Ultimate guide to writing great blog content

Once your blog is up and running you’ll want to start filling it with amazing content that helps your reader.

It’s important for your blog to look professional and be easy for visitors to navigate.

But once they land on your site, it will be the information you offer to visitors that will keep them on your blog for longer and coming back again and again.

It’s not enough that visitors land on your site, they need to stick with it. If they enjoy reading one article, they may click another, then another and another.

While you don’t need to be a professional writer to be a blogger, it certainly is important that you put the work in to produce clear, well-written and informative posts.

So this post is all about showing you the formula to amazing blog posts. We’re going to talk about the entire process, from picking a blog topic to making sure your readers stick with your blog post right to the end, then click on more content written by you!

This post contains affiliate links. That means I make commission from any sales made via the links but it does not cost you a penny more.

You may also like: Guide to starting a money-making blog

Choosing your blog post topic

The starting point is picking your blog post topic.

If you’re new to blogging then it’s likely you will have a huge list of ideas for what you can write about.

However if you are stuck then there are various ways you can get inspiration for your topic idea.

First up imagine your ideal reader. Who are they? Why are they coming to your site? What do they need help with?

Also think about what your blog is about. What kind of questions might someone landing on your blog have regarding your overall niche.

To help organise your thoughts, you could try brainstorming ideas. Start with the name of your blog in the centre of a plain piece of paper.

Next write categories relating to your blog around your blog name. For example, for my website The Mummy Bubble my categories would be pregnancy, baby, toddler, and toys.

Next you break down these categories into specific areas people may need help in.

So for baby, do your readers want information about eco-friendly nappies? From this sub-category you can then come up with a whole host of potential blog post ideas, such as top 10 eco nappy brands, how to get started with eco nappies, specific eco nappy brand reviews and why you should use eco nappies.

Another way to come up with blog content ideas is to simply turn to Google.

Type key words into the search bar relating to your blog content. First up, just see what pops up in the results. Scroll down a little and see what the related questions in the search results say. I often get ideas for blog post topics from here.

Next you can try typing in a key word and then the letter a, to see what Google autocompletes the search term to. Try other letters of the alphabet to see what comes back on autocomplete.

This is a great way of finding out, for free, what people interested in your blog niche are searching for.

The website Answer the Public is a fantastic, free resource for bloggers looking for blog post topics. Simply type in your search term, and you get hundreds of potential blog post ideas.

Once you have an idea of the topic you want to use, it’s a good idea to do some keyword research.

Sometimes it’s as simple as following the steps I outlined above using Google to find popular queries that you could write about.

Some bloggers pay for keyword research tools. I have yet to go down that road. I’m not dead against it, but have simply chosen to invest my money into the business in other areas such as Tailwind.

If you do want to pay for keyword research tools that offer your blog post topic headline ideas, then I suggest SEMRush as a popular one that gets a lot of good reviews. You can get a limited number of free queries on SEMRush, so it’s worth signing up just to give it a go.

You can also do free keyword research on the Google Keyword Planner. This can give you great ideas on potential key words to target.

When I say target, I mean key words that you would like to rank for on Google. So when people type that key word into Google, it’s your website that comes out, hopefully, as the first result or at least the first three.

There are lots more tips for finding keywords on this great post here.

Writing your blog headline

Once you know what your blog topic will be, it’s time to choose your headline.

The headline should not be too mysterious. There’s no harm in teasing the content a little, but it also really needs to contain the keywords related to your blog post.

Your headline is just one of the places Google will look when searching for relevant content to answer user enquiries.

So make sure your headline contains your keyword phrase.

For example, if you’re writing a post about baby-led weaning then that absolutely needs to be in the headline.

While your headline needs to be functional for Google purposes, it also needs to be interesting and capture the reader.

Try making it captivating by teasing the content with phrases such as “secret to” or “mistakes to avoid”.

If your blog post is going to based around a list, people tend to say that odd numbers get more clicks although I tend not to put too much emphasis on this to be honest.

If you’re providing an exhaustive guide to a particular product, such as a camera lens, or method of doing something, such as retiling your bathroom, be clear in your headline this is a full guide.

Say it’s an “ultimate guide” in the headline and if you’re including images showing step-by-step what you’re talking about in the blog post, then call it an “ultimate visual guide”.

Don’t write like a robot

Because everyone is trying to rank on Google, many bloggers end up writing for the Google algorithm instead of for their reader.

They try to stuff keywords into every single phrase, and actually while this might make your Yoast SEO plugin light up with a green traffic light to say you’ve done great SEO, it doesn’t necessarily make for a great reader experience.

The general consensus among the blogging community is that the most important way to rank on Google is to write great, informative and exhaustive content that really answers a question.

So while you do need to sprinkle some keywords in there, remember it’s far more important to write for your ideal audience so that they are fully informed by your content.

Use your own unique voice when writing. Blogs are almost a way of chatting to your reader, so stick to a style that is similar to how you might be explaining your blog post topic to someone face to face.

You’re trying to build a rapport with your audience, without actually being able to look them in the eye. This is tricky, so allow your personality and your own personal experiences show through in your writing.

