Before we get into the technical elements of blog posts, there is one fundamental that every blogger in every niche needs to adhere to.
Create content with readers in mind
You’ll read a lot about optimizing your content for search engines, and while that it is important, if you don’t optimize your content for humans, then you’ll never gain the exposure that it takes to ultimately get links and rank well in search engines. If you write content that people love to read, then you will get traffic, social shares and links as your readership grows.
Basic components of a blog post
Following are the basic elements of a great blog post. We’ll talk about how to optimize each for both readers and search engines.
Headline
The headline, or title, of your blog post must be crafted to capture the attention of potential readers who may see it in their social media newsfeeds or in search results. Make sure you’ve found a great keyword phrase that people searching will use to find blog posts on your topic — and include it in your headline.
Introduction
The first paragraph of your blog post will either keep people reading or make people leave. Make sure that it compels people to read the rest of your content. You should use your targeted keyword phrase for search at least once in this paragraph.
Main content
This is the main portion of your blog post content. Think of the headline as the promise and the main content as the fulfillment of that promise. Your main content should fully satisfy anyone who visits your post based on the headline. If you create content that does not satisfy the promises of your headline, people will start to identify your blog as unfulfilling and thus, stop visiting. The length of your blog posts can range from 300 to 3,000 or more words. It’s best to alternate the length of your posts as you gain insight about what works best for your audience.
Sub-headlines
Many people will scan your blog content as opposed to reading it word for word. Write subheads that break your content into digestible sections, and make sure those subheads represent the content within them.
Bolded text - Use bold text in a few areas of your main content to help highlight important points. Use it selectively, otherwise your entire article will seem bolded, thus taking away the ability to highlight key portions of content.
Bulleted/numbered lists - While you don’t want your entire post to be bulleted or numbered lists, these lists do help separate out steps and lists with useful content.
Media
Supplement the text portion of your content with media, such as relevant images and video. This will help break up your content and illustrate your points better. Images can also be used as part of the search optimization of your post—include your post’s main keyword phrase in the filename of the image as well as the ALT tag.
Conclusion
The conclusion should be a paragraph or two at the end of your post to summarize what the reader should have gotten out of it. If they didn’t, chances are, they will go back to see what they might have missed.
The last line of your blog post should be some form of a call to action. It can be as simple as asking readers to share their thoughts in the comments or to share the post on social media if they enjoyed it. If your post was written to promote a particular product or service, the call to action should encourage the reader to learn more about it.
You don’t have to include all of the elements from this list in every post, but make sure you always have engaging introduction, quality content, and a solid conclusion.
