Introduction

In this blog post, I’m going to present to you the Ultimate Guide & Resource on How To Write The Perfect Blog Post.

Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) has evolved and become extremely sophisticated and if you wish to rank high in the Search Engine Results Page (SERP’s), you need to have a stellar content writing strategy in place.

Let me begin by asking you this question…

How many times has this happened to you that you searched for a query on Google and in the very 1st few results itself, you got your answer?

This happens to me almost every single time.

Google’s Search Engine Algorithms keep evolving and getting more & more sophisticated.

That’s why ranking high on keywords important to you and your business has become mission-critical.

Would you like to know how to write a good blog post that makes an impact and helps you build authority & trust for your brand in the market?

There’s a method and a structured process for writing a good blog post.

Let’s figure out exactly how to do that in this article!

11 Simple Steps To Writing The Perfect Blog Post:

1. Keep Your Audience In Mind

Before you even begin the writing process, you must put yourself in the shoes of your ideal target audience.

Your target audience should always take the center stage in your Content Marketing Strategy.

Ask yourself the following questions:

What does your audience really want to know on the topic? (Searchers Intent)
How can you uniquely best solve the problem of your audience?
What other closely related supporting material would they be interested in?

Find great topic ideas your audience would be interested in using the following Topic / Content Discovery Tools:

2. Research Your Topic Well

The next step is to research your topic thoroughly.

If you’re an authority and possess sufficient expertise in your niche, it will go a long way in helping you research your blog post topic.

Open an incognito window in your browser and use the most probable search query that your audience would enter in Google to find information on the topic you wish to write.

Find out which blog posts are ranking in the top 10 results, click on them, study & research them properly.

This will give you a good idea of the kind of content that is relevant for the keyword you’re targeting for.

blog research – perfect blog post — Blog Research – perfect blog post

To find great compelling topics you can write on, you can also make use of Keyword / Content Research Tools such as:

Additionally, you can also make use of On-Page SEO Content Tools such as:

3. Write A Powerful Attention-Grabbing Headline

The headline of your blog post often creates the 1st impression, so make sure that it is a good one!

blog post headlines – perfect blog post — Blog Post Headlines – perfect blog post

Here are a few essential characteristics of Powerful Attention-Grabbing Headlines:

It should be short & simple
It should be attention-grabbing & intriguing
It should evoke an emotion or create an element of curiosity
It can be Keyword-Rich but NOT Keyword-Stuffed
It should not be misleading (Refrain from click-bait)
It can contain a number – viz. 7 Blogging Mistakes To Avoid As A Beginner! etc
Use Power Words in your headline [ See Example Below… ]

Here are a few of my favourite free tools and resources that you can use to come up with your own powerful headlines/working titles:

Power TIP: Create a Swipe File of powerful attention-grabbing headlines & headline templates you come across online. Use them as a reference for writing your own blog post headlines!

4. Eye-Popping Featured Image

Create an eye-popping featured image for your blog that solidifies & supplements your powerful attention-grabbing headline!

The objective of your headline is to grab your readers attention and make them want to click on your blog link.

On the other hand, the objective of your blog’s featured image is to generate enough interest in your reader so that they feel the desire to at least skim/scan through your blog post to ascertain whether or not it is worth their time to read it fully.

blog post images – perfect blog post — Blog Post Images – perfect blog post

Here are a few essential characteristics of Eye-Popping Featured Images:

It should look simple, clean and professional
The design should be attractive & eye-catching
You must make use of your brand colours, typography & brand design elements
It must look cohesive and help in quick brand recall
It should clearly communicate what the blog post is all about

Here are a few powerful graphic designing tools that you can use to quickly design your blog’s featured images:

Power TIP: Create / Design your own custom branded blog featured image templates. You can use these templates to quickly create your new blog’s featured image and save a lot of time as well!

If you’re someone who isn’t good at graphic design, you can buy premium readymade templates for all your designing needs on sites such as Etsy & Creative Market.

5. Simple & Easy To Read Blog Post Structure:

When you write your blog post, make sure that the structure of your blog post is simple and easy to read.

Blog Post Structure – Example:

Introduction

You must start your blog post with a compelling & strong enough reason for your reader to keep reading the article.

If you happen to make a promise to your reader to solve a particular problem, make sure you make good on the promise in the blog post itself.

Main Body

The main body refers to the meat of your content. Make sure that it is full of meaty content and contains no fluff.

Get straight to the point, address the topic or the problem with the help of examples/case studies, real-life experiences etc.

Conclusion & Call-To-Action (CTA)

Sum up your entire article in a few short points to make it easy for the reader.

You must leave the reader with a lot of takeaways!

In addition to the conclusion, you can also have ‘next steps’ or ‘content upgrades’ or a ‘CTA’ in this section for the reader to delve even deeper if they enjoyed reading your blog post.

