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How to make it easier for people to read your blog posts

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How to make it easier to read your blog

How to make it easier to read your blog

How do you make it easier for people to read your blog posts?

Making people read your blog posts can be one of the biggest challenges you face as a blogger or as a blog writer.

Whether you write for your own blog or for your clients, you want people to read what you write.

It is not blog post ideation.

It is not publishing.

It is not even promoting your blog.

It is making people read your blog posts.

Everybody is in a great hurry.

There is an onslaught of content on the Internet.

7.5 million blog posts are published every day combining all the platforms.

Not just blog posts.

Humongous amount of content is published per minute.

With all this deluge of content, people read your blog posts only when it is absolutely essential for them to read them and if they don’t read them, they won’t be able to achieve something crucial.

Go to Google and search for “blogging tips” and see how many results come up.

How do you choose which link to click?

33% people click the first three links.

Even if a majority of people click the first three links, very few have the patience to read complete blog posts.

I’m not saying you just write points and skip the main content.

There is a way you can make it easier for people to quickly go through your blog posts.

People skim through blog posts, they rarely read

It is said that within the first 30-50 seconds your visitors should be able to make out what the blog post says.

They quickly see the headline.

This skim through the subheadings.

They go through the bullet points.

They read the quotes.

They view the pictures.

And then they quickly leave your blog to visit other, similar blogs.

Even if people don’t read the entire text of your blog post, you can format your blog post in such a manner that people consume the maximum amount of content.

Here is what you can do.

Present your main proposition through the headline

The headline tells people what your blog post offers.

It tells what they’re going to gain when they read your blog post.

It attracts people to your blog post.

It gives them a reason to scroll down and read the remaining text.

If the headline is not inspiring enough, they won’t stay.

Many people leave your blog just after reading the headline because the headline doesn’t captivate them, it doesn’t hook them.

The headline of this blog post is quite straightforward: How to make it easier for people to read your blog posts.

There is no ambiguity.

You exactly know what the blog post is going to tell you.

If you want to learn how to make it easier for people to read your blog posts, you are going to stay and make some effort to read.

Otherwise, you will leave.

End of story.

Write single-sentence paragraphs

Single-sentence paragraphs are less intimidating than big chunks of text.

Just capture one thought in one sentence.

Have one sentence in one paragraph.

Use lots of white space that gives the impression that one is having to read less.

Sentences with lots of white space are also easier to read on mobile phones.

Express important points through subheadings

You may like to read: How to use subheadings to make your writing more effective

You can see that this blog post has multiple subheadings.

The subheadings are in a larger font type compared to the body text.

They immediately stand out.

They convey to you the main point of the smaller text.

By merely going through the subheadings, you can make out all the important points that I’m discussing in this blog post.

You should write the subheadings in such a manner that by merely going through them, your reader can get the complete gist of what all your covering.

Avoid covering too many topics in a single blog post

I have seen many bloggers do that to write longer blog posts.

There is an SEO rumour: the longer your post is, the better are its chances of ranking higher on Google.

Google says it is not true.

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).

Nonetheless, just to make sure that a blog post is more than 1000 words, or more than 2000 words, bloggers include many redundant topics that don’t belong to that particular blog post.

Even I have done that many times.

But now I’m going against my own advice.

Write smaller blog posts.

Stick to the main topic.

Give enough information.

Don’t needlessly extend your blog posts.

I will give you my own example: I never read complete blog posts on other blogs that run into 2000-3000 words.

I just quickly look at the information I’m searching for and then move on.

Make the most important point in the beginning itself

Just to make sure that your readers don’t miss out on the most important thing you want to convey to them, say it in the beginning itself.

If you feel that you need to create a narrative and then after you have made people read a few hundred words only then you will come to the main point, you are mistaken.

People may not go that far.

Hence, whatever you want to say, say it within the first 100 words

Use bulleted lists

Bulleted lists

  • Are easier to skim through.
  • Need little text.
  • Allow you to make pointed observations.
  • Are easier to remember.

Some bloggers use very long sentences in bulleted lists, which is not advised.

They even use complete paragraphs which, again, is not advised.

