Creating helpful, reliable, people-first content

Google’s automated ranking systems are designed to present helpful, reliable information that’s primarily created to benefit people, not to gain search engine rankings, in the top Search results. This page is designed to help creators evaluate if they’re producing such content.

Self-assess your content

Evaluating your own content against these questions can help you gauge if the content you’re making is helpful and reliable. Beyond asking yourself these questions, consider having others you trust but who are unaffiliated with your site provide an honest assessment.

Also consider an audit of the drops you may have experienced. What pages were most impacted and for what types of searches? Look closely at these to understand how they’re assessed against some of the questions outlined here.

Content and quality questions

  • Does the content provide original information, reporting, research, or analysis?
  • Does the content provide a substantial, complete, or comprehensive description of the topic?
  • Does the content provide insightful analysis or interesting information that is beyond the obvious?
  • If the content draws on other sources, does it avoid simply copying or rewriting those sources, and instead provide substantial additional value and originality?
  • Does the main heading or page title provide a descriptive, helpful summary of the content?
  • Does the main heading or page title avoid exaggerating or being shocking in nature?
  • Is this the sort of page you’d want to bookmark, share with a friend, or recommend?
  • Would you expect to see this content in or referenced by a printed magazine, encyclopedia, or book?
  • Does the content provide substantial value when compared to other pages in search results?
  • Does the content have any spelling or stylistic issues?
  • Is the content produced well, or does it appear sloppy or hastily produced?
  • Is the content mass-produced by or outsourced to a large number of creators, or spread across a large network of sites, so that individual pages or sites don’t get as much attention or care?

Expertise questions

  • Does the content present information in a way that makes you want to trust it, such as clear sourcing, evidence of the expertise involved, background about the author or the site that publishes it, such as through links to an author page or a site’s About page?
  • If someone researched the site producing the content, would they come away with an impression that it is well-trusted or widely-recognized as an authority on its topic?
  • Is this content written or reviewed by an expert or enthusiast who demonstrably knows the topic well?
  • Does the content have any easily-verified factual errors?

Provide a great page experience 

Google’s core ranking systems look to reward content that provides a good page experience. Site owners seeking to be successful with our systems should not focus on only one or two aspects of page experience. Instead, check if you’re providing an overall great page experience across many aspects. For more advice, see our page, Understanding page experience in Google Search results.

Focus on people-first content

People-first content means content that’s created primarily for people, and not to manipulate search engine rankings. How can you evaluate if you’re creating people-first content? Answering yes to the questions below means you’re probably on the right track with a people-first approach:

  • Do you have an existing or intended audience for your business or site that would find the content useful if they came directly to you?
  • Does your content clearly demonstrate first-hand expertise and a depth of knowledge (for example, expertise that comes from having actually used a product or service, or visiting a place)?
  • Does your site have a primary purpose or focus?
  • After reading your content, will someone leave feeling they’ve learned enough about a topic to help achieve their goal?
  • Will someone reading your content leave feeling like they’ve had a satisfying experience?

Avoid creating search engine-first content

We recommend that you focus on creating people-first content to be successful with Google Search, rather than search engine-first content made primarily to gain search engine rankings. Answering yes to some or all of the questions below is a warning sign that you should reevaluate how you’re creating content:

  • Is the content primarily made to attract visits from search engines?
  • Are you producing lots of content on many different topics in hopes that some of it might perform well in search results?
  • Are you using extensive automation to produce content on many topics?
  • Are you mainly summarizing what others have to say without adding much value?
  • Are you writing about things simply because they seem trending and not because you’d write about them otherwise for your existing audience?
  • Does your content leave readers feeling like they need to search again to get better information from other sources?
  • Are you writing to a particular word count because you’ve heard or read that Google has a preferred word count? (No, we don’t.)
  • Did you decide to enter some niche topic area without any real expertise, but instead mainly because you thought you’d get search traffic?
  • Does your content promise to answer a question that actually has no answer, such as suggesting there’s a release date for a product, movie, or TV show when one isn’t confirmed?
  • Are you changing the date of pages to make them seem fresh when the content has not substantially changed?
  • Are you adding a lot of new content or removing a lot of older content primarily because you believe it will help your search rankings overall by somehow making your site seem “fresh?” (No, it won’t)

What about SEO? Isn’t that search engine-first?

There are some things you could do that are specifically meant to help search engines better discover and understand your content. Collectively, this is called “search engine optimization” or SEO, for short. Google’s own SEO guide covers best practices to consider. SEO can be a helpful activity when it is applied to people-first content, rather than search engine-first content.

Get to know E-E-A-T and the quality rater guidelines

Google’s automated systems are designed to use many different factors to rank great content. After identifying relevant content, our systems aim to prioritize those that seem most helpful. To do this, they identify a mix of factors that can help determine which content demonstrates aspects of experience, expertise, authoritativeness, and trustworthiness, or what we call E-E-A-T.

Of these aspects, trust is most important. The others contribute to trust, but content doesn’t necessarily have to demonstrate all of them. For example, some content might be helpful based on the experience it demonstrates, while other content might be helpful because of the expertise it shares.

While E-E-A-T itself isn’t a specific ranking factor, using a mix of factors that can identify content with good E-E-A-T is useful. For example, our systems give even more weight to content that aligns with strong E-E-A-T for topics that could significantly impact the health, financial stability, or safety of people, or the welfare or well-being of society. We call these “Your Money or Your Life” topics, or YMYL for short.

Search quality raters are people who give us insights on if our algorithms seem to be providing good results, a way to help confirm our changes are working well. In particular, raters are trained to understand if content has strong E-E-A-T. The criteria they use to do this is outlined in our search quality rater guidelines.

Search raters have no control over how pages rank. Rater data is not used directly in our ranking algorithms. Rather, we use them as a restaurant might get feedback cards from diners. The feedback helps us know if our systems seem to be working.

Reading the guidelines may help you self-assess how your content is doing from an E-E-A-T perspective, improvements to consider, and help align it conceptually with the different signals that our automated systems use to rank content.

Ask “Who, How, and Why” about your content

Consider evaluating your content in terms of “Who, How, and Why” as a way to stay on course with what our systems seek to reward.

Who (created the content)

Something that helps people intuitively understand the E-E-A-T of content is when it’s clear who created it. That’s the “Who” to consider. When creating content, here are some who-related questions to ask yourself:

  • Is it self-evident to your visitors who authored your content?
  • Do pages carry a byline, where one might be expected?
  • Do bylines lead to further information about the author or authors involved, giving background about them and the areas they write about?

If you’re clearly indicating who created the content, you’re likely aligned with the concepts of E-E-A-T and on a path to success. We strongly encourage adding accurate authorship information, such as bylines to content where readers might expect it.

How (the content was created)

It’s helpful to readers to know how a piece of content was produced: this is the “How” to consider including in your content.

For example, with product reviews, it can build trust with readers when they understand the number of products that were tested, what the test results were, and how the tests were conducted, all accompanied by evidence of the work involved, such as photographs. It’s advice we share more about in our Write high quality product reviews help page.

Many types of content may have a “How” component to them. That can include automated, AI-generated, and AI-assisted content. Sharing details about the processes involved can help readers and visitors better understand any unique and useful role automation may have served.

If automation is used to substantially generate content, here are some questions to ask yourself:

  • Is the use of automation, including AI-generation, self-evident to visitors through disclosures or in other ways?
  • Are you providing background about how automation or AI-generation was used to create content?
  • Are you explaining why automation or AI was seen as useful to produce content?

Overall, AI or automation disclosures are useful for content where someone might think “How was this created?” Consider adding these when it would be reasonably expected. For more, see our blog post and FAQ: How Google Search views AI-generated content.

Why (was the content created)

“Why” is perhaps the most important question to answer about your content. Why is it being created in the first place?

The “why” should be that you’re creating content primarily to help people, content that is useful to visitors if they come to your site directly. If you’re doing this, you’re aligning with E-E-A-T generally and what our core ranking systems seek to reward.

If the “why” is that you’re primarily making content to attract search engine visits, that’s not aligned with what our systems seek to reward. If you use automation, including AI-generation, to produce content for the primary purpose of manipulating search rankings, that’s a violation of our spam policies.

Info via: https://developers.google.com/search/docs/fundamentals/creating-helpful-content

Online Business Ideas

27 Online Business Ideas for Beginners

NICK SCHÄFERHOFF

Editor in ChiefLast updated: Dec 20, 202163 Comments

Idea

Will 2022 be the year you will finally create a profitable online business?

You’ve thought about it every year. You’ve gone over countless online business ideas in your head and imagined what your life would be like if you could quit your job and generate money on the internet.

You could travel the world with ease, create a comfortable lifestyle for yourself and your family, and achieve financial freedom. You could finally escape the constraints of the 9-5 lifestyle and own your time completely.

But then, what happens? Usually, you spend some time considering the ideas but ultimately resort back to your comfort zone.

The steady income of your secure job, the ease of having somebody else tell you what to do every day (instead of trying to figure it out from scratch), and the consistent schedule.

You tell yourself, “You know what? This year is a little too crazy. I’ll start that online business next year!”

But “next year” never comes.

We’re here to tell you that 2022 is the year you should start your online business. There’s more opportunity than ever, and you should take advantage!

To help you get started, We’re going to lay out 27 online business ideas. Read through them, see which you connect with, and start doing your research. Then get started with one, it’s that simple!

27 “Easy to Start” Online Business Ideas

Here is our list of 27 online business ideas for 2022.

1. Start a Blog and Monetize it

We talk a lot about how to start a blog on this website, and for good reason.

In 2022, it’s easier to start a blog than ever before, and your blog can also be a big potential source of income (if you know how to monetize it).

Keep in mind that you don’t just start a blog and expect the money to roll in. You need to create content consistently, and it also needs to be content that educates, informs, or entertains people. In other words, it needs to capture their interest in some way.

What’s more, you need to sell something through the blog. This can be ad space, products, digital products, sponsored posts, coaching, ebooks, etc.