You can even point them to other related blog posts that they might find useful for additional reading on the topic.

blog post structure – perfect blog post — Blog Post Structure – perfect blog post

Here are a few essential characteristics of an Effective Blog Post Structure:

Simple and easy to understand
Use of Conversational style in English (Write in a way you would speak to avoid the use of complex grammar structures)
Do not write to impress but to be understood & be of value. Write to engage and inform.
Use a Table of Contents for easier navigation
Use short paragraphs and format the text with the appropriate use of bold, italics, numbered/bulleted lists to highlight important words/sentences in your article
Use relevant quotes/tweets wherever appropriate and applicable
Try to keep the width of your blog write-up narrow for ease of reading
The structure should have enough white space to make it more scannable & skimmable
The article should be Keyword & Semantic Rich NOT Keyword Stuffed
It should be well organised & have a logical content flow
Ensure the accuracy of your blog content and verify that the information presented is 100% factual
Focus on the quality & depth of content, not quantity!
Focus on improving the user experience. (Make it easy for the reader)
The content should help establish your expertise, authority & trustworthiness
Check for Grammatical & Spelling Errors
Do a plagiarism check (To ensure that there’s no duplicate content)
Do a readability test of your written content (To ensure that it is easy to understand)
Proof-Read your blog post before publishing
Based on the focus keyword of the article, create your ideal post title & meta description

Here are a few blog writing & proofing tools that you can use to ensure that your article is simple, easy & effective:

Grammarly – For checking grammar, spellings and plagiarism
Hemingway App – For Improving Readability
Flesch-Kincaid Readability Test Tool
RankMath SEO Plugin for WordPress – For Effective SEO
Yoast SEO Plugin for WordPress – For Effective SEO

Power TIP: Create your very own Blog Post Templates for various types of articles and use them as guidelines & prompts for creating your new articles & blog posts.

6. Ideal Length & Depth of Content For Perfect Blog Post:

Another common question that a lot of you might have is what should be the ideal length of a great blog post?

How long should your blog post be?

Although there is no correct answer set in stone when it comes to the ideal length of your article, here are a few pointers that will help address this concern:

What is the average blog post length of the Top 5 ranked blog posts for your search query?
Long-Form Content (between 2000 – 3000 words), that covers the topic with relevant, in-depth and accurate information will always get brownie points

ideal blog post length – perfect blog post — Ideal Blog Post Length – perfect blog post

One of the biggest misconceptions new writers and bloggers have, when it comes to the ideal length of your blog post is, they think their article must be the most comprehensive article on the topic.

Nothing could be further from the truth.

If the top-ranked article is let’s say for example 3000 words, if you write a blog post having 3500 or more words, it is NOT going to guarantee a number 1 spot to you.

If this were true, everyone would simply write a more comprehensive article and be assured of a top rank on Google for their chosen keyword.

Here’s what you must keep in mind when it comes to ranking in the SERP’s:

The perfect blog post in the eyes of Google is the one that best answers the searchers intent in the most complete, concise and engaging manner.

So if the top-ranked post on Google is currently a 3000-word article and you’re able to provide much better content in just 2000 words that best answers the searchers intent in the most complete, concise and engaging manner, your content will get the attention it deserves!

Will it rank on top?

No one can guarantee that!

But you’re giving yourself the best chance to rank if you follow the above guidelines.

7. Attractive, Data-Driven Visual Images, Graphics, Videos & Multimedia

We’re living in the age of visual culture.

The use of attractive visual imagery and multimedia is a must if you plan on writing an epic blog post.

A recent study observed that articles with images have 90% additional views than those that don’t!

Another study observed that articles with 7 relevant images or more tend to be shared 3 times more than those that don’t.

blog post visuals – perfect blog post — Blog Post Visuals – perfect blog post

Here are a few essential characteristics of Top-Notch Visual Imagery & Multimedia:

Adding data-driven tall infographics actually play a vital role in helping your article get a lot more social shares.
Images, especially infographics help skim, scan and understand the content a lot better & faster.
When you add images, make sure you compress & optimise your images so that they load quickly on the page.
Make sure you optimise your images for SEO.
Make sure you add the image alt text, title, description and caption to ensure proper SEO for all your images.
This will help Google, Bing & other search engines to know and better understand the kind of images you have included in your article.
Videos have gained crazy popularity in the past 2-3 years! If you embed a YouTube video on your blog, it will help you drastically improve your average time on page & reduce the bounce rate because people love watching videos!
If you’re into podcasting, you can embed your podcast and that will also help improve your average time on page & reduce the bounce rate.
In addition to videos & podcasts, you also can embed other rich multimedia files such as PDF Documents, Slideshare Presentations, Swipe-Files, Templates, Mind-Maps, Cheat-Sheets, etc to add even more value to the article.
Try showcasing illustrations, examples & case-studies as much as possible through visual imagery & multimedia

Power TIP: Create custom blog image graphic templates that can help you batch produce high quality branded content at scale!

8. Social Shares & Social Signals

If you write a great blog article, people will naturally want to share it with others.

When people like an article, they are much more likely to like, share, comment & engage with your content and this is a good thing.

Social signals, refer to a web page’s collective likes, shares and overall social media visibility as perceived by search engines.

blog post social sharing – perfect blog post — Blog Post Social Sharing – perfect blog post

It is solely your responsibility to make it easy for your readers to share, like, comment and engage with you and your content.

