Want to know how to get people to read your blog? This post will tell you how with an easy-to-follow guide, blog template and SEO checklist.
Blog writing is the cornerstone of SEO content. By regularly publishing optimised articles, you can get your target audience in the front seat to your business.
But what if your blog doesn’t perform? Or you get the clicks but not the conversions?
How to get more people to read your blog – a simple process
There are two prongs to a successful blog strategy:
- SEO optimisation: it has to rank highly and generate a good click-through-rate
- Relevance and value: it must benefit the reader and of course be relevant to your brand
You have to tick both boxes to deliver a piece of content that both attracts new customers AND sells to them.
So how do you go about writing the perfect post?
Read on to discover the foolproof formula for getting your blog noticed.
1. Choosing your blog topics
People are bombarded with information everywhere they go. From Instagram captions to emailers, brands are screaming their names to get their audience’s attention.
But what makes you stop scrolling? Apart from animals doing humorous things, for most of us, it’s something relatable. Content that speaks to us. And more than likely, the answer to a problem.
To get more people to read your blogs, you need to be useful. So how do you uncover your audience’s qualms?
What problem does your business solve?
First things first. What do you sell? No matter the product or service, your offerings are an answer. It may not be blindingly obvious at first, but whether your website sells coaching for creatives or custom made crockery, you are a solution to someone’s problem.
So how do you find out this information?
There are a number of ways to turn this research into search terms you can target:
- Ask your customers
- Generate ideas from reviews or comments
- Use sources such as Quora and Answer The Public
- And finally…. do keyword research.
Do your keyword research to get people to read your blog
Have you done a keyword analysis? Using SEO platforms such as Ahrefs, SEMRush or UberSuggest, you can curate a list of thousands of phrases your audience are searching for that are relevant to your business.
These will vary from high volume/harder to rank for terms to lower volume/more specific phrases. It’s important to gain oversight of both so that you rank highly for generic and more intentional keywords.
FOR EXAMPLE
Let’s take a candle business for example.
‘Scented candles’ has 9400 UK searches per month. Whilst this is an excellent term to target, it has a medium difficulty score of 20 and a lot of competition.
But if we look at the related search terms we can see that ‘scented tealight candles’ and ‘scented beeswax candles’ have a very low keyword difficulty and much smaller search volume. As they are more detailed phrases, these users will have a more specific search intent.
Whilst it’s possible to do a keyword analysis yourself, you will need to invest time and money into using an SEO platform.
As a part of my small business SEO services, I offer an in-depth keyword analysis that will provide you hundreds of already categorised phrases ready for targeting across your website and blog content.
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Create content pillars
You can now use this research to categorise terms into a set of content pillars. These will generally be based on your varying services or products and the specifics of the problems you solve.
From here you can then begin to select blog topics and titles. It’s also worth looking at the top 10 search results for any particular term. This will give you a good idea as to what titles and content are ranking well.
Bonus tip
Whilst seasonal posts and annual guides are definitely valuable – evergreen content is where you will reap rewards from organic traffic that can be found all year round.
2. The perfect blog formula
As previously mentioned, all blogs need to provide value to your target audience. Otherwise, you might as well be sharing your life story.
To create content that’s high value, you need to grab your reader’s attention right from the get-go. And keep them invested until the very end of the piece.
A winning blog post template that will get more readers
Title: short, catchy, and to the point
Introduction: get your reader’s intrigue immediately – include questions to ‘you’
The problem: present the issue that your blog post resolves directly to the reader
Solution: the bulk of your piece – share the answer, you’re the expert!
Summary: wrap up your post’s key points and include a call-to-action
Bonus tip
No matter how perfect your post is, there will always be some who get distracted midway through. Disperse a couple of varying call-to-actions throughout your post to make sure you address every reader.
3. Writing for SEO
A blog that isn’t optimised is like a website without words. It simply won’t perform.
To get more readers to read your blog you must wear your SEO writing hat.
This doesn’t mean you should just jumble some keywords together – Google is smart enough to know when you’re playing the game. Instead, search terms need to be woven throughout valuable, naturally written copy to craft a relevant, useful post.
I’ll cover this in the next section, but for now, here is a checklist for creating an optimised blog post:
- Make sure you include the target keyword in the title, preferable at the start
- Include your target keyword in the first 100 words
- Use H2, H3 and H4 to format your post into sections
- Disperse secondary keywords and ‘semantics’ throughout
- Link to internal pages and authoritative external websites
If you can tick every box each time you write, you’ll be well on your way to getting more people to read your blog.
Bonus tip
Don’t include dates or numbers in your blog post URL. You should update your content at least every 12 months – and you might want to change that ‘top 8’ guide into a ‘top 10’.
How long should a blog post be?
At least 1000 words.
You’ll find some blogs that are less – even half. But if you look at the top 5 blogs that appear in any search results, they are typically over 1250 words.
This is because it allows the writer to share more information. And more words = more value.
The only exception is for posts that aren’t SEO targeted e.g. brand stories, award wins and business news.
4. Scannable
How often do you see a giant chunk of copy and miss a few sentences? Or move on altogether.
Humans have very short attention spans. And in a modern-day world where information is so readily available, they don’t like having to search for it.
Win your readers over by making sure your blog is scannable. Use varying headers, lots of visuals and digestible paragraphs of copy.
Digestible paragraphs
Keep paragraphs to a maximum of three sentences. And keep them short and conversational.
Avoid lots of descriptive language, adverbs and conjunctions.
Make it easy for your reader to find the juicy details of your blog post using varying headers and bold statements.
Visuals
There are plenty of us who don’t actually like to read and prefer to learn information visually. Break up your text with relevant photographs and diagrams. But remember to be careful of copyright infringements – if you can’t use your own imagery, make sure you have permissions.
Images should be high quality but low file size as to not affect your site loading time.
They also need to have an ‘alt tag’ or ‘alt text’ – a literal description of the photo or diagram that is displayed for visually impaired users or when an image doesn’t load.
5. Share it – and make it shareable!
You’ve written the perfect post – now what?
Once your content is live, it’s time to share it with the world! Get it on your socials, pop it in your newsletters – make sure your current audience gets a glimpse of your hard work.
Whilst organic traffic from Google search results will take some time, it’s important to get the ball rolling with direct and referral traffic.
Want your audience to share it? Ask them! And don’t forget Pinterest. Even if you don’t have your own branded account, you can encourage readers to pin your post by including ‘pinnable’ images such as below:
Bonus tip
Include a detailed visual such as an infographic or diagram and share it with industry platforms.
This is another form of SEO known as ‘backlinking’ which helps your website domain authority.
Find out more about the importance of backlinks in my guide to small business SEO.
To sum it all up
By following the above steps you will produce optimised, value-driven content that gets seen.
But one final word of advice.
Whilst content is king, being consistent is champion. Regularly publishing is the only way to guarantee more readers to your blog. To really get the most out of an SEO content strategy, it’s recommended to publish at least four blogs a month.
That can be a lot for a small business or even a bigger brand. Writing regular optimum-quality content requires a few hours work every week.
If you need a helping hand with your blog writing, investing in a freelance copywriter could be for you.
I offer expertly optimised blogs delivered straight to your inbox as a part of my SEO copywriting services.
– Choose from 1-10 articles every month (discounted packages available)
– SEO formatted ready for publishing
– Send a brief or have topics researched for you; your choice
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Get in touch today to find out about my affordable SEO writing packages and let’s raise you through the ranks!
