-headers, and bullets or numbered lists to highlight your points. Sub-headers are another on-page SEO element. Sub-headers organize and break up your blog post into different sections to signal to Google (and your reader) what the post will cover. Sub-headers should be written with H2 tags or smaller -- never H1 tags, which signal a title. Use sub-headers to split up sections of your blog post -- making sure to integrate the keywords you're using this post to target. Bolding important text can also help readers quickly understand the key takeaways from the post. And include visuals and multimedia elements to break up your text.
It's hard to grab a reader's attention and this can also help your readers understand the post at a glance. Featured images usually sit at the top of a blog post and are another element to draw readers in to learn more. The image should reflect what the story is about, intrigue readers, or provoke them. It doesn't need to directly illustrate what your post is about, but it should be loosely related to your content. While most people enjoy a great cat photo, it may not always be relevant to your content. And for throughout the body of your blog post, use multimedia content wherever it's possible to break up the blog post and re-engage your reader. Add images, videos, audio recordings, and social media posts. HubSpot sometimes includes an audio version of the blog post. Or includes a video that's on the related topic. It changes it up for the reader but also helps them digest the content in a different way.
Changing up the format of your blog post will provide additional value to your reader while making sure their eyes are focused on what they're reading and seeing. See the difference? The blog post without any visuals looks a lot less welcoming. The next step is all about lead generation - promoting your offers on your blog. As you attract more and more visitors to your blog, that increased traffic means an increased opportunity to generate leads. If you really want your inbound marketing efforts to pay off, then it's crucial that you strategically promote the majority of your blogs to corresponding or relevant offers.
The goal should be to attract someone and provide content around the topic they're trying to learn more about, then be helpful and offer them a relevant next step. Make sure the CTA doesn't disrupt the user experience. Again, the goal is to be helpful, not pushy. Additionally, you might want to insert a CTA after the first few paragraphs. To avoid looking too pushy too soon, try including a passive CTA through hyperlinked text. It's important to include these passive CTAs, as you can't always count on your visitor reading your entire post and converting. Think about it.
Do you read to the end of every single blog post that you click on? By not including a CTA near the beginning, you may be missing out on a valuable conversion opportunity. HubSpot performs CTA tests all the time--from image and text CTAs to the placement of the CTAs--we're always looking for ways to improve click-thru rate. Interestingly enough, we found that text CTAs near the top of blogs posts produce the highest click-thru rates. Something you might want to keep in mind and test on your blog posts. Lastly, include a CTA at the end of each post.
This offer should be relevant to the blog content that a visitor has just read. Your visitor is there to learn something from your blog post, so provide an offer that gives them more educational content to continue learning. This is a CTA at the end of the same post that was shown earlier. The title of the post is "Data Visualization 101: How to Choose the Right Chart or Graph for Your Data" at the bottom a CTA for an ebook on how to present data people can't ignore. Another option is a pop-up that the reader sees as they scroll down the page.
The offer is about the same topic as the post, so a reader who wants to learn more would be interested in clicking through. Next, you'll want to optimize the blog post. When search engines crawl your blog, they don't read every word. Instead, they scan certain parts of your post to understand what you're writing about and how trustworthy the content is.
8. Optimize Meta Description and Craft Title and Description
To help search engines understand what you're trying to communicate, you'll want to optimize the page around your long-tail keyword, which you already did in the title and body of the post, but you'll also want it in the URL, alt-text, and meta description. The URL of your blog post should make it easy for your visitors to understand the structure of your website and the content they're about to see. Search engines favor web page URLs that make it easier for them and website visitors to understand the content on the page.
What if there's a specific article you want to read, like the data visualization example. Its URL structure denotes that it's an article from the Marketing section of the blog and that it's on the topic of data visualization. The URL doesn't have to match the title of the blog exactly. Keep the URL short. In this way, URL structure acts as a categorization system for readers, letting them know where they are on the website and how to access new site pages. Search engines appreciate this, as it makes it easier for them to identify exactly what information searchers will access on different parts of your blog or website. Alt-text with images helps because search engines don't just look for images.
9. Optimize Your Image
Rather, they look for images with alt text. Because search engines can't "see" images the same way humans can, an image's alt text tells them what an image is about -- which ultimately helps those images rank in the image section of search engine results. Your meta description is meant to give search engines and readers information about your blog post's content -- so be certain to use your long-tail term so search engines and your audience are clear on your post's content. At the same time, keep in mind the copy matters a great deal for click-through rates because it satisfies certain readers' intent. The more engaging, the better.
10. Optimize Meta Description Length
The maximum length of this meta description is greater than it once was -- now around 300 characters -- suggesting it wants to give readers more insight into what each result will give them. So, in addition to being reader-friendly (compelling and relevant), your meta description should include the long-tail keyword for which you are trying to optimize. And include relevant internal and external links within the post. Link to related blog posts or your site pages when appropriate. If you've written about a topic that's mentioned in your blog post on another blog post, ebook, or web page, it's a best practice to link to that page. Seems counterproductive? Well, it's not.
Conclusion
Blogging is starting a smaller part of your content strategy. In order to get found in search and best answer the new types of queries searchers are submitting, the solution is to use the topic cluster model: Choose the broad topics for which you want to rank (like you'll do at the beginning with your blog posts), then create content based on specific keywords related to that topic that all link to each other (like your blog posts), to create broader search engine authority. This model uses a more deliberate site architecture to organize and link URLs together to help more pages on your site rank in search engines -- and to help searchers find information more easily.
This architecture consists of three components --pillar content, cluster content, and hyperlinks. So your blog posts can serve as cluster content that then includes hyperlinks to more information located on your pillar content page. It's a better experience for you, the search engines, but most important your visitors. Make sure you have easily accessible options for your readers to be able to share your blog posts. If a visitor finds one of your posts helpful and valuable, then they're likely to share it to one or more of their social media channels. And don't forget about mobile!
With mobile devices now accounting for nearly 2 out of every 3 minutes spent online, having a blog that's responsive or designed for mobile has become more and more critical. Make sure to keep mobile in mind as you structure your blog post. What would the experience be like if someone were you read your blog post on their mobile phone instead of a desktop computer? You might change the length of the post. You can see what the difference looks like here. Keep those smaller devices in mind! At the end of the day, it's important to write consistently and frequently.
There are a lot of blog posts out there, so make sure to choose quality over quantity. Always. Commit yourself to a blogging schedule. The more often you blog, the more likely you are to get found. After all, each new blog post is an opportunity to attract new visitors as well as a continuation to your overall content savings account. The more often you post quality content, the more you will see your blog grow and influence your business. And there you have it - the fundamental strategy and best practices for getting your blog up and running so that you can begin to attract new visitors and convert them into leads.
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