How to Write the Best Blog Post Ever (A Complete Guide)
Would you like to write the best blog post ever?
It’s very possible. People do it all the time. The next best blog post is right around the corner, and it could be YOU who writes it.
But you can at least write the best blog post you’ve ever written. You can keep doing that every time you write a new post, too.
You know what will happen because of that, right?
Your blog will get popular because your content will be some of the best in your niche. It might even earn the prestige of being “the best” content in your niche if you work hard enough.
It’s definitely work!
But if you want to take your content to the next level and write the best blog post ever, then I suggest you read my guide, save it, and come back and read it again for reference.
What makes the Best Blog Post Ever?
There are a few different ways to make the best blog post you’ve ever made. And, as I said, it could very well become the best blog post altogether.
People do it all the time, but of course, best means different things to different people.
The main thing is that you have to remember to make each blog post better than the last, which will help you succeed at making the best blog post ever.
Solve Problems and Answer Tough Questions
The best blog post in your niche will tackle the hardest parts of the niche.
This is why it is always important for anyone blogging in any niche to become an expert at their niche. Learn about everything to do with your niche. Stay up-to-date with changes in your niche. Look into what the future has in store for your niche. And always know what your competition is up to.
Then you tackle the most difficult challenges of your niche to develop authority over the industry. An expert with authority gets a bigger audience.
Solve the biggest problems in your niche. Answer the toughest question. Make sure your answers are clear and concise, and easy to understand.
As I said before, you have to work for this sort of thing.
How to Start a Blog Post?
Starting a blog post should come by flow of inspiration.
It’s better to create something when inspired than to create any other time. You’ll put more soul into what you’re trying to make for your audience. Inspiration definitely goes along with creativity.
But starting a blog post also takes a blog. If you don’t have a blog, you should consider starting a blog. It’s easy to do, free for the most part, and a lot of fun if you enjoy writing.
I use WordPress, and many of the references in this guide will be geared toward WordPress, but I’ll try to give alternative advice for those of you who use something else.
The last step of how you can start a blog post is to actually start one and quit procrastinating about it.
How to Create Your Best Blog Post Ever!
I’ve devised a seven-step process for creating your best blog post.
These are not set in stone. I’m sure you’ll find other advice and steps in your blogging career to add to these. And that is a good thing. Always continue to learn more about blogging.
But these steps are basic and advanced in helping you create the best content you can make.
Step 1: Brainstorm your post’s topic
The first step in creating the best blog post ever is to come up with the best topic ever.
This is an area you should spend a lot of time on. You need to come up with a great topic that serves your audience. It can’t be for you. It has to be for them.
Your topic will also turn into a keyword for search engine ranking. I will show you more about that further along in this article.
So, for now, focus on coming up with the perfect topic to write about.
Step 2: Competitive research and gap analysis
Once you develop a topic, you need to research it and find gaps.
My system is opening up the top five organic (non-paid) listings on Google after searching for the topic. I write down every section on each of the five posts. I made sure I cover those sections in my own words, adding more to them than what other posts have included. Then I look for gaps that they didn’t include in each section. I also look at what new sections I can add.
The system above will help your content rank because it covers the same things but with more detail and added information benefits.
During this process, you’ll tend to learn new things, too. That is always really rewarding.
Step 3: Determine your audience
In order to create an awesome blog post, you have to know who you’re creating for.
And those folks are your audience.
If you don’t know who your audience is, stop and figure it out before going any further!
Who do you see as something that would consume your content? And don’t be general about it. A generic niche isn’t going to make the best blogs ever. You have to niche down to do serious blogging.
A niche is the core topic of your blog. It’s the main topic you write about.
Once you determine your niche, it’s easier to determine your audience.
I write posts for content creators who want to market and better rank their work on search engines and social media. My audience is people who consume just that! I don’t write articles on how to make web3 communities, so the web3 community isn’t my audience.
You must choose an avatar, and I don’t mean a photo, either. An avatar is your ideal customer, whether you’re trying to sell them a product or you’re trying to get them to read your blog.
All consumers are customers, even if the product is a free blog post.
Find out who your customer is and what they want to get out of your content, and that’s how you determine what your audience is.
Step 4: Create an outline
Before you start writing, plan your post out by creating an outline of what you will write.
Start with a great title. You can change it later if the post evolves into something else. But at least a good title will give you something to work with as you craft your outline.
Then you begin to add your outline.
I typically open up a Word document, input my title, and then start adding headlines. I did it for this article. I make the title an H1 and center it. Then I put H2 headings in each section. I create sub-sections as H3 headings. Then I put bullet points on what I want to discuss in each section.