But if you’re willing to put in the work and you’re in it for the long haul, blogging can be extremely profitable (some bloggers make $50k per month or more).Here are some resourcesto help you get started with your first blog:

2. Get Started With Affiliate Marketing

Learn affiliate marketing

Affiliate marketing is basically the process of earning a commission by promoting somebody else’s product.

There are two main ways most people do affiliate marketing:

  • Information products. You promote products like ebooks, membership sites, video series, etc. This type of affiliate marketing can earn you up to 50% or more in commission, has relatively low barriers to entry, and it’s easy to find products to promote.
  • Amazon partners. Many affiliate marketers have success with Amazon. There are literally millions of products to choose from, and it can be quite profitable. For more information, you can check out the Amazon Associates Program.

Quick side note: Before you start affiliate marketing, it helps to have at least a basic knowledge of SEO and copywriting (more on each of these later).

That being said, you can read a few copywriting books and look through the beginner’s guide to SEO from Moz to help you get started.Further reading:

3. Set Up an E-Commerce Site

One of the best ways to earn online income is by setting up an e-commerce store.

Here’s the plus side: if you try to go the route of affiliate marketing, the best affiliate marketers are focused on 3 main niches; dating, weight loss, and making money online. You would have to compete with the best of the best, and it’s not easy.

With the e-commerce route, in many markets, you’ll be competing against old-school business people who may or may not have any internet marketing experience. Many of them have glitchy, out-of-date websites, which leaves you a lot of room for improvement, and you can capitalize on their shortcomings.

It’s still not easy by any means. It requires hard work, and you need to stand out amongst the hundreds of thousands of e-commerce websites and online stores. But by filling a unique niche and executing the right marketing techniques, you can make your e-commerce store a profitable success.

Here are some tips to help you get started with your e-commerce store:

  • Find a profitable market. Brainstorm some ideas, do keyword research, and try to get as specific as possible. For example, there is probably a lot of competition for selling surfboards. But if you narrow it down to surfboard racks, you may have a better chance of standing out in the market.
  • Ask yourself, “Is the product expensive?” There are costs associated with manufacturing, distribution, reselling, etc. If your product isn’t expensive (at least $50 or more), there may be no profit left by the time you sell the product.
  • Ask yourself, “Is the product in a growth market?” If your market has already passed its peak (i.e., the VCR market) and is on the downslope, you probably don’t want to get involved. Instead, you want to get into an industry that’s on the upswing – that’s where you’ll have the most profit and growth potential.
  • Consider building a Shopify store. Shopify is a system built for e-commerce. With some basic web knowledge, you can set up a good-looking store very quickly, with a low-cost investment and with no coding needed. Shopify has a 30-day free trial too, so you can get started without spending a dime.

Here are some additional resources for creating a successful online store:

4. Self-Publish a Book on Amazon

Publish a book on amazon

Have you ever thought of writing a book, but didn’t know where to get started? All the publishing nonsense, editing, and formatting, marketing, etc.?

With Amazon, you can self-publish a book fairly easily, and really make money from it. There are some simple and inexpensive guides to help you write your book AND have it generate consistent income.

Here’s the secret sauce: If you can launch your book and get a few hundred sales in the first week, Amazon will take over and start promoting it for you. This way you can make some real money from it. It’s actually easier than it sounds, but we’ll get to that in a minute.

Here are a few tips for writing a book:

  • Validate the book by giving a survey to friends, an email list, and/or survey sites like PickFu. By validating your idea before you write the book, you’ll improve the odds of people willing to buy your book (and you’re not wasting your time by writing it.)
  • Create an outline and stick to it if possible.
  • Set aside at least 30 minutes to an hour each day to write.
  • Format the book according to Amazon’s standards.

Once the book is written and formatted, you can head over to KDP.amazon.com. Log in with your Amazon account, then under “Create a New Title”, select “Kindle eBook.”

Here’s a good strategy for your book’s launch week (to get 100+ sales):

  1. Set the price at 99 cents for the first week.
  2. Run a 99 cent promotion with sites like Buck Books and Robin Reads.
  3. Post a book excerpt on a relevant subreddit and link it to your book page at the end.
  4. Post 1-2 guest posts during the launch week that link back to your book page.
  5. Blast your email list multiple times.
  6. By the end of the week, hopefully, your book has eclipsed the top 5,000 or 10,000 overall paid ranking. From there, raise the price to $2.99, and continue raising the price $1 at a time every few days until it stops selling (then, lower it back by a dollar). This will tell you the optimal price for your book.

(Here’s a case study of a book that used this strategy to launch successfully and consistently bring in $3-$4K a month in profit.)

5. Create a Digital Product or Course

Creating a digital product or course is similar to writing an ebook. You’re monetizing your expertise by teaching it to the others.

That being said, you don’t have the benefit of Amazon promoting your course. You have to do the promoting yourself through your own website, your email lists, and possibly through affiliate partnerships. You also need to create a compelling sales page that will convince visitors to buy from you.

If you don’t already have an audience, it might be better to self-publish on Amazon first. That way, you can validate your course idea, grow your email list (just make sure to have an email opt-in at the front and back of the book), and more or less create a rough draft of the course (since it will probably be similar to the book).Here are some additional resources to help you with an online course creation:

  • TheRiseToTheTop.com – David Siteman Garland’s website that’s helped thousands of entrepreneurs launch profitable online courses.
  • Monetize Your Expertise Podcast – Helpful episodes by online course expert Grant Weherley to help you start your fist online course.

6. Become a YouTuber

Videos are becoming more and more popular. From Instagram and Snapchat Stories to Facebook Live video, videos will only continue to grow. If you’ve always loved the thought of being behind the camera, now is the time you can take advantage.

Whether it be starting a vlog and getting ad revenue/selling products to your audience, or building a YouTube channel to drive more traffic to your website – 2022 is a great time to get started.

Not only will making YouTube videos help you tell better stories and provide more valuable content to your audience – it can also help you get profitable speaking opportunities.

The best part is, you don’t even need to go out and buy an expensive new camera – as long as you have a smartphone with a quality camera lens, you can start filming your first video right now!

7. Start App Development

Mobile apps are getting more and more popular by the year. If you have an idea for a cool, useful, and/or fun app for a phone or a tablet, this may be the way to go.

It helps to have some coding knowledge, but it’s not an absolute necessity. There are plenty of software developers looking to collaborate with people on app creation.

Word of caution: the app market is saturated right now, so make sure you validate your app and do your research before investing lots of money in your idea.Here are some resources to help you in the app development process:

8. Learn Facebook Advertising

Facebook continues to expand and grow. Therefore businesses are spending more on Facebook ads. But here’s the problem: a lot of old school businesses don’t know what they’re doing when it comes to Facebook ads. Even newer companies don’t have the time it takes to learn the ins and outs so that they get the most return on their Facebook ads investment.

Consequently, they’re looking for Facebook ad specialists to step in and do it for them. Luckily, this is something you can learn fairly quickly. Once you do, you can reach out to businesses and offer to help create profitable Facebook ads.Here are some Facebook Ad resources you can learn from:

9. Learn and Master SEO

Search Engine Optimization

SEO (Search Engine Optimization) refers to getting a website to rank higher for certain “search terms” in search engines like Google. When a website ranks higher, it gets more relevant traffic and in turn, can make more revenue.

This is another highly valued skill in the internet marketing world. That being said, it can be a bit difficult because Google is always changing its algorithms. With it, some of the rules of search change. You always have to be on the leading edge, learning, and testing new strategies.

If you can master SEO, companies will always be willing to pay you for your help.

10. Become a Copywriter

Copywriting is the art and science of strategically delivering words (whether written or spoken) that get people to take some form of action. It can range from anything to sales pages, to email marketing, to even quality blog content.

If you have a natural inclination and passion for writing, copywriting may be your ticket to earning online income.

It’s a great way to achieve freedom in your life. Not only does copywriting allow you to work remotely, but it also allows you to control your schedule. Plus, learning the skill itself will help you in many areas of online business (i.e. building a blog, affiliate marketing, etc. – when you can write in a compelling way, all of these become much easier!)

11. Skype Coaching

Do you have an expertise that you’d like to help people with? Then Skype coaching may be a potential option for you. Basically, you hop on Skype and provide assistance to your coaching clients. This can come in the form of daily, weekly, or monthly calls.

There are Skype coaches for just about everything – life coaches, health coaches, dating coaches, etc.

Note: It’s much easier to market your coaching services when you also have a blog on your coaching topic.

12. Buy and Flip Domains

You’ve probably heard of people who buy and “flip” real estate, right? They buy a house for a relatively good price, fix it up a little bit, and then resell it for a nice profit.

It’s the same idea for buying and flipping domains. Whether it’s your own domain, or whether you’re looking to buy somebody else’s site and flip it, this can be a good source of online income.

You can use resources like Empire Flippers to both buy and sell your domains.

13. Start a Podcast

Podcasting

A podcast can be a great revenue generator.

As you grow your podcast, you can offer paid sponsorships and sell your own products and services. Through the podcast, you’ll be able to earn the trust of your listeners, which makes them that much more likely to buy what you have to offer.

14. Dropshipping

Dropshipping is when you create an online store to sell other people’s products (i.e you don’t do any of the manufacturing or shipping). Then, you get a commission for each sale.

The benefit here is that you don’t have to risk buying up stock in a product and losing money if it doesn’t sell. The entry barrier is lower and you don’t have to invest nearly as much to get started.

If you’d like to learn how to dropship, Drop Ship Lifestyle is one of the best resources to help you get started.

15. Freelance Pay Per Click Consulting

(These are PPC ads)

You ever saw those sponsored ads at the top of your Google search results? That’s Pay Per Click (PPC) advertising in action.

It’s a form of internet marketing in which advertisers pay a fee each time one of their ads is clicked. Put simply, it’s a way of buying visits on your site.

If you can master this skill, you can offer the service to other businesses.