Try to keep each bullet points not more than 5-10 words.

Use block quotes to highlight important points

If you scroll up a bit, I have quoted from a Google link using block quotes.

In case you want people to notice a chunk of text while quickly skimming through your blog post, enclose it within block quotes.

It immediately becomes visible and catches attention.

Use images to make important points

Very few people miss images.

Insert the images around your key points so that when people view the images, they also read your important text.

In fact, whenever you are making an important point that you don’t want people to miss, use a relevant image above or below.

People may not read your complete blog post if they really don’t want to, but the tips mentioned above will help you make them read most of your blog post.

6 tips for writing meaningful blog posts

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Tips on writing a meaningful blog post

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

  1. Write down the purpose of your current blog post
  2. Keep your title, headline and the text, aligned
  3. Do enough research to make your blog posts authoritative
  4. Write an outline first
  5. Don’t unnecessarily stretch your blog
  6. 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.

Can you immediately start blogging?

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Can you start blogging immediately

Can you start blogging immediately

Yes, and it depends.

The starting part is not difficult.

Whether you want to host your own blog under your own domain or you want to use one of the existing blogging platforms, and depending on your Internet speed of course, you can start blogging within the next 10 minutes.

You can start both business blogs or personal blog based on your preference.

You can start blogging immediately in two ways:

  1. Install a blogging platform such as WordPress under your own domain name.
  2. Use a third-party blogging platform by simply opening an account with them.

Immediately starting a blog with WordPress

Installing the WordPress blogging platform may seem like a daunting task because it involves “installing”.

WordPress is a set of PHP files that you need to first download from WordPress.org, and then using an FTP program, uploaded to your web hosting server.

But it doesn’t have to be this complicated.

Most of the web hosting companies allow you to install WordPress on your server with a single click.

Well, single click is just a way of putting it; it takes a few clicks.

But the interface is quite friendly and even if you have never installed WordPress on your server, you can install it and start blogging immediately.

Web hosting companies like GoDaddy also offer dedicated WordPress hosting services.

If you opt for a WordPress hosting package, WordPress comes pre-installed.

Once you have made the payment, you are given a WordPress username and password.

You can immediately log into the dashboard and start blogging.

You don’t even have to install anything.

You don’t need to deal with FTP servers.

You don’t need an FTP program on your computer.

You will simply need to go to the URL recommended by the web hosting company and once you are on that URL, you will be able to log into the dashboard and start blogging immediately.

Don’t you need a custom WordPress theme to run a blog?

Not necessarily.

Yes, a theme matching your main website does look good, but the focus of my blog post is telling you how to start blogging immediately and for that, I’m going to skip the part of installing a WordPress theme.

The default installation comes with standard themes that you can use to display your blog.

After logging into the dashboard, you can use one of the default themes.

After that, there is a very neat WYSIWYG editor that you can use to write and publish blog posts.

There are many tweaks that you can make to your WordPress installation, but right now that doesn’t matter.

What matters is, how fast you can start blogging.

Even if you want to start a business blog and you don’t want to waste time getting a custom theme designed, the default theme is sufficient enough.

The important part is creating content.

It may take two or three months to get a nice theme but in the meantime, you should start writing and publishing blog posts as soon as possible, and this is the quickest way.

Don’t worry about the theme yet.

The content is the important thing.

Just set the ball rolling.

Immediately starting a blog with third-party blogging platforms

I’m not going to discuss multiple blogging platforms because that becomes confusing.

The difference between a self-hosted blogging platform and a third-party blogging platform is that when you use a self-hosted blogging platform like WordPress, it is under your own domain.

A self-hosted blogging platform like WordPress is good for your search engine rankings.

With a self-hosted blogging platform, when the traffic begins to build up, it comes to your own domain name rather than another website.

The only problem is that it may take you many months to build decent traffic.

This brings me to the topic of third-party blogging platforms.

One of my favorite third-party blogging platforms is Medium.com.

You can immediately open an account with Medium using your Twitter account or Google account.

In fact, it may take less than five minutes to start writing a post on Medium.

One of the biggest benefits of publishing your blog posts on Medium is that you can get exposure faster, unlike a self-hosted blog.

