Have you ever wondered why business owners run a blog on their website?
Blogging offers so many benefits! Operating a business online makes it even more crucial to build an online presence, and launching a blog is a valuable way to achieve this.
If you pitch your blog just right, you should be able to gain some, if not all, of the following ten benefits for your business:
- Increase page views for your business website
- Grow your online presence (including social media)
- Improve your website’s Google ranking position
- Attract new customers to your business
- Engage existing customers
- Boost conversion rates
- Build your reputation as an expert in your niche
- Boost awareness of your business
- Encourage more subscribers
- Differentiate your business from its competitors
Blogging provides your business with an excellent opportunity and the chance to gain the benefits mentioned above. But before you can see these proven results, you first need to start populating your blog with content.
Launching yourself into the world of blogging can be daunting. Writing your first blog post can be challenging. You may feel unsure about what to write, how to format your blog posts and terrified at the prospect of tackling search engine optimisation. Here, we will explain everything you need to know about writing your first blog post. We will show how to lay the foundations of blogging success so you can enjoy the many benefits a business blog can bring to your company.
Starting Your Business Blog
This step-by-step guide will take you through every step needed to create perfect posts for your new blog:
Define Your Target Audience
One common mistake made by business bloggers is to write posts without keeping their target audience in mind. Before you write any posts, it is a wise idea to think carefully about your target audience. This will help you to consider the type of content they would find helpful and add value to time spent on your website.
Choose a Subject
Choosing subjects to write about requires careful consideration. If your posts are irrelevant to your target audience or your business, you risk losing website traffic. Once you have established your target audience, viewing your blog from their perspective is helpful. What type of content would they find useful? What sort of subjects would they expect to be written about on your blog? Asking these questions is crucial, as writing about relevant subjects will add value to your blog for your business and readers.
Check out the subject ideas below to get some inspiration for your blog:
Example blog post subjects for virtual assistants
- Top Time Management Tips for Busy Entrepreneurs
- How to Choose the Best Virtual Assistant for Your Business
- Five Reasons Your Business Needs a Virtual Assistant
Example blog post subjects for social media managers
- 10 Ways to Boost Your Organic Reach
- How to Use Hashtags Effectively
- 8 Ways to Increase Your Instagram Followers
Example blog post ideas for life coaches
- How to Procrastinate Less and Live More
- Five Ways to Identify Your Barriers to Success
- How to Live Mindfully Every Day
Carry Out Keyword Research
Once you have decided on a subject to write about, it is time to identify your keywords. Keywords are crucial in optimising your content and ensuring your target audience finds your blog. Once your keywords have been identified, you will need to incorporate them into your blog post. But, choosing just any keywords that are relevant to your blog is not enough. To be effective, your choice of keywords needs to be specific enough to ensure that your blog does not get lost.
Finding relevant long-tail keywords and using them in your content is one of the best ways to use keywords to enhance your blog’s presence on the search engine results pages (SERPs). Long-tail keywords are more detailed and specific, meaning they appear less frequently in searches. However, as they are so specific, they are more likely to result in a conversion. Using specific search terms suggests that the user is motivated and focused on what they are looking for online. Therefore, it is more likely they will visit your site and potentially become a customer.
Carrying out keyword research is vital for several reasons; here is what using the best keywords can help you to achieve:
- Keyword research will help you identify the content people are looking for right now within your niche and spot trends.
- Keyword research insights can be used beyond your first blog post. Your keyword research will help you to write a content plan for your future blog posts.
- Carrying out keyword research will help you to ensure that your content is effectively targeting your audience. Targeting your audience with keywords in your blog content will increase the chances of attracting new customers.
- Choosing the wrong keywords or keywords that are too generic will not benefit your blog post. So, researching keywords and using the best methods for your research is essential.
How to conduct keyword research
Knowing where to start your keyword research can be tricky, but it is vital to get your research right. There are a few main ways to carry out keyword research:
- You may want to choose your keywords based on your current website traffic. You can use your site’s analytics to examine organic traffic and see the keywords that bring people to your site.
- Using a tool such as Google Trends will help you identify the keywords people are searching for right now. Using the tool will provide you with keywords that are most popular and relevant to the search term you enter.
- SEO tools and keyword generators are additional ways to find relevant keywords to incorporate into your content. Many different tools are available that perform this function, including MOZ, Ahrefs, and Google Keyword Planner.
