How to write a successful blog post: Guide with tips and key steps to follow

Why write a blog post?

A blog post allows you to increase your visibility, build customer loyalty and convert them into buyers. It’s the basis of useful information for internet users: to learn about a place, find tips, or discover the best article that will meet their needs, the customer almost always turns to the web before buying an item.

A blog, as one of the many types of content marketing, will then allow you to put forward your editorial content, whether it is advice, a good plan or the discovery of a product. Writing a product page is central, and a blog can boost the impact of your catalog even more!

For example, when you sell products on the web, a blog will allow you to inform people of the benefits of your products, tell the story of your brand, highlight the importance of your product in its environment, or simply answer practical questions, according to popular keywords often typed by internet users.

The main keyword of your article will certainly be the main topic of your post. With this, the reader interested in this keyword in question will have many chances to come across your blog, your site, if your post is well optimized and makes search engines like Google happy.

With how content marketing works, in addition to gaining notoriety, depending on the tone you choose and your objective, you may have the chance to build a real community around your universe, your brand, your content, which will allow you to boost your brand image and position yourself as an expert in your field.

Write, but about what: how do you find the perfect topic?

An effective blog post is the one that’s well constructed, has a catchy title, important keywords, images, and links. But before you can write the best article, you need to find the topic that will make the difference.

To come up with post ideas, it's best to refocus on the basics:

• What is the area I’m passionate about?
• What are the questions I ask myself in my field?
• What original content have I never seen before?
• What content inspires me and what formats make me want to write?
• What questions does my audience have about my topic?

Your editorial line will be easily defined, helped by your target audience and/or the expectations of your ecommerce customers.

Finding your audience for a powerful post

Finding your target audience is an important step in the process of writing a blog post.

Who is your reader? Who are your articles aimed at?

Just like in ecommerce, knowing your audience will allow your actions to be performed in the right direction, without spreading yourself too thin. Your web writing will then be guided by your main objective to give you key information about the expectations of your targeted readers.

By discovering your audience, you’ll be able to understand their interests, issues, and recurring questions by visiting the various social networks and blogs that exist.

This “market” analysis will be able to pinpoint the exact keywords and actions to be taken during the writing phase, adding images, videos, so that your proposed formats can get straight to the point, directly into the mind and heart of your reader.

H3: Press article for your company or blog: what will be your medium?

The structure of a blog post is very important to its impact and success. Whether you’re an individual or you want to highlight the actions of your online store,

the formats and ideas of articles will certainly be the same, but the content will be different.

The treatment of a subject then depends on the site that creates it but also on the objective of the post: to inform, sell a product, promote an event, simply to write for image content, for fun, etc.

In addition to the writing skills that’ll make your blog a benchmark in its field, your medium must correspond to your objective. You don’t write the same way on a showcase site as on a personal blog. The medium will determine the tone, the length, and the type of post that you’ll write to hit your target.

How to write a blog post: the method to write well

Step 1: Find the topic by researching and monitoring

A text is nothing without the theme and the subject. Before you start writing, your first step will be to know exactly what you want to write about. The content of the post will then inspire the for: if you’re an expert in the field of surfing or if you sell surfboards on the internet, you’ll be able to write around your theme.

But what topic will you target? To create a common thread, you need to choose a topic that interests your readership.

To have maximum impact on your readers, you need to look at the basic SEO rules in order to reach the first page of search engines like Google.

To do this, before you get started, consult the trends on sites like Google Trends, look at the keywords that stand out in your sector, and use the questions in the “People also ask” tab, the recurring questions proposed in the Google SERP.

“How to take care of your surfboard,” “5 tips to start surfing,” “Top 10 surfing legends in the world”: even if your competitors or other sites have already dealt with these topics, optimize the information as much as possible and provide quality content on an optimized site.

You may love prose and writing beautiful sentences in your own style, and it would be a shame if no one got to read your work, right? SEO will then be your best friend to increase your blog’s traffic!

Step 2: Determine the number of words or the length of your text

The relevance of your content depends on your knowledge, your style, and the information that you’ll be able to bring to your reader. Nevertheless, if you’re not a great writer or if you’re scared of a blank page, don’t hesitate to take a look at the articles already ranking for your topic

This way, you’ll be able to see the size of the posts that work in the eyes of Google and other search engines, and you can then challenge yourself to reach a length equal or even superior to that of other sites.