16. Sell Products on eBay

Sell on ebay

Sure it’s a bit old school, but people are still making lots of money on eBay. To start selling, you can do something simple like head to a local clothing store and buy some clothing on sale.

Then, you can list it on eBay for a higher price, and if it sells, you can reinvest the profit in more clothing and continue making more profit.

It requires some strategy and planning but is surely a profitable way of online business.

17. Become a Web Developer

A web developer is someone who knows how to build a website from the bottom up. In order to do this, you need to learn coding, which will take time and hard work. But if you’re willing to put in the effort, it can pay quite well.Here are some tips for learning to code and getting started with web development.

18. Invest Your Time in Graphic Design

Ever saw a beautiful sales page or a website design that really jumps out at you? That’s all due to a graphic designer.

Graphic designers are basically visual communicators. They design web pages, sales pages, logos, and really anything else that needs to look sharp.

To be a great graphic designer, you don’t need to be great at drawing, you don’t need a college degree, and you don’t need to buy a fancy expensive computer. But you do need to be a visual thinker, you do need to specialize in something, and you definitely need a portfolio.

19. Build Niche Sites

The idea behind a niche website is to target a specific niche (for example, a specific kind of photography), rank on Google for the keywords related to that niche, and then turn that traffic into earnings through affiliate offers or through selling your own products.

A lot of research goes into this – you should be ready for a bit of workload. If you create a good niche site, it can bring you an extra $500 a month or more.For further reading, check out this post from Sean Ogle:How to Build a Niche Site that Brings in $500 a Month

20. Start a Consulting Business

Do you have tons of knowledge in a specific field? Then you may have what it takes to be a highly paid online consultant.

As a consultant, you simply must apply the knowledge, skills, and experience you have in a specific field to help clients solve a problem or issue they have in that field.For further reading, check out this post from USA Today:How to Become a Highly Paid Consultant

21. Start a Paid Private Facebook Group

A paid private Facebook group provides you with the chance to create a highly engaged community.

It gives you a place to deliver your content, allows your community members to interact with each other, allows you to limit access to qualified members, and also allows you to moderate and control the group.

Note: If you already have a website and an email list, it’s easier to create a paid private Facebook group, but it’s not an absolute necessity.

22. Assist with Lead Generation

Businesses are always on the lookout for ways to create new leads. Leads, after all, are the lifeblood of businesses.

When you assist with lead generation, you basically play the matchmaker. You connect business with the leads for whom they can solve the problems.

23. Instagram Sponsorships

Do you love taking photos and dream of building up a great Instagram following? As you grow your following, more sponsorship opportunities will become available. For example, if your account is focused on fitness, you may be able to sponsor products like protein powder, supplements, etc.

24. Create SaaS (Software as a Service)

SaaS business

Google Apps, Dropbox, Leadpages – these are all SAAS.

SAAS is any kind of online software that you pay to get access to.

For this, you first must brainstorm/find an online service that people are willing to pay for on an ongoing basis. Once you create it, the challenge is to maintain it, which is not an easy task. That being said, it can be quite profitable if you can make it work.

25. Technical Writing

Ever wondered who wrote the instruction manual for that new TV? That’s the job of technical writers.

If you have a love for writing and like the technical side of things, then you may have what it takes to be a technical writer.

Here’s a resource that can help you get started: Starting a Technical Writing Business from Scratch

Here are some sites where you can find work:

26. Resume/Cover Letter Writing

People will always be looking for jobs – they’ll need help with their resumes and cover letters.

That’s where you can come in and help them create a stellar resume to get them hired.

27. Tech Support

With online tech support, you basically offer your skills as a tech whiz. You can work with bigger companies or even one-on-one clients.

Tech support jobs can also regularly be found on Upwork.

How to Start an Online Store

Guide for Creating an Online eCommerce Site

KAROL KROL

Last updated: Dec 20, 20216 Comments

In 2022, starting an online store is easier than ever.

A few decades ago, creating a website wasn’t an easy task, especially for someone who wasn’t tech-savvy and didn’t know how to code. Nowadays, however, anyone with a computer and internet connection can launch an eCommerce business within a matter of minutes, all thanks to modern tools and website builders.

However, you have to decide on a couple of things before setting up your webshop; matters like what you’re going to sell, how to handle shipping and payments, and most importantly what marketing strategies to use.

Follow our step-by-step online store building guide and you learn how to start an eCommerce website quickly from scratch.Table of Contents

  1. Decide what you want to sell
  2. Choose between dropshipping and selling your own products
  3. Pick the exact products to sell
  4. Come up with a business name
  5. Build and set up an online store
  6. Set up payment methods
  7. Market your online store
  8. Conclusion

Ready? Let’s start.

1. Decide What You Want to Sell

The first step that’s an absolute must-do is to pick your niche. As it’s often defined, a niche is a specific piece of a broader market.

Sorry if this sounds a bit too dictionary-like. Let’s break it down into simpler terms. Basically, when picking your niche, you have to decide:

  • What do you want to sell?
  • Who are you going to sell it to?
  • Why would they buy it?

These three questions may seem fairly obvious, but they’re actually far from.

Defining your ideal customer base and figuring out why they would buy from you will make your job much easier later on. The main mistake that people make is going too broadly in the hope that the bigger the potential market is, the more likely they are to get good sales. This is not correct.

If your target customer base is simply “people who breathe” then you’re going to have a hard time positioning your product in the market, promoting it, and explaining what’s so valuable about it.

Overall, focusing on one niche is better than going all over.

It’s best to start in an area that you already have a personal interest in, expert knowledge about, or passion for. It’s really hard to operate in a field that you know nothing about.

So, begin with your interests, navigate from there. Define who your ideal customer is, and what makes them want to buy the products that you want to offer.

A good starting point is to look at what your competition in the niche is doing. See how they position their products, who their customers are. Learn from that and build upon other people’s experiences.

2. Choose Between Dropshipping and Selling Your Own Products

Let’s start from the beginning by explaining two popular eCommerce scenarios:

Scenario no.1 is the traditional way of running an online store. In this model:

  • (1) you get products from the supplier or create them yourself → (2) you offer those products to customers via your website → (3) the customer buys the product → (4) you send the product to them

Here’s the dropshipping model:

  • (1) you start by listing the products on your website → (2) the customer buys the product → (3) the supplier sends the product directly to the customer

The main benefit of the dropshipping model is that you don’t have to hold any inventory yourself. This means that there’s no cost involved in making the products or storing them. In fact, everything you sell is pure profit since you only have to pay the supplier after you receive an order from your customer.

In the traditional model, you have to shell out money upfront to either obtain products from the supplier or get them created. You must do that before you can ever start selling them.

On the other hand, dropshipping won’t be for you if the products you want to sell are of your own production or need to be customized/personalized before they can be sold.

Overall, if you can, opt for dropshipping – and especially if it’s your first attempt to start an online store. Dropshipping is a great way to test the waters and validate that the products you want to sell are indeed something that customers will want to buy. Then, later on, you can expand and start offering your own products as well.

3. Choose the Exact Products to Sell

One of the great things about dropshipping is that there’s an abundance of different products to choose from in nearly every niche.

This is excellent news for businesses that are just getting started and don’t want to invest in their own product development. The overall steps are:

  • Research your niche. Examine what sort of products your competitors are selling, and what their best-selling products are.
  • Go to content sites on the web to find what type of challenges, products, or things in general your target audience reads about.
  • Go to niche-related forums and see what your customers talk about.
  • Search on Google with keywords most relevant to your niche.
  • Go to Amazon and do similar research. See what products sell well.

With all this research, you can now go to some popular markets and start looking for specific products you can sell.

The biggest market of this kind is AliExpress. It’s a regular eCommerce marketplace by most standards, but it also allows you to establish relationships with merchants and offer their products as a dropshipper. Go there and look for products that are in tune with the research you’ve done, and also seem like something interesting-enough for your customer base to enjoy.

Aliexpress

We recommend getting started with between 10-50 products. This will give you more than enough stuff to make your store complete and also not overwhelm you with what’s going on as you work with the store on a daily basis.

When you’re putting together a list of products, keep the following things in mind:

  • Make sure that the product is available for shipping in locations where your target audience is. Also, the lower the shipping costs, the better.
  • Check the shipping times and make sure they don’t exceed what you would consider acceptable (we leave deciding what’s acceptable and what isn’t to your judgment).
  • If possible, avoid brand name products (you don’t want to depend on being able to sell Adidas sneakers, for instance).
  • It’s a common practice for dropshipping stores to set their margins at around the 50% mark. Meaning, when looking for products to sell, focus on the ones that are half the price compared to what you want to sell them for.

As we mentioned earlier, having a list of 10-50 products is suitable for a start. We’ll use that list later on when importing the products to your actual online store.

4. Come Up With a Business Name and Register a Domain Name

Choosing a domain name for your store is undoubtedly the most fun part of the whole endeavor. People love to name things. Especially businesses.

However. The name you end up with can have a lot of significance for your future success and ability to market the business effectively. Here are the things to keep in mind when brainstorming a business name:

  • Pick a Name That’s Easy to Pronounce

Imagine yourself talking to someone over the phone and needing to mention the name of your store. Do you have to spell it out for the other person to understand?

If you do, the name is too complex. Go for something simple and easy to pronounce on the first go.

  • Pick a Name That’s Easy to Memorize

This relates to the previous point, somewhat. Apart from being easy to pronounce, your name also needs to be easy to memorize.

You can achieve this in a couple of ways. Going with a completely made-up word as your name is one solution (think “Google”). Alternatively, you can put together two words that do have real meanings but create something original when put next to each other (think “Face-book”).

  • Pick a Name That’s Brandable

Your name should be original enough so that people won’t mistake it for any other similar business.

For example, if you want to name your pizzeria “Pizza Den” but there’s another business in town called “Pizza Pan” then it’s not a good name.

  • Pick a Name That’s Short(ish)

Not longer than a combination of 2-3 words. Any longer and it’s going to be harder to remember and less brandable.

