WAYS TO WRITE A GOOD BLOG ARTICLE FOR BEGINNERS

The first challenge that new bloggers face, is the best ways to write a good blog article. Once you can break this initial barrier, writing articles for your blog becomes easier.

How to write a good blog article

A blog is made of blog posts and a good blog is made of good blog articles.

How do I write a good blog article?

To write a good blog article for your blog, you need to follow the steps below

Step 1: Prepare.

 - Before you start writing think about the topic. 

- What do you want to talk about in the article?

- What are the key points you want to develop? 

The writer needs to research and read about the topic in other to deliver a good article. Researching also helps the writer to know the keywords that are relevant to the article.

- Who is your target audience

Who am I writing the blog article for? Different audiences require different types of content, your target audience also influences your choice of words and tone of the write-up. 

To write a good blog article you must write what will interest your audience, example undergraduate students may be interested in articles that have to do with how to secure a scholarship, single mature ladies may be more interested in dating sites, so your topic, tone and style of writing depends on your targeted audience.

To really engage your audience, you need to know what their needs and interests are, so you can write an article that delivers something they will find valuable. 

When writing an article, avoid using complex or professional terms. Instead, use words that laypeople will easily understand. Using natural and plain language makes it easier for people to read and understand your article.

- Why am I writing the article? do you want to pass information, educate or entertain your audience. your reason for writing needs to be clear in your mind in other to achieve its desired goal.

Step 2: After your research is over, the next thing to do to write a good blog article, is to create an outline for the article.

 Draft your outline or structure for the article. The basic structure should include the following;

- Introduction

- The body of the article

- The conclusion or summary

The structure of the article is pertinent because it guides your discussion or pattern of writing. It also allows you to divide your article into headings and subheadings. 

The ultimate goal is for your content to have an organized structure that will make it easier for your audience to read your article. Once you are done with the outline the next thing to do is to start writing.

Step 3: Format your content in a way web users cannot ignore your article

Once you’ve attracted your reader’s attention with your headline, you need to write a good introduction to make them read on. The approach you use will depend on your subject matter, but here are some techniques you can try:

 - Ask a question that will make your audience think.

- Tell them what information to expect in the article.

 Step 4: Use headings and paragraphs

The headings and subheadings need to be interesting to the readers because it is the heading or title of the article that will attract visitors to your blog site. 

The behaviour of the web users on your site is also determined by the heading, the content and also structure of the article. 

Subheadings also make the article easy and attractive to read as it tells the audience what is in each section of the article.

Everybody uses paragraphs while writing, but not everybody uses them appropriately. Each paragraph should have its own idea or subject. 

 Step 5: The length of the article

To write a good blog article you need a minimum of three hundred words. The longer your article is the better. Search engines prefer long articles, but you need to ensure that the content of your article is rich, appropriate and relevant. Bloating your word count and use of redundant or unnecessary words will not help.

Step 6: Use of images

Remember that images are as important as writing. Beautify your blog posts, with good images to attract visitors. They need to visit first before they can read your content.

 Use photographs, infographics, cartoons, videos, and other visual elements as appropriate in your blog posts.

Step 7: Conclusion

At the end of the article, you need to summarize your write up, highlighting important points. 

 You may initiate further discussions on your writing by ending your article with a question, or a thought-provoking comment. That would encourage your readers to comment on your post.

 This is one of the differentiating features between writing an article for a blog and other types of articles. A blog article can be interactive.

Writing a blog article for SEO

Search Engine Optimization ( SEO) simply means making your content attractive such that search engines like Google or bing can easily track it. If you do not optimise your post for SEO, then it will not be served easily to web users.

 The aim is to appear on the first page of Google and other search engines. The reason for this is not far fetched. When people search Google or other search engines for queries, how often do you go beyond the first page to check out the results? rarely. And more often than not, you will notice that you already have all the information about your query after going through the first few suggestions.

 So, if you want your article to be seen easily by web users, you have to be on the first page. One of the best ways of doing that is to rank high on what’s technically known as SERP. Search Engine Results Page.

To do SEO for your article do the following

1. Use keywords in your headings and the body of your article. These are words that easily and clearly indicate to search engines what your content is all about. However, overuse of keywords should be avoided. 

Search engines can easily detect the use of excess keywords (Keyword stuffing) and will interpret it as an attempt to trick them into showing your content. It is better to write naturally and not to inappropriately force keywords into your content.

 As a general rule, about 1% of your post should be taken up with keywords. So, if you’re writing a 1,000-word article, then the body of the article should contain approximately 10 keywords.

2. Google automatically cuts off headings that are over 65 characters, so if you’re writing blog articles for SEO, try to keep your headings between 55-65 characters.

3.  Keep your paragraphs short because it makes it easier for readers to quickly glance through. The use of about 40-50 words per paragraph is good enough.

4. Please avoid the use of clickbait headlines because nobody likes misleading headlines and this will negatively affect the article once detected by search engines.

5. Remember to compress the size of any image you use before uploading it, so you don’t slow down your page speed. Also, type in the image title and alt text. The alt text describes what the image is all about and it helps search engines understand why the photo is in your post.

6. Internal linking. Do you have any related previous articles in your blog to link up, where the reader can access more information about the topic? 

 Linking to other posts on your website helps search engines create an accurate sitemap. It also helps your audience discover more interesting content, keeps the readers on your site longer, reduces bounce rate and increases the potential for a conversion.  

 7. Link externally to high-authority websites.

Linking to reputable websites offers blog readers additional reading material to expand their knowledge and also shows search engines that you have researched the topic widely.

 8.  Include keywords in your meta description. Meta descriptions are another area Google crawls to determine search rankings. Meta descriptions are the one- to three-sentence descriptions, you'll find underneath the title of a query result. It summarizes the content of your post.