How to Write For a Blog-Keys to Success

By | August 22, 2015

how to write for a blogWhen you first decide you want to start blogging or building an online business, there are so many questions that you come up with.  One of the questions most people ask me is it easy?  The quick answer is yes, but I will get more into that later or another article.  The second question people ask me is how to write for a blog.  This is the basis of this article.  I will go over several things to keep in mind when writing for a blog. This is the longest post to date on my blog, but I didn’t want to leave out any details.

my recommendationsI like to say blogging is like planning an around the world trip.  Yes you might be able to do it if you were super rich at the drop of a hat.  The reality is there are stages and planning that need to take place before you can go.  Each post is part of that planning.  If you were going to take a year off of work and see the world, how long would you have to plan: 1 month, 6 months, 1 year?  Building an successful business online is like this it takes time to plan it all out, write it out, and get the traffic you need to make sales.

 

Is It Hard To Write a Blog


It really is not that hard to write a blog as long as you are writing about something that interests you.  So before you begin a blog or a new blog ask yourself a question.  The question is can you write about that topic for 10 months, a year, two years?  If the answer is no then move on to another topic or it will become very boring and tiresome for both you and your readers.  After all how do you expect people to read what you write if you are not interested in what you write?  They won’t be and they will quickly move on.how to make money by blogging

 

So Why Do You Want to Blog?


Find the reasons you want to blog.  Do you want to blog to have fun and earn some money?  If that is your intent then it might be the right thing for you to start doing.  If you hate reading, writing and just want to make money, then you probably should go somewhere else.  The reality is that it takes a lot of reading and writing to create a successful blog.

You can write about your own experiences and that works for many people.  The trouble is if you hate to write it still will not work for you.  When you are first starting you need to get people reading what your write.  This is not as easy as it sounds, especially if you don’t like to write or like the subject you are writing about.  It does no good to post and post and post if no one is interested in what you are writing because it is boring.

 

What Are Your Interests


So how do you keep it from being boring?  Well writing for a blog is nice because you chose what to write about.  That means you can focus on your interests.  Do you like the outdoors, living green, fishing, fast cars, or even windsurfing, then that is a good starting point.  This does not mean you should write about cars today, weight loss tomorrow, making money online the next day, and kitchen lights the following.  This will only confuse your reader, especially at first.how to write in a blog

Take a look at your interests and take some time figuring out exactly what you want to share with people and what you would like to learn more about.  Brainstorm and write down at least 15-20 different topics that you like.  Don’t worry at first if you don’t know much about the subjects.  Maybe you want to learn more about them.  This is just a starting point.

Once you have that list let it rest for a day.  Then go back and take a look at the list.  Think about what you already know, what you can research to find out more information on, and what information you can easily find on each of these topics.  These topics are going to be very broad at first and you really need to narrow it down a lot.  The one you eventually chose will be your niche.

picking a nicheYour niche shouldn’t be baseball that is far too broad a subject especially when first starting out. This is also where you start doing some keyword research to find out what people are Googling.  I will explain more on keyword research a bit later, the same rules apply here as listed below.  Find out if there is a market for your blog through the research.  Instead of baseball, maybe your niche would be baseball training for adolescents.   Can you see how that is much more specific?  It also gives you your target market.

Learn about your target market.  The market is not just anyone.  Again you need to narrow it down.  Start with yourself and ask why you like the subject?  What you would want to know more about?  These are more than likely the same things others would want to know about.

Start looking for products that you could promote or put ads on your blog about.  This is just one way to monetize your site.  Monetizing your site is just a way to make money from your website.  This is an important step if you are looking to make some money from your blog.  If there are no products then it might not be the right niche for you to get started in.  You could always create a new product but that is an entirely different aspect of blogging and making money online.  So for now I would stick with existing products.

 

QuestionWhat Is a Blog


Okay so I have rambled on a bit about picking a niche and how to write for a blog but I still haven’t said what a blog is.  A blog is a simple website that is updated periodically with posts.  They typically contain some pages and categories, but really it is a website that is updated regularly.  They can be opinions, facts, educational, reviews, or any combination of the above listed things.  They are not a static webpage that never changes.

 

Getting Ideas


I know you have heard at least once in your own research that “content is king”.  I think there is one thing missing on that statement.  “QUALITY”, that is right “Quality content is king”.  Remember what I said earlier, if you are not interested in what you are writing, neither will your readers and they will quickly go somewhere else.  This means people won’t stay long enough to read what you wrote, in turn they won’t want to read anything else from you in the future. So putting up a bunch of content is not the key, make sure it is quality content.

