It’s well known adding a blog to your website enhances your SEO, builds rapport with prospective clients, and provides additional value to your existing clients. With the key benefits of blogging already known, it’s important to also know the essential elements that go into a successful blog post. 

Each blog post on your website should have certain elements to make it effective in enhancing your SEO, building that rapport, and connecting with your audience. This article will walk you through each of these key elements to ensure every blog post is serving you well.

After coming up with a topic for your blog post, you’ll want to also gather the following:

• Blog Post Title*
• Blog Post Content*
• Image(s) for Inside the Post*
• Featured Image*
• WordPress Category*
• WordPress Tags
• SEO Keyphrase
• SEO Meta Description

The items above with a * are the bare essentials you’ll want to have covered. But for your blog to serve you best, it should include all of the items listed. Let’s dive into what each of these items consists of and why they’re important to the success of your blog.

1. Blog Post Title

Your headline, or blog post title, should clearly outline what your blog post is about. You’ll want to find a title that is keyword rich and relevant to the content (and ideal client). When coming up with a title, consider what your ideal clients are searching for when they go to Google for answers. In fact, go to Google yourself and type your title in and see what comes up. Use some of the links provided as inspiration for what ranks higher.

I regularly use Monster Insight’s and CoSchedule’s headline analyzers to help me come up with a more powerful headline.

2. Blog Post Content

Your blog post content is the words and content that make up your post. If you’re writing these yourself be sure to keep them aligned with your brand voice. Be sure to use subheadings to break up your text. This is great for readability and search engine optimization.

Once you write your content, ensure you have an inviting opening paragraph and conclusion that invites the reader to take action. This could be leaving a comment, booking a discovery call, or downloading a lead magnet.

You’ll also want to scan for any relevant links to add to your content. This is another great tactic for boosting your SEO. Link to other relevant content on your blog that will provide additional value to the reader and invite them to stick around longer. You can also link to content outside of your website, just be sure to make the links open in a new tab.

3. Image(s) for Inside the Post

Depending on your blog post topic, you’ll want to include some sort of images. Stock imagery or brand photography can be used to support your content and break up the text on the page. Websites like Haute Stock or Styled Stock Society make it easy to find unique images that remain consistent with the look and feel of your brand.

Prior to uploading your images, be sure to rename the files to something relevant to the blog post topic to support your SEO. More on that here. You’ll also want to make sure they’re JPEG files and under 250KB to enhance your website performance.

There is no hard and fast rule for how many images to use. You can use as little or as many as you see fit. You’ll see some of my blog posts include many images to help break up the content and some have very few.

4. Featured Image

In addition to images to be used within your post, you’ll need to choose a featured image for your post. A featured image is used to accompany your website URLs when shared on social media and on search engines. To simplify matters, I usually use the first image used in my blog post for the featured image.

5. WordPress Category

You’ll also need to choose a category for your blog post. Categories help organize your blog content. Typically a strong blog will have about 3-6 staple categories. This also helps your blog stay on topic. Google wants to see you’re posting relevant content and will look at categories to check on this.

6. WordPress Tags

WordPress tags are more specific than categories. Think of tags as more descriptive categories. Think about what people will be searching for in order to find your post. Use these to create your tags. There will be some overlap in your tags from post to post, but it isn’t a requirement. I recommend 5-10 tags per post.

7. SEO Keyphrase

I typically have a roundabout idea of my post’s SEO keyphrase prior to writing. Simply put, a keyphrase is the search term you want to rank for. I love UberSuggest’s Keyword Ideas tool to research my keyword phrases. Their tool helps identify the most effective keyword phrase based on search engine traffic. Each page and post on your website should target a slightly different keyphrase, so it might be a good idea to track your keywords on a spreadsheet.

Once you come up with a key phrase, it’s best to go back through the website content and make sure to use the keyword phrase throughout. It’s important to make sure to use in the headline, body, and subheadings in a very organic manner. Google can tell when you’re just stuffing it in there in the hopes of a better rank. Authenticity matters.

Using a plugin like Yoast SEO, once you add your content to WordPress you’ll receive suggestions on how to further optimize your post for this keyword.

8. SEO Meta Description

In addition to your SEO keyphrase, you’ll want to come up with a strong meta description. A meta description is the short line of copy you see under a link in your search results. Your headline will appear first as the link but then there is a short description underneath the link. 

If you don’t create a meta description, Google will do its best to create a relevant meta description based on your content. But, you can help them (and potential clients) attract more of the right traffic by creating a relevant meta description. 

Keep meta descriptions around 160 characters or about 2 sentences long. Keep it short, sweet, and enticing. Read more about how to create the right meta description here.

The best blog posts will provide value to prospective clients while attracting more of the right traffic to your website.

Keeping these essentials in mind when crafting your blog posts you’ll be growing your traffic and providing value to your audience. If you need support with a website upgrade or rebrand to showcase your blog posts, I’d love to help. Click here to learn more about my brand and website design services.