Blogging is important for your website
You hear it all the time: “Blogging is important for your website”. So you try to be a good entrepreneur and blog regularly about your company and what you do. But it’s hard, isn’t it? It’s difficult to consistently write about engaging “sticky” content about week after week. Not only that, you’re not really seeing the payoff of all the blogs you’ve been writing. But don’t give up yet, with some tweaking and adjustments, you can get your blogs to stand out, boost your SEO, and even start dialog. Here’s how you can accomplish all this with a blogging cheat sheet.
Blogging starts with an idea
Managing a blog content schedule is challenging enough, throw in having no idea what to write about, and blogging suddenly becomes a nightmare. But there’s help. Consider using a Topic Generator. HubSpot has a great one. Check it out on their site. All you have to do is put in three different nouns and the generator will spit back 5 possible blog topic ideas. The choices aren’t bad, but they are generic, sometimes grammatically incorrect and sometimes too common. This tool, however, can help you generate some ideas for your blog.
Use keywords as inspiration
When your creative well runs dry, a place you can find inspiration is with keywords in your niche. Google Trends is a tool that uses search data to see how often a keyword or phrase has been searched – relative to all searches performed – over a certain time period. Essentially, you can quickly find out what’s hot, what’s rising and when that occurs. Type a keyword in your niche and you’ll discover interest level over time, regional interest and related searches to help narrow your keyword down.
To help with blog post ideas, follow these steps:
- Type in your keyword. For example, if you have a diet blog you could search for “paleo”
- Choose a time frame to get a better representation of what’s currently trending. For example, you can choose “Past 90 days,” or “Past 30 days.”
- Scroll down to find “Related Searches” and click on “Rising.” You will see popular search terms that are gaining popularity. The data indicates that “paleo bar” and variations of this keyword are a trending topic. A savvy diet blogger might take this information and write a blog post on paleo diet bars, taking advantage of what people are searching for right now.
Play around with the time frame to see if you can grab other search terms for more topic ideas.
UberSuggest is a free keyword generator that will give you a long list of keyword ideas. It’s based on the suggestions provided by Google when you start typing in its search box.
Know Your Audience
If you don’t understand your readers, they won’t want to stick around, come back or tell anyone else about your blog.
Empathy is the most powerful tool you have as a blogger because it connects you to your audience emotionally. You create that empathy with your readers and it’s the emotional connection that gets them to think they get me. They know what I’m thinking and feeling.
Just put yourself in your reader’s shoes. Ask questions like:
- What are their problems, frustrations and challenges?
- What does a typical day look like in their world?
- What do they hope to gain by reading your blog?
You can find out these answers by:
- Sending out a short survey to your list
- Reading other blogs comments
- Reading forum posts in your niche
Then the key is to take one of the problems or desires that your readers have and incorporate it into your blog post.
With a focused topic, considering the reader’s pain points and well-researched keywords, your blog will garner a lot of attention, both from Google and new visitors to your site.