When structuring your blog post, aim to have a clear intro explaining what the post will help people to do or teach them, a body where the bulk of the helpful information is, and then a conclusion summarising, briefly, the key message of the post.

Use a spell checker

Spelling mistakes mean you lose credibility. We’re only human, and so mistakes will creep in, but if you’re publishing your content to an audience and what to appear professional to those people, you really need to take steps to ensure you don’t have mistakes littering your posts.

You can use a free spell checker on your word processing software on your computer, or try something like Grammarly to spell check and check your grammar.

Grammarly is free, but there is a premium option that offers a few more features when checking your content.

How long should your blog post be?

This is a subject that provokes a whole lot of debate in the blogging community!

Some say that the best blog post, the one that’s going to beat all the others to rank number one, is the 5,000 word epic that answers every little question on the topic and topics related to it.

While there’s certainly something to be said for providing your reader, and Google, with everything they could possibly need to know on your blog post topic, some topics don’t just lend themselves to 5,000 word epic posts.

I suggest a minimum word count of 500 words, and an ideal word count of around 2,000 words.

If you’re a food blogger 500 words may be the absolute limit of what you can squeeze out for a recipe post. That’s totally fine. There’s more to ranking on Google than just writing a really long post.

Aim to answer the query that your blog post aims to solve fully and completely.

Some of my top ranking posts on Google are also my shortest.

Pick some awesome H2 headlines

What on earth is an H2 headline I hear you ask? These are the subheadings that you need to use to break up your content.

In WordPress, when you’re formatting your blog post ready for publishing, you can transform text into one of 5 headlines. The H2 headline is one of the places Google looks when it’s searching the internet for relevant content to answer someone’s query.

So your H2 headlines are a good place to not only reiterate what your overall post is about, but also to add different keywords that are relevant to the topic, giving you a chance to rank on Google for those keywords too.

To find ideas for H2 headlines, I sometimes Google my blog post topic or main headline, and then scroll down to look at the related questions or search terms.

Break up the content with headings and lists

We’ve just talked about H2 headings above, but you can also break up your blog post in other ways.

Breaking up your blog post with headings and subheadings, as well as bullet points, makes it easier to read, and presents the information in a more appealing way.

Link to other content

If you’re going to make money from your blog through advertising or affiliate marketing, then the longer you keep them on your site viewing ads and potentially clicking through to purchase products the better.

It’s also great for SEO to have lots of links between your posts.

Try to add your link to your other posts on a keyword related to that post. It’s best to avoid using “read more here” as your link text.

In each new post try to link back to around three or four of your older posts. Then, once your new post is published, go back to older posts and link to your new post from there, where it’s relevant to do so.

Next up, you also need to be linking to content on external websites. Choose websites that rank well on Google for your topic and are an authority.

For example if you are writing about an issue related to babies, you may want to link to the NHS web page that’s relevant to that topic or a page on the National Childbirth Trust site.

Add relevant photos

If you’re writing a blog post about cooking a recipe or making something, then you’ll have taken your own photos.

Be aware when uploading photos that in order to keep your website working fast, you need to shrink the file size of your photos down so that loading them doesn’t take too long for your user.

Your image file size shouldn’t be more than 100k. Most images that come off a quality camera are 2MB or more, so you see you really need to shrink that file size right down before adding it to your website. There’s a great explanation to file size and resolution over on WordPress.

There’s a good guide here to using Photoshop to resize your images.

Your images should be JPEG format.

If you don’t have any images of your own to add to your blog post, then you can get stock images.

I used Pixabay a lot in my early days which is brilliant and free, although it doesn’t have a huge selection of images.

Now I use Shutterstock and DepostPhotos. I thoroughly recommend DepostPhotos because you can get great offers on their image bundles through AppSumo.

Depending on your WordPress theme you’re using for your website, your blog may have space for a featured image, which is displayed on your homepage with the link to the blog post.

This featured image may also be automatically displayed on the blog post, so remember that when adding other images so you don’t double up on pictures.

Try to add two or three images to your post. If you want to make money using advertising on your site, then images are a great way to keep people scrolling through your content for longer.

They add extra content to the post. This is good because it keeps people’s eyeballs looking at the ads on your site for longer, which means more money for you.

Once you’ve added your photos, you need to edit the alt text. You can see the alt text box on the right hand column of WordPress when you click on the image in edit mode for your blog post.

Your alt text on normal images in the post should describe the picture with some relevant keywords included for the post.

When it comes to your Pinterest images, the alt text should be the headline for the post.

You will also want to add at least one Pinterest pin image to your post. A few key tips for making beautiful pins:

It should be 2:3: ratio, which means it’s upright rather than landscape as this format is best for Pinterest.
Use text and a relevant image on your pin.
Make sure the text is clear. Italic fonts are nice but can be tricky to read.
Use bright colours.
Use Canva for making your pins. They have great templates for pins if you’re stuck on designing pins from scratch.

You can find lots more tips for using Pinterest to grow your blog traffic here.

Writing great blog content checklist

So putting all of the above together, here’s a checklist breaking down the process you need to use when putting together your blog posts.