As a blogger, you know just how vital readers are for your website’s success.
How valuable is a blog that no one wants to read?
Visitors who come across your blog expect it to spark their interests.
If not, your blogging efforts won’t result in an increase in traffic.
Here are some tips to ensure that you publish blog posts that your visitors actually want to read.
Your Title is the First Impression
We’ve all heard the old saying, “Don’t judge a book by its cover.”
But, when it comes to blogging, your visitors will always judge your posts by their title.
It’s a natural response.
Therefore, you need to make sure your title catches the attention of blog visitors, and lures them in to read it.
One great tip for coming up with a good title is asking yourself, “If someone asks me to describe what my article is about in 10 seconds or less, what would I say?”
The answer to this question should be the title of your blog post.
If your title doesn’t hook your readers in within seconds, your blog won’t get much traffic.
Ensure that your blog post titles pique the interests of readers, making them interested in what you’ve published.
Don’t Forget the Basics
Publishing blog posts with simple, basic errors is one of the quickest ways to lose your target audience.
Always take the time to check and recheck the following before publishing your posts:
– Do a Spell Check
– Proofread for Grammatical Errors
– Check to Ensure All Links are Correct
– Proofread to Ensure that Sentences Flow Smoothly
– Make Sure Your Content is Relevant to Your Blog’s Niche
It’s okay to make a few spelling errors, typos and other mistakes when you write.
However, if you want to build a blog people actually want to read, your readers should never see these mistakes.
That’s why it’s so important that you proofread your content, make necessary revisions, and proofread again before publishing.
This is a great post at ProBlogger : 11 Blog Proofreading Tips You Can’t Afford to Ignore
Must Bring Value to the Lives of Readers
When readers land on your blog, they’re hoping to find some great insight on a particular topic.
Your blog posts must bring value to the lives of your visitors to keep them engaged. This is also important to keep them coming back for more.
The best way to ensure that your blog brings value is to decide who your target audience is.
Knowing your target audience will help you understand what they’re looking for online.
From there, you can share your industry expertise with an audience who’s already interested in what you have to offer.
People conducting searches online are looking for a solution to a problem they’re having.
Providing them with the knowledge they need to make an educated decision about a solution helps you create a relationship with your market.
This relationship is one of trust, which will help you gain lifelong, dedicated readers.
Add Interesting, Relevant Images
Always remember that “a picture is worth a thousand words”, especially when it comes to blogging.
Your image choices should be relevant to the content in the post.
They should also be interesting enough to capture your audience’s attention.
People love visuals.
Images also help to break up your content, making your text more pleasing to the eyes.
Before publishing your posts, search for images that help to engage and entertain your readers.
If your post is instructional, images that actually show the process you’re writing about will help your visitors understand your content better.
Keep Your Posts Organized
Readers pay attention to the way blogs are organized.
Blogs that have clusters of words all over the place tend to turn readers off.
The text becomes overwhelming to look at and search through, causing visitors to leave, and never return.
Here are few suggestions :
– Blog posts need to be written using bolded titles and paragraphs that are organized, and short. This improves the look of your blog.
– Break your posts into sections using h2/h3 headings. This not only makes your posts look more organized, it adds to your SEO value. Search engines pay attention to keywords, putting even more value into h2/h3 headings.
– Add categories to your blog. Make sure that each post is placed in a relevant blog category. This makes it easier for your readers to sift through your posts to find what they’re interested in reading.
Quality Trumps Quantity
The most important thing to remember is that your audience is seeking quality information about a particular topic.
The amount and length of the posts you publish is nowhere near as important as the quality of your content.
Your posts should intrigue and entice your readers, not put them to sleep.
What do you think?
Do you have any other tips to add?
Please let me have your views in the comments below, thanks!
Hi Erik,
You mentioned the key things to keep in mind when writing a blog post. Most people are not that serious about blogging reason why they don’t take the time out to learn the basics.
I have learn that there is nothing in this life, that you don’t learn how to do before doing it. As natural as eating is you must learn how to eat to proper way to avoid public embarrassment.
I love this post and your site feel “simple and beautiful”.
Hi Erik,
First of all let me appreciate the post and thank you for such nice compilation.