While it’s true that Google tends to emphasize long texts, this doesn’t mean that you have to fill in the blanks and write endless paragraphs with no substance, just to reach a specific word count.

Always prioritize quality over quantity, because even if search engines don’t rank your posts at the top of the SERP, your loyal readers deserve the best possible content.

Step 3: Build an article to structure your ideas

An article should be built according to a logical flow of ideas. Without going as far as the “thesis-antithesis-synthesis” dissertation, once you’ve found your theme, your subject, the style of your post will be obvious and therefore the structure of your text will appear.

By writing sections and subsections defined by titles and subtitles at first, you’ll then only have to “fill in the blanks.”

In addition, starting by establishing your plan will allow you to always maintain the thread of your writing, because, between each step, between each part, you’ll naturally develop your content by already thinking about the next transition and the next subject.

These titles and subtitles have names in the SEO world: title tag (visible on the SERP), H1 (the headline placed at the top of your article), H2–H6 (subtitles of your article). These tags will be key in the reading of your blog post by SEO robots.

Here, you can also take inspiration from the best-ranking articles to understand their construction and be inspired by their subsections while maintaining your style, without ever decreasing the relevance of your text.

Hn tags, title, keywords... You need to follow all the right SEO practices to be sure that your content is read by a maximum number of internet users and your products are purchased by all your visitors! Here’s a complete article to help you to optimize your blog posts for SEO and improve your ranking on Google.

Step 4: Write the post, always targeting your objective

The goal of writing will be to answer all the questions and achieve the main objective of your post.

Selling a product, highlighting a trend, talking about an experience: your mission will be to stay focused on your subject, without going “off topic,” and to always follow the thread of your speech.

Nothing’s worse than drowning your reader in a flood of endless information or worthless sentences! To make sure that you always offer quality content, you can refer to these three elements during the writing process:

• Your objective: to highlight a product, a service, to evoke a topic that’s close to your heart, etc.
• Your target: who is my reader? What are the problems I need to solve in my post?
• Your plan: always refer to the sentences before, already written, and check the subsections that follow to remind yourself of your point A in order to go smoothly to point B.

In addition, during the writing phase, write and take advantage of this moment to not "control" your sentences: the time of the rereading will allow you to rationalize and optimize your text.

Step 5: Add a conclusion to end on a high note

The conclusion can be constructed in different ways, depending on the type of post written. The first solution will be to write a conclusion that’ll summarize the points discussed previously, either in the form of sentences or in the form of a bulleted list, for example. This format will make the information more visible and easier to share.

The conclusion can also become an opening to a related topic, not covered in the text but which can be directly related to the main topic of the post. This part of the article can also be the occasion to mention a particular event, to add links to social networks or technical information on a product for example.

Finally, to finish the post, there’s no need to write long paragraphs: the conclusion serves as the “icing on the cake,” not the whole cake!

Step 6: Finish with an introduction to captivate the reader

That’s right! One of the most important tips is to write the introduction after finishing the entire article, including the conclusion. Why write the beginning at the end?

Simply to be certain of the content of the post and therefore the content of the introduction. Imagine writing the introduction before you even know the article’s structure: what if your article deviates from its initial trajectory? You’ll have to rewrite your entire introduction! It’s a waste of time and doesn’t make sense.

With your ideas well structured and the conclusion well written, you’ll only have to write what will act as point A to land on your point B at the end of the conclusion.

In the introduction, for the most novice and to be sure of yourself, don’t hesitate to have your introduction revolve around a simple question (point A), to answer it at the end of the conclusion (point B) with the help of your text’s thought process (the path to get there).

Step 7: Proofread for the final touch

Finally, proofreading is perhaps the most critical moment in your process: this is when you will be able to correct your mistakes, modify your sections, and rewrite what you don't like anymore.

This is also the time when you can use SEO tools like YourTextGuru to check the optimization of your text and adjust it based on the SERP.

Proofreading is a phase that should not be neglected under any circumstances because it allows you to analyze your writing and clean up your text. To make sure that everything is in order, it’s better to do it several times, even with several people: if your blog post is long, if it’s very important for you, or if you’re working on your company’s blog, don’t hesitate to ask for help from your entourage so that they can help you see the errors and improve your text.