The Medium platform is ready-made.

People can follow you and receive notifications whenever you publish new blog posts using Medium.

You can build traffic faster on your Medium blog, but the only problem is that most of the traffic comes to your Medium blog instead of your own website.

For building faster visibility, Medium is a great platform.

If by chance your blog post is picked by their editorial team and featured on the homepage, your blog can get massive exposure in terms of hundreds of thousands of views, in a single day.

It also makes it easier to immediately start blogging.

What about other third-party blogging platforms?

LinkedIn allows you to publish articles using its platform.

Publishing LinkedIn articles or blog posts is a good way to build your leadership over the professional networking platform.

It is said that LinkedIn promotes blog posts and articles published on its own platform more than the usual smaller updates.

Aside from Medium and LinkedIn, there is also a WordPress.com, but somehow, I have never liked it.

It doesn’t look professional.

If right now you don’t want to immediately start blogging under your own domain the best options for third-party blogging platforms are LinkedIn and Medium.

You can use LinkedIn for professional blogging.

You can share your thought leadership blog posts using LinkedIn.

LinkedIn these days also allows you to run a newsletter.

This way, whenever you publish a post over LinkedIn, your newsletter subscribers immediately receive an email with the contents of your blog post.

Medium too has such a facility.

What do I recommend if you immediately want to start blogging?

If you ask me, I would highly recommend the self-hosted WordPress blogging platform.

It may seem difficult in the beginning, but it will be worth the effort.

Your search engine rankings will improve if you publish regularly.

All the traffic that your blog generates will come to your own website.

You will own the content – all the blog posts are stored in a MySQL database and anytime you can take backup of this database and store it locally on your computer.

Even for self-hosted blogging platform, you don’t face many hurdles.

As mentioned above, WordPress hosting is available with every hosting service these days.

All you need is access to the admin/dashboard, and you can immediately start blogging.

Third-party platforms definitely have their benefits, but I would recommend that you first publish your latest blog posts on your own, self-hosted blog and then share them or syndicate them on the third-party blogging platforms.

7 immediate benefits of publishing a blog post every week

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Benefits of publishing a blog post every week

Benefits of publishing a blog post every week.

Almost every month I publish a blog post prompting my readers to regularly publish blogs on their business websites. Blogs are automatic SEO magnets. They are structured in such a manner that you don’t need to do anything extra to improve your search engine rankings – provided you are using a standard WordPress theme that does not obstruct the Google crawler from accessing your content.

Ideally, you should publish a blog post every day. At least for SEO purposes. The more you publish, the faster your content gets crawled by search engines. You also cover more topics and increase your keyword. Talking about keywords, never overusing keywords when you are writing blog posts.

Since publishing a blog post every day may be an expensive undertaking when you need to hire a content writer or blog writer to write your blogs, my suggestion is, stick to a one-blog-post-per-week schedule and you should start experiencing some benefits immediately.

Just like everything else in life, there are caveats. Nonetheless, the fundamental factors that improve your search engine rankings as well as your conversion rate, is the quality of your content, the relevance of the blog posts that you publish. Stick to quality, stick to relevance, and everything else pretty much gets taken care of by itself, well almost.

1. A weekly blogging schedule improves your search engine rankings

Regular weekly blogging improves your SEO.

Regular weekly blogging improves your SEO.

Whenever I talk about search engine rankings, please always keep in mind that only the rankings that get you targeted traffic are worth considering. Improving your rankings for random keywords and search terms doesn’t help you much.

Carefully prepare a list of keywords around which you’re going to write and publish blog posts. Formulate all your titles and topics and headings and subheadings around those keywords. Never lose track of your keywords.

I have often seen that clients get happy because their rankings suddenly improve through regular blogging, but they don’t generate much business. This is because although the rankings are improving and also the traffic is increasing, the right people are not coming to the website or the blog. Hence, no business.

Anyway, how does publishing one blog post every week improve your search engine rankings?

You give Google more content to crawl and index. A greater number of your links are included in the search index. You are covering more keywords, especially the longtail keywords.