  • Don’t Use Any Special Characters Or Numbers

Also forget about dots, underscores, dashes, etc.

  • Pick a Name That is Available as a .com Domain

The .com is the most popular and most important domain name extension of the bunch. If you’re brainstorming a name, don’t go for something that doesn’t have a .com domain available.

You can check if your dream domain name is available on a domain registrar site like Domain.com (but don’t buy it yet).

domain.com

Further Reading:

5. Start an Online Store Website By Yourself

Finally, it’s time to build an actual online store.

Here’s the best part: you can do it all on your own, there’s no professional help needed, and you don’t have to sacrifice the quality of the final outcome. Your online store is going to be just as functional and just as good-looking as if it was built by a pro.

To make that happen, we’re recommending using WooCommerce.

Note: Before you can start building your online store with WooCommerce, you first need to create a website. For this check out our step-by-step tutorial on how to build a website with WordPress.

However, there are alternative ways to set up an online store. You can also use Shopify (or any other eCommerce platforms out there).

6. Set Up Payment Methods

The last piece of the puzzle when attempting to start an online store is accepting payments from customers.

By default, WooCommerce allows you to accept payments via PayPal. You don’t need to do much in order to enable this payment system either. You likely already took care of it during the initial WooCommerce setup.

paypal homepage

That said, you can choose a different payment system, or even use a couple of alternative systems at the same time. One of the reasons for this might be that some of your customers will prefer specific payment methods over others. So the more of them you have integrated into your store, the more sales you’ll get.

Two of the most popular additional payment methods for WooCommerce are Stripe and Square. These are particularly good choices if you want to accept credit cards (which you surely do).

Both Stripe and Square are free to get started with. However, like with every payment method, there are additional fees imposed on every transaction made (it’s the same with PayPal), so just be aware of that.

Getting a new payment method installed in your eCommerce store is simple. Those payment systems are all delivered as WordPress plugins, so you can install them the same way you installed WooCommerce.

After that, each payment system comes with its own setup procedure. Most of the time, though, all you have to do is sign up for an account and verify your details.

7. Start Marketing Your Online Store

There are many different things you can do to get the word out about your store, but we’re going to focus on just four here – the four that are the most likely to work in 2022 and going forward.

Influencer Marketing

Influencer marketing is a relatively new way to promote your store. Most of it is done on Instagram.

The way it works is this:

  1. Find people popular in your niche or recognizable for whatever reason.
  2. Reach out to them and ask what their rates are for promoting products like yours. Also, pay attention to the size of their following and ask about the number of engagements they get under similar posts.
  3. Agree on a run of two or three promotional posts, and send them your products.

Paid Ads

Paid ads basically don’t ever fail. If there’s a market for something, and you target that market with ads, you will get some sales.

The most popular platform for advertising your products is Google AdWords. Getting started with them is relatively easy, and Google has its own guides to take you through the initial steps.

Social Media Marketing

While Instagram certainly is the most on-trend social media network of today, this doesn’t mean that it’s the only place where you should promote your store.

ASOS Instagram

Online store ASOS on Instagram

In fact, you should be present in all the places where your customers are likely to hang out. This, in the modern-day, means most of the popular social media networks. Or, at the very minimum, the top ones like Facebook, Twitter, and optionally Pinterest (if your customers use it).

Your approach to all these networks will be similar, but the goals and the way you construct your messages will be different.

The first thing you should do is research what your competition is doing and how they go about promoting their stores. Take note of their strategies and tactics, and see what you can adapt to your situation. Chiefly, pay attention to:

  • the type of messages they post
  • the posting frequency
  • how often they promote their products directly
  • what’s their general voice and how their messages make you feel

Next, set your own goals as to what you want to achieve through social media.

Most commonly, those goals should be building brand awareness among customers, and only occasionally promoting your products, and trying to generate direct sales. If you push your stuff too much, you’ll alienate people quickly.

Buffer

The next step is setting a publication calendar in place and preparing some social media posts in advance. You can then publish those posts with the help of tools like Buffer.

Content Marketing and SEO

Nowadays, content marketing and SEO are the most effective methods to promote any website (including eCommerce stores).

The idea behind content marketing is simple: you give people insights on topics related to your business and thus generate interest in what you have to offer.

For example, if your store sells winter socks, then you can offer people advice on things like how to pick ski socks. You can deliver that advice in the form of a simple blog post. As people read your content, they also get introduced to your store and the socks that you have in your catalog.

The same principle can be adapted to any market or niche. Find out what people want to know and then create content that delivers that info to them.

When doing so, optimize your content so that it’s more discoverable via Google. It’s reported that Google is responsible for 94% of total organic traffic on the web.

Here’s more info on how to get more traffic using free strategies.

Conclusion: How to Start an Online Store

Congrats! If you followed through our guide you should now know the basics of how to start an online store.

Easy, right?

Here’s a quick overview of the seven steps of creating  an online store:

  1. Decide what you want to sell
  2. Choose between dropshipping and selling your own products
  3. Pick the extra products to sell
  4. Come up with a business name
  5. Build and set up an online store
  6. Set up payment options
  7. Market your online store

If you have any additional comments or questions on how to start an online store, don’t hesitate to leave us a comment below!

Static vs. Dynamic Websites: Here’s the Difference

Static vs. Dynamic Websites: Here’s the Difference

Written by Jamie Juviler

woman using a computer to view static vs. dynamic websites

During your research into website design and development, you might have come across two terms used to describe types of websites: “static” and “dynamic.”

If you’re building your own website, opting for a static or a dynamic website is one of the first major decisions you’ll need to make, since it will determine how your web pages are stored and delivered to visitors in their browsers.

To help you understand the difference, let’s break down what it means for a website to be static or dynamic, and discuss the pros and cons of each approach. Finally, we’ll share some examples of popular dynamic websites to give you a better sense of what they can do.

Static vs. Dynamic Website

The difference between static websites and dynamic websites is that static websites appear the same for every user that accesses them and only change when a developer modifies the source files, whereas dynamic websites can present different information to different visitors.

No matter how complex a website appears to be, at its core a web page is just an HTML file displayed in a web browser. When you visit a website, your browser sends a request to the web server that hosts the website, and the server responds by sending back an HTML file (along with some other related files). Your browser processes this HTML file and shows it to you as a page.

Ultimately, both static and dynamic websites generate HTML files, but what makes a website “static” versus “dynamic” depends on how the server creates this HTML file before sending it to you. To understand the difference, let’s first unpack how static websites work.

What is a static website?

A static website is made up of a fixed number of pre-built files stored on a web server. These files are written in HTML, CSS, and JavaScript, which are called “client-side” languages because they execute in the user’s web browser. When a user requests a page from the server with a URL, the server returns the HTML file that is specified by the URL and any accompanying CSS and/or JavaScript files.

During this exchange, the web server does not alter the files before they’re shipped to the user, so the web page will look the exact same to everyone who requests it. The content is “static” — the only way to change how the website looks is by manually changing the content of the files.

This doesn’t mean that static websites can’t be interactive or engaging. They can still have clickable links and buttons, images and video, CTAs, forms, digital downloads, and animations powered by CSS or JavaScript. With enough skill, you can even get a static website to look pretty nice. But, a static site will always look the same to everyone.

Common examples of static websites include resume websites, portfolio websites, brochure websites, one-off landing pages, and other informational or read-only sites. These websites are small (three to four pages or fewer), limited in content, and don’t require personalized content or frequent updates.

Static Website Advantages

Most benefits of static websites stem from their simplicity. Static sites are the easiest kind of site to build and maintain from scratch. If you want to launch a basic website quickly and cheaply, static sites are a solid option. With knowledge of HTML and CSS, you can code up a decent one without too much effort or cost.

Static websites also tend to be faster than dynamic websites on the user’s end. This is because pages on static websites are already built and require minimal back-end processing. The server only needs to retrieve the requested files and deliver them to the client. Static websites are also easier to cache due to lack of variation in content. Site speed, also called website performance, is crucial for a positive user experience and also affects search engine ranking.

Static Website Disadvantages

As you can probably guess, a static website isn’t the best option in many cases. The most apparent issue is scalability: Any time you want to make a site-wide content update, like changing the header of your pages, you’ll have to alter each individual HTML file. Plus, whenever you want to add a new page, you’ll have to manually create a new HTML file. For large websites, this simply isn’t practical.

Another disadvantage of static websites is lack of personalization. If you can’t tailor content to visitors, you might miss an opportunity to create a more engaging experience for visitors. Sure, a static site can display information about your business, but what if you could show visitors different information based on, say, their location? For that, you need a dynamic site.

Finally, there are many types of sites that just aren’t possible to build statically. For instance, ecommerce websites typically let users add products to their carts and check out, functions you can’t do with a static site unless you rely on third-party tools.

For these reasons, most websites that you use today are built dynamically. Next, let’s explore what that means.

What is a dynamic website?

Unlike a static website that displays the same content to all visitors in the same format, a dynamic website presents different information to different visitors. The content that a visitor sees can be determined by several factors, such as their location, local time, settings and preferences, and/or actions they’re taken on the website (e.g., shopping habits), making for a more tailored and interactive experience.

To achieve greater flexibility on the front end, dynamic websites require more complexity on the back end. These websites don’t store each page as its own HTML file. Instead, web servers build pages “on-the-fly” — when the user requests a page, the server pulls information from one or multiple databases and constructs an HTML file custom-built for the client. Once the page is built, the HTML file is shipped back to the user’s browser.

To build pages on the back end, dynamic websites employ server-side scripting languages like PHP, Python, Ruby, or server-side JavaScript, in addition to client-side languages (HTML, CSS, and JavaScript). Depending on the amount of data that is being pulled to construct the page, this process can get quite complex. However, the user doesn’t see any of this process — they only see the web page loaded in the browser, same as with static sites.

These days, most websites you use employ at least some dynamic practices. Online stores, social media sites, membership sites, news sites, publishing sites, blogs, and web applications all rely on dynamic content to some degree.

