How to Start Writing a Blog Post – 6 Basic Skills to Know

How to Start Writing a Blog Post

Before you start writing a blog there are a couple of things that you need to consider.

Firstly, you will want to know who your audience is going to be. Who are you targeting and what do you want to get across to them? Understanding your target market will be essential for you to succeed in your niche and engage the right audience.

Additionally, you will want to select a good keyword. Correct keyword research is the first part of the search engine optimisation or SEO.  Correct SEO is essential for you to rank your posts on the internet.

There are a couple of good keyword research tools available such as Jaaxy.com and keysearch.co.  Both of these tools provide you with free initial access. So if you are new to affiliate marketing you can try these keyword tools out at no initial cost.

Using a good keyword tool will vastly improve your ability to find ranking keywords for your blog post. Another free option is to use Google search. Just type in a search term for your idea and see what auto fills into the search results. This will give you an idea of what other people are actually searching for.

Think of a Strong, Compelling Headline

Think of a strong, compelling headline to lead your article with.  But remember to include your keywords into your headline. this is important as it is part of  ‘on page’ search engine optimisation (SEO) for your post.How to Write a Blog Post

having a standout headline is essential to the success of your post. People are by Nature inquisitive and when they see a catchy compelling headline they will be more likely to click on it and read the post. If you don’t have a good headline it’s quite likely that your article will be skipped over and people will just not read it.

There are some great headline generator tools such as Headline Analyser by coschedule.com. This is a great tool to learn how to produce good headlines. all you need to do is enter your keyword and it will help you to generate a catchy headline.

Don’t just rely on headliner generators to do the work. You need to stay in control and ensure the headline makes sense and is related to your post.

What to Write in a Blog Post

In reality, knowing what to write is the first step in knowing how to write a blog post.

Great post ideas can come to you at any time. I like to have a notebook with me whenever it’s convenient so if I get a good idea for a post I can jot it down so I can flesh it out later. But just searching the internet will give you a tonne of great blog post ideas within your niche.

Once you have thought of some ideas play around with keywords relating to this topic using your keyword tool.

The content in your posts needs to be readable. On the internet, people tend to skim through articles and posts and pick out information that is relevant to them or what piques their interest.

So keep your ideas condensed and to the point and have sufficient breaks between sentences and paragraphs.  A nice clear, uncluttered page will make your article much more readable.

Some tips on how to make a quality post:

Try using small paragraphs. Using small paragraphs will help to break up your article and make it more readable to your audience. Learn Search Engine Optimization

Separating your ideas with subheadings will also help to break up your article and gives your reader something to focus on.

When you’re writing use conversational speak rather than formal language. Obviously, if you are writing a textbook you would use a more formal language. But when writing articles and content for a blog you would generally write as if you are talking to somebody directly.

Your goal with your post should be to inform people and not tell them or preach at them. People don’t want to be told what to do. Your readers will be much more engaged if you show them how to do things I’ll give them options rather than telling them exactly what to do.

Add in Subheadings

Try adding in subheadings on your page before you start writing. This will help you build out your post and will also break the page up. It makes it more readable for your audience. Formatting your posts like this will also help you to focus and create ideas in your head before you put them onto paper.

People tend to skim articles before they read through them so having good subheadings will help them to focus on what is written on the page.

Try Bullet Points

Try using bullet points in your post.  using bullet points also helps to focus your reader’s attention to your article. bullet points are a little bit like subheadings so when readers skim through your article they might stop at the bullet points to take in the information that is summarised.

Some tips for using bullet points:

– Make sure your bullet points make sense

– Don’t overuse them throughout your post. 1 set per post

– Keep points short and to the ‘point’. 1 to 2 lines at the most

– Ensure they look symmetrical and similar length to each other

– Try hyperlinking within your bullet points to other relevant articles

Now Select Your Images

Having captivating images will help to engage your readers on your post. We tend to process images and pictures easier than text-based information. so good images are a bit like subheadings 4 people when they’re skimming through your article. if they see a captivating image they will generally stop and read the text around it.What to write in a blog

Finding royalty free images is often quite difficult unless of course, you have your own photos or images to use. one website that I use to find images is called pixabay.com where I can pick up royalty free images that I can use. when you start creating a lot more content you will find that purchasing images becomes more necessary.

When you select her images make sure they’re relevant to your content. like bullet points and subheadings your images also need to make sense within your post.

Optimise your Post for SEO

So once you have created your post you will want to optimise it so it is more likely to be found on the internet. Good SEO will enable your post to rank higher within the search engines making it easier for your readers to find you.

Optimising a post is a full separate article on its own, but here are some of the basics that can help you along your way.

“On Page” SEO relates to what you need to do within your article.

Keywords

Keyword research is one of the fundamentals. You can have a lot of fun with this, so don’t be intimidated by it.  