The formatted heading I use above transfers to my blog system (WordPress). That should work on most blog systems.
When you create an outline, you have something to work with as you develop your main content; otherwise, it’s easy to get writer’s block and become unorganized with your content. This is especially true with a larger article like this one.
An outline will make creating the best blog post ever an easier task.
Step 5: Write your engaging content
The next step is to develop your content within your outline while keeping engagement in mind.
Engagement is when you bait the reader to perform actions that interact with you.
So, occasionally asking questions and invites to leave a comment would be engaging. Asking them to share your article would be engaging. Including links to other relevant articles you’ve written also engages them to continue reading other parts of your blog.
The more you engage with a reader, the more likely they will continue to read the entirety of your blog.
Nowadays, we lose readers fairly quickly because most want something fast, and then they’re gone.
But if you can engage with them, it might be good enough to keep them sticking around or at least come back to read future content.
And you should do all this while writing the best content you possibly can in the process.
Step 6: Editing and grammar
Editing is just as important, if not more important, than the writing process.
Over a hundred editing and grammar issues will appear in my editing process for this article. I commonly miss commas, mix my words up, and create some poorly structured sentences.
For the most part, what I write is very readable in the raw.
But I want my articles to be proper and nearly perfect as close as I can get to it. I know they won’t be 100% perfect, and I’m fine with that.
I used to read my articles out loud, have others read them, and double to even triple-check them before publishing them. This was so I could find spelling, grammar, and sentence structure mistakes.
But that takes a long time to do. Sometimes editing can take longer than writing. If you’re into the hustle like I am, extra time to edit is a challenge that has to be done in order to succeed.
I found the perfect alternative, and it’s free – Grammarly. This is a freemium SaaS platform. The system uses AI and is developed really well. Full transparency – I am an official ambassador for Grammarly, but I loved it long before I was invited into the community. It has made editing so easy and fast, and I highly recommend you add this tool to your content-created toolbox.
Try to make sure your best blog post is proper before publishing. It makes the content look good, and it makes you look good as a creator.
Step 7: Publish and promote
Your final task is to publish and then promote your best blog post ever.
Publishing should be simple enough. Make sure you optimize the article for search engines if you want it to rank well on Google and others. Format the article to look good for the ready and provide the best user experience. Add and optimize images and links. And then publish your post to the world.
No one will likely see your post until you promote it, especially if your blog is new or not as popular.
I suggest promoting it on many different outlets. Social media is a great start. If you have a mailing list, promote it to your subscribers. Word of mouth is still a great way to market blog content, too. Email your friends and family and ask them to promote it. Post on forums that allow blog promotion. Comment on relevant blog posts of others and link to them in the website field.
When it comes to publishing – it’s best to stay ahead. You can accomplish this by creating many different posts and scheduling them to post on a specific date. This will keep you ahead of schedule.
After you publish and promote, start working on the next best thing.
Crafting Better Blog Posts
In order to have the best blog post ever, you have to create the best content you can create.
My system is to look at the top five links on Google for a search term. I try to include everything those posts have included but in my own words and with my own additions. I filled in the gaps that the other blogs didn’t include.
And then, I repeat the same process for each section and sub-section. I take those titles and search for them on Google, find the top five, and repeat the process above.
My system takes a while, but it works. A lot of bloggers do it this way, too.
But aside from that, you need to work on perfecting other aspects of the content, too.
Using eye-catching images and visuals
We’re a visually influenced society and creature.
We like pictures. We like videos. We like sound. We should incorporate these visual elements into our content. Don’t just have words and nothing else. At least add an image or two to break it up and add some visuals to the mix.
Make sure your visuals and media (and thumbnails of media) are high-quality and as eye-catching as possible.
If you need good quality photos that are free, I recommend either taking them yourself, if possible, or using a service like Pixabay.
Images should be used in every best blog post you create.
Creating irresistible headlines and openings
This is one of the most important parts of creating the best content ever.
You have to bait, hook, and keep your readers on the line. It’s just like fishing!
So, you need to bait potential readers with a title that immediately catches their attention and makes them want to click on it. You can use clickbait, but I highly recommend you only use it if you deliver what it promises and accurately. If you don’t deliver what you offer, people will quit trusting you and your content, and that can be devastating for your blog.
The hook is your opening content, headings, and any other content you want them to continue reading.
