How to write a blog post that drives traffic

Here’s the thing about writing blog posts that convert: structure is everything. You can look at a blog post a lot more like it’s a structured and engineered product rather than an artistic expression of writing.

Blog posts for a business blog exist for one reason: to drive traffic. That’s it. They are not there for you to flex your writing chops as a creative writer. They are there to drive thousands of impressions and to get people to click on links to your product, and they’re very good at this.

Blogs do something else that no other form of copywriting can do. When you write a blog, you’re building something for the future blogs can easily drive traffic two, three, four even five years down the road.

Keyword research

The first place you need to start with every blog post is keyword research. Put yourself in the mindset of your ideal customer. Think about what it is they’re looking for, their pain points, and what they’re trying to get out of your service, and also realize that if they don’t get it out of your service, they’re going to get it out of someone else’s.

Do your own keyword research; you really do need to invest in an SEO platform. I use SpyFu.com, and I’ve been quite pleased with it. Spy Fu does many different things, but I mostly use it to figure out keyword density and the difficulty in ranking for that keyword. Ideally, you want a low difficulty rating in ranking for a given keyword.

Headings

Don’t confuse these with the headers or the footers. The headings are extremely important for SEO purposes.

Headings are built in a hierarchy, and what they are is actually an HTML tag. H1 tags, or headings, are the title tag. You ONLY use them once in an article.

The way I like to think about your headings is more of an outline that provides a structure to your article. The headings are a great place for you to do keyword research, and use keywords that you are targeting to pose questions for the rest of the article to answer. So make sure you use keywords from your research in the headings.

Aim for a reasonable word count

There’s no perfectly right answer for the word count, but it all depends on how in-depth you plan to go. Sometimes you will want to write a very long-form article that may be 3000 to 5000 words long.

I don’t believe there is any exact right word count, but usually, I like to aim for about 1,000 words and no more than 2,000 words. Dwell time is an important factor in determining search engine optimization. You want people to stay on the page for at least, you know, a reasonable amount of time to read the words on the page. If it’s a 1,500-word article and they leave after 30 seconds, then they didn’t read the whole article, and Google understands that.

Be authentic!

Beyond any metrics, beyond any structuring beyond data and research, the most important thing is to be authentic, talking to other human beings. Humans that are reading your work want to read something that was written by a human being. A human being with empathy understands their pain point and what it is that they are missing.

This is honestly the most crucial part of the whole thing you’re trying to build a narrative that’s the entire point of the blog, and it gives you a building block to work off of so you can interlink other blog posts. You can start to create a narrative that builds upon itself.

Sell but don’t be salesy

Look, no one should be under the false illusion that a business blog is trying to do something besides drive people to their products. That’s the entire point.

You should let them know that you will try to drive them to their products, but you also don’t want to be so focused on the sales or keywords and metrics that you miss out on getting people to enjoy your work.

I am always careful when working on a product in a blog post. I don’t do individual callouts to the product. What I do is work the URL into a phrase where the product makes sense. That’s the best way to do it. I don’t understand blog posts where they do an individual call-out or a text box that says, “Here, check out this product!”. That’s just not natural.

Have fun with it! (Assuming humor is appropriate)

One of the most underappreciated components of sales is humor.

You don’t have to go overboard, especially if you have a struggle with writing or humorous content, but don’t be afraid to put yourself out there and interject something funny: a funny meme or a funny GIF, or insert a Tweet that gets you rolling.

Yes, I do this within reason; if you’re writing for a funeral home, you probably should go light on the humor.

But, in my case, writing for firearms, humor is well received, so I try to use it fairly liberally. Trying to have fun with it and joke around is important, especially with things that resonate with the community.

SEO Tips of The Week

I’ve posted this link a few times on Twitter and will keep sharing it. Getting started learning SEO is no harder than reading the company blogs on Moz, Ahrefs, SEMRush, SpyFu, and so on.

The link in my tweet is an excellent compilation of resources. It’s totally free, and it is the best place to get started.

So, my tip is to start learning and never stop. If you do anything in the digital commerce space, you must learn at least the basics of SEO.

Resources & Recommended Reading

Backlinko is one of the top sites for learning the complex landscape of SEO, especially backlinks (duh). I am still a total newb at this, but I understand the importance of them and push myself to learn more every single day.

Give them a follow @backlinko 

For just general recommended reading, I am currently reading the two-part biography of Robert A. Heinlein, and it is excellent. It’s kind of pricey but worth it if you want a good read this weekend.