In this article I’m going to show you how to write a blog post that gets hundreds of comments, thousands of social shares, and massive traffic to get first page Google Rankings.
Let’s face it, getting traffic to your blog is harder than ever, in fact there are over 912 million blog posts. And the vast majority of blog posts that are published, get zero links or social shares. Today things are completely different. Keep reading.
According to WordPress, 2.3 million blog posts come out on their platform everyday, so for your content to stand out and get shared today, it needs to be amazing.
1.0 – Find a proven blog post topic
It’s no secret that your blog post topic must be huge. Here’s exactly how to find blog post topics that actually work. First head over to Udemy.
Udemy is a blog post topic goldmine, here’s why. Udemy doesn’t just show you content that people are interested in, you’ll see content that people are actually paying for.
You can search for courses by category or by keyword. Either way, you’ll find content that people are actually paying to access. For example, let’s say you run a blog about graphic design.
Well head over to the Design Category in Udemy, and scroll down to their best-selling courses and within five seconds you have a list of proven topics. Very cool!
The next place to look for proven topic ideas is Amazon. To use it, just search on Amazon with the keyword that describes what your blog is all about. Then look for a book on that topic with lots of ratings, this shows you that people actually bought the book.
Finally, click “look inside”, to see the table of contents and just like with Udemy, you get a list of topics presented to you on a silver platter.
2.0 – Write your headline
Now that you have a proven topic, it’s time to write your blog post headline.
Eighty (80) percent of people read your headline, but only 20 percent click over to the actual post. Is that stat true? Who knows, but I do know that your headline is super important. With that, here’s exactly how to write blog post headlines that stand out and get clicks.
First start your headline off with “proven phrases”.
BuzzSumo recently analyzed about 100 million headlines. So what did they find? That headlines that start with less than 20 words and phrases, get the most shares on social media.
Obviously you don’t need to start every single headline off with one of those phrases, but when it makes sense try and use them.
Second, make sure that your title uses brackets or parentheses.
A study by Outbrain found that adding brackets to headlines can improve click-through rate by up to 38 percent.
Finally, you want to use long headlines. That study of 900 million blog posts that I mentioned earlier, found that posts with long headlines got 76 percent more shares compared to posts that used short headlines.
3.0 – Write an attention-grabbing introduction
Topic, check. Headline, check. Now it’s time to write an introduction that grabs your readers attention right off the bat, how? The PPT Formula. By the way, the PPT stands for Preview, Proof, Transition. Here’s a breakdown of the formula.
First, you have the “preview”. This part couldn’t be any more simple. Just let your reader know exactly what to expect. That way when someone lands on one of your blog posts, they know that they’re in the right place.
Next, it’s time for the proof. Here’s where you show people that you know what you’re talking about.
Now what if you don’t know what you’re talking about, well you’ve got bigger problems than blog post introductions, but that’s another story.
You can show proof with personal results, years of experience, number of clients, credentials or certifications, or anything that shows that someone should listen to your advice.
Last up we have the transition. Cap your intro off with a transition, a transition that pushes your reader to keep reading.
4.0 – Write an awesome post
Is there a formula for writing blog posts that people will link to and share? No, if there was, everyone would use it. That said, there are proven strategies that you can use to make your content ten times better.
For example, one technique that you can consider is to use lots of section sub-headers. Sub headers are great because they break your content up into easy to read chunks, which is super important if you publish a lot of long-form content.
I also recommend using lots of visuals in every post that you publish.
Now when I’m talking about visuals I’m talking about things like screenshots, charts, pictures, infographics. Basically don’t be afraid to use a ton of different visuals and just lots of visuals in general in every post.
Next, use a font that’s between 16 and 20 pixels, if you’ve ever read anything at medium.com, you’ve probably noticed that their articles are super easy to read. How do they do it?
Well besides a clean layout, they use 21 point font. And if you’re using anything less than 16, you’re probably missing out on a lot of readers.
Finally when it makes sense, publish content that’s at least three thousand words.
A BuzzSumo Industry study, found a clear correlation between long-form content and social shares. In fact, the data showed that long-form content got an average of 77 percent more social shares, compared to traditional short blog posts.