You might even need to make your whole article one big hook if you want everything read. The best way I recommend doing that is to audit each sentence and treat your blog post like it’s a best-selling novel. Every single sentence needs to count. If you put in sentences just to fill content, you’ll lose people on those.
In order to know what to put that’s irresistible to read, I suggest you ask yourself what would make you read something. That’s what you need to answer and work off of.
I’ll get into some practice to help you make great eye-catching titles and headings later in the copywriting section of this post.
But this is probably one of the top three most important parts of creating the best blog post ever.
Implementing CTAs and copywriting
A good blog post has calls for action and is written in a way to make people want to act on those calls.
A CTA stands for Call-to-Action. It’s a statement or visual portion of your blog content that asks a reader to act on a request. Your request might be to subscribe to your newsletter. It could be to buy your product. It might be something as simple as asking the reader to share your post and leave a comment. Whatever it is, your post should have at least one or two CTAs embedded within it.
In order to make a CTA work, you need to persuade the reader to act on it. That’s a hard task if you don’t choose the right words that will make them want to do something like that.
That’s where copywriting comes into play.
Copywriting isn’t trademarks and intellectual property stuff – that’s copyrighting. Copywriting (with a W) is language and visuals that encourages readers and viewer to perform an action. Typically, we use copywriting or copy for short, to sell products and services. But it’s also a great tool to use in a blog post in order to make the content highly desirable for reading.
Copywriting involves using psychological elements in order to create an emotional response of the viewer. When a viewer is emotional, they’re more likely to perform an action or even make a purchase. We’ve used copy on the internet, TV, and radio since all these mediums were created.
There are a few copywriting formulas that you should consider using in your blog posts. These are PAS and AIDA.
PAS stands for Problem-Agitate-Solve. This copy format is extremely simple but also really powerful. You first state the problem of the reader, then you agitate them by stating more problems that typically interact with the main problem, and finally, you solve their problem, which usually comes from your article or a Call-to-Action. You can use this in the opening of your article or throughout the article if you wish to.
Let’s take a look at an example of PAS being used in an opening statement for a blog post focusing on cycling apparel products:
Are you experiencing painful chaffing after your bike rides? (This is the PROBLEM portion of PAS)
No matter how many creams you use or seat covers you install, it only feels like it is getting worse and worse. You are probably even getting sick of cycling altogether. (This is the AGITATE portion of PAS)
The solution is padded bike shorts. These are designed to mitigate shock and protect you from chafing. In this article, I’ll show you 10 different shorts that will help you stop chaffing and start enjoying your bike rides. (This is the SOLVE portion of PAS)
As you can see from the example above, we present a problem that a reader has, agitate them to become even more emotional about it, and then invite them to learn how they can stop it and solve the problem that’s agitating them.
The AIDA formula is another great copywriting strategy. This is often used in long-form content on a blog post. AIDA stands for Attention, Interest, Desire, and Action. You start by catching the attention of the reader. Then you get them interested in what your blog post had to say. You make them desire to want to act. And then, finally, you invite them to act. This is another strategy that uses emotion to get results.
Let’s look at another quick copywriting example, but this time for the AIDA strategy:
Are you getting tired before your hiking trip ends? (Attention)
It seems like you start to wear out within just a mile or two of hiking. You’ve tried everything you can think of to no avail. It’s getting harder and harder to go on longer hikes or even enjoy the shorter ones. You don’t want to quit hiking. (Interest)
This was happening to me until I started religiously practicing four steps on every single hike I went on. (Desire)
These four steps are simple to do and turn into a habit. In this article, I’m going to explain these steps and how you can start doing them today to enjoy longer hikes without being exhausted after you’ve finished. (Action)
In the example above, I get the attention of the reader by presenting a problem. I then add details of the problem to create interest as it relates to their issues. Then I share a personal experience and a sneak peek of how I beat it to make the reader desire to know what to do. Finally, I invite the reader to find out how I did it by presenting the action of reading my article.
There are even more great copywriting formulas out there to choose from.
Whatever you use, just make sure you deliver what you promise.
Write for the Era
As a marketer, it’s important for me to understand the culture of my audience.
As a business owner or blogger, you should also understand the culture of your audience. You should write for that culture. That’s what I mean by writing for the era.
Cultures change with time. What was popular yesterday isn’t always popular today. What’s trending today is probably not going to trend tomorrow. And it’s up to you to stay up-to-date with what’s trending in your niche or industry.
This is why it’s so important to learn every day and stay on top of your industry or niche market.
If you stay with the current trends and cultural era, creating the best blog post possible isn’t going to be as difficult as it might seem.
