It is no secret that content is king when it comes to blogging. However, crafting well-written, engaging content that resonates with your audience isn't always easy.
There are a lot of best practices to follow throughout the process, but even the most seasoned bloggers can still make silly mistakes.
This article will give you eight do's and don'ts for content writing that will help you grow your blog.
Buckle up as we get started!
Starting with the positive ones...
Things To Do To Grow Your Blog
Following are things you should do when it comes to growing your blog.
1. Write Shorter Paragraphs
It's no secret that people like shorter paragraphs as they are easier to read. Shorter sections are visually appealing and help break a dense text block into something more manageable. So, try to break up your information into smaller, more manageable sentences when writing. If you're dealing with long paragraphs, you can always try out a paragraph shredder to make your paras more manageable.
2. Always Proofread Your Content
If you're writing content, proofreading is a good practice. By doing this, you can ensure no errors in your work that could affect its appearance. While you won't always get it right, you shouldn't look careless in your writing. Ensure you proofread your articles thoroughly before publishing them.
3. Follow On-Page Practices
If you want your content to rank on the search engine, you must follow the best SEO on-page optimization practices. It includes using the right keywords and meta tags, relevant content, and optimized images, among many other factors. In adhering to these on-page optimization practices, you deliver value to your users and search engines, and in return, they reward you.
4. Respond to Blog Comments
After reading your content, people are likely to have some questions that they'll ask. Point your readers to ask their questions in the blog comments and respond to every word you receive. It builds trust and authority, in addition to increasing your blog engagement.
5. Create Unique Content
As a content writer, it is always essential to produce unique content to cover all bases with search engines and readers. It can be a challenge, especially if you are writing about topics covered extensively by other writers. However, writing unique content that will capture your readers' attention with a bit of creativity and effort is possible.
6. Add Visuals
While creating content, it's vital to add visuals to your blog in images, videos, or infographics. Visuals can help break up your text and make your content more engaging and appealing. They can also convey a message or story the blogger is trying to tell. Visuals are often underestimated, but they can help increase engagement. So make sure to use great visuals in your blog or other content to make it more appealing.
7. Create Catchy and SEO-Friendly Headlines
To get people to read your blog, you need a catchy headline. Your headline provides a snapshot of the article and entices your reader to read your content further. The other thing you want to do is make sure your headline is SEO-friendly. This means using the primary keyword strategically in your headline to ensure that it's relevant to the user query. It helps the search engine understand your content better.
8. Use Storytelling
There's no one blueprint for penning a great story, but there are some aspects that all good stories share. A good story has a relatable central character that readers can empathize with. These stories are a powerful way to connect with your readers, create an emotional bond, and make your content meaningful and engaging.
Things To Avoid (Don'ts) While Growing Your Blog
Following are the no-no's or the don'ts when it comes to growing your blog.
9. Never Copy Other's Content
Originality is key when creating content. You shouldn't copy other people's work, be it text, images, videos, or any other media type. It's not only a plagiarism issue but also quite embarrassing. Moreover, the search engine will penalize you for doing the same. There are plenty of tools available to check for content plagiarism.
10. Don't Blindly Follow the Competitor
Although it's crucial to be aware of what your competitors are up to, you shouldn't simply imitate their every move. You should take inspiration from their strategies and see how you can improve upon them. As you'd know, there's always room for improvement, no matter how big or small. The more you experiment with your blog, the better off you'll be. So, keep trying different types of content, approach, and topics.
11. Don't Forget to Outline
One of the most important things to do when writing a blog is to create an outline. It'll help you organize your thoughts and ensure that your blog is cohesive. It's easy to stray from your topic and create a disjointed blog post without an outline. So, before you start writing, take the time to outline. It'll save you a lot of headaches in the long run. There are plenty of AI-based Outline generators to help you create your perfect blog outline.
12. Don't Compromise On Quality
Your content is a reflection of your brand. It's important to deliver high-quality content to help build a loyal following. If you compromise on the quality, you will lose credibility with your audience, which will reflect in the results.
13. Don't Use Complex Words
The most challenging thing in any profession is to make something simple. A blogger is considered great if he can communicate complex ideas in a simple language anyone can understand. Complex words can create difficulties for readers to understand. If you want your blog to be accessible to as many people as possible, try not to use complex words. This is where you avoid using too much jargon. You can look to the Flesch-Kincaid score to check for a good readability score. You can also check out content readability improver tools to transform the complex text into an easily digestible one.
14. Don't Cover Many Topics in a Single Blog
When writing a blog post, it's best to focus on just one topic rather than trying to cover everything. This way, you won't overwhelm your readers with multiple topics in a single blog post. If your content is about multiple topics, write separate blog posts for each case and link them to guide the user.
15. Don't Avoid Keyword Research
Keyword research is a vital part of writing a successful blog. It constitutes 50% of SEO. By taking the time to research relevant keywords, you can ensure that your blog will be more visible to your target audience. So, the better your keyword research, the higher chances are for your content ranking on SERP.
16. Don't Try to Be Perfect
There's no such thing as perfection; it comes in iterations. Perfection in blogging is simply an invitation to lazy writing. What you need are systems that score your content piece. The moment you cross a minimum threshold, that's when you need to publish that content piece. You can always update the same article later.
Conclusion
Blogging can be fun and equally rewarding. You should do certain things to ensure your blog is successful. At the same time, there are also certain things you should avoid doing to make sure that your blog does not fail.
In this blog, we looked at 16 such things. In all fairness, there might be hundreds of pieces of advice to grow your blog, but till then, these will do if you want to grow your online presence.