Well, it’s all about driving traffic in, retaining them and converting into your customer. There can be different factors affecting each of these blogging goals.
As you mentioned “Must Bring Value to the Lives of Readers” is truly important when you thing about retaining your regular readers. Similarly “Your Title is the First Impression” is true to drive in traffic from different sources. Search engine snippets displays the title so is the truth for social networks and blogging networks. Very surprisingly, I did not find any tips mentioned about converting your loyal readers into customer. Guess that’s for the next post! 🙂
As I experience the war between quality and quantity is well determined by the value to the lives. If your readers don’t find anything to change their life, neither quality nor quantity works, but if you go on sharing tips like in this post, it will definitely impact.
Thanks once again for the post.
Hey Erik,
Everything you said here is spot on. The headline is really key and if you can craft a headline that catches people’s emotions as well as their eyes, then it’s a win-win.
Of course we can’t forget the basics as well because there are still many people that don’t even bother to proofread their posts. I just read a post today where a blogger said they write a post and because they’re anxious to get it out there, as soon as they’re finished, they hit publish.
That’s something I can’t and won’t do. I need to double and triple check to make sure it’s good.
Lastly, the images are also very key. I was talking to Carol Amato and she’s the one who really got me thinking about images. Now, I try to spend a good amount of time finding great images for my posts and not something that everyone else already used.
Great post.
Have a great week.
– Andrew
Hi Erik
What I see here is wonderful guide to creating a better blog. The tips you have listed are spot on and would be beneficial for every blogger who is struggling with gaining traffic.
Like you have mentioned, it is really important to understand the basics of blogging as this can help you stay focused and achieve the goal of building a better blog. I like the picture of the dog reading.. lol
Thanks for sharing.
Hi Erik,
Bloggers try their best to build their blog at which they can keep their readers engage. Title of the blog posts matters a lot. People need to learn about writing the best title.
Putting perfect images is the best solution because people like to see attractive images like you have embedded.
You have added some great points here.
Thanks for sharing with us.:)
~Ravi
I’ve gone overboard in the value-quality department Erik but in a good way. 6,000 words was my last post’s length and I won’t publish again until I hit a high word count. Because I like offering some in-depth stuff, and also my free posts – which reach eBook length – are fun previews for my eBooks on sale. What a nice match right?
Building a better blog is easier with your effective tips. Note headlines. Keep ’em short and clear or longer and entertaining but never rush through headlining any post. Use the 1-2 seconds you have to snag the average attention span wisely.
As for promoting I’m huge on commenting. Another simple tool through which you can build bonds, make friends and help others out. Once you build a better blog spread the word by sharing your opinion.
Thanks Erik.
Ryan
I think another important factor for writing good blog posts is that you have to be genuinely interested and passionate about what you write. Otherwise, the whole quality blogging process becomes a chore and if you don’t even feel like reading your own content, readers won’t bother either.
Yes you are correct only peoples like informative blog like yours so now only good contents rank well good post Thanks a ton
Hi Erik Sir,
Great post. This is the first time I’ve looked at the lifehacker site and I landed on totally relevant content.
I’ve just started two blogs. One by myself and one with a friend and this info really helps to focus the mind when considering future content. I’ve found writing posts can be difficult but the more advice I read like this the easier I’m finding it. Having structure, having a point and being yourself seem to be up there in terms of priority. And finding your flow, which I’m just starting to do.
Rabia Khalid…
Hi Erik,
This is yet another article every blogger needs to see, the first thing to consider is your title as it’s what your reader first see’s, making your title attracting would surely make your reader want to click to see whats inside, then when you write a quality content that is reader friendly, surely you’ll build a blog that people will actually want to read.
Thanks for sharing with us.
Hi Erik,
Great post !!! As you said that title of your post makes the content win. And for me keeping title ( that too sound catchy tile ) being difficult for me also take time.
Adding images is very noted point , may I ask you one thing the images that you are using is all royalty free pics or you pay for it ?
If its free pics, may I know from which places you will get it free ? Or any sites ( I know Flickr ).
Looking forward for your reply !!!
Enthusiastic blogger – Siva