One of the hardest things to do it to come up with new content for your blog and is one that must be overcome to become have a successful blog.  So how exactly do you come up with ideas?  There are several things you can do, for example brainstorm like you did above.  You can search the internet, or better yet let the internet search for you.  How would you like Google to send you an email listing current events, posts, and articles about your subject when something new comes out?google alerts

Google has a free, yes I said free service that will send you an email when something is posted that meet certain parameters.  This service is Google Alerts.  It is very easy to setup and use.  I personally have mine set up to send me them once a day.  I take a quick look at them to give me some ideas.  Then I typically go to the internet and do more research on the subject.

You can also use BuzzSumo.  This is a great free program as well.  It sorts posts based on the number of social shares that the post has. You can then take that information and do a bit more research and make a great post.  Don’t copy what others did, make sure it is your own and that you do your own research.

 

Keyword Research


Okay you have a few ideas about the content you want to write about.  You know that people are looking for it because it is being shared.  You know that there is interest in it because people are searching for it.  Now you need to get your main keywords to write your post.  I start with google to get some long tail keywords and use my favorite method to come up with many good long tail keywords.  First type in your main bases for the article, we will stick with the baseball idea.  Lets say that we found some articles that were about baseball strength training.

Keyword ResearchGo to Google and when you first type in baseball strength ( I didn’t even finish typing it and you can see I have several other key terms that people are searching for on Google.  It came up with baseball strength, baseball strength and conditioning, baseball strength training, baseball strength and conditioning program, and baseball strength workouts.  All of these are great keywords to start with for further research.  I love using Jaaxy to narrow things down a bit more.  You can read my full review on Jaaxy here and how to use it.  If you put each one of these terms into Jaaxxy it will come up with other variations.  Shoot for keywords that have some traffic but low competition.

The traffic does not have to be huge, because as you add more and more posts it is cumulative.  I found a great keyword that makes sense.  I found “baseball strength training programs”.  There are an average of 80 monthly searches and an estimated 14 sessions of traffic a month.  The best part is there are only 32 other websites competing for those exact terms.  What does all of that really mean.  Well it means that if you beat 32 other websites then you will get on average 18 visitors a month from that one set of keywords.

Just focus on one set of main keywords.  You can use others in your post, but Google will also pick keywords that it feels are relevant to your post.  Imagine getting 10 or 15 of these different keywords written naturally in your post.  10 would get you 180 different people coming to your blog a month from that one post.  Now imagine having 100 posts, 200 post or even 300 posts on your blog.  Now you can see what I mean that this is a cumulative thing.

 

Research


Yes research our research continues.  Lets look at our main keyword that we just came up with in Google and use Moz to help determine our competition.  Take a look and analyse the top ten results.  You want to see if they are using the keyword in their title, pictures, and/or the meta tag.  The top three listed in Google don’t have the keyword listed in the title or the meta tag.  It is probably a safe bet that it is also not used in the pictures names or alt descriptions.Competition research

Don’t be scared by the page authority (PA) of 41, 49 or 40; or the domain authority (DA )of 81, 81, or 72 respectively that the first three tags have.  If this is a new site for you it will have PA of zero and DA of zero.  It is okay, why because you are going to use your SEO to out rank them.  How do you do that? Well, remember what I said to look for in the keyword competition?  That is write, the keyword should be used in the title, meta tag, and the pictures (name and alt description).

So now we will use the keywords in the title.  Maybe make the title something like, “The Best Baseball Strength Training Programs-Not Just Playing Games”  I always like to add something to the end to make it more appealing.

You have analyzed the competition and found a great set of keywords.  Start the normal process of research on the topic at hand.  Read a few different articles and take notes, if you don’t know enough about the subject.  Read reviews and find out what the best programs are and make not of them as well.  When you decide the ones you like, then see if there is an affiliate program for them.  This is easy to do.  Just Google the name of the program and add affiliate at the end of the search.  This should give you the program and you can sign up to be an affiliate yourself.  That is really another process all together.

 

get paid to blogOutline and Writing


You have done your research and you have some notes.  The next thing you want to do is begin writing, but wait just a minute.  Don’t just write randomly and without purpose.  Decide what you hope your reader will do and how you can get them to do that.  The best idea is to make yourself an outline.