Make sure you have your Keyword in your post title, meta title and meta description.  You can read a bit more about keywords and content here.

SEO your Images

Don’t forget to do an ‘ALT Description’ for your images.  The Alt Description helps your article to get discovered by search engine bots, so avoid overlooking this one. Have at least one of your image contain your Keyword in the Alt Description.  

Links

It is important to remember to add some links into your post. Have a couple of internal links (hyperlinks that direct to another relevant post on your own website). And don’t forget an external link as well ( a hyperlink to an authority website – like Wikipedia)

“Off Page” SEO is equally important.   Anything that you can do to help boost your posts rankings is important.

Add your Post URL to Webmaster Tools

Add your URL to the Search Engines. By adding your posts URL to Google Webmaster Tools or Bing Webmaster tools will help it to get indexed quicker.  (note Google and Bing together account for over 80% of search engines results).

Once your post is indexed and found by the search engines then your “On Page” SEO will help take it up the rankings.

Socialise

Another neat SEO trick is to link your post to social media. You can add it to Facebook or Twitter etc, whichever one you use the most. Also adding your post to the “Description” tab of your Youtube account will help it get noticed and increase ranking.  

Learning Content and Writing Skills

There are some great training sites available for people wanting to develop writing skills. But I believe you don’t really need any special skills to write. If you can talk to someone about an idea, then you can write about it too. Forget the formal essay writing you learned at school and college. best internet business opportunity

But If you want to know how to start writing a blog post on the internet in order to make money then you need some guidance with the technical aspects of SEO.   

Try the Wealthy Affiliate site for some tips on content writing and creating websites for blogs.

You can set up a free account initially (no credit cards needed). You will get access to the first modules of training, which include website set up and writing content. It is the best way to learn how to start writing a blog.

10 thoughts on “How to Start Writing a Blog Post – 6 Basic Skills to Know”

  1. Hi there! Glad to be visiting your post today. I like how you plan out the points as far as what is needed even for sub headings in bullet points. Many people forget to do these positive basic things. Also you brought out how SCO is very important in the outworking of your purpose of targeting the right audience. It’s funny how we don’t actually talk about the writing and grammar part of it LOL

    1. Hi Andrew thanks for leaving your comments here. I don’t think I mentioned in the post that I use Grammarly as well to help with my spelling and grammar. I am terrible at that part of writing, so it is a great tool to use.  I find that planning out the structure of a post is the best way to get in and actually start writing… planning helps get rid of procrastination as well. 

  2. Being and authority and owner of a blog website, I know first hand how helpful this post is. Would have loved to add a thing a thing or two.

    But it also opened my eyes on some key priciple in writing. I will use this guide from time to time to write better posts and articles. Hopefully I can also write for you in future… Smile’s.

    1. Hey thanks Marshall. Yeah if you have anything to add by all means add it in the comments here. Always open to new ideas. Al the best with your blog site. 

  3. Hello,

    This was a very insight and detailed step-by-step guide for beginners and I’ll definitely take into account everything you mentioned for my website.

    I have recently began learning about this at Wealthy Affiliate and it’s amazing! It was the best decision to join this community and learn something new everyday. So, I also highly recommend to anyone interested in the topic of your article.

    1. Thanks for your comments, Marianna. I get such a thrill from hearing people taking the step up and learning as much as they can for their own benefit. WA certainly has the best training that I have found on the internet, so good on you. 

      cheers James

  4. Hey James, 

    I’ve really enjoyed reading this article as you’ve provided us with tonnes of valuable information on blogging. You’ve mentioned that if you add your post URL to webmaster tools, you can get indexed faster. I’ve been told that there is a certain limit on submitting URL’s. Do you happen to know the limit by any chance? 

    Thanks in advance for answering my question and for this detailed blog post. Keep up the good work James!

    1. Hi there AV2001.  Look, that is a great question on the number of URLs you can submit.  I think that might relate to submitting them all at once – ie if you went through your list of posts and started adding them through Google Webmaster (now actually the URL Inspection tab in the new Google Search Console).  I am not actually aware of any limits on the number of URL’s you can submit.  I haven’t hit it yet 🙂 

  5. Thumb up for you James. I can commend this article that is an informative and more of training on it own. Thanks for sharing this great tips in the article. I will say to earn big through blogging requires a lot as involving serious training, am glad I knew this fact early during my start. I can really say all the tips in the article are necessary for successful blogging business. I so gains some tips also, which I will build on efficiency and effectiveness. I do like to ask that when best for a start to get a brand name?

    1. Thanks Topazdude.  I appreciate your comments and glad you have been able to get something from the post.  Your question regarding using a Brand Name…. I would be setting this up from the very beginning. If you want to become an authority site for your niche, having a brand that you can build for yourself is something you want to have from the start – whether that be a DOmain name or your website name (should be one and the same if you can do it). 

      All the best with your online business. 

      James

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