We’ve all seen one: a basic blog with paragraphs and paragraphs and bland, boring text and nothing else notable to draw your attention. The topic could be interesting but was poorly executed, you have no idea how or where they got their information, and you’re falling asleep as you scroll down pages and pages of black and white copy. Yikes.
While many bloggers and businesses alike are trapped in this bad version of content marketing, it’s actually easier than you might think to break the basic mold of blogging and create a champion-worthy blog that viewers will delight in reading, sharing and interacting. So to help get you over this hurdle, here are three tips for rising above the basic blog post.
Create More Compelling Titles and Headlines
Once you’ve perfected the actual content of your blog, it’s time to polish everything up. While the content of your blog is important for getting and keeping readers from a long-term perspective, you’ve still got to convince those newcomers that you’re worth their time. Even if you’re not boosting your exposure by using Google AdWords, you still need to have a title good enough to get someone to click on it from the SERPs. An easy way to accomplish this task is to create an intriguing and compelling title as well as headlines throughout your post.
When writing blog titles, Corey Eridon of HubSpot shares an easy formula for clickable titles. This formula includes starting with a working title to give your content shape and meaning and then making your title short, sexy and accurate once you’ve completed constructing the content. Don’t be surprised if it takes you a while to come up with your titles or if crafting compelling titles doesn’t come naturally to you at first. But if you practice and stick to it, you’ll be able to see your readership increase as your titles improve.
Get Your SEO On with Linking Structures
Figuring out a solid linking structure to execute within your blogs will not only help to create higher ranking content, but it will also help keep people on your site for longer. While any link within your blog is going to be beneficial to you, WebCEO.com shares that editorial or contextual links are most valuable because they’re seen and used by both people and search engines. Whenever possible and relevant, look for pages within your blog to link to in your specific blog posts to help build up your SEO value and internal linking structure.
Boost Interest and Time on Page With Images
People are more visually interested now more than ever. For this reason, excluding photos, graphs or other images from your blog posts isn’t just a bad idea, it’s extremely detrimental to the success of your content.
To help keep people interested in your blog post and stay within your site for a longer amount of time, Mustafa Khundmiri, a contributor to KISSmetrics.com, tells bloggers to stop using stock photos and instead use images that elicit emotion, show humanity and focus on the reader. By using this strategy with your photos, you will take your blog posts from irritating to irresistible.
With the ever-increasing amount of content online, you have to do something to rise above the rest. By using the tips mentioned above, you can improve the look and feel of your blog posts to overcome the blunders of the basic blog.
Originally posted on January 5, 2016 @ 12:27 am