I normally start with a blank document in Word and list out the main points I want to make during the article.  So before I started to write this article I had written down all of the headings to help give me a direction.  This direction is great, but don’t write the article for you.  Make sure you are writing it for your audience.  It would do you no good if you wrote an article for an 80 year old person and you are trying to sell them baby diapers.  While some grandparents might be looking for that, the biggest audience is going to be 18-30 year old women. My point being make sure it is topic and audience appropriate.

Truly try to help your audience.  Don’t tell them things, show them.  Also make sure you write as if you were telling your friend about it.  If you focus on selling people will see that right away and be turned off.  Not all articles have to be about selling something.show your reader

Okay now we have our keyword in the title and an outline set.  It is time to get the real work started.  Focus on the opening paragraph.  Make sure your main keyword(s) is(are) listed there.  Then just write naturally.  Don’t worry about putting keywords in.  If you write about a subject naturally it should be infused with great keywords throughout without you forcing it.  If you put your keyword in all over the place the search engines will penalize you and people will find it awkward to read.

When writing just keep focused on the topic at hand and write about it in full detail.  Don’t worry about the length of the article.  Make sure you hit every point you want to make but don’t force it.  Let it happen and then let it rest for a bit before you publish it.

 

Getting Photos


A sea if text is never good.  You don’t want your reader’s eyes to glaze over.  Make your paragraphs short and break it all up with photos.  I mean photos that are related to what you are talking about and are captivating. Remember the old saying a picture is worth a thousand words.  Make them inspirational. Don’t just Google images and use those images. That is one of the surest ways to get into copyright trouble.  Make sure you have the right to use the images.Get good images for your blog

One way you can make sure you can use the images is to take them yourself.  If you took the picture you have the legal rights to the picture.  I know sometimes you want something bigger or better than you have.  There are several websites out there that both sell royalty free images.  There are also many that you can get free royalty free images at.

Make sure you follow the rules set aside for each image.  If it says attribution needed.  Make sure you give the credit to the person you need to so you can avoid any legal issues.  There are plenty of places to find images that you can use online.

 

Putting It All Together


You have everything you need for a great post.  So you just need to put it together.  Remember you want to make sure that your post has a picture that is named your make keyword.  So in the instance above we would want an image called “baseball strength training programs”.  We would also want the image to have an alt description of the main keyword.  So the alt text for the image would be “baseball strength training programs”.Links

Put your images in your post as well as any links you want to have in the post.  Making sure you don’t have many outgoing links on each post.  First off people don’t like it. Secondly, Google doesn’t like it and will penalize you for it.  Google sees it like this: If your content is so great why are you so eager to send people to all these other places.  You can put interlinks in your post.  Google does like when you interlink.

An interlink is a link that goes to another page in your website.  It is a good idea to use them in your site.  You can consolidate your outgoing links in one page or group of pages whatever works best for your style.

How Long Should It Be?


Don’t worry about the overall length.  The truth is the longer it is the better in the eyes of Google.  It gives them a better chance to see if the article is genuine and what it is really about.  People may not even have ready the article and might comment on it because they see you put some work into it and want to read it later.  I always shoot for 1500 words.blog length

The truth is that it depends on what type of post it is, because not all posts are the same.  If I write a review post, it is typically around 700-1000 words.  I myself don’t like posting a 500 word article.  I mean what value do I provide to my reader.  They might read it but it probably will have very little effect or help for the reader.

Try to write in detail about everything on the subject of the post.  Don’t just breeze over it.  Using proper headings, your readers will skim to see what they want to know more about.  This article is over 3000 words and is by far the longest post I have made thus far on this blog.  To me that is okay because I feel it is needed to answer questions I get from readers.  I am always happy to answer them but enough have asked so why not write about it.

 

Time Well Spent


A well written article can take time.  But if it is well done then it will have value to your reader and increase the chances of them sharing it with another person.  The more they share it the more traffic you get the better the rankings you have with the search engines.  This even gives you more traffic.it takes time

The point is a well written article is worth the time it takes to write it.  So take the time to write a proper article and reap the reward as time goes on.  Finally make sure you ask for people to talk to you.  At the end of each and every article I ask people to leave me a comment or ask questions.  This is a great habit to get into. Not only do people like reading others opinions but Google also like seeing the interaction.  Make sure you comment on each person’s perspective and thank them as well.  This interaction shows that you are a real person and helps build trust with your readers.