Consider the probability. What are the chances of you winning a lottery? Never buying a ticket, occasionally buying a ticket, or regularly buying a ticket? No, I’m not suggesting that you get addicted to buying lottery tickets and squander away all your savings. What I mean is, if you do more of something, provided you do something specific, the probability of a specific outcome increases.

The same way, the probability of your content appearing on Google search results increases if there are more links from your website in Google’s index.

Getting your content crawled by Google can be a big issue. Although the search engine is crawling millions of web pages, blog posts, images, videos, and social media posts, almost every hour, since it is crawling practically everything, it may take a month, or even more, for the Google crawler to visit your link.

Your website gets crawled randomly. There is no schedule. This is because the Google crawler doesn’t know when you publish content. Not everyone publishes a regular blog. Not everyone updates website content regularly. Hence, it is left on randomness to decide when your website gets crawled.

On the other hand, if you have a schedule and you stick to your schedule, Google learns to crawl your content based on that schedule. Hence, if you publish a new blog post every Wednesday, there is a greater chance that your website will be crawled every week, probably somewhere around Wednesday. If you publish a blog post every day, your website is going to be crawled every day.  If you post multiple blog posts every day and you go on doing that for months, your website gets crawled multiple times in a day.

Hence, regularity gives you a significant edge over other websites that don’t publish content regularly.

Again, publishing a blog post every day, or posting multiple blog posts every day, can be expensive if you need to hire a content writer, but even a weekly schedule brings you immediate benefits. Within a couple of months, you will see a marked improvement in your crawl rate and targeted traffic.

2. You get more subscribers for your mailing list

You get more email subscribers with regular blogging

You get more email subscribers with regular blogging.

Every business must build a mailing list. A mailing list is a list of email ids that people give you, knowingly, consciously, with their consent, and you use these email ids to keep them engaged fruitfully.

Most small businesses publish a newsletter to keep in touch with their subscribers.

You may like to read Why publish a newsletter for your business or organization.

The benefit of building your mailing list is that people agree to remain in touch out of their own choice. They come across your subscription box on your website/blog, they drop their email ID with their consent, and then you can regularly keep in touch with them. These people are interested to hear from you. They don’t mind if you send them emails. Every business wants to build such a mailing list.

I use my mailing list to broadcast the blog posts and web pages that I’m publishing on my website all the time.

When you publish a blog every week, you get more people to your website who are interested in your content and since they are interested in your content, they will subscribe to your newsletter so that they don’t miss your content.

This may not be an immediate benefit of publishing a blog post every week because a mailing list takes time to build, but it definitely kickstarts the process. As the proverb goes, “If there was a better time to start building your mailing list, it was a couple of years ago.”

3. Increase followers and visibility on social media

Fan following on social networks increases with regular blogging

Fan following on social networks increases with regular blogging

Entrepreneurs and businesses who share their own content on social media websites get more followers and enjoy better visibility. If you simply share content from other websites, although your followers will value that, the effect is not the same as publishing your own content and sharing your own knowledge and wisdom.

People who share their own insights get more followers and people take them more seriously. Chances of active engagement are also better. People may share your content on their own timelines, giving you more exposure.

Publishing a blog post every week on your business blog and then sharing it on your social media profiles also seed new conversation ideas.

4. You have more content to repurpose

You have more content to repurpose when you blog regularly

You have more content to repurpose when you blog regularly.

You may like to read How to repurpose old content.

Repurposing old content means reusing your existing content through different formats and different presentations. Maybe you can pick up a single paragraph from one of your blog posts and then post it on LinkedIn. Maybe you can create a small visual out of the same paragraph and then post it on Instagram.

Complete blog posts can be created out of small portions of your existing content. For example, I can write a new blog post from the point “Increase followers and visibility on social media by publishing content regularly”, that I have discussed above.

After a while it becomes self-fulfilling. The more content you publish every week, the more content ideas you have for different content marketing needs.

5. You share your human side with your readers

Regular blogging allows you to share your personal side

Regular blogging allows you to share your personal side.

In my case, there is not much difference between my writing style whether I’m writing for my main website or for my blog, but with most of the businesses, this is not the case.

