Tips on writing a meaningful blog post
This blog post talks about tips on how to write meaningful and captivating blog posts that are human-centric.
The main points covered in this blog include
- Write down the purpose of your current blog post
- Keep your title, headline and the text, aligned
- Do enough research to make your blog posts authoritative
- Write an outline first
- Don’t unnecessarily stretch your blog
- Make your blog post easily readable
In my previous post I wrote about Google’s “helpful content” algorithm update.
Once this update is active, websites that focus more on search engine rankings and less on the relevancy and quality of content, will lose their rankings.
If search engine rankings from Google matter to you, then you must write and publish content (that also includes blog posts) that is relevant to your readers.
This means writing meaningful blog posts that solve a definite purpose and deliver value to the visitors.
What is the purpose of publishing blog posts?
Search engine traffic matters.
I will be frank here: most of the clients who approach me to write their blog posts have search engine optimization as their first most priority.
Yes, as they read more about Google algorithms, they understand the importance of quality and relevance of their content and hence, they want to publish meaningful blog posts.
But by the end of the day, their primary objective of publishing blog posts is to cover enough topics to improve their search engine visibility, or SEO.
Even Google must know that websites need search engine traffic to get business.
For example, if someone needs a blog writer, he or she is going to search for “looking for a blog writer for my business” on Google.
For this person to find my link, I must publish a web page or blog post describing my blog writing services.
Therefore, to an extent, one needs to write in a manner that makes it easier for Google to make sense of the content and then rank it accordingly.
In the realistic world, there are two reasons why businesses publish blog posts:
- To give visitors a valid reason to visit the website or the blog as often as possible and through that, become familiar with the website and what it offers.
- Improve search engine rankings.
Google prefers blogs (or websites) that have lots of content.
When you have covered multiple topics in your niche, it gives you content depth.
It conveys to Google that you have, sort of, developed an expertise on the topic, and therefore, your content should be highlighted for related search terms.
These are the reasons why businesses publish regular blog posts.
What I often suggest to my clients is use the language that is used by the target audience.
This automatically optimizes the blog content.
Tips on writing meaningful blog posts
In the context of writing your blog posts, you first need to understand and acknowledge what “meaningful” stands for you.
Google defines meaningful content as content that provides appropriate answers to the questions people ask.
When people don’t immediately leave your blog post and they read a major portion of it, it indicates that they have found what they were looking for.
They are deriving value out of it.
They get the solution they are looking for.
They can understand and read your blog comfortably.
You genuinely mean to impart useful and relevant information through your blog posts.
Listed below are some tips you can use to write meaningful blog posts for your blog.
1. Write down the purpose of your current blog post
This is a two-pronged approach: your blog post must have a purpose from your perspective and from the perspective of your readers.
What do YOU want to achieve through publishing a blog post and making your readers read it?
What should your readers achieve or accomplish once they have gone through your blog post?
Of course, there is the obvious objective that you want the maximum number of visitors to turn your paying customers and clients.
But this isn’t how the real-world works.
Every blog post must have a singular purpose.
For example, the purpose of this blog post is to share with you my knowledge of how to write meaningful blog posts.
When you implement these tips, my purpose is that you should be able to publish your own meaningful blog posts or even if you hire me as your blog writer, you should have an idea of how I will be writing your blog posts.
Writing an introduction may help you remain focused.
In the introduction you can write why you are writing the blog post and what you want to deliver to your readers.
You may like to read: What is blog post introduction and how to write a great one?
2. Keep your title, headline and the text, aligned
Click bait headlines are frowned upon by Google, and much more after the recent update.
There is a difference between your blog title and your blog headline.
Your blog title is what appears in search results as a highlighted hypertext that people click to visit your website or blog.
The job of your blog post title is to bring people from the search engines to your blog or website.
The headline is the big text that appears at the top of your blog post.
This is the name of your current blog post.
Ideally it appears within the <h1></h1> tags.
The job of your headline is to present a compelling reason to your visitors to read your blog post further.
When I say there must be an alignment between your title, headline and the main text, what I mean is, don’t mislead people into reading something that does not exist.
I again come back to this blog post: my purpose here is to share blog writing tips with you.
I’m not promoting my services.
I’m not promoting an affiliate product (although, AdSense ads appear, they are automatic and they appear with every blog post here).
The sole purpose of this blog post is to adhere to the objective of the headline: tips on writing meaningful blog posts.
3. Do enough research to make your blog posts authoritative
If you are a big agency or an established consultant, you can conduct your own research and publish the data.
If not, there are many authoritative websites that give you authoritative data.
What I mean to say is, always use data and numbers instead of random expressions.
For example, instead of saying “millions of blog posts are publish on WordPress every month” you can say “70 million blog posts are published on WordPress every month” and then link to the source.
As of 2022, there are 600 million blogs on the Internet, worldwide.
Your readers find numbers reassuring.
They are double reassured when they find out that you have taken these numbers from authoritative websites.
It also tells your readers that you make an effort when writing an awesome blog post for them.
4. Write an outline first
An outline helps you a lot if you are working on a longer blog post of around 2000 words.
You may like to read: 6 steps to writing the perfect blog post outline
Writing an outline renders clarity to your blog post.
It makes your blog post readable.
It streamlines its flow.
An outline makes sure that you don’t miss anything important.
It is basically the order of your topics – one beneath the other.
An outline helps you keep your thoughts organized.
It helps you build a narrative.
It is not necessary that you write an outline of your current blog post every time, but if you build a habit of writing an outline before writing a blog post, in the long run it will benefit you a lot.
5. Don’t unnecessarily stretch your blog post
Google says there is no correlation between your search engine rankings and the number of words you use to write your blog posts (source).
Are you writing to a particular word count because you’ve heard or read that Google has a preferred word count? (No, we don’t).
Many Internet marketers advise you to write huge blog posts like containing 2000+ words.
To achieve this, many bloggers cram their blog posts with lots of additional information that is not relevant to the topic the user has searched for.
Instead, create highly focused blog posts dealing with a single topic.
Yes, you can give some background information.
But if a blog post can be written in 500 words, don’t use 2000 words.
People find so much information overwhelming.
They don’t even read such long blog posts.
They leave midway.
Isn’t it better to write just 500 words that makes it easier for people to read and derive value from your blog post?
6. Make your blog post easily readable
Divide various sections under headings and subheadings.
Write short sentences capturing one idea in one sentence.
Avoid using complex sentences.
Use bulleted points whenever you can.
If possible, use single-sentence paragraphs.
Link to other relevant sections of your blog or website instead of repeating your content.
Two types of people read your blog posts:
Those who quickly scan.
Those who read completely, even the finer text.
You format your blog post for both types of readers.
Use simple language – preferably language used by your readers.
Avoid using complex words.
Don’t use passive voice much.
Most of the people may be reading your blog posts on a mobile phone.
It is easier to read smaller sentences and words on mobile phones.
If they find it difficult to read your blog post, even if your blog post is meaningful, mentally they will get distracted and exhausted and stop reading.
They may be in a state of distraction.
They may not have enough time or patience to read your blog post completely, sentence by sentence.
They should be able to understand what you are trying to communicate by simply going through the headings and subheadings, or at the most, including the bulleted points.
These are a few tips you can use to write meaningful and relevant blog posts.
As Google rolls out its update, it will become increasingly important that you deliver real value to your human readers and focus less on “search engine optimization hacks”.
Simply focus on delivering value in the language people use, and the SEO part should be taken care of on its own.