I hope you found the time spent on reading this article as much as I enjoyed writing it.  The information contained I have learned over time.  I have used all of these ideas and techniques in the posts I make on this blog and others.  Remember when I said blogging is like planning for a yearlong around the world trip?  Well why don’t you start planning and write that first or even 30th article.  The important part is you get started today or it will never happen.  You can learn how to do it too by reading my top recommendation or visiting my Recommendations Page for things that have helped me since I started writing blogs.

As always please leave a comment or ask any questions you have below.  Thank you for taking the time to read my post.

12 thoughts on “How to Write For a Blog-Keys to Success

  1. Tony

    Hey there Marc. Yes I see that you can make a little extra money on the side.. If not more than you realize. I like your site it has a great platform. Im work on looking up keywords for my site and you seem to have some good points.
    -Tony

    Reply
    1. Marc Pintar Post author

      Tony,

      Thank you for the kind comment. Please let me know if these tips help you with your writing once you are done. Best of luck to you on your writing.

      Marc

      Reply
  2. Richard H

    Thank you for writing about creating a successful blog. So just to clairify a blog is a post or page on a specific topic?

    I ask that because when I think about a “blog” I always think of a personal experience with something not about a certain topic. I imagine a blog about traveling or personal success. Is a blog just content?

    I know this may sound like I’m simple but in order to write a successful blog or page I need to know the difference thank you.

    Reply
    1. Marc Pintar Post author

      Richard,

      You are welcome I am glad you enjoyed it and thank you for the comment and question.

      A blog is a webpage that is updated regularly. Pages and posts are part of a blog. Typically the pages are static, meaning they are the main topics on the website. Posts are added to the home page or blog roll depending how the site is setup. Topics within a blog can very but are all, generally, centered around one topic. So a blog about traveling could be about a person’s own travels and is updated regularly to show the reader what is happening. The posts and pages are actually the content on the blog.

      I hope that helped clarify it for you. If not please let me know and I will try to elaborate more.

      I will be happy to help you out anyway I can so please feel free to ask questions.

      Marc

      Reply
  3. Vertical Veloxity

    I started blogging about 4 years ago. I got out of it and got hooked on facebook. I found myself giving all my good materials and nuggets out on facebook and many of it went to waste because no one responded to it etc. So I think everyone should have a blog. Would you say that bloggers are the new journalist?

    Reply
    1. Marc Pintar Post author

      Thank you for the comment and it sounds like you are getting back into blogging. Many people call bloggers the new journalists, but I really think it depends what they are blogging about. To me a journalist writes news articles. Not all blogs are news related so I dont believe that is a fair comparison. That being said I think some bloggers are a new style of journalist, just not all. I hope that makes sense.

      Thank you again for your comment.

      Marc

      Reply
  4. Lucinda Freestone

    Dear Marc

    Thank you for this very interesting post of how to write a blog.

    Even though I have had my website for six months, I have never known that a blog is the actual website. I have always thought it was just something people wrote off the top of their head and posted on Facebook or here at WA.

    I try to follow the same guidelines as you have set out here. I have registered with Google Alerts and use them as a basis for ideas too. Jaaxy is a great keyword tool and has helped me a lot.

    You have written a very thorough article and I have learnt a few extra tips from it. Thank you. I will bookmark it and refer to it quite often I think.
    Regards
    Lucinda

    Reply
    1. Marc Pintar Post author

      Lucinda,

      I am very happy you found the post useful. I really enjoyed writing this one and poured my heart and soul into it. Please share with others if you would.

      Thank you,

      Marc

      Reply
  5. Karl Lambert

    Nice article. If you love writing, then I would also recommend blogging. It can be a good hobby for someone that is free. At the same time, it can be a means of earning money once you used that talent of youra in the right way. Blogging for me is a stress reliever because i can be able ti express my emotions through writing

    Reply
    1. Marc Pintar Post author

      Karl,

      Thank you for the kind words. Yes there are a lot of different ways you can use blogging from being a hobby to a full time profession once you get good. Using it as a stress reliever is also a great idea.

      Marc

      Reply
  6. Branka

    Hi! Great article! You really didn’t miss anything 🙂 I think I will go through it again and write down the steps, I think I am missing one or two. I am new in blogging, so I don’t have some insights to share but it is great to read this kind of posts, they bring grater clearness in whole picture. Thank you!

    Reply
    1. Marc Pintar Post author

      Branka,

      I am very glad that I was able to help you out a bit. Please let me know if there is anything I can do to help or if you have any questions at all.

      Marc

      Reply

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