Obviously this doesn’t mean that you need to pad your blog posts with a bunch of fluff or filler. But if it does make sense to publish a long-form blog post or guide, go for it.
So now that your post is in the books, it’s time for the next step.
5.0 – Write your conclusion
Here’s the deal. Most people use throw away conclusions such as “I hope you enjoyed this article”. But professional bloggers know that your conclusion is super important. Especially if you wanna get lots of comments on your blog.
An easy three-step process for writing awesome conclusions is the “TAC Process”. Here’s how it looks.
First start your conclusion off with a transition. This sentence lets people know that the meat of your blog post is over and it’s time to sum things up.
Next, it’s time for the ask. Here’s where you ask your reader a very specific question. In other words, you don’t wanna ask something vague like what do you think?
Instead, give your reader an insanely simple question that’s easier to answer. For example, in this conclusion you can see that I’ve asked people something that will take like two seconds to answer. And you want to end your conclusion with a CTA (call-to-action).
Your CTA can be whatever you want your reader to do next. You can ask your readers to leave comment, share on social media, sign up for your newsletter, subscribe to your YouTube channel, the exact call to action that you use is totally up to you.
But the important thing to keep in mind here, is that you got someone
to read your blog post all the way to the end. Which means they really enjoyed your content and they’re ready for the next step. And as long as you give them that next step in your conclusion, you’re good.
6.0 – Optimize your post for SEO
Obviously there’s a lot more to SEO than I can cover in this short article.
SEO is super important for your blog posts long-term success. So I do want to quickly cover three simple techniques that you can use to optimize your blog posts for SEO.
The truth is, traffic to most peoples’ blog posts look like this, a huge spike on day one, then it flattens out to pretty much zero. But when you optimize your post the right way. You’ll still get that spike, but your post still brings in consistent traffic month after month.
So the first on-page SEO technique is to include your target key word in your introduction.
Google and other search engines put more weight on words and phrases that show up at the top of your page. So you want to make sure to use your keyword once in your blog post intro. Next use short URL’s.
When it comes to Google Rankings there’s no doubt about it, short URL’s work best. In fact, Google themselves actually recommend that you use short descriptive URL’s. That’s because short URL’s make it easy for Google to understand the topic of your page.
Plus people use your URL to figure out which result they should click on. Which is why lots of industry studies have found that short URL’s get clicked on more than long URL’s.
7.0 – Add internal links to your post
Now internal linking doesn’t have to be complicated. Keep things simple.
Add two to five internal links to some of your older posts. Now you could also go back to older posts and link to the new post that you just published.
And before I end this article, I have a quick bonus step for you…promote your post.
Most blog posts, even good ones fail, because they’re not promoted enough. And no, sharing your content on Twitter and Facebook doesn’t really count as promotion.
To get your content seen today, you need to do a lot more than just share on social media. Here are three bonus quick content promotion strategies that you can try.
The first strategy is the content announcement newsletter. When it comes to content promotion, email crushes social media; yep! and it’s not even that close.
There’s no denying that email is way more powerful when it comes to promoting
content compared to social media.
Next, we have Facebook re-targeting.
It’s no secret that Facebook’s organic reach is pretty much zero right now. Fortunately you can still get your Facebook followers to see your posts, without paying a fortune. The secret is to boost your posts, but only boost to people that have visited your site. In other words, re-targeting.
Finally we have Aweber.
If you don’t have an autoresponder email list provider yet, then Aweber is probably the best way to promote your content. That’s the good news. The bad news is you can’t just send the same spammy email to 100 people and expect it to work. You have to be creative in your writing also.
Aweber has a handy email guide for you which you can get for free by clicking >> HERE.
Conclusion
So, there you have it. My seven-step process How to Write a Blog Post That Gets MASSIVE Traffic.
If you liked this article and would like other related topics then please leave a comment below
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You may also want to check out one of my earlier marketing posts on Top 6 List Building Mistakes .
Now I want to hear from you. Which strategy from this article are you going to try first? Are you going to promote your content with email AWeber, or try using shorter blog post URL’s? Let me know by leaving a comment below right now.
Photos by Mateus Campos Felipe, Thought Catalog on Unsplash