The language that people use on the main website is different from the language they use on their blogs.

You can let your hair lose when you are writing blog posts. You don’t need to sound very official. Your language can be free flowing. It can be conversational. It can be friendlier.

This helps you make a connection with your visitors. You’re not some highflying executive or a salesperson just interested in making a sale. You’re interested in sharing your thoughts. You want to tell stories. You want to share anecdotes.

The trust factor is very critical on the Internet. When people come to your website and decide to do business with you, or decide to go away without doing business with you, you’re not there to talk to them personally. It is what you have written on your website or blog that does the talking. You cannot have conversations through monotonous and jargon-ridden interactions. There need to be friendly conversations to make people comfortable and to make them trust you. Weekly blogging on your website helps you achieve that.

6. You earn more backlinks

You get more backlinks with regular blogging

You get more backlinks with regular blogging.

I have never approached other websites to put my links on them. All the backlinks that I have gathered, I have gathered naturally. People come across my content on Google and social networking websites, find it link-worthy, and then link to it.

Almost everyone is aware that one of the biggest benefits of getting quality backlinks is that it improves your search engine rankings. Google considers backlinks as endorsements. Why would people link to your content unless it offers something valuable?

People want to share to authority content. For example, if someone writes about the benefits or advantages of publishing a blog post every week and then wants to backup with another link, the author can link to my present blog post on the same topic.

As mentioned above, one of the most popular and well-known reasons for getting backlinks is improving search engine rankings. After quality content, it is the quality of your backlinks that has the biggest impact on your SEO.

You also get additional exposure. What if hundreds of websites share your link? What if your link is shared by a news website? What if you are quoted by a business reporter and along with your quotation, he or she also publishes a link to one of your blog posts? You get a ton of additional traffic.

In fact, people who don’t want to rely on Google put lots of energy into getting high quality backlinks just for the sake of generating traffic from all those websites.

7. Establish yourself as an expert or an authority

Regular blogging establishes you as an authority

Regular blogging establishes you as an authority.

By publishing a blog post every week and sharing your knowledge and wisdom, you establish yourself as an authority on your subject.

I am a content writer. People hire me for my content writing and copywriting services. It definitely helps them decide in my favor when they see that I have published so much content on the topic of content writing and copywriting.

Prospective clients come across my blog posts on Google or LinkedIn, they come to my blog and see how much I have written on the topic,  they get impressed, and then they contact me for work. Most of my work comes through people who first see my blog.

Although I don’t offer my services as a content consultant, most of my clients want to know so much about what to publish and how to publish, that these days, I have started charging them for the time I spend talking to them. It deters some clients for striking up long conversations about their content, but it also encourages many clients to pay for my time for my consulting services.

Publishing a blog post every week isn’t very difficult even if you have to pay for every blog post. The advantages outweigh the cost. Of course, it would be easier if you could write and publish blog posts on your own, but then, you may be good at your profession, but it may not be possible for you to come up with high-quality content, especially on a weekly basis. I know a client who is an excellent writer and in fact, in her field, she writes better than I do, but she cannot be consistent. This is because she is not a professional writer. She is a technology consultant.

Anyway, although there are some great, immediate benefits of publishing a blog post every week, if you can afford it, at least for the first 2-3 months when you kickstart your content marketing campaign, try to publish a blog post every day. This gives you lots of content to offer to Google. Your website gets crawled every day and hence, new content becomes available to your target audience faster. You can maintain the buzz around your website on social networking websites. Your search engine rankings improve within 40-60 days.

 

5 reasons why you should start a blog for your e-commerce store

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5 benefits of publishing an e-commerce blog
5 benefits of publishing an e-commerce blog

Want to improve search engine rankings of your e-commerce store? Want to supercharge your conversion rate? You must start an e-commerce blog.

If you’re wondering why you should start an e-commerce blog, you will find your answer here.

The e-commerce space is quite crowded. With websites like Shopify and Rackspace it’s even easier to start an e-commerce website within a few days without knowledge of programming or HTML.

