You sit down at the computer and you have a blog idea in mind, but do you know it is something people are searching for? What's the best keyphrase to try to rank for? What types of posts do people (and Google) like best? Learn how to plan a blog post that Google will love!
Deciding what to write is probably one of the biggest challenges for bloggers. This is especially true if you’re a blogger who tries to publish multiple posts per week. While it may seem easy or even interesting to just sit down and write the first thing that comes to your mind, that strategy likely isn’t going to gain you much of a following. Moreover, it won't generate much organic traffic.
The most successful bloggers out there get traffic and loyal followers by writing posts that people want to read. They write posts that answer their readers' questions, help them with something, and generally make their lives easier. So what are the things your potential readers want answered? How can you make their life easier?
Google is the best resource for getting content ideas!
Lucky for you, there is an easy-to-use website that will tell you what questions your potential readers are asking: Google, the most visited website in the world. Every minute of the day, your potential readers are going to Google and searching for solutions to their problems. Let me show you how to gather information from the world’s best, most powerful search engine.
Go to Google.com and enter a general search term regarding your industry. Let’s say you specialize in women’s fitness. So let’s search for “fitness for women.” Now, scroll to the bottom of the page where you will see that Google is suggesting some additional searches for you. These are based on what your potential readers are searching for. In other words, they are potential topics.
Granted, some of these are still pretty general, but the idea is to keep drilling further down into the topic to get as many content ideas as possible. So click on one of these suggestions. I clicked on “women's fitness tips” which could definitely be a blog post. Now, I scroll to the bottom of this search page: more topic ideas. I see “fitness tips for weight loss,” “daily fitness tips,” “top 10 health and fitness tips;” all excellent potential blog posts. You could even drill down further into these.
So using Google for topic ideas, all you need is a general idea. Just type it into Google and scroll to the bottom of the page, click around on some of the suggestions, and continue going to the bottom to see what additional suggestions appear, all the while taking notes on all the potential blog post ideas.
So you’ve got topics. Now you need to write a post that both your readers and Google will love (which is always the same thing – if readers love it, Google will, too). More on the actual writing of the content later; first, you need to determine how long your post should be if you want it to rank on the 1st page and generate oodles of organic traffic.
To answer this question, you must scope out the competition. Using Google, search for the term you’d like to rank for and click through to the blog posts currently ranking on the first page. How long are the posts? If the number 1 result for the term is a 5,000-word dissertation, a 500-word post isn’t going to beat it out. Also, if all the top results are videos, a blog post will probably not compete. Your post will need to be of comparable length and medium to the posts that are already ranking on the first page. The key here is to try and find a happy medium. There’s no need to overthink word count (quality is more important than quantity), but you do need to be in the same neighborhood where length is concerned.
In the blogging world, everything is centered around content. In order to rank highly with Google, there are quite a few things to keep in mind regarding SEO, but the most important thing to focus on is that you provide unique and valuable content that is relevant to your chosen niche.
What are 3 types of blog posts that people (and Google) love?
Sample Titles:
How-To’s are great content to add to your site from time to time! If someone is coming to your site to learn what you’re offering in this post it is because they were specifically looking for this information! They have a problem and you are offering them a solution. This is a very powerful style of blog. You are establishing credibility and expertise, offering value, and creating trust! These posts are also great for social media exposure, being as they are easily and often shared!
People who are viewing how-to’s are also more engaged and tend to stay on your site much longer, which factors into your site’s metrics that Google uses to determine how high your page ranks!
A few things to remember is to be very specific when giving instructions. It’s good to provide pictures, videos and infographics, if possible. It may also be a good idea to include checklists, cheat sheets and to-do lists. You could even include them as a downloadable PDF at the end of your post (and gather their email for your list)!
Lists are another style of content that are good to include sometimes! They are easy to create when you are in a pinch and people love them! They are easy to follow and read, can be a lot of fun, easily actionable, and they are very shareable! This is another way to extend your social media exposure as they do great on social media sites, especially if you use a catchy title! These particular posts are less likely to rank high with Google, due to their lack of substantive content, but it does boost your digital presence and increase traffic, both factors which will indirectly help your rankings.
One example of this would be resource or link lists (sometimes called curated content). These provide value to your customer by giving them a centralized place to find more information about some things they know are available combined with others they may not even have thought of! Providing these types of lists tends to raise your audience retention and keep people coming back to your site, as well as recommending it to others.
There are two types of reviews, straight reviews and compare/contrast reviews. These posts give people valuable information that they are searching for in order to make informed buying decisions. Besides providing credibility, these types of lists provide instant authority on a topic. Straight reviews assess one specific product. Compare/Contrast reviews are another type and are self-explanatory. You gather information and compare the pros and cons of two or more similar products.
Utilize these three types of blog posts as often as possible when writing your content, and your blog will be rewarded with top search rankings and quality site traffic.
Welcome! My name is Glenneth and I live in beautiful East Tennessee. I wear many hats: CEO of The Visibility Method, SEO & Google Ads Expert, content creator, and more. I love technology, social media, and weight lifting. My favorite place to hang out is the hammock in my backyard. My favorite colors are pink and orange. My favorite team is the Vols. And I LOVE to get email so please drop me a note and say hi!
That’s helpful! Sometimes I have a title in mind and I search it and the same title comes up. Can you use that or how should I differentiate a title if what I want to use comes up in search?
if you have a title in mind and search it and see other articles with that title, i would say you are exactly where you should be. make sure those articles are similar to the content you were planning and about the same length.
Thanks for sharing this! This is so helpful for content creation, especially when I need to do plan out content for the months ahead. Thanks!
yay! glad you enjoyed it!
Thank you, this is so useful as I plan out content (which I am SO bad about) – appreciate the tips!
yay! thanks for letting me know!
[…] post – correct? If not, now is the time to start. Here’s a post I wrote about How To Plan Blog Posts that Google Loves that I thought would help you out. You need to make sure you know what keyphrase you are […]