Blog Writing 101

Writing a successful blog can be a time consuming endeavor and at times can become extremely frustrating, but knowing the basics of blog writing can greatly improve the experience, making it less frustrating and time consuming.

If done correctly, blog writing can be extremely beneficial for a business; knowing the basic steps and a few tips will greatly enhance the experience and result in higher quality blogs, which in turn can result in more traffic to your website in the long run. Blogs are often used not solely as a source of information, but also as a source of search engine optimization (SEO) by producing new content on a regular basis. The constant source of new data keeps search engine spiders returning to the website to index the new data, which with the utilization of keyword rich content can result in a higher ranking on a search engine results page.

Following these simple tips can greatly improve the process of writing a blog:

Tailor your blog to the reader: A reader reads a blog to get something out of it, whether that is for general knowledge or business advice. The first thing you should think about when beginning a blog is “What will a person be reading this blog for?” Write the blog around these reasons.

Make a blog that is worth reading and not a waste of time. The reader should finish reading the blog and feel like they have gained something from it. If they do not feel happy with your blog, they probably will not come back and read it again or tell their friends about it either.

Make a blog as close to perfect as possible. No mistakes in grammar, spelling or sentence structure, as these will deter people from reading. Nothing is worse than reading something that is full of errors and difficult to understand. Having errors means that less time was devoted to the blog, and your readers will be turned off.

A blog should be kept short. It is not meant to be an essay or dissertation. Generally people scan through what they read on the Internet. Another reason is that it is better to publish shorter articles, more often, than it is to publish long articles every few weeks or so. This does not mean to short change the details of your writings, just be mindful of the attention span of the readers.

Use Keywords enough to benefit the blog, but not too many because using too many keywords make the article sound unnatural, like the words were forced into the article. This is another trait that tends to make the reader not want to read the blog. The search engines will pick up on this too, this is called “keyword stuffing” in SEO terminology.

Use sentences that are to the point, one subject per sentence, avoid jargon, and use commas liberally. You want the point of the article to be as clear and obvious as possible. It should jump out at the reader when they begin to read.

Write the article as if you were speaking it, just like you talk, but know your audience and make sure you speak to them in a way they will accept and understand.

Use a title that is clear and do not avoid making a statement.

Creating the perfect blog may be impossible, but creating a great blog that people will continue to come back to is something that can easily achieved, by following these tips to writing a successful blog. Another helpful fact is some research studies that have been done on blog reading and the design of the blog site. Interestingly enough, more people surveyed said that the most important characteristic of a blog to them was the way it was written and the quality of the information. They put much less stress on the design of the website than they did the actual content of the blog. Food for thought.