Content writers and bloggers usually write blog post on topics that they don’t have much knowledge about. A proper step-by-step process thus helps them to write and produce content without being expert on the subject.
In this article, I’m going to discuss the entire process of producing a blog post. From researching on the internet to outlining a post, and writing a complete blog post.
The entire process involves only six simple and actionable steps, which you may find a little extensive and time consuming, but it’s what I do almost every day to write posts for my niche sites.
Step 1: Select A Topic For The Blog Post
This step is very self-explanatory. Search for a topic you want to write a blog post on. As you research the topic, ask yourself the following questions.
- Who is the target audience of the article?– My recommendation would be to always address the beginner spectrum of audience as they come in large number. It’s a proven strategy to get more traffic to your site, unless of course you specifically want to target the expert group of the audience.
- Is the topic too big or narrow to explain with a blog post? – Don’t pick a topic that is too broad or narrow that makes it harder for you to explain effectively with a blog post. Also, look if it does require too much writing work for you. Don’t go overload with your word count; make it easy for you and readers to digest the content as quickly as possible.
- Can you write a better informative blog post than your competitor? – This is the most important question to ask. If there’s already great quality content available on the search result, then it’s no-brainer to leave the topic for the better.
- What is the main take-away message you want readers to have? – you should have a clear idea of what action you want readers to take or a message to have.
For example, if you want to write a blog post on “how to get more traffic to my blog” then your primary keywords for the topic would be “get traffic to blog”, “increase traffic to blog”, “get free traffic”, “get free traffic fast” etc.
Pick one of the keywords that have low-competition and yet have a good search volume. Because you don’t want to waste time in writing content that never going to rank well in google search. If you’re still a little confused about the keyword selection then I highly suggest that you watch the following video by SrufsidePPC.
You should always aim for a topic with low-competition keywords and have high-monthly searches. Pick a keyword that has at least 100+ searches per month. Why I am saying this is because almost all of the keyword research tools underestimate the actual traffic of a keyword and doesn’t show the exact search volume.
Thus, it is safe to assume that in reality it have a 10 times higher search volume of a keyword than what these tools suggest. My favorite keyword research tools are Ahref & SEMRush as they are the industry leaders when it comes to finding accurate data on keyword difficulty and the monthly search volume.
It also helps you find other similar search phrases that you can incorporate in your blog post to increase the likelihood of getting a ranking boost in Google SERP.
Step 2. Plan Out The Post Type
This step is fairly easy to follow. Once you have decided on the topic and the keywords, now the time to select the article type of the writing. There are many popular types of articles to choose from, but over time I have seen that the listicle type of blog post performs better and brings more traffic month after month. Other than the listicle type of blog posts, you can go with the following type.
- Tutorial & How-To
- Reviews
- Opinion Based
- Interviews
- Comparisons
Step 3. Structure The Title Of The Post
No matter how good your blog post be if the headline or title fails to make people click on it, then the post will not generate traffic. So, before writing the post you must generate a catchy title that can bring more clicks to your blog post.
Use the auto-suggest feature of google – One of the best ways to start off is to look for the auto-suggests given by the google search. It can give you an idea of the exact queries people are actually using to search the topic. You can thus find tune the title to match the queries that people search the most on the search engine.
Brainstorm the headline possibilities – Brainstorming could be a great method to come up with the headline ideas that incorporate the primary & secondary keywords that we have chosen for the blog post.
It’s crucial to have the primary focus keyword in the title otherwise, google will not show the blog post on the desired search queries. Also, it will give you an idea to plan out the content structure before writing the post.
Step 4. Look Up Other’s Content For The Research Material
This is the step I get most excited about, also is my favorite one. Blogging is all about 70% writing and producing text content. When I first started blogging, this is the step I got stuck for a long time. Because being a blogger you often require to write on a topic that you have very little to no knowledge about. That’s where this method comes in and rescues us.
Analyze competitor’s blog post – If you look closely you’ll find that google already has done a great job at filtering out the best blog posts from others. Often time than not the information provided by those pages is what google tested out way before ranking them at the top spots of its search result.
So, you are going to write a blog post on a similar topic, you better off analyze the content and pay close attention to the information they have provided and make a note of their subheading or the ideas they’ve presented. Continue doing this on 5-10 more articles on the same topic. Soon you will start to notice that they’ve talked about the topic in so many different ways and points of view.
In other words, they are not identical. Make a list of each important point or stat you find, and note the URL of the source articles if you need to give a credit attribution later on. After analyzing other’s work, you’ll have a good list of information or data to discuss in your blog post.
Step 5. Create The Outline Of Your Blog Post
This is the step where you need to start creating the outline of your blog post. You can use the list you’ve just made. In the outline, include each sub-point you want to add from the list also mix your own points to add extra value to the final result.
Your objective should be producing a blog post that covers all the missing information that others have missed in their content. You’ve seen and read their content thus, you know how to structure a better blog post than others.
If you feel that you need to include more information or statistical data, you can go back to search google, take note and incorporate it here in the blog post.
Step 6. Start Writing
Write & explain each sub-headings and points – at this point, you should feel that most of the heavy work has already been done. I wrote an article just to do this work. How To Rewrite Article Without Plagiarizing?
Try to use simple language – everyone’s writing style is different. But it’s a general tip to write blog posts in a language that even 10 years old can understand. Although, it depends on the characteristics of your audience.
Edit the blog post once you finish writing the first draft – No matter how good you can write a blog post, the first draft will always have room to improve; from silly grammatical errors to spelling mistakes.
Read through the post and make sure it is easy to read and doesn’t have any complex sentence structure. Make sure it clearly and effectively communicates the message that you wanted your readers to take away from the blog post.
Final Thought
There you go, a completed and detailed step-by-step instructions you can follow to research and produce great quality blog posts on a regular basis.