Write with your voice
Always be you no matter what.
Do you ever listen to people talking on the phone? Try to notice a change in how they talk and their tone of voice for different people they talk to. We all change our tones and the way we talk to different people. It’s a nasty habit, too.
We should use the same voice for everything. We should be our unique self-100% of the time. Changing our tones will only make us fake in the end. And when people discover our fake tones, it’s hard to recover from it.
The best way to make great content is to use your natural and original voice. Write as you talk.
Talk to the reader as an individual
When you write, write to a single reader, not the entire audience.
You can make a blog post better when you talk to the reader as if you’re talking to them face to face. It feels personal. It feels real. It feels inviting. It’s been tried and tested again and again and proven to be the most effective way of communicating with your audience on a blog post.
Writing as if you’re talking to someone face to face will keep them reading and engaging with you.
Make it scannable for mobile
You’ll notice I write a lot of single sentences or very short paragraphs.
I do this to make my content scannable.
I do it because it’s mobile-friendly. More than 85% of your readers will be using their mobile devices. I promise you! Because of that, you need to write for mobile users first.
You can accomplish that by doing more line breaks. You should also keep sentences short. You should keep paragraphs short. And you should write in a way that everyone can understand what you’re saying without having the define words.
Don’t use big words. Keep it short, and remember that people are reading from a tiny screen.
SEO Best Practices for Your Blog Posts
SEO stands for search engine optimization.
SEO is a way to optimize your blog post to make it rank better on Google and other major search engines. You can choose not to use SEO, but your blog post will likely not be the best blog post ever because competitors are using it to rank their content better than yours.
But if you choose to use it, it can help you achieve anything you want it to result in, whether that is more readers or more conversions into paid customers.
In this section, I’m going to give you a quick breakdown and checklist to optimize your blog content for search engines.
Technical SEO
Technical SEO sounds more complex than it is.
To achieve this for blogging, focus on two main areas: SSL and Page Speed
SSL is basically encryption and security for your domain name. Your domain name is your main website address. My domain name is shawngossman.com. I use SSL, and you can tell by seeing the lock icon in the address bar, https before my domain name, and a security certification attached to the lock in the address bar.
I use Let’s Encrypt, which is free and widely used by website owners on the internet.
The SSL feature is extremely important to use for SEO. Not using it might make people not trust visiting your website altogether, as the browser will warn people that the blog site is not secure.
Page Speed is the other technical SEO factor. Google and others will rank your blog based on how fast it loads. Every page on your blog should load fully in up to 2 seconds. If it’s more than 2 seconds, it loads too slowly.
Most of the time, this is because of the hosting service, and it might mean you need to go with a more stable service.
But other times, it can be your fault. You might have too many plugins installed that are slowing down your blog. You might be using large images that are making load times slower. You may need a better caching system for your website.
A fast and secure blog is required to have an optimized website for search engine ranking.
Keyword Research
Keyword research is important to do for every post you make.
Every post needs to have a keyword targeted to it. The keyword should be unique to each post and never used more than once for a post or page on your blog.
Many popular keywords are extremely competitive. You need to choose long-tail keywords that niche down. They need to be searched for but not extremely competitively used in another article.
The content you put against a keyword also needs to match the search intent of the search user, or it can seriously damage your SEO strategies.
The best way to research a keyword is by searching for the topic you want to write about. This will give you information and inspiration for choosing a keyword.
Then you need to research the keyword. I use a combination of tools, including:
- Keywords Everywhere (freemium)
- Uber Suggest (freemium)
- SEM Rush (freemium)
- Google Search Console (free)
- Google Trends (free)
- Google Search (free)
- Ahrefs (premium/expensive)
The keyword “buy road bikes” will be extremely difficult to compete with. The keyword “buy Trek road bikes” will still be difficult because of the popularity of Trek road bikes.
Leading from the examples above, let’s say you’re doing SEO for your local bike shop in Nashville. You would want to rank for local SEO and use a keyword that isn’t as competitive but still searchable.
This is where long-tail keywords come into play.
You might try to rank for “buy trek bikes in Nashville” or “buy new trek bikes in Nashville.” The keyword is longer and more direct to what kind of content you’re creating.
Keyword research is an art, and it’s good to constantly learn about it.
Keyword Placement
Once you determine your keyword, you need to place it strategically into your blog content.
There are three places you need to include the keyword on every post. Those places are your title, your H1 header (only use one H1 per post), and the URL of your post, often called the slug. These areas will tell Google and other search engines what your blog post will be about.