For example, consider an ecommerce site whose home page recommends products based on what they think you’ll want to buy. This means that every visitor will see a slightly different home page. Of course, it wouldn’t make sense to hard-code a page for each person and store it on the server. Instead, server-side code works to determine what content you should see, fetch that content from various databases, and build a page from it.

Other use cases for dynamic content include changing the page language based on the user’s location or settings, displaying a user’s previous orders from your website after they’ve signed in, and gating certain content on your site according to a user’s membership status.

Dynamic Website Advantages

We’ve already touched on the primary advantage of dynamic websites: They enable you to personalize your website’s content to each visitor, which means a more engaging user experience resulting in more conversions and purchases.

Beyond personalization, server-side scripting is very powerful and unlocks a myriad of possibilities for functionality. Dynamic code allows us to build web applications, SaaS software, and rich experiences that simply aren’t possible with a static approach.

It’s also much easier to make site-wide updates on dynamic websites. Administrators can quickly and easily make sweeping changes on their site, rather than updating the source code for each HTML file. On websites that frequently update content and appearance to keep up with their industries, this is a necessity.

Lastly, dynamic websites are more scalable than static websites, as the server does not store a fixed number of pages. Instead, the server constructs a page when it is needed. Going back to our ecommerce site example, say you want to add several new products to your site. Instead of building separate product pages in HTML, you just need to store product information in a database. Server-side scripts can pull this data to construct the product page automatically.

Dynamic Website Disadvantages

Since dynamic websites are more complex than static websites, they require much more time, effort, and know-how to create from scratch. If you don’t have the technical expertise to build and maintain a dynamic website, you can invest in a developer or development team.

Alternatively, you can use a website builder or a content management system (CMS) to handle the technical side of things, so you can place more focus on your site’s content and design. For example, WordPress works by building its pages dynamically using the server-side language PHP.

One other tradeoff of using a dynamic website is a potential drop in performance. Dynamic websites do more processing on the back end in order to deliver pages to visitors, which can affect load time. There are ways to optimize your site speed, and website building software has improved in this area. Still, speed is definitely something to keep in mind when managing a dynamic site, since delays of fractions of a second can cause higher bounce rates.

Dynamic Website Examples

  1. Wayfair (Dynamic Ecommerce Website)
  2. Twitter (Dynamic Social Media Website)
  3. Netflix (Dynamic Entertainment Website)
  4. HubSpot (Dynamic SaaS Website)
  5. The New York Times (Dynamic News Website)

Most websites you use today are likely dynamic ones. To wrap up this post, let’s look at five popular examples of dynamic websites.

1. Wayfair (Dynamic Ecommerce Website)

Anyone who uses Wayfair knows the company tailors its shopping experience to customers. Its dynamic website allows you to view products deemed most relevant based on your browsing and purchases.

dynamic website examples: wayfair homepage

2. Twitter (Dynamic Social Media Website)

Given that over 300,000 tweets are published per minute, I can’t think of a better use for a dynamic website. Twitter’s dynamic build allows its interface to change in real time with new tweets.

dynamic website examples: twitter

3. Netflix (Dynamic Entertainment Website)

Netflix displays TV and movie recommendations based on your viewing habits and other information that you set in your profile. This dynamic interface has made it into the streaming giant it remains today.

dynamic website examples: netflix

4. HubSpot (Dynamic SaaS Website)

All cloud-based software tools rely on dynamic pages to deliver customized experiences to customers, and HubSpot’s CRM platform is no exception. Every page is, at its core, an amalgamation of customer and business data, organized in a way that helps you take action.

dynamic website examples: hubspot

5. The New York Times (Dynamic News Website)

Any large news website requires a setup that enables it to publish frequent articles with minimal friction. The New York Times uses server-side JavaScript frameworks to generate new article pages dynamically and update its home page content accordingly.

dynamic website examples: the new york times homepage

Understanding Static and Dynamic Websites

In the early days of the web, all websites were static — websites were kept as collections of pages stored on servers, and these pages could be delivered to clients when requested.

However, this method became less workable as users started expecting more from websites, like more personalized displays, auto-generated content, and eventually full-blown software available through the cloud.

To sum up, a static approach works well for a small website with no personalization that you want to watch quickly. Anything beyond that, and you’ll probably need a dynamic website.

 

Originally published Mar 24, 2022 7:00:00 AM, updated March 29 2022

Topics:Website Design

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How to Write a Blog Post: A Step-by-Step Guide [+ Free Blog Post Templates]

Ever read a blog post, you’ve consumed content from a thought leader that is an expert in their industry. Chances are if the blog post was written effectively, you came away with helpful knowledge and a positive opinion about the writer or brand that produced the content.

Anyone can connect with their audience through blogging and enjoy the myriad benefits that blogging provides: organic traffic from search engines, promotional content for social media, and recognition from a new audience you haven’t tapped into yet.

→ Download Now: 6 Free Blog Post Templates

If you’ve heard about blogging but are a beginner and don’t know where to start, the time for excuses is over because we’ll cover how to write and manage your business’s blog as well as provide helpful templates to simplify your blogging efforts.

  1. What is a blog post?
  2. How to Start a Blog
  3. Writing Your First Blog Post
  4. What makes a good blog post?
  5. Blog Post Examples
  6. How to Write a Blog Post

Let’s get started with an important question.

Blogging may mean different things depending on your niche — so let’s begin with this definition.

What is a blog post?

A blog post is any article, news piece, or guide that’s published in the blog section of a website. A blog post typically covers a specific topic or query, is educational in nature, ranges from 600 to 2,000+ words, and contains other media types such as images, videos, infographics, and interactive charts.

Blog posts allow you and your business to publish insights, thoughts, and stories on your website about any topic. They can help you boost brand awareness, credibility, conversions, and revenue. Most importantly, they can help you drive traffic to your website.

But in order to begin making posts for a blog — you have to learn how to start one, first. Let’s dive in.

How to Start a Blog

  1. Understand your audience.
  2. Check out your competition.
  3. Determine what topics you’ll cover.
  4. Identify your unique angle.
  5. Name your blog.
  6. Create your blog domain.
  7. Choose a CMS and set up your blog.
  8. Customize the look of your blog.
  9. Write your first blog post.

1. Understand your audience.

Before you start writing your blog post, make sure you have a clear understanding of your target audience.

Ask questions like: What do they want to know about? What will resonate with them?

This is where the process of creating buyer personas comes in handy. Consider what you know about your buyer personas and their interests while you’re coming up with a topic for your blog post.

For instance, if your readers are millennials looking to start a business, you probably don’t need to provide them with information about getting started on social media — most of them already have that down.

You might, however, want to give them information about how to adjust their social media approach (for example — from what may be a casual, personal approach to a more business-savvy, networking-focused approach). That kind of tweak is what helps you publish content about the topics your audience really wants and needs.

Don’t have buyer personas in place for your business? Here are a few resources to help you get started:

2. Check out your competition.

What better way to draw inspiration than to look at your well-established competition?

It’s worth taking a look at popular, highly reviewed blogs because their strategy and execution is what got them to grow in credibility. The purpose of doing this isn’t to copy these elements, but to gain better insight into what readers appreciate in a quality blog.

There are multiple angles you should look at when doing a competitive analysis:

  • Visuals: Look at the blog’s branding, color palette, and theme.
  • Copy: Analyze the tone and writing style of the competition to see what readers respond well to.
  • Topics: See what subject matter their readers enjoy interacting with.

3. Determine what topics you’ll cover.

Before you write anything, pick a topic you’d like to write about. The topic can be pretty general to start as you find your desired niche in blogging.

Some ways to choose topics to cover include asking yourself questions like:

  • Who do I want to write to?
  • How well do I understand this topic?
  • Is this topic relevant?

4. Identify your unique angle.

What perspective do you bring that makes you stand out from the crowd? This is key to determining the trajectory of your blog’s future and there’s many avenues to choose in the process.

  • What unique experience makes you a trusted expert or thought leader on the topic?
  • What problem will you solve for readers?
  • Will you share your opinions on trending debates?
  • Teach your readers how to do something?
  • Compare or share original research?

It’s up to you to decide the unique angle you’ll take on topics.

5. Name your blog.

This is your opportunity to get creative and make a name that gives readers an idea of what to expect from your blog. Some tips on how to choose your blog name include:

  • Keep your blog name easy to say and spell.
  • Link your blog name to your brand message.
  • Consider what your target audience is looking for.

If you still need more assistance, try using a blog name generator.

Make sure the name you come up with isn’t already taken as it could lessen your visibility and confuse readers looking for your content.

6. Create your blog domain.

domain is a part of the web address nomenclature someone would use to find your website or a page of your website online.

Your blog’s domain will look like this: www.yourblog.com. The name between the two periods is up to you, as long as this domain name doesn’t yet exist on the internet.

Want to create a subdomain for your blog? If you already own a cooking business at www.yourcompany.com, you might create a blog that looks like this: blog.yourcompany.com. In other words, your blog’s subdomain will live in its own section of yourcompany.com.

Some CMS platforms offer subdomains as a free service, where your blog lives on the CMS, rather than your business’s website. For example, it might look like this: yourblog.contentmanagementsystem.com. However, to create a subdomain that belongs to your company website, register the subdomain with a website host.

Most website hosting services charge very little to host an original domain — in fact, website costs can be as inexpensive as $3 per month when you commit to a 36-month term.

Here are five popular web hosting services to choose from:

7. Choose a CMS and set up your blog.

CMS (content management system) is a software application that allows users to build and maintain a website without having to code it from scratch. CMS platforms can manage domains (where you create your website) and subdomains (where you create a webpage that connects to an existing website).

HubSpot customers host web content via CMS Hub. Another popular option is a self-hosted WordPress website on a hosting site such as WP Engine. Whether you create a domain or a subdomain to start your blog, you’ll need to choose a web hosting service after you pick a CMS.

8. Customize the look of your blog.

Once you have your domain name set up, customize the appearance of your blog to reflect the theme of the content you plan on creating and your brand.