You can find out more about keyword research and how to choose the best keywords for your content in this video from SEMrush:
Keywords are crucial for blog writing and play a pivotal role in getting your blog to rank well on search. However, when you are writing, it is important that you do not go overboard with your use of keywords. This is called ‘keyword stuffing’ and may be penalised by Google, impacting your blog’s performance.
Write Engaging Content
Ensuring your content is engaging is vital if you want people to read it. So, figuring out how to go about making your blog content engaging is a must. Thinking about your target audience is crucial when trying to write engaging content for your blog. This is because your target audience will determine the tone of voice and level of detail you include in your blog posts.
Pitching your posts perfectly is crucial when writing a blog. Writing posts that are too technical may have site visitors hitting the back button, so this is a factor worth remembering when you start writing. Likewise, if your content does not appear to be original and is not informative, you are unlikely to see much benefit from your blog.
Maximising the potential benefits of each blog post is a great way to ensure that your efforts pay off. To do this, it is helpful to write evergreen content. Writing evergreen content means you do not need to worry about its relevancy. Evergreen content can be left to continue generating traffic with little effort required from you. There may be times when you need to write a blog in response to a recent event or address a specific issue that is relevant to the present time. However, making the majority of your content evergreen is a valuable long-term strategy for populating your blog.
Don’t forget to add social media buttons to your blog post so that your engaging content can be easily shared by readers.
Optimise Your Content
Writing high-quality, engaging content which contains relevant long-tail keywords is vital and will help your blog to rank on SERPs. However, it is vital to go a step further to give your blog the best chance of being found by your target audience. Turning your attention to SEO and optimising your website for search is vital to get it noticed.
Use Header Tags
Headings not only help to break up your text and make it easier to read, but they also optimise your content. Incorporating header tags into your content is essential to ensure that your blog post is optimised. This is because they make it easier for search engines to identify what your text is about and its relevancy so that it can be ranked accordingly. Here is how you can use header tags in your text:
- H1 tag – H1 should only be used once in your blog, and this will usually be for the title of the post. This header should include your main keyword phrase.
- H2 tag – The H2 tag can be used for sub-headings throughout the text.
- H3, H4, H5 tags – H3, H4, and sometimes H5 tags are used to create further subsections following an H2 sub-heading. Using the H3 tag is particularly useful for breaking up bodies of text to improve readability and clarity.
Proofread Before Publishing
It is essential to focus on creating the most engaging content for your blog and then optimising it to ensure that it ranks well. But delivering high-quality content is about more than making it interesting and working on SEO. Proofreading your content is vital to ensure that your blog posts appear professional. If one of your aims for your blog is to establish yourself as an expert in your field, you must ensure that your content is thoroughly proofread. Keeping your content free from mistakes is vital for it to be taken seriously and to protect the integrity of your brand.
So, before you hit publish, running a spelling and grammar checker is vital and will ensure that your work creates the right impression.
Select the Best Images
While creating the right content is vital, adding images is important too. Images enhance your writing and will make your blog post look more appealing. However, any photos you use need to be high-resolution and not so large that they slow down your page loading times. You may choose to upload your own images or to use stock images. Just be aware that you will need to ensure the images are royalty-free before you use them and are available for your use.
Link to Relevant Content
Adding links to your blog content offers a couple of significant benefits. Firstly, linking to relevant external URLs can help to improve your SEO. Choosing authoritative websites that are respected and linking to relevant content on these sites is the best way to benefit from external links. Doing this also adds extra value to your content, as it helps to signpost readers to further relevant information.
Secondly, it is helpful to link to relevant content on your own website. Adding internal links helps to keep users moving around your website. In turn, this encourages readers to engage further with your content. This increases your page views, and visitors will likely convert into subscribers or customers if they like what they see.
In Conclusion
As you can see, there are many different elements that come together when writing your first blog posts for your business. Ensuring you give each aspect of blog writing the focus it deserves is the first step toward success. Here is a quick recap of the steps you need to follow when creating your first blog post:
- Identify your target audience – who is going to read your blog? Who does it need to appeal to?
- Choose a subject for your blog – make it appealing and relevant to your target audience.
- Research keywords – incorporate relevant keywords naturally within your content.
- Write engaging content – ensure your content adds value to your website and your reader’s experience.
- Optimise your content – incorporate heading tags correctly.
- Proofread – check for spelling errors and grammar mistakes.
- Add images – enhance your content with high-resolution images.
- Include links – add both inbound and outbound links to build authority.
Happy Blogging!