You can put your keyword in at least one other header if you have more headings. After that, make sure to include it in the ALT tags of your first image.
In your actual content, it’s good to mention your keyword in the first sentence or paragraph. After that, just mention it a few more times spaced out in the rest of your content.
There is no percentage for keyword density, but if you use it too much, it can hurt your ranking and even get your post banned from the search engine.
Any time you place your keyword in your content, it needs to blend in naturally. If the keyword makes your content sound weird or not normally sounded, then you need to put it in a different way until it makes sense where it’s at.
Keyword placement isn’t as difficult as some people make it out to be. The hardest part is coming up with the best keyword that isn’t too competitive.
What Makes the Perfect URL?
Your blog post URL will help with your search engine ranking.
I noted this factor above. Place your keyword in your URL in the slug portion. An example would be “blog.com/my-first-blog” if our keyword was “my first blog.” If your keyword was “create your first blog” and you made a how-to article, you could also make the URL “blog.com/how-to-create-your-first-blog.”
You just want to make sure your keyword is in the URL.
Title and Meta Description
Your title and meta description are important factors for SEO.
Your title and your meta description should have your keyword in them.
The title should have it. Try to keep it as close to the beginning as you can. Make sure your title isn’t too long, either.
Your description should also have your keyword in it. Only mention the keyword once. Make sure you add copywriting techniques to your description to make it stand out.
Your title and your H1 header can be different as long as both have your keyword in them.
Optimize Images
All images should be optimized for SEO.
First, make sure your image file size is lightweight. It’s best to ensure images are under 500kb. The higher they are in size, the slower your page will load. A slow page will have negative SEO rankings.
Your first image, typically the cover image, should have the keyword in its ALT tags. Images after that should have ALT tags that tell a user what the image is. This is to help disabled users to understand your images better.
Lastly, make sure your images are high-quality and visually appealing.
Write Great Content
In order to have the best blog post ever, it needs to have the best content ever written!
You have to write great content. Every sentence and word counts. You should have a goal of making each blog post better than the last. This will help ensure that your blog gets popular and does well on search engines.
Content is and will always be king when it comes to SEO. But content isn’t always text. It can be images, audio, and even video. And it’s good to include all these content elements in your blog when applicable.
Don’t write generic content. Write unique and original content that solves problems and answers tough questions with easy solutions. That’s how you win at blogging.
And while using AI is a good idea, don’t rely on it to write your content. You should be the writer, not a program that is still capable of making mistakes and errors.
Content is most important – make sure you master it.
Add Internal and External Relevant Links
Try to add relevant links but make sure they’re good websites.
You should add a healthy mixture of internal and external links to each blog post.
The text you turn into a link is called anchor text. The text should explain what the link will go to. Don’t link up things that say “click here” because it’s poor anchor text and often results in a bad rating on search results. People want to know what they’re clicking.
Internal links are important. It keeps people on your blog, which helps you rank better in search. Just make sure the links are relevant to the post you wrote.
The same goes for external links. Make sure they’re relevant to the blog’s copy. Make sure they have a great anchor text, and you might also add a “no follow” attribute to the link.
If you link to a website that uses bad SEO practices or has poor or harmful content, it can hurt your ranking. That’s why all external links are best set to “no follow.” But you should still be extremely picky about what external links you allow on your blog.
Links are important, and if your content is good enough, another website will link to you, and that will help boost your search ranking, too.
Create a Bio
The last task you have for your best blog post ever strategy is creating a great bio.
Every post should include your bio at the end. Your bio shows who you are and what you’re about.
Most bios include a photo of the author, some social links, and a paragraph or two about who they are and information that relates to the niche of the blog.
A bio will help you build a reputation and authority in your niche.
Try to use the same photo and name on social media. You want to build a brand around your blog. You want people to instantly know who you are.
Keeping the same name, photo, and voice on your blog and social media will help accomplish your brand.
And that’s how you can create the best blog post ever. If you’ve enjoyed this guide, be sure to follow me on Twitter for more guides and tips for blogging. I’d appreciate it if you shared this guide with other bloggers, especially on social media. Feel free to leave a comment and add to this guide or ask questions.
About the Author
Shawn Gossman has created content, blogged, ran online communities, and shared a passion for digital marketing for over twenty years. Shawn believes the best way to help content creators, businesses, brands, and marketers is to give away more than you sell. The same advice is recommended for the readers that follow this blog. Shawn also offers a variety of services for extra help in the area of content creation, blogging, forums, and digital marketing. Learn more about Shawn Gossman by clicking here.
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