You read them, I read them, we all read them – but which ones actually made an impact on you?

Which blogs gave you useful information? Which ones made you think, or taught you something new?

Most importantly, which drew you closer to the brand that created them?

Ultimately, writing a blog post should accomplish that for your business (or your client’s business).

On top of that, a good blog post written for SEO should pull in ideal traffic from search engines and convert those visitors into leads.

Yep, blogs can and should be profitable. They must stand on their own and work hard behind the scenes.

A well-written blog can be effective and make your reader trust you enough to want to look into your services or products and buy. (It’s happened to me multiple times – one blog was enough to convert someone.)

However, effective blogs that work like this need to be packed with mega value for your particular readers.

How is it done? Let’s talk about how to write a blog post that wins.

Why write blog posts?

First, let’s start with why you should write blog content.

Even today, when content marketing is taking over advertising as a preferred marketing method for both businesses and consumers, some people still underestimate it.

“Do you really need to blog?” they ask. “Does content matter that much?” they wonder.

Yes, 1,000 times yes!

Maintaining a blog on your website with regularly published blog posts is possibly one of the single best things you can do to improve your SEO and search visibility.

Companies that blog see 55% more visitors than those that don’t blog, and they see 97% more inbound links and 434% more indexed pages across their websites.

Blogging is also how you establish trust between a brand and its audience. 82% of consumers feel more positive about a brand after reading that brand’s content. 70% read at least 3-5 pieces of content before talking to a salesperson.

Content is #1. It matters more than any other factor – not just for SEO, but also for connecting with customers.

What to do before writing a blog post

It’s a myth that you can just sit down and hammer out a blog post in one day.

It’s not possible – not if you want to meet your goals and create profitable content.

To give yourself the best chance at writing incredible, results-getting blog posts, make sure you have these preparatory steps handled.

Research your audience

Is your audience already defined for your brand? Good on you – skip to the next step. You already have research and insight into what they want to read and what questions and problems they need answered.

These things are vital. If you instead jump into writing a blog post without understanding who you’re writing for and what they need from your unique expertise, you’re asking for failure. It would be like walking into an auditorium to give a speech without knowing anything about why those people are there and what they expect you to talk about.

Don’t write a single word of your blog post until you have your audience knowledge down. This article by Ryan Robinson is a good place to start.

Brainstorm a blog topic your audience will want to read

You can’t write about any random topic you pull out of your head – it’s unlikely anyone will care.

For that reason, it’s important to do a little strategic brainstorming to find the right blog topic.

Like audience research, this step helps you figure out exactly what will draw in the people you want to read your blog.

Specifically, look at the intersection of:

• The topics that will speak to their problems, questions, or pain points. (Use your audience research to find out what these are.)
• The topics your brand (or your client’s brand) is an expert on.

This isn’t as hard as it sounds, by the way. Sometimes, a blog topic will spring up naturally through the everyday interactions you have on social media or the questions customers ask in emails or your live chat.

The key is ensuring you or your team are always listening to catch these opportunities.

Map your topic to a keyword

Let’s say you’ve come up with a great blog post topic that sprang from a customer question.

How will you optimize that post to ensure other people with the same question can find your blog with a Google search?

You need to map the post topic to a keyword your brand can win (“winning” means your post will rank in the top three results, ideally at #1. Among a myriad of benefits, ranking higher in search results is associated with more people clicking on your link).

How to do it:

• Run your post topic through a keyword research tool like Semrush or Ahrefs.
  • Example: A dental practice comes up with the topic “tooth sensitivity after fillings” from a patient question, “Why is my tooth sensitive after getting a filling?”
• Check the search volume and the keyword difficulty (KD) of the exact match results.
• If they’re too high (either too difficult or too popular to edge into the rankings), look at the variations and related terms.
  • Example: “Tooth sensitivity after fillings” has a KD of 41 (possible), but a variation, “tooth sensitivity months after filling” has a KD of 25 (easy) and a search volume of 260.
• Build and optimize your blog post around the keyword you found that’s easiest to rank for – usually the one with the lowest KD and a relatively low search volume.

Here’s an example of a dental clinic that did this, currently ranking #2 for the keyword:

If right now you’re thinking, “Wait, why would I want to rank for a keyword with low search volume?” consider this. It’s not about the volume of traffic to your blog.

You want the right traffic – the people with the most potential to turn into customers. Longer, more specific keywords bring in fewer people, but those people have specific issues your brand can solve.

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Time to write: How to create a blog post in 10 steps

Finally, it’s time to write your blog post. Follow these steps to write valuable content that will bring in results.

1. Research your topic

If I’ve done my job, hopefully, it’s clear that you need to research during every stage of writing a blog post. From your audience to what to write about to keywords – and now the topic itself – you should validate what you’re doing at every turn.

In that vein, to get an idea of what searchers are looking for when they type your keyword into the search box, you should Google your topic/keyword. Analyzing the results tells you three things:

• The type of blog content ranking for the term – long-form (over 1,500 words) or short-form?
• The type of information included in ranking blog posts (what facets of the topic do they cover? What questions do they answer? How deep do they go?)
• The search intent of people Googling the keyword – what are they looking for when they search for this term, really?

All of this can and should inform how you approach writing your blog post. Ultimately, you need to not just match what you find in Google search, but rather up the ante and create something better.

That means you should analyze the competition with a critical eye. What’s missing from the top posts? What value could you add that the others don’t have?

2. Write an outline and structure the post

Now you have enough information tucked in your back pocket to start writing your blog post. (Phew!)

I always start with outlining. An outline helps you figure out:

• The key points you want to cover in the blog.
• How to order those key points both logically and for engagement.
• How to structure your post with headings so it’s easy to scan and read.
• How to include your keyword in strategic spots, like inside H2s and H3s.

There’s no need to get complex, here. Simply jotting down your key points, finalizing the order, and applying headings can be enough to give you a good start.

For example, here’s the outline I created for this post you’re reading:

3. Write the intro

It’s time to write the introduction, arguably one of the most important parts of your blog post.

Usually, you want to keep it short and sweet. I like to aim for 200 words or less for my intros. This gives you enough time to hook your reader and offer up some tempting nuggets to keep them on the page and reading.

However, one of the most effective ways to write an intro I’ve found is to be as empathetic to the reader’s main problem as possible.

• State the problem at the heart of your topic that’s plaguing the reader.
• Empathize. How does it feel to have that problem? What bad outcomes could result from not finding a solution?
• Present the light at the end of the tunnel. You have the solution! Tell them what it is, no holds barred.
• Finish your intro by promising or previewing the details of the solution, which you’ll reveal in your blog post.

This intro formula loosely follows a tried-and-true copywriting formula, by the way: PAS (problem, agitation, solution).

Here’s an example of that in action via this Copyblogger intro: