A few of the most asked questions I get as a blogger is how I manage to get traffic to my website, how I get people to stay and how I do all this without losing track. Maintaining a blog is a lot of work, but once your hard work pays off, it is definitely fun too. In this post, I will show you my step by step guide to creating the perfect blog post!
There are three moments you can distinguish when crafting the perfect blog post: before publishing, immediately after publishing and some time after publishing. We’ll go through each of these three steps!
Before publishing
The first step is the most obvious one for every content writer. Before publishing, you obviously need to write your text and optimize it for SEO.
Topic
When you are a blogger, you often do not write what others want to know, but rather what you want to share from your experience. It’s the very reason why I started the Caroline’s Corner series at Yoast. As a blogger, it can be difficult to focus on SEO, as you often write from your own experience and are more focused on entertaining people than informing. I keep a list of blog post ideas with me, so I always have something to blog about.
Keyword Research
After you picked your topic, it’s important to see if you are solely writing for entertainment purposes, or can give information to your readers too.
Even if you think you can only entertain, often there is a bit of information to give to your readers too. One of my favorite courses of Yoast is the Keyword Research training. If you as a blogger struggle with your keywords, then I highly recommend this training.
Text and tone of voice
Are you wondering when you finally can start writing your post? That time is now! I often skip the keyword research step but trust me, this will do you no good.
If you want to rank in Google, your keyword research is absolutely important. Optimizing after you wrote your post can be done, but it is sometimes quite tedious. And wouldn’t you rather focus on a new post anyway than optimizing an old one?
Write your blog post and do not forget this should be in the same tone of voice the rest of your blog is. If you are known to write funny texts and people come to you because you are so honest, they don’t want you to sugarcoat things. In other words: create your personal brand and stick to it .
Images
Some bloggers prefer to create photos and images before they start writing their texts. Others, like me, prefer to first write and then find the correct images. Whether you use stock photos or create your own graphics, make sure you at least have a header image that also can be used to be shared on social media.
In Yoast SEO Premium, there is a social preview where you can see what it looks like when your post is shared on Facebook or Twitter. You can set a different social image if desired.
Social media texts
Not only you can set your own social image, you can also write a different description for Facebook and Twitter than for Google. People who find you through Facebook, often have a different connection with you than those who find you through Google.
Make sure the description resembles that! I have made the decision that through social media I want to entertain people, so I focus more on the fun parts of the blog posts on social media. An example: if I write about idiot things my cat does, I would for example tell my followers on Facebook how I found another dead mouse in my kitchen this morning and how I gave the little fella a funeral. For Google I would focus on the behavior of cats and this would show in the meta description as well.
I have a genuine love-hate relationship with Pinterest. Although I love the way it brings me visitors, I’m not someone who enjoys creating graphics for the platform. I love writing, I don’t love designing as much. As a blogger, you have to design things as well.
Or become rich and hire someone to do it for you, that’s an option too! A part of your blog post’s preparation is designing a Pinterest image. These should have a ratio of 2:3, which means that it’s vertical. Pinterest comes with a scheduled feature now, so you can schedule your pin before publishing the post, just make sure you put the correct publishing URL in!
SEO
And now, the most dreaded thing for every blogger world wide… I’m just kidding, there are people who absolutely love SEO, my colleagues included. Me, not so much.
I do love it when people come to my blog through Google, but more often than not I am known for muttering: ‘I don’t want to do SEO, I want to write’. Optimizing for search engines is of course a big part of your blog strategy. It’s important to check your meta description, your social descriptions and of course the distribution of your keywords and the readability analysis.
As you most likely are aware, you know our plugin helps you with this step! Don’t forget to add proper internal and external links and you’re good to schedule or publish your post.
Summary
To sum up of all the steps before you publish a blog post:
- Pick a topic;
- Do keyword research;
- Write your text in your brand’s voice;
- Create your images;
- Create your Pinterest image and schedule it;
- Do a last SEO check;
- Publish or schedule your post.
Author: Caroline Geven / Yoast.com
