If you’re thinking of starting a blog, then let me tell you that it’s one of the best decisions you can make for yourself and your brand! Blogs are a great way to express your brand and its culture, so why not make use of it?

However, the fact that starting a blog is intimidating is relatable. With over 152 million blogs crawling the internet, how do you make your blog stand out? This is the question that you’ll be getting the answer to after you’re done with this article.

But first, to get you pumped up and motivated about starting a blog, let’s talk about what it can do for your business! 

Why You Should Create a Blog?

1. Attract the Audience

Content is king! You must have heard this phrase many times, but only because it’s so relevant! Whenever you’ll publish a blog, you’ll be increasing your chances to be discovered.

Create blogs that will be of value to your target audience. Answer frequently asked questions about your industry, or some interesting insights, or whatever the most popular monthly searches are. Once you have a build-up of these blogs, people looking for answers will stumble upon your blog sooner or later through google searches. Optimizing plays a huge part in this, but more on this later.

2. Build Authority

Blogging is a gateway for you to build authority in your industry, but only if you’re able to provide unique and valuable content to your readers! All it takes is one piece of information for a reader to decide that you’ll be valuable to him, hence making him come to you for his problems!

Publish as many blogs as you can that are centered around your target audience problems, then slowly watch your authority build up!

Once you create your authority, you have established a relationship of trust and respect with your audience. This leads to brand loyalty which ultimately generates more leads and sales for your business!

3. Tell your story

Create blogs that offer exclusives like how you made your business successful, what struggles did you face, how did you overcome them? This will appeal to the emotional side of your readers and will swing to your advantage! Everybody loves a good success story, why not tell yours to inspire them? Not only will your audience be impressed by the behind-the-scenes information, but they’ll be more devoted to you too!

4. Engagement

After you’re done attracting new customers and making sales, you don’t want them to forget about your brand, right? Blogs are a great way to engage your audience and delight them.

Create blogs related to your product or service to keep offering useful information on using it. What are the different ways your customers can use your product? What are some hacks related to them? Is there an update coming their way? 

Top Tips To Optimize Your Blog.

1. Be Consistent

Once you start a blog, there’s no going back. If you’re not consistent in updating your blog, then you’ll start to lose relevance as well as readers!

Blogs that get updated daily generate 5 times more traffic than those who don’t! Create relevant and high-quality blogs consistently to keep a steady stream of readers.

To make it happen, make a content plan and decide which post will go out when, so you can create them beforehand and have a steady flow of articles.

Remember, the more you post, the higher your chances of ranking higher on Google.

2. Be Original

Your readers will catch on to the fact if they know you’re forcing something, and that’s just off-putting. Your passion for your brand should shine through your writing. Don’t rephrase content you find on other blogs! Try to create something unique and valuable.

Not only will this establish your authority, but offering fresh stats or content to your readers will prompt them, as well as other brands to share a piece of your content with others! By being original, you’re creating content that will market itself when published. 

3. Use Quality Images

Using images in blogs is very, very important- they can get you 94% more views than usual! However, just like all the other content on your website, images should be relevant.

Include facts and figures so images are shareable. Absolutely steer away from bad quality images with low resolution. No matter how valuable they are, they will be very off-putting and will drive away traffic rather than attracting it.

4. SEO!

There are many ways you can optimize your article for search engines. For instance, making proper use of heading tags so Google can skim through your content. Optimize your sub-headings as well as URL with rich keywords to increase chances of ranking on Google’s first page.

5. CTAs

Call-to-action buttons are a great way to engage your readers and give them a direction after they’re done through your blog. And if your content was impressive enough, they might just click on it and boost your conversion rates.

CTAs can be anything you want, it’s totally your choice. It could be a form asking you to sign up, a subscribe or a download button, whatever you want.

There are also multiple places where you can set up your CTA. Experts recommend after the first 2 paragraphs, in the middle, and finally at the end. These are the places where engagement is the highest. 

6. Plan With Keyword Search

After you’re done deciding on the topic, your next step is to plan and research your content. Do comprehensive keyword research relevant to your article so you can incorporate it into your article subtly and as smoothly as possible.

Use a mixture of long-tail keywords and keyword phrases for some SEO juice so you can rank for those keywords on the first page as well!

However, don’t overdo it. Use a keyword 1-2 times in 500 words to avoid keyword stuffing. If using them is unavoidable, then try inserting synonyms in their place.

7. Add Image Alt-Text

SEO and keywords apply to images as well. Save your images with a relevant keyword. Image alt-text tells search engines what the image is about, so use it wisely and optimize that as well.

By doing this, you’re increasing visibility of your image. And even if your blog doesn’t rank well on Google, your image is visible in Google images for the same search results.

8. Make Your Blog Responsive

A good way to make your blog stand out from your competitors is by making it interactive and fun! Think about it, you’re providing your readers with something other than just walls of text. So even if your readers zone out- which they will because of human attention span- they will be snapped back to your content when they see something out of the box!

Examples of a responsive blog can include, a short animation through scrolling, or whenever a mouse hovers on a specific word. Not only does this keep the reader interested and hooked, but it also prompts them to share it too!

9. Optimize For Featured Snippets

Featured snippets offer websites another way to rank highest on Google. In order to have your content featured, the information needs to be precise and relevant. Here are some of the tips that might help you land this spot:

• Use heading tags and list types to present content.
• Target the most asked questions and address those.
• Have keywords in your heading.

Whatever content you’re producing, make sure you’re using the proper tags so Google can discover your content. Use tools like UberSuggest and AnswerThePublic for keyword search and FAQs.

10. Optimize Your Title

For search engines, optimize your title by adding a couple of keywords most relevant to the article. Keep the title just under 60 characters so that readers can read your whole title on the search engine.

For your readers, optimize the title by evoking emotion through it. Promise the reader something that they will obtain if they click on your blog. Or maybe, go against the norm and tell them why a common thing we all do is wrong. If your title has a promise, suspense, or an uncommon negation, chances are that it is going to have a high CTR. We are creatures of habit after all. 

11. Make Your Articles Easy To Read

How many times have you exited the article just because you had trouble reading it? People hate looking at a wall of text, especially with no line breaks! That’s the worst thing you can do for your blog.

Your article should be a mixture of one-liners, small paragraphs, and images scattered throughout. This increases readability and maintains engagement from start to finish.

Keep your tone light and informal so readers can relate to you. They’re not reading a research paper, they’re reading your blog! What can you offer that’s unique? 

Conclusion

So there you have it, insider tips for optimizing your blog for the best traffic! These are just some tips we’ve learned along the way. However, digital marketing is ever-changing, so keep your experiments and strategies dynamic to accommodate new trends and tips for the future!

A blog is a powerful and sustainable way to express your brand, use it wisely!