Many bloggers go to work writing, writing, writing. But they fail to remember to make the content visually appealing and easy to scan. We need to include a basic format to make the content easy to read. Image to the Left. Look familiar? Would you want to read on?
Let’s get started.
- First, Create an SEO Friendly headline. You may say, we need to write for readers, not search engines. You’re partly right. Write for readers using emotion-evoking headlines in the form of questions that can pull in your reader. It helps to refer to the On-Page SEO Checklist for more details.
It’s important to have one and only one Heading 1 title. Use your best keyword phrase as the Main Title. You’ve done your keyword research here. In WordPress, the title that is assigned H1 or Heading 1 tag is the words in the first field in this post. All other titles will be subtitles here in the content of your post.
- Have 5-6 Heading 2 subtitles. Your keyword research will show you what type of questions people are asking. Search engines like Google like to see the same questions in your content.
- Write 2-3 sentences per paragraph. Consider Using appropriate subtitles to provide an overview of the content for your reader. As they read through, they should be able to understand what your content is about by the subtitles.
- Create a Call-to-Action in the middle and near the end of the post. Make them count.
- Get an email signup for your newsletter so you can nurture them into a client.
- Provide an ebook or a
- Checklist to download.
- People love templates to organize thoughts and actions. This offers value.
- Insert at least 1 image or video
- With every Image, you must Create an Alt tag. This is ADA Compliant and suitable for any reader not displaying images. As an SEO strategy, we suggest using your best-searched keywords and the name of your company. Assuming your research for the best keyword phrase, use the same keyword phrase you use in the title of this article. for example, ‘How To Format The Perfect Blog by Carol Scalzo of Hit-the-Web Marketing’. This is why your images need to be relevant to your content. Also, if the image is turned off, the description here will tell the visitor the meaning of the image.
- Link to two other pages within your website that will complement the point you are trying to get across. As a strategy, link back to one of your product or service pages. This boosts ranking in search engines for the product or service page.
- Create an external link to a high authority website. One that is very popular AND well regarded. (be wary of hacker or porn sites)
- Make sure hyperlinks and images Open in A New Tab.
- Have social media buttons so visitors can share to Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram, Pinterest.
A Content Marketing strategy is about 25% of a successful marketing plan. You need to drive traffic to your engaging content. Learn more about our program to your success in Best Way to Spend $1000 Marketing Your Business.
Just a few tweaks and you can get your content ranking higher because it converts. Work toward making it look like the following:
What Does A Formatted Blog Look Like?
The after picture [right side] of the main image here in this blog shows what a blog strengthened with blog best practices and search engine optimization looks like. The goal is to use WordPress SEO tactics. What’s good? Check the Readability and SEO. The Goal is for Readability to be Good. Define Good! The copy score for this blog scores 78.2% which is fairly easy to read. The goal is to be 65% or higher.
How to Optimize Your Blog in WordPress
A free resource to help you obtain search engine optimization best practices for your WordPress blog or website is to install the Yoast SEO plugin for WordPress. If you are unsure how to install this plugin, feel free to contact Customer Service at Hit-the-Web Marketing by calling 781.996.9163.
Other Ideas toward the best blog format
- Embrace White Space.
- Nix the Sidebar.
- Use Lists.
- Include a Block Quote or Two.
Find out how every one of your blog articles can convert. We periodically run a 3-hour workshop to show how this is done.
You’ll learn
How to Write the Perfect Blog and How to Apply On-Page SEO Use Our Simple Checklist.
Learn this once and you can apply it many times over. Worth thousands of dollars.
It’s here! Get organized and plan your content marketing strategy. Download our Content Marketing Calendar. There’s more than one way to use the content marketing calendar but we’ll show you how we found to make the best use of it. Of course, feel free to modify it as you see fit for your organization or project.
Don’t put off till tomorrow what you can do today. We have a Get Your Blog Done Monthly Workshop to keep you on top of writing good content. Content that will increase your organic ranking, engage your target audience, get new customers, and keep them coming back for more. You are going to Educate them in the name of success.
Carol is the founder of Hit-the-Web Marketing since 2009. She's been building websites and marketing campaigns from scratch into something scalable and successful for over 20 years.
We build websites around lead generating strategies. Then, we go to work driving traffic to your website, converting visitors into customers, and nurturing and retaining your customers. Our main service is Google Ads. Because 92.07% of people searching on the web use Google as their search engine of choice.