According to this UNCTAD report, Covid-19 has led to a surge in e-commerce business. Due to multiple lockdowns all over the world, almost everyone ordered from home. Even those who were reluctant to purchase stuff online, started doing their shopping from online retail stores. The share of e-commerce in the global retail trade rose from 14% in 2019 to 17% in 2020, according to the same UNCTAD link.

Starting an e-commerce blog enables you to carve a space for yourself on this crowded terra firma.

Data from IBM’s US retail index shows that the Covid-19 pandemic has accelerated the shift towards digital shopping roughly by 5 years. The non-essential purchases in the conventional, brick-and-mortar department stores declined by 75% in the second quarter of 2020.

It is not just the big e-commerce websites like Amazon.com, JD.com or Walmart e-commerce that have taken a huge proportion of the e-commerce business. There have been thousands of startups all over the world in the wake of not just the Covid-19 pandemic, but also to leverage the fast-changing consumer dynamics. I was recently reading about a new startup called Dukaan (colloquial for a neighborhood shop in India) that came up during the Covid-19 lockdown when the founders realized that the local shopkeepers were no longer able to sell their products even to the traditional customer base. Hence, they built a platform for traditional shop owners to sell their products using the platform. There are hundreds of such examples.

Naturally, the competition has increased. Whereas the bigger e-commerce websites don’t rest on their laurels and spend millions of dollars to maintain their visibility and push their products in front of their customers, smaller e-commerce websites need to rely on search engine optimization, content marketing, and social media marketing to get their share of the pie that is already being shared by thousands of others.

E-commerce blogging can be a big weapon in your arsenal.

There are multiple benefits or advantages of starting an e-commerce blog.

Why do you buy from Amazon.com? It is a known brand. You have already purchased from it scores of times, in my case, even hundreds of times. You know it’s return policy. More or less, you have had a good experience when it comes to addressing your grievances and you know that you can rely on the company in case you don’t receive the product you have ordered or if you have received a faulty product.

Amazon.com doesn’t have to convince you. You are already convinced. It has been on the landscape of e-commerce for more than 20 years. It doesn’t need to win your trust.

But if you’re a small e-commerce website people hardly know, you need to win their trust. All the attributes that are assumed about Amazon.com, you need to establish them.

You need to convince people that not just their money is safe with you, in case they face a problem, you’re going to be there for them. Lack of trust is a big problem among the prospective e-commerce customers because they don’t know you yet. They don’t know whether it is safe to spend their money on your website.

Recently my wife purchased a kurti from an unknown online retail store that sells women’s garments.  The piece of clothing cost double than what such a piece of clothing would cost on Amazon, but my wife liked it so much, that she bought from this website. It was a complete set containing upper and lower garments.

They sent the wrong color. They sent just the upper garment. When we called them, no one picked up the phone. Our email to their support elicited no response. We found that there are lots of negative reviews and feedback on Twitter about the company.

Such companies make it harder even for those e-commerce websites that mean to serve their customers well. This is an unnecessary hurdle created on the way of the well-meaning companies.

Blogging can fill this gap. It can familiarize people to your presence. It can establish a space of trust. Being a small e-commerce website, through your blog, it is easier to engage your customers at a personal level.

This Hubspot report says that e-commerce websites that publish a blog get 55% more traffic than those that don’t. Further, e-commerce websites that publish blogs get 97% more inbound links, and have 434% more pages indexed by Google.

Listed below are 5 reasons why as an e-commerce website you should publish a blog.

1. Blogging improves search engine rankings of your e-commerce website

Although a major part of your business comes from repeat customers (a universal trend among e-commerce websites) if you are an e-commerce store, in the beginning, you need to be found on major search engines like Google and Bing.

Before buying people look for information. For that they use a search engine like Google. They want to read about the product. They look for reviews. They look for opinions. They try to find the ratings.

In terms of improving your search engine rankings through an e-commerce blog, think about your own e-commerce store. It may be unique. It may be quite different from a bigger retail store like Amazon.com. Maybe you’re selling just 10 to 15 items, or even less. You need to educate people about the benefits of purchasing those items from your website. This you can achieve through regular blogging.