For example, if you’re writing about sustainability and the environment, green might be a color to keep in mind while designing your blog.

Sustainability blog example

Image Source

If you already manage a website and are writing the first post for that existing website, ensure the article is consistent with the website in appearance and subject matter. Two ways to do this are including your:

  • Logo: This can be your business’s name and logo — it will remind blog readers of who’s publishing the content. (How heavily you want to brand your blog, however, is up to you.)
  • “About” Page: You might already have an “About” blurb describing yourself or your business. Your blog’s “About” section is an extension of this higher-level statement. Think of it as your blog’s mission statement, which serves to support your company’s goals.

9. Write your first blog post.

Once you have your blog set up, the only thing missing is the content. While the design and layout are fun and functionally necessary, it’s the content that will draw your readers in and keep them coming back. So how do you actually go about writing one of these engaging and informational pieces?

Writing Your First Blog Post

You’ve got the technical and practical tidbits down — now it’s time to write your very first blog post. And nope, this isn’t the space to introduce yourself and your new blog (i.e. “Welcome to my blog! This is the topic I’ll be covering. Here are my social media handles. Will you please follow?”).

Start with “low-hanging fruit,” writing about a highly specific topic that serves a small segment of your target audience.

That seems unintuitive, right? If more people are searching for a term or a topic, that should mean more readers for you.

But that’s not true. If you choose a general and highly searched topic that’s been covered by major competitors or more established brands, it’s unlikely that your post will rank on the first page of search engine results pages (SERPs). Give your newly born blog a chance by choosing a topic that few bloggers have written about.

Let’s walk through this process.

1. Choose a topic you’re passionate and knowledgeable about.

Before you write anything, pick a topic for your blog post. The topic can be pretty general to start. For example, if you’re a company that sells a CRM for small-to-enterprise businesses, your post might be about the importance of using a single software to keep your marketing, sales, and service teams aligned.

Pro tip: You may not want to jump into a “how-to” article for your first blog post.

Why?

Your credibility hasn’t been established yet. Before teaching others how to do something, you’ll first want to show that you’re a leader in your field and an authoritative source.

For instance, if you’re a plumber writing your first post, you won’t yet write a post titled “How to Replace the Piping System in your Bathroom.” First, you’d write about modern faucet setups, or tell a particular success story you had rescuing a faucet before it flooded a customer’s house.

Here are four other types of blog posts you could start with:

  • List (“Listicle”): 5 ways to fix a leaky faucet
  • Curated Collection: 10 faucet and sink brands to consider today
  • SlideShare Presentation: 5 types of faucets to replace your old one (with pictures)
  • News Piece: New study shows X% of people don’t replace their faucet frequently enough

If you’re having trouble coming up with topic ideas, a good topic brainstorming session should help. In the post I’ve linked, my colleague walks you through a helpful process for turning one idea into many. Similar to the “leaky faucet” examples above, you would “iterate off old topics to come up with unique and compelling new topics.”

This can be done by:

  • Changing the topic scope
  • Adjusting your time frame
  • Choosing a new audience
  • Taking a positive/negative approach
  • Introducing a new format

And if you’re still stuck, let’s take a look at some first blog post idea examples.

First Blog Post Ideas

The Difference Between [Niche Topic] and [Niche Topic], Explained by a [Niche Expert]
  • The Difference Between SEM and SEO, Explained by a Marketing Expert
  • The Difference Between Sedans and Coupes, Explained by a Car Mechanic
  • The Difference Between Baking and Broiling, Explained by a Professional Baker
The 10 Best and Worst [Niche Tools] for [Niche Activity]
  • The 10 Best and Worst Writing Software for Fiction Writing
  • The 10 Best and Worst CRMs for Nurturing Prospects
  • The 10 Best and Worst Family Cars for Cross-Country Roadtrips
8 [Niche Activity] Common Mistakes (+ Ways to Fix Them)
  • 8 Non-Fiction Writing Common Mistakes (+ Ways to Fix Them)
  • 8 Salmon Broiling Common Mistakes (+ Ways to Fix Them)
  • 8 Car Maintenance Common Mistakes (+ Ways to Fix Them)
9 Proven Tips for [Niche Activity]
  • 9 Proven Tips for Checking Plumbing Problems under Your Kitchen Sink
  • 9 Proven Tips for Writing a Non-Fiction Bestseller
  • 9 Proven Tips for Doing DIY Car Maintenance
Why We/I Switched from [Niche Tool] to [Niche Tool] (Comparison)
  • Why We Switched from Pipedrive to HubSpot (Comparison)
  • Why I Switched from Microsoft Word to Scrivener (Comparison)
  • Why We Switched from iMacs to Surface Studio (Comparison)
[Niche Tool] vs [Niche Tool]: Which [Tool] is Best for You?
  • Zendesk vs Freshcaller: Which Call Software is Best for You?
  • Air Fryer vs Convection Oven: Which One is Best for You?
  • Mazda Miata vs Toyota Supra: Which Sports Car is Best for You?
The Ultimate Roundup of [Niche Activity] Tips and Tricks
  • The Ultimate Roundup of Novel Writing Tips and Tricks
  • The Ultimate Roundup of Macaroon Baking Tips and Tricks
  • The Ultimate Roundup of Solo Traveling Tips and Tricks

Want some real examples of blog posts? See what your first blog post can look like based on the topic you choose and the audience you’re targeting.

2. Target a low-volume keyword to optimize around.

Finding a keyword with low searches in Google (we recommend sticking to about 10 to 150 monthly searches). These topics offer less competition and should therefore allow your new blog post to rank more easily.

To choose a topic, you can either do a traditional brainstorming session or carry out keyword research. We suggest the latter because you can actually see how many people are looking for that topic.

Now, don’t be intimidated by the term “keyword research.” It’s not just for marketers, but for new bloggers, too. And it’s really easy to do.

To jumpstart your keyword research, first begin by identifying the general topic of your blog.

Say you’re a plumber. Your general, high-level topic might be “plumbing” (67K monthly searches).

Next, put this term into a keyword research tool such as:

When you run this term through the tool, a list of related keywords will appear. Scan the list and choose one with a lower search volume. For this example, we’ll use “under sink plumbing” (1.4K monthly searches).

Run that keyword in the keyword research tool again. Look at the related keywords. Find one with a lower search volume. Do that again.

For this example, we’ll settle on “plumbing problems under kitchen sink” (10 monthly searches). That’s the topic for our first post.

TLDR; Choose a low-volume, low-competition keyword that will ensure your first post ranks.

For more help on keyword research, here are more resources you can use:

3. Google the term to understand your audience’s search intent.

You’ve got your topic — now, you need to check that the user’s search intent would be fulfilled by a blog post.

What does that mean?

If someone is looking for “plumbing problems under a kitchen sink,” they might be looking for a tutorial, a diagram, an article, or a product that can fix the issue. If they’re looking for the first three, you’re good — that can be covered in a blog post. A product, however, is different, and your blog post won’t rank.

How do you double-check search intent?

Google the term and look at the results. If other articles and blog posts rank for that term, you’re good to go. If you only find product pages or listicles from major publications, then find a new topic to cover in your first post.

Consider the term “under sink plumbing bathroom” (30 monthly searches). It seemed like a perfect fit because it had low monthly searches.

Upon Googling the term, we found product carousels, product pages from Home Depot and Lowes, and guides written by major publications. (You’ll also want to avoid topics that have been covered by major publications, at least for now.)

TLDR; Before writing your first blog post about a low-volume topic, double-check the user intent by Googling the keyword. Also, don’t forget to take a look at who’s written about that topic so far. If you see a major brand, consider writing about another topic.

4. Find questions and terms related to that topic.

You’ve got a highly unique topic that’s been covered by just a few people so far. It’s time to flesh it out by covering related or adjacent topics.

Use the following tools:

  • Answer the Public: When you place your keyword into this tool, it will give you a list of questions related to that term.
  • Google: Google is your best friend. Search for the term and look under “People also ask” and “People also search for.” Be sure to touch upon those topics in the post.

You can also use these keyword research tools we mentioned above in step one.

5. Come up with a working title.

You might come up with a few different working titles — in other words, iterations of approaching that topic to help you focus your writing.

For example, you may decide to narrow your topic to “Tools for Fixing Leaky Faucets” or “Common Causes of Leaky Faucets.” A working title is specific and will guide your post so you can start writing.

Let’s take a real post as an example: “How to Choose a Solid Topic for Your Next Blog Post.”

Appropriate, right? The topic, in this case, was probably “blogging.” Then the working title may have been something like, “The Process for Selecting a Blog Post Topic.” And the final title ended up being “How to Choose a Solid Topic for Your Next Blog Post.”

See that evolution from topic, to working title, to final title? Even though the working title may not end up being the final title (more on that in a moment), it still provides enough information so you can focus your blog post on something more specific than a generic, overwhelming topic.

6. Create an outline.

Sometimes, blog posts can have an overwhelming amount of information — for the reader and the writer. The trick is to organize the info in a way so readers aren’t intimidated by length or amount of content. This organization can take multiple forms — sections, lists, tips — whatever’s most appropriate. But it must be organized!

Featured Resource: 6 Free Blog Post Templates

Blog-Post-Template

Download These Templates for Free

Let’s take a look at the post, “How to Use Snapchat: A Detailed Look Into HubSpot’s Snapchat Strategy.” There’s a lot of content in the piece, so it’s broken up into a few sections using descriptive headers. The major sections are separated into subsections that go into more detail, making the content easier to read.

To complete this step, all you really need to do is outline your post. This way, before you start writing, you’ll know which points you want to cover and the best order to do so. And to make things even easier, you can download and use our free blog post templates, which are pre-organized for six of the most common blogs. Just fill in the blanks!

7. Write an intro (and make it captivating).

We’ve written more specifically about writing captivating introductions in the post “How to Write an Introduction,” but let’s review, shall we?

