How to Write a Captivating Blog that Ranks in 4 Easy Steps
Writing a blog post is like working out – you just want to get it over and done with quickly, but that won’t give you the best results! Yes, you can bang out a blog in around 30 minutes if you are already knowledgeable in your niche, but will it be engaging enough? Take your time writing a blog post the right way to really nail it and draw your audience in.
Let’s break the blog down into parts and explain how to write each section for the best results. We’ll give you tips on what makes a great blog, including how to add some wow-factor to the headline, intro, body, and conclusion.
What Makes a Great Blog?
Let’s face it; you can’t just sit down and start writing words without spending some time thinking about it first. A good blog is a lot of work, as it must be carefully planned out to deliver the most impact to the readers. After all, you are writing it for the audience, not yourself.
A mistake many business owners make is to start a blog on their websites because they’ve heard blogging is a good thing to do for lead generation – but then, they make it all about themselves and their brand! This won’t get any kind of good ranking, nor are people even likely to click on it, much less spend time reading the blog.
The first step is to find out which topics your readers are dying to know about. This is crucial to ensure you’re creating blogs that actually interest your audience. Try searching for topics related to your business on Google. It should spit out some commonly asked questions and alternative search suggestions around halfway and at the bottom of the page. These are the highly-searched topics people want to find out about, and now you have the questions your readers most want answered.
Once you have your general topic, you can begin the keyword research. There are plenty of online tools to help with this, but you may need some assistance from SEO experts like those at Thinkroom, because they can be hard to decipher and use. Keyword research is going to be essential because what you may write on your website might not be what people are searching for, or at the very least, a lot less effective than the right combination of words.
For example, let’s assume you own Thinkroom and you want to write a page on your website about advertising. You might assume that “Advertising Sunshine Coast” would be a good search term, but as you can see from the monthly search volumes below, the best search term is “Digital Marketing Sunshine Coast”. It’s so easy to get this wrong, and although starting with a Google search can be insightful, a professional agency with the right tools is worth its weight in gold.
If you already have your keyword research nailed, follow the below step-by-step guide to writing each section of your blog posts.
1. Headline
The headline is your one and only chance to grab people’s attention, so use it wisely. You can come up with the headline before or after you write your article; that’s really up to your preference. The main thing you need to do is ensure that it’s attention-grabbing!
Here are some headline ideas that intrigue the reader and make them want to click through:
- ‘How To…’ posts are a classic. Just take a look at the title of this blog, ‘How to Write Captivating Blog Posts that Rank’
- ‘X Best…’ for some reason, people love to know how many points they are going to read, and of course, they want the best ones. For example, 10 Best Ways to Engage Your Audience
- ‘… Vs … : Which is ….?’ Marvel vs DC: Which Would Win in a Fight? Readers love comparison articles.
Those are just a few headline ideas to get you started, but there are plenty more you could dream up yourself!
2. Introduction
Now that you’ve gotten the audience to click through to your blog, don’t lose them on the first line. You need to write a captivating introduction that summarises the content in an interesting way. Think of the first sentence as sort of like a secondary headline because this really needs to hook the reader’s attention.
One way to start is by defining a pain point the person has. For example, if you’re writing a blog about car repairs, the pain point would be having a car that breaks down that you’re sick of shelling out money to a mechanic to repair.
You could start by describing what this pain point is like as someone who has been through it – ‘Don’t you hate when your car breaks down YET AGAIN, and you’re forced to fork out even more money….’. Then summarise the content of the blog to let the reader know that you’re about to solve this pain point for them. That’s just one idea, but there are plenty of ways to create a compelling introduction.
The intro is the main way to get people to continue reading your article. Google pays attention to how far down people scroll on the page, and ranks blogs with more scroll depth higher. So, if you can get people to actually read the entire blog, this can help your search ranking.
3. Body
Now, it’s time to get to the heart of the matter. Many blog posts begin the body by defining a relevant part of the topic for some context before getting to the solution. For the car repair article, this might be what the different parts of the engine are, so the reader knows what the parts are when you refer to them later.
Then continue on to answer the question you put in the headline or intro or give a solution to the pain point the person is experiencing. In this article, the pain point is writing a blog that helps you gain SEO traction. You can see the body is telling you how to structure an article for exactly that.
Don’t forget to intersperse your keywords naturally throughout the headings, introduction, and of course the body of the blog. This shows Google that you are offering useful information and is a crucial part of search engine optimisation.
4. Summary
The summary goes back over the main points you covered in the body of the article. This makes it easier for the reader to remember what they learnt and gives you the chance to drive home the most important points in what you said. You should not be adding any new information at this stage.
That’s it, the magic 4-step blog writing formula! There are a million different ways to write a blog, so make sure that you stay true to your personality while writing for exactly what your readers want to know about. Otherwise, why would they choose to click through?
Write a compelling headline, hook them in the intro, create a body that answers their pain point, and sum it all up without adding new information.
If you don’t want to be a blog writer because that’s not your thing, don’t waste your time. You can start a blog by getting in touch with Thinkroom instead. We have a team of expert copywriters and SEO specialists on hand who’d love to help. We can write your blogs based on keyword and topic research to make sure they not only rank but actually appeal to your audience.
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