Install a social sharing plugin that makes this a breeze for you and your readers!

After using & experimenting with a lot of social sharing plugins, I finally found the Best Social Sharing WordPress Plugin!

Social Pug is the perfect balance between features, functionality, simplicity & lightweight code that doesn’t really reduce the page loading speed by much.

I use the Premium version of the Social Pug Plugin on my site, but even their free plugin is good if you’re just getting started.

Social Sharing is an exercise in positive reinforcement! The more your article gathers social proof, the more it gets shared, and the more it goes viral!

9. Internal & External Linking – Link Clusters / Topic Clusters

A perfect blog post will always have quality links that point to useful and related articles on your website and other external sites!

It will contain links to other useful articles, tools and resources that are related to the topic of your article whether on your own blog or other peoples blog or website.

blog post inter-linking strategy – perfect blog post — Blog Post Inter-Linking Strategy – perfect blog post

Let’s take the example of this blog post.

I have included a compilation of all the best-in-class tools & resources that point to external sites.

I have also carefully compiled a curated list of other extremely relevant, useful and related articles at the end of this blog post.

The idea is – Don’t just link to a resource just for the sake of it.

Whenever you add any links to your article, make sure that every single link is a quality link.

10. Effective Lead Generation Strategy

Lead generation is the lifeblood of every single online business.

When you start creating epic content that focuses purely on delivering sheer value and quality, you will soon start attracting a lot of targeted quality traffic.

When people happen to find you online, if you do not convert those targeted visitors into leads, all that traffic will get completely wasted.

It is often said that, on average, it takes approximately 7 touch-points before a brand new visitor becomes a customer.

The only way you can keep in touch with your website visitors is if they become leads and share their contact information with you.

When you create stellar content, you will over time, gain the trust of your website visitors to engage with you at a much deeper level.

Your blog is the best vehicle with which you can build a strong relationship with your target audience.

That’s why a perfect blog post must always factor in an effective Lead Generation Strategy.

lead generation strategy – perfect blog post — Lead Generation Strategy – perfect blog post

Here’s How You Can Create An Effective Lead Generation Strategy:

Have an extremely valuable & relevant freebie/lead magnet/content upgrade that your visitor can get access to for free in return of their name & e-mail address
The free lead magnet/content upgrade will help you engage and communicate with your audience at a much deeper level
You can even provide for multiple freebies in your blog post as long as they are relevant and related to the topic of the article.
Sprinkle the lead magnets across your content throughout the article at strategic locations where your audience would be most likely interested in opting in to engage even more deeply with you & your content.
The images and visual imagery you design to represent your freebie should look professional, attractive and desirable
Excessive use of Pop-ups can severely impact the user experience negatively and is often annoying and obtrusive
Try avoiding or minimise the excessive use of pop-ups to collect leads. At best, use pop-ups smartly.

An effective lead-gen strategy will ensure the best return on investment (ROI) for your Content Marketing efforts!

It will provide for an optimal content escalation path throughout the customer’s journey in your Product’s Sales & Marketing Funnel.

When you have an effective lead generation strategy in place, the sales of your products/services go on auto-pilot.

Your audience already knows, likes and trusts you because of the value your content provides and therefore selling becomes easy and less-frictional.

11. Effective Post-Publishing Promotional Strategy

The above 10 steps outline how to write an ideal blog post.

But if you really want your articles to get the maximum possible leverage, you ought to have an effective post-publishing strategy in place.

post publishing strategy – perfect blog post — Post Publishing Strategy – perfect blog post

Here’s How You Can Create An Effective Post-Publishing Strategy:

Share your blog post with your email list
Share your article on Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Pinterest and other Social Media Platforms
Promote your article on sites such as Quora & Reddit (Do NOT SPAM. Share only on relevant groups and communities that are related to your topic.)
When people engage with your blog article via comments, make sure you reply & and deliver value to your readers even in the comments section.
Re-purpose your written content into a video and upload it natively on YouTube, Facebook & Instagram etc.
Re-purpose your article into audio/podcast and use services such as BuzzSprout to host and distribute your audio to various podcasting services & directories.
Don’t just keep churning out new blog content. Revise, refresh & recycle your old blog posts with fresh relevant content from time to time – Redwood Strategy!
When an article goes viral, try to create similar supporting content and link to and from those articles to your main article.
Follow the Hub and Spoke Content Marketing Strategy – The spokes are supporting pieces of content that provide additional information on the topic and also drive readers to the hub page.
To further boost your traffic and rankings, you can perform legit link-building and email outreach activities

Related Blog Posts You Will Find Useful:

If you found this blog useful, you might want to save THIS PIN below to your Blogging Tips Pinterest Board & check the post later when new updates are published!

perfect blog post template – perfect blog post

Before you go, don’t forget to download my FREE PERFECT BLOG POST CREATION CHECKLIST to use it as a template before you publish your articles!

Now that you have the perfect recipe for creating amazing content, l would love to hear from you as to how you’re going to use the above checklist and publish content on your blog.

Is there anything I have missed out on? I would love to hear from you in the comments section below…

How To Write The Perfect Blog Post [ 11 Step Ultimate Guide ]

Introduction