Did you know that in all editorial offices, in all media, there’s a department dedicated to the proofreading of articles before publication, made up of dozens of experts?

The editorial secretariat will also help to re-establish the editorial line on all the content handled by the journalists. You see: even the editorial experts are helped by other people to ensure quality content!

So, you don’t have to be ashamed of helping your friends, relatives, or even the web to find the right spelling of a word or a verb: better to check several times than to publish sloppy content.

A few writing tips to never go wrong

To conclude, here are a few simple tips to keep in mind when writing your posts in order to always stay on the right track, to be reproduced also for your product-page writing!

Write short sentences

To be sure to propose a qualitative content, your worst enemy will be the sentence that never ends! There’s no point in trying to cram all the information into a sentence full of commas and parentheses.

When you write this type of sentence, take a step back: can this or that comma become a period? Can the two ideas you’re talking about be two separate lines?

What’s more, to shorten your sentences, avoid the relative pronouns “who” and “what” as much as possible.

For example:

• “The new surfboard that we offer on our online store, which is blue, will allow you to ensure a good glide, thanks to its coating, which is new generation.”

This sentence can become:

• “Discover our new surfboard on our online store. Thanks to its new-generation coating, it’ll ensure a good glide. In addition, its blue color is very trendy: surf in style!”

A single sentence becomes three sentences with more style, more fluidity, and more quality for your reader!

One sentence = one piece of information

During the writing phase, don’t limit yourself. You’ll then be able to advise during the proofreading phase. At this point, remember the adage “1 sentence = 1 piece of information.” You can, of course, write pretty sentences if you feel like it!

For all the other aspiring writers who want to get started without having all the keys to writing (yet), having a framework is always a good idea.

When you proofread your text, pay attention to the meaning and substance of the sentence: is there repetition? Have you approached a piece of information in a different way before? Does it read smoothly?

Let’s use an example:

• “This surfboard has a new-generation coating. With the latest generation of surfboard coating, the surfboard performs better. When choosing a surfboard, performance is a must: this new-generation surfboard is ideal for riding.”

Paraphrasing, repetition, or “keyword stuffing” in SEO terms will kill your text and your reader’s attention. If you want to write a paragraph on a single element, make sure to offer quality text:

• “Did you know that we offer the latest generation of surfboards? The novelty of our models is especially the revolutionary coating: thanks to this technology, the glide is more fluid, and the performance boosted to the maximum!”

And above all, don’t hesitate to use websites and applications for synonyms, conjugation, grammar, syntax... In short, all the aids available to help you in your writing: there’s no shame in using these valuable tools!

Check your sources

When contributing information about your products, an event, a brand’s history, etc., verify all of your sources with multiple sites, multiple texts, or the brand directly.

Even if you’re not covering international political events or a global pandemic, accuracy is key to the success of any news site!

Whether you want to give information about a product, talk about brand news, or simply write about new trends: play the truth and transparency card!

Add CTAs (calls-to-action)

Throughout your article, you may want to promote your product or direct your visitors to your registration form.

To highlight your different menus and pages, there’s nothing like creating CTAs in the form of visible and colorful buttons. They act as incentives, allowing the reader to be instinctively attracted by the link, and you can easily boost your conversion rate.

Email, blog post, homepage: the CTA is an essential tool to add in all your written content!

Work on formatting

Several writing tools can help you structure your ideas and highlight your information. For example, use bulleted lists and other numbered lists to make it easier for your visitors to read.

In addition, bolding is very important, because it allows you to highlight the most important words and sentences in your paragraphs. However, be careful not to overuse it, as it can make your articles considerably heavier. Bolding is also an SEO lever: it allows robots to understand the meaning of your post and to integrate the most important elements for your SEO.

Finally, read articles on the internet, get inspired by other sites to structure your ideas and make reading as fluid as possible!

Stop spelling mistakes

Spelling mistakes are the bane of writing: they make your post lose credit. So, proofreading by yourself, by your friends and family, checking your sentence on the internet, etc., are all good ways to avoid spelling mistakes. All means will be good to avoid typos and mistakes as much as possible.

Become an example by proposing quality content and error-free texts: to do this, think about training and language software to sharpen your skills in whatever language you’re writing in. And remember that there is no shame in wanting to improve, in any field, including your own language! Now it’s up to you.