First, grab the reader’s attention. If you lose the reader in the first few paragraphs — or even sentences — of the introduction, they’ll stop reading (even before they’ve given your post a fair shake). You can do this in a number of ways: tell a story or a joke, be empathetic, or grip the reader with an interesting fact or statistic.

Then, describe the purpose of your post and explain how it will address a problem the reader may be experiencing. This will give the reader a reason to continue reading and show them how the post will help them improve their work or lives.

Here’s an example of an intro we think does a good job of attracting a reader’s attention right away:

“Blink. Blink. Blink. It’s the dreaded cursor-on-a-blank-screen experience that all writers — amateur or professional, aspiring or experienced — know and dread. And of all times for it to occur, it seems to plague us the most when trying to write an introduction.”

8. Build out each section of your outline.

The next step — but not the last — is actually writing the content. We can’t forget about that, of course.

Now that you have your outline or template, you’re ready to fill in the blanks. Use your outline as a guide and expand on all points as needed. Write about what you already know, and if necessary, conduct additional research to gather more information, examples, and data to back up your points, while providing proper attribution when incorporating external sources. When you do, always try to find accurate and compelling data to use in your post.

If you’re having trouble stringing sentences together, you’re not alone. Finding your “flow” can be challenging for a lot of folks. Luckily, there are a ton of tools you can lean on to help you improve your writing. Here are a few to get you started:

  • Power Thesaurus: Stuck on a word? Power Thesaurus is a crowdsourced tool that provides users with a number of alternative word choices from a community of writers.
  • ZenPen: If you’re having trouble staying focused, check out this distraction-free writing tool. ZenPen creates a minimalist “writing zone” designed to help you get words down without having to fuss with formatting right away.
  • Cliché Finder: Feeling like your writing might be coming off a little cheesy? Identify instances where you can be more specific using this handy cliché tool.

You can also refer to our complete list of tools for improving your writing skills. And if you’re looking for more direction, the following resources are chock-full of valuable writing advice:

9. Publish and promote your first post any way you can.

As a new blogger, you likely don’t have a social media following yet. Thankfully, you don’t need a huge following before you can create a promotion strategy.
https://www.youtube.com/embed/Gg-E-NJ10zc?feature=oembed

A promotion strategy is your master plan for how you create, post, and engage with your social media content. It helps you take advantage of social and digital technologies to share your business, or in this case, your content. Having a solid promotional strategy offers your audience from different marketing channels more ways to find your blog posts.

Here are more blog post promotion resources:

What makes a good blog post?

Before you write a blog, make sure you know the answers to questions like, “Why would someone keep reading this entire blog post?” and “What makes our audience come back for more?”

To start, a good blog post is interesting and educational. Blogs should answer questions and help readers resolve a challenge they’re experiencing — and you have to do so in an interesting way.

It’s not enough just to answer someone’s questions — you also have to provide actionable steps while being engaging. For instance, your introduction should hook the reader and make them want to continue reading your post. Then, use examples to keep your readers interested in what you have to say.

Remember, a good blog post is interesting to read and provides educational content to audience members.

(Want to learn how to apply blogging and other forms of content marketing to your business?

Check out HubSpot Academy’s free content marketing course.)

Quick Blog Writing Tips

  • Conduct research if necessary to convey your point.
  • Make your content skimmable; break it into digestible chunks.
  • Include interesting quotes or facts for emphasis on the subject.
  • Paint a full picture with images, graphics or video.
  • Use Grammarly to catch mistakes.
  • If you don’t know where to start, start by telling a story.
  • Reference social media posts.
  • Each sentence should convey a single idea.

While you have several tools and tips already, we wanted to provide you with some formatting guidelines to use before you publish your own.

Blog Format Guidelines

  1. Include H2s to arrange ideas.
  2. Center your Images.
  3. Add alt text.
  4. Keep your sentences clear and concise.
  5. Use media with purpose.

1. Include H2s to arrange ideas.

When you begin typing your blog content, it’s important that you divide paragraphs into sections that make it easier for the reader to find what they need.

If you’re just starting out, then focus on the overarching H2s you want to talk about, and you’ll be able to branch off into subheaders and more naturally as you continue.

2. Center your images.

This is a simple practice that can help your content look more professional with little effort. Centering your images keeps the reader’s attention drawn to the subject — not searching for elsewhere.

Centering also looks better when translating from PC to mobile devices. As formatting transitions to small screens or windows, a centered image will remain the focal point.

3. Add alt text.

So those images you centered earlier, make sure you have descriptive alt text for them, too.

Image alt text allows search engines, like Google, to crawl and rank your blog post better than pages lacking the element. It also leads readers to your blog post if the keywords included are what they searched for in the first place.

Besides SERP features, image alt text is beneficial to readers by providing more accessibility. Image alt text allows people to better visualize images when they can’t see them, and with assistive technology, can be auditorially read aloud for people to enjoy.

4. Keep your sentences short and concise.

When you begin working on the body of your blog post, make sure readers can clearly understand what you’re trying to accomplish.

You shouldn’t feel pressure to elongate your post with unnecessary details, and chances are that if you keep it concise, readers will derive more value from your work.

5. Use media with a purpose.

Break up the monotony of your blog post with some multimedia content where seen fit.

Your reader will enjoy visiting a blog page with images, videos, polls, audio or slideshows as opposed to a page of black and white text.

It also makes it more interactive and improves your on-page search engine optimization (SEO).

Now, do you want some real examples of blog posts? See what your first blog post can look like based on the topic you choose and the audience you’re targeting.

Blog Post Examples

  1. List-Based Post
  2. Thought Leadership Post
  3. Curated Collection Post
  4. SlideShare Presentation
  5. Newsjacking Post
  6. Infographic Post
  7. How-to Post
  8. Guest Post

1. List-Based Blog Post

List-Based Post Example: 17 Blogging Mistakes to Avoid in 2021, According to HubSpot Bloggers

List-based posts are sometimes called “listicles,” a mix of the words “list” and “article.” These are articles that deliver information in the form of a list. A listicle uses sub-headers to break down the blog post into individual pieces, helping readers skim and digest your content more easily.

As you can see in the example from our blog, listicles can offer various tips and methods for solving a problem.

2. Thought Leadership Post

Example: How HubSpot’s Customers Are Shaping the Next Normal

Thought-leadership-blog-example

Thought leadership posts allow you to share your expertise on a particular subject matter and share firsthand knowledge with your readers.

These pieces — which can be written in the first person, like the post shown above — help you build trust with your audience so people take your blog seriously as you continue to write for it.

3. Curated Collection Post

Example: 8 Examples of Evolution in Action

An example blog post featuring a curated collection

Curated collections are a special type of listicle blog post. Rather than sharing tips or methods for doing something, this type of blog post shares a list of real examples that all have something in common in order to prove a larger point.

In the example post above, Listverse shares eight real examples of evolution in action among eight different animals — starting with the peppered moth.

4. Slide Presentation

Example: The HubSpot Culture Code

Example slides presentation, HubSpot Culture Code

HubSpot Slides is a presentation tool that helps publishers package a lot of information into easily shareable slides. Think of it like a PowerPoint, but for the web. With this in mind, SlideShare blog posts help you promote your SlideShare so that it can generate a steady stream of visitors.

Unlike blogs, slide decks don’t often rank well on search engines, so they need a platform for getting their message out there to the people who are looking for it. By embedding and summarizing your SlideShare on a blog post, you can share a great deal of information and give it a chance to rank on Google at the same time.

Need some slideshow ideas? In the example above, we turned our company’s “Culture Code” into a slides presentation that anyone can look through and take lessons from, and then promoted it in a blog post.

5. Newsjacking Post

Example: Ivy Goes Mobile With New App for Designers

An example of a newsjacking blog post

“Newsjacking” is a nickname for “hijacking” your blog to break important news related to your industry. Therefore, the newsjack post is a type of article whose sole purpose is to garner consumers’ attention and, while offering them timeless professional advice, prove your blog is a trusted resource for learning about the big things that happen in your industry.

The newsjack example above was published by Houzz, a home decor merchant and interior design resource, about a new mobile app that was launched just for interior designers. Houzz didn’t launch the app, but the news of its launching is no less important to Houzz’s audience.

6. Infographic Post

Example: The Key Benefits of Studying Online [Infographic]

An example from an infographic blog postThe infographic post serves a similar purpose as the SlideShare post — the fourth example, explained above — in that it conveys information for which plain blog copy might not be the best format.

For example, when you’re looking to share a lot of statistical information (without boring or confusing your readers), building this data into a well-designed, even engaging infographic can keep your readers engaged with your content. It also helps readers remember the information long after they leave your website.

7. How-to Post

Example: How to Write a Blog Post: A Step-by-Step Guide

For this example, you need not look any further than the blog post you’re reading right now! How-to guides like this one help solve a problem for your readers. They’re like a cookbook for your industry, walking your audience through a project step by step to improve their literacy on the subject.

The more posts like this you create, the more equipped your readers will be to work with you and invest in the services you offer.

8. Guest Post

Example: Your Bookmarkable Guide to Social Media Image Sizes in 2021 [Infographic]

Guest posts are a type of blog post that you can use to include other voices on your blog. For example, if you want to get an outside expert’s opinion on a topic, a guest post is perfect for that.

Additionally, these posts give your blog variety in topic and viewpoint. If your customer has a problem you can’t solve, a guest post is a great solution.

If you begin accepting guest posts, set up editorial guidelines to ensure they’re up to the same standards as your posts.

So we’ve gone through the different types of blog posts you can make, but how do you consistently make quality blog posts that your viewers will enjoy?

How to Write a Blog Post Graphic

How to Write a Blog Post

  1. Draw from your buyer personas and what you know about your audience.
  2. Pull from your content strategy and/or brainstormed topics.
  3. Identify what’s missing from the existing discourse.
  4. Choose what type of blog post you’re writing.
  5. Generate a few different titles and choose the best one.
  6. Create your outline and designate keyword-rich H2s and H3s.
  7. Write your blog post!
  8. Proofread your post.
  9. Add images and other media elements to support your ideas.
  10. Upload your post into your CMS.
  11. Determine a conversion path (what you want your audience to do next).
  12. Add calls to action to guide your audience to take action.
  13. Link to other relevant blog posts within your content.
  14. Optimize for on-page SEO.
  15. Publish and promote the blog post.
  16. Track the performance of the blog post over time.