Blogging in itself is search engine friendly. Assuming that you update your blog regularly (1-5 times every week) Google crawls and indexes your e-commerce website with greater regularity because it expects to find fresh content. The Google crawler is engineered in a manner that it is constantly looking for fresh content, and even the Google ranking algorithm prefers fresh content over comparatively older content.

Make sure you choose the appropriate blog post titles that include the names of your products and their features. For example, if you sell ladies garments, you can publish something like “How to choose the best evening gown for the upcoming spring ball?” Or something like, “How we can help you if you’re not satisfied with our delivery”.

If you regularly publish a blog, people come to your website regularly. Research has shown that before buying, people need to come to your website for at least 4-5 times.

Regular blogging also gets you back links which are important for your SEO as well as wider visibility. Other bloggers and online publishers may link to useful posts from your blog. Also, blog posts are shared on social media with greater regularity.

2. Regular blogging establishes you as a thought leader

Trust matters a lot when it comes to shopping on an e-commerce website. Trust, coupled with familiarity. Familiarity comes from regular visibility. Trust comes from regular exposure to your knowledge, experience, and good advice.

Remember that having an e-commerce website doesn’t always mean having an online retail store where you list scores of products. Even if you’re selling one e-book, it is an e-commerce website, and to make people buy your e-book from your e-commerce website, you need to establish your presence among them as an authority figure.

3. Build a community of loyal customers around your e-commerce blog

The very nature of a blog makes you attract people who are interested in reading what you have to say. If you publish interesting and useful content on your e-commerce blog, they keep track of your blog. They leave comments. They respond to other visitors’ comments. They feel connected to your community. When they feel connected, they show their connectedness by following the footsteps of the community. If many of your community members buy from your e-commerce websites, the others will too.

4. Publishing targeted content is cheaper than advertising

Organic search engine rankings don’t just increase your search engine visibility, they also reduce your reliance on online advertising.

A problem with online advertising, especially when you are spending money on a PPC campaign, is that you pay for every click. Whenever someone clicks your link on Google, for example, and if the link is not a part of organic search results, you pay for that click. Whether the person buys from your website or not, you spend money on the person for visiting your website.

Being an e-commerce website with multiple items in your catalog, you may need to bid on multiple keywords. For example, if you want to draw traffic for, let’s say, 50 items in your e-commerce catalog, you will need to pay for individual clicks for all those 50 items. On an ongoing basis. You can easily guess how much money you will end up spending.

With blogging, the only money you’re spending is the money that you pay to your content writer. If your listings begin to appear in organic search results, whether you get 100 clicks or 1 million clicks, you don’t pay anything. All the traffic is free.

Also, inbound traffic – people coming to your website when they come across your content on Google and other websites – always converts better than the traffic that you get through advertising. This is because when people come across your relevant content, they decide on their own to come to your website. Knowingly or unknowingly, they are aware of why they are coming to your website. This makes it easier for them to decide in your favor when they need to buy something, and you offer it.

5. An e-commerce blog builds you are broadcasting platform

What is a broadcasting platform? It is a place where people come to read about your views, get to know about your products, and display interest in your ideas and opinion. With regular blogging for your e-commerce website, you can generate massive amounts of traffic within a couple of years. Something to the tune of 2-3000 visitors every day.

This gives you the ability to broadcast your side of the story in case some dispute happens. You will have a ready-made audience with you. You won’t have to depend on other websites to tell your side of the story. In case something tarnishes your image on the Internet, you can immediately take corrective measures by publishing an explanatory blog post on your e-commerce blog.

Should you publish an e-commerce blog on your own website or use third-party blogging platforms?

I strongly suggest that you publish a blog under your own e-commerce website. This way you completely own your content. All the traffic that you generate comes to your own e-commerce website.

There are certainly some benefits of publishing your e-commerce blog on a high traffic website like Medium (or LinkedIn), but then you will be diluting your traffic as well as search engine benefits. You may start an e-commerce blog on Medium, and you may get visibility faster, but most of the visibility belongs to the Medium platform. Whereas, from the beginning itself if you start publishing your blog on your own e-commerce website, it may take a while to build traffic and presence, but by the time you have built an audience, you will have your own strong presence.