Creating an A+ Blog that Ranks High and Provides Value
With a lot on your mind, you pour your heart and soul into blog post after blog post. You post all the new events, awards and recognition your company gets. Isn’t that quality? No fluff topics. No sales pitchy posts. Just trustworthy, heartfelt content.
Unfortunately, even this noble foundation leaves many blogs unread. To create an A+ blog that ranks high in search engines, your content needs to provide value and speak to readers by doing the following.
Feed Your Audience What It Wants
Great content means little if it only has meaning to you. To draw readers in, you need to give audiences what they want to read. Look for trending topics, provide solutions to reader problems and answer their questions with your blog posts. Become a resource for your current customers and readers and future ones!
To accomplish this, you need to do your research.
- Use Google Trends to find up-to-date topics based on search volume.
- Look to Quora, LinkedIn Answers and other such sites to identify common questions.
- Survey your audience through email and social media platforms.
- Simply ask a question on a social media post and listen to the replies.
- Study your audience to know the problems they face.
Package Content Beautifully
Magazines shout it. Hollywood drives it. The Jones’ promote it. While the cultural focus on looks may irritate us, reality dictates that appearance matters. Your blog is no exception. An attractive blog gets attention, and it’s not all vanity.
Visual appeal draws human beings in and helps us remember the point. In fact, studies reveal that we recall 65 percent of information paired with a graphic as opposed to 10 percent with text alone. Plus, we are more likely to share posts with visual elements.
What does this mean for your blog?
- Use images relevant to your topic (not just random photos).
- Create infographics around interesting stats and facts.
- Craft attention getting headlines (80 percent of readers stop at the title).
- Eliminate typos and misspellings (readers deem error-ridden copy unintelligent).
- Use bullet points and short paragraphs for easy skimming and visual appeal.
Rise as a Thought Leader
Building your reputation as a thought leader in your niche increases readership. After all, the familiar and trusted get our loyalty as human beings. While rising as a worthy resource requires time and effort, the results prove worth the work.
Need ideas to get started? Try these:
- Find your unique voice by reading fervently, writing often, and interacting with your audience.
- Post articles in a way that teaches and informs rather than sells.
- Answer audience questions from an innovative angle (one that makes you stand out).
- Study other bloggers to identify gaps in information readers want.
- Follow and work with influencers, those admired by your audience.
- Guest post or contribute content to reputable sites.
Working these points lays a foundation for your A+ blog, one that gets noticed, read and followed. Combine them with thought-out, valuable and diverse topics and new heights lay ahead!
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