1. Draw from your buyer personas and what you know about your audience.

Before you start writing your blog post, make sure you have a clear understanding of your target audience.

Ask questions like: What do they want to know about? What will resonate with them?

This is where the process of creating buyer personas comes in handy. Consider what you know about your buyer personas and their interests while you’re coming up with a topic for your blog post.

For instance, if your readers are millennials looking to start a business, you probably don’t need to provide them with information about getting started in social media — most of them already have that down.

You might, however, want to give them information about how to adjust their social media approach (for example — from what may be a casual, personal approach to a more business-savvy, networking-focused approach). That kind of tweak is what helps you publish content about the topics your audience really wants and needs.

Don’t have buyer personas in place for your business? Here are a few resources to help you get started:

2. Pull from your content strategy and/or brainstormed topics.

If you already have a pre-existing portfolio to look back on, it would benefit you to pull from those brainstormed post ideas or previous content strategy.

3. Identify what’s missing from the existing discourse.

Fill in the gaps of the existing discourse in the topic of your choosing.

You want to meet a need that hasn’t already been met in your topic cluster. Otherwise, you run the risk of writing content for topics that are already over-saturated. It’s hard to beat saturated search queries when you’re trying to rank against high authority publications — but not impossible if your content is answering the queries the competition hasn’t.

4. Choose what type of blog post you’re writing.

There are several types of blog posts you can create, and they each have different formats to follow.

Six of the most common formats include:

  • The List-Based Post
  • The “What Is” Post
  • The Pillar Page Post (“Ultimate Guide”)
  • The Newsjacking Post
  • The Infographic Post
  • The “How-To” Post

Save time and download six blog post templates for free.FEATURED RESOURCE

5. Generate a few different titles and choose the best one.

Your blog title should tell readers what to expect, yet it should leave them wanting to know more — confusing, right?

This is why when you’re coming up with a blog post title that you should brainstorm multiple ones instead of just one.

6. Create your outline and designate keyword-rich H2s and H3s.

When outlining, you need to center your main ideas with keyword-rich H2s and H3s. These are going to be your headers and subheaders that readers typically search for, and the information that Google crawls when indexing and ranking content.

7. Write your blog post!

We already told you how to build out your outline earlier in the post, so we’ll quickly go over the main points once more.

You’ve already outlined your main headings and subheadings, so now’s the time to add the body.

Write about what you already know, and if necessary, conduct additional research to gather more information, examples, and data to back up your points, while providing proper attribution when incorporating external sources. When you do, always try to find accurate and compelling data to use in your post.

This is also your opportunity to show personality in your writing. Blog posts don’t have to be strictly informational, they can be filled with interesting anecdotes and even humor if it serves a purpose in expressing your ideas. It also factors into creating and maintaining your blog’s brand voice.

Don’t be discouraged if you’re having trouble stringing sentences together, you’re not alone. Finding your “flow” can be challenging, but there are many tools to ease the process.

8. Proofread your post.

The editing process is an important part of blogging — don’t overlook it.

Ask a grammar-conscious co-worker to copy edit and proofread your post. You may also consider enlisting the help of The Ultimate Editing Checklist or using a free grammar checker like Grammarly.

If you’re looking to brush up on your self-editing skills, turn to these helpful posts for some tips and tricks to get you started:

9. Add images and other media elements to support your ideas.

When you’re finished checking for grammar, shift your focus to adding other elements to the blog post than text. There’s much more to making a good blog post than copy, here’s some following elements to add in support of your ideas:

Featured Image

Choose a visually appealing and relevant image for your post. As social networks treat content with images more prominently, visuals are more responsible than ever for the success of your blog content.

For help selecting an image for your post, read “How to Select the Perfect Image for Your Next Blog Post” and pay close attention to the section about copyright law.

Visual Appearance

No one likes an unattractive blog post. And it’s not just pictures that make a post visually appealing — it’s the formatting and organization of the post, too.

In a well-formatted and visually-appealing blog post, you’ll notice that header and sub-headers are used to break up large blocks of text — and those headers are styled consistently.

Here’s an example of what that looks like:

Visual appearance example in a blog post

Screenshots should always have a similar, defined border so they don’t appear as if they’re floating in space — that style should stay consistent from post to post.

Maintaining this consistency makes your content look more professional and easier on the eyes.

Topics and Tags

Tags are specific, public-facing keywords that describe a post. They also allow readers to browse for more content in the same category on your blog. Refrain from adding a laundry list of tags to each post. Instead, put some thought into a blog tagging strategy.

Think of tags as “topics” or “categories,” and choose 10-20 tags that represent all the main topics you want to cover on your blog. Then stick to those.

10. Upload your post into your CMS.

You filled out your blog post with all the optimized content you can, now is the time to publish it in your content management system.

You can opt to post your content immediately, save it as a draft, or schedule when you want it to be posted live in case you adhere to a posting schedule.

11. Determine a conversion path (what you want your audience to do next).

conversion path is a process by which an anonymous website visitor becomes a known lead. It sounds simple enough, but creating an effective conversion path requires a clear understanding of your target audience and their needs.

Having a conversion path is important because when you share your content on the web, you should have an idea of what your audience should do next, or in other words, provide them with a path forward.

The HubSpot Flywheel model is a great example of this as it shows how our organization gains and maintains leads.

HubSpot Flywheel Model

12. Add calls to action to guide your audience to take action.

Call to action (CTA) are a part of a webpage, advertisement, or piece of content that encourages the audience to do something. You can add them to your blog post to guide your reader with “next steps” or a conversion path.

Different types of call to actions include asking readers to:

  • Subscribe to your newsletter to see when you publish more content.
  • Join an online community in your blog domain.
  • Learn more about a topic with downloadable content.
  • Try something for free or discount to convert readers to customers.

To get a better idea of how to make a CTA that readers want to click, we have a whole list of effective call to action examples for you to check out.

13. Link to other relevant blog posts within your content.

When you’re completing your blog post, you should link relevant content throughout it. An effective way to do this is to link within the same content cluster.https://www.youtube.com/embed/m-nx1fHhJ2M?feature=oembed

Keeping relevant content throughout your post can provide your readers with more helpful information, and potentially boost search engine rankings with corresponding longtail keywords.

But we’ll talk more about how to improve your ranking in the next step.

14. Optimize for on-page SEO.

After you finish writing, go back and optimize the on-page elements of your post.

Don’t obsess over how many keywords to include. If there are opportunities to incorporate keywords you’re targeting, and it won’t impact reader experience, do it. If you can make your URL shorter and more keyword-friendly, go for it. But don’t cram keywords or shoot for some arbitrary keyword density — Google’s smarter than that!

Here’s a little blog SEO reminder about what you should review and optimize:

  • Write your meta description.

Meta descriptions are the descriptions below the post’s page title on Google’s search results pages. They provide searchers with a short summary of the post before clicking into it. They are ideally between 150-160 characters and start with a verb, such as “Learn,” “Read,” or “Discover.”

While meta descriptions no longer factor into Google’s keyword ranking algorithm, they give searchers a snapshot of what they’ll get from reading the post and help improve your clickthrough rate from search.

  • Optimize your page title and headers.

Most blogging software uses your post title as your page title, which is the most important on-page SEO element at your disposal. But if you’ve followed our formula so far, you should already have a working title that will naturally include keywords or phrases your target audience is interested in.

Don’t over-complicate your title by trying to fit in keywords where they don’t naturally belong. With that said, if there are clear opportunities to add keywords you’re targeting to your post title and headers, feel free to take them. Also, try to keep your headlines short — ideally, under 65 characters — so they don’t get truncated in the search engine results.

  • Consider anchor text best practices as you interlink to other pages.

Anchor text is the word or words that link to another page — either on your website or on another website. Carefully select which keywords you want to link to other pages on your site because search engines take that into consideration when ranking your page for certain keywords.

It’s also important to consider which pages you link to. Consider linking pages that you want to rank for a specific keyword. You could end up getting it to rank on Google’s first page of results instead of its second page — and that isn’t small potatoes!

  • Write alt text for all of your images.

Alt text conveys the “why” of an image as it relates to the content of your blog post to Google. By adding alt text correlating to the topic clusters and keywords of the post, Google can better direct users’ searches to you.

  • Check that all images are compressed for page speed.

When Google crawls different websites, a page’s load speed holds weight in page ranking. Make sure the images you include throughout the page aren’t unnecessarily large to shorten the duration it takes to load.

Use apps like Squoosh to minimize the size of your images without losing the quality.

  • Ensure that your blog post is mobile friendly.

More than 60% of organic visits are carried out on a mobile device. As such, having a website with a responsive design is critical. In addition to making sure your website’s visitors (including your blog’s visitors) have the best experience possible, optimizing for mobile will score your website some SEO points.

15. Publish and promote the blog post.

Share your post across all the marketing channels in your repertoire. The further the reach, the more of a possibility that readers will find it.

Channels to expand your blog post promotion strategy include:

16. Track the performance of the blog post over time.

Your post is published for the world to see, make sure you’re keeping an eye on its performance over time so you can see if your blog post strategy is working well enough for your goals.

There’s a plethora of website traffic analysis tools that you can take advantage of to better understand your audience’s behavior on your blog posts.

Ready to blog?

Blogging can help you build brand awareness, become a thought-leader and expert in your industry, attract qualified leads, and boost conversions. Follow the steps and tips we covered above to begin publishing and enhancing your blog today.

Editor’s note: This post was originally published in October 2013 and has been updated for comprehensiveness.

Originally published Jan 21, 2022 7:00:00 AM, updated March 16 2022

Topics:How to Write a Blog Post

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