Having a blog on your website can have a very positive impact on your SEO; attracting more traffic, establishing your authority, and building credibility in the eyes of Google. But, far too many people make the mistakes of writing blog posts solely for the purpose of pleasing Google, as opposed to truly connecting and engaging with their target audience.
In this article, we’re going to briefly outline some handy tips on how to write blog posts that will effectively convert readers into customers.
1. Find your authentic brand voice
It may sound a little cheesy, but do not underestimate the value in finding your brand voice and making it present and consistent throughout all of your writing.
If you want to truly engage with your audience and have them resonate with your brand, you need to use language that excites and interests them. If your blog posts drone on with very little personality at all, they’re not going to be very impactful.
2. Know exactly who you are writing for
Just as it’s important to find your voice, you also need to identify exactly who you are speaking to. The more data you have on your ideal customer, the better positioned you will be to create content that is perfect for them.
Of course, this isn’t only important for ensuring that your readers enjoy your content, but that the right people can actually find it! As such, conduct extensive audience research, target the appropriate keywords, and build your content around them.
3. Draw them in with strong headlines
The title / headline of your blog posts are in many ways more important than the content itself. Remember, thousands and thousands of businesses are scrabbling for your ideal customer’s attention and if you wish to cut through the noise, you’ve got to get creative.
Use the right keywords in your titles and headlines for SEO by all means, but write them for people first.
Notice in this blog, the title isn’t “A guide”, it’s “Your guide”. Subtle language decisions can have a massive impact.
4. Use headers to break up the text
Headers are not only handy for breaking up large blocks of text and making blog posts easier and more enjoyable to read, but they can also help improve flow and allow your readers to find the key information they need as quickly as possible.
Using this post as an example, you are likely already aware of many of the points shared, however, there may be one or two that you haven’t thought of and when clearly defined by headers, you can navigate your way to the key information with ease.
5. Bulleted lists for clarity
Bulleted lists can work wonderfully in blog posts because:
- They look tidier.
- They’re organised.
- They’re easy to read.
- They provide concise information.
- They break up the monotony of reading paragraphs.
6. Add relevant visuals
Pictures, videos, infographics, and social media snippets can add so much value to a blog post. The fact is, if someone visits a blog post and can only see large blocks of text on a page, the average consumer is put off – even if the content within is incredibly valuable. However, by leveraging the power of visual elements, not only does it improve the aesthetic charm of a blog post, but certain visual elements like infographics can increase comprehension.
7. Link internally
When adding new posts to your blog, make sure that you are continually adding to your website’s internal linking structure. If you have additional blog posts that go into even more detail on a given subject, send your readers in that direction. Similarly, if you have certain products or services that apply, add links to those pages as well.
Internal linking makes navigating your website easier, helps users find what they are looking for faster (and discover things they never knew they needed), and improves SEO.
8. Cover a subject better than anyone else
Today, there are over 25-billion indexed web pages on the internet. That’s a gargantuan amount of information – which means writing an entirely unique blog post is becoming increasingly difficult to achieve. That said, just because you can’t always create ‘new’ content, it doesn’t mean you can’t do it better than everyone else.
If you want the best chance at converting your readers into customers, provide extensive information on a subject and prove that you are the authority. If you can do it clearly and with concision, your post will invariably rank better with Google, establish trust with your readers, and (ideally) up those conversion rates.
Final thoughts
As you can see, there’s a fair amount of work that goes into planning and producing high value content for your blog. If this is something you desperately want for your business but don’t feel confident taking on the responsibility by yourself, it’s worth seeking out the professionals. If you partner with one of the top agencies for SEO in Melbourne for example, you can leverage their expertise in SEO and creative writing and share high-quality content with your audience, consistently.
The more consistent you are with quality, the better chance you’ll have at building a loyal following and ultimately converting as much of those ‘clicks into customers’ as possible.