Last Updated on February 20, 2021 by Santhosh Muralidhar

Learning how to write a blog post can be extremely valuable for any type of brand. 

As you know blogging plays a very big role in growing the traffic of a website. 

Now here in this article, you will get to know about the 7 actionable steps to write a blog post on wordpress.

1.Select a topic idea and do research about stats, facts

You will need solid knowledge about what subject or topic you are going to write. 

When you sit to write a blog post, many times it can be a struggle to choose a topic immediately. 

This is the reason It’s always a good habit to make a basket of content ideas. 

Building a content basket is not a big task. 

All you need is an excel sheet ready at all times.

And whenever you come across any useful topic idea (while doing any kind of online research activity, browsing, keyword research, social media activity, etc) you would just enter the main topic name in that excel sheet. 

So that when the next time you come back to write a blog post you can just go to the excel sheet & easily pick one interesting topic from your content basket.

There are many several ways to pick topics for writing a blog post.

You can choose topic ideas by analyzing your competitor’s website. 

The topics present on the competitor’s website (preferably top trafficked web pages) might be an interesting subject for your audience as well. 

The idea here is that you would come up with much better content than your competitor for the same topic and outrank your competitor.

This method of picking competitor topics to outrank them is also known as the skyscraper technique. 

It is a very helpful tactic for bloggers. It was discovered by none other than Brian Dean of Backlinko.

Apart from that, you can go with the research method and tools method to find topic ideas.

If you are very interested in doing online research then it can also be beneficial for you to generate topic ideas. 

Quora For Blog Topic Research

You can use platforms like Quora, re-edit, and even Google search to find topic ideas for your blog post.

For example, assume that you are a health blogger. 

Many people on the Quora platform post questions related to health tips and advice. 

These questions posted by other users can be a great blog topic for you too.

In the past, I had written a detailed guide about using quora for getting topic ideas. 

The guide also covers all the practical steps & implementations to gather topic ideas by analyzing the questions posted by Quora users.

After picking the topic you must start collecting relevant data and stats around that particular subject. 

This will make your blog post look more authoritative.

Because content that is backed by stats and data will always get more traction and build trust with the users.

You can always make use of graphs and charts to represent the stats/data in a visual format inside the blog post for your readers.

2.Learn How to Write a Blog Outline

A blog outline consists of the main important points and subsections/subheadings which are going to be present in your blog post.

The idea here is that by initially mentioning all the major points of your topic you will be in a much better position to express your knowledge and elaborate on those major points while writing the blog post. 

Creating an outline for your blog will help you to easily put in your thoughts, swiftly express your opinions about the topic in a systematic way.

Because when you choose one topic and begin writing obviously there are going to many multiple points which will need further elaboration and bigger explanation. 

Having a blog outline will ensure that you won’t miss out on giving an explanation about all the necessary steps and major subtopics/points in your content.

And creating a blog outline will also help in editing the content correctly. 

Because while writing the article you would definitely do a grammar check, spelling/vocabulary check, and rewrite few sentences here and there in the content. 

Hence when you already have all the major subheadings in your outline it becomes much earlier to pick the sentences and paragraphs which need to be rewritten or edited.

I would personally say from my own experience that creating an outline will give that extra flexibility to manage and edit the content.

Example Case:

For example, I’m now writing about the topic “how to write a blog article in 7 easy steps”. 

So my content outline actually consists of 7 main points or subheadings that I will describe in my post. 

I would give a bigger explanation and elaboration for each of those 7 steps about blog writing.

You can refer to the below-attached screenshot to get more clarity about creating a content outline.

Let’s take another example. Assume that you are a fitness blogger. 

And your writing content about the topic “5 awesome fitness tips to strengthen your body”. In this case, each of those 5 main fitness tips can be added to your content outline. 

Also, each of those five main fitness advice could become the major subheadings of your post. 

And then you might give a much detailed explanation & elaboration about each of those five fitness tips to make your readers understand how they could strengthen the body.

3.Create an Awesome SEO Friendly Title and Headline to Write a Blog Post

Blog title plays a key role in attracting more eyeballs and getting more clicks/traffic for your content. 

It is very crucial to make the title and meta tags SEO friendly while you learn how to write a blog post.

Because the title is one of the foremost things that users will observe when they come across your content on search engines or inside any social media newsfeed.

A relevant and catchy blog title will make users click on the post. 

Hence it increases the traffic and visibility of your blog.

Major Tips to Create a Blog Title While Learning How to Write a Blog Post for SEO

A good blog title will always consist of the main keyword and the topic name of your content. From an SEO perspective, the length of the title must be less than 50 characters and the keyword should appear at the beginning of the title.

Including numbers & mentioning the year can make the title look better and get you more traffic. 

It has been proven that having odd numbers in the blog title can catch the eyes of more users. 

You should try to create list-based articles. 

A good example of a listicle is “7 great diet plans for living healthy”. Here as you can observe the number 7 is mentioned in the title. 

This can actually get the attention of more users when they see your post on search engines.

Also, adding a square bracket or parentheses to the title can attract more users to click on your post.

For example, assume that you have recently updated some of your old blog posts. 

So, you can just add a bracket in the title to mention that the post is updated for the current year. 

And then your heading might look something like this “7 great diet plans for living healthy (Updated for 2021)”.

It is always a good practice to use words like Best, awesome, great, amazing, etc in your blog titles. This can convey a positive sentiment to the users.

Leverage Tools to Write a Good Blog Post Title

I always suggest you use good tools for creating blog titles and headlines. 

The best tool to create blog titles is the co-schedule headline analyzer tool.

This tool will check your blog titles carefully to ensure that more powerful words, uncommon words, and common words are present in your headings. 

Also, the tool will analyze and determine whether your blog heading has a good positive sentiment or not.

And it also gives some valuable suggestions for title length. Also, the tool will give you a preview of your headings in the search results. 

This will help you analyze if the title is getting cut short or not by search engines.

Because longer titles are always going to get cut short by Google and this will cause a negative impact on your web traffic.

The coschedule headline analyzer tool will give a score for each title that is being tested.

If you get a score of above 70 after testing your headings with this tool then it suggests that your titles are looking great.

I always use this tool for every blog title/ heading that I create. So, in that way, it can help in making all the blog post titles SEO-friendly.

Write Meta Description For Blog Post

Along with creating a title, you must write a good meta description for your post as well. 

The meta description will give a brief summary or an overview of your content to the users. 

It is perhaps the second most important thing that users will notice on search engines after reading the title. 

As a good practice, your meta description should contain the target keyword and variations in the beginning. 

Also, the description must be less than 300 characters to get better SEO returns. 

I had actually published a guide about writing meta descriptions and I suggest you go through the same if you need more information or details regarding that.

4.Open an editor/Google doc to Start Writing a Blog Post

The thing that I observe is that many people actually struggle to just show up for writing. 

Now that doesn’t mean that they are lacking knowledge or writing skills.

It is just the mental preparation, passion, and discipline which is required to put in efforts consistently in order to write posts.

Blogging can also become very addictive if we do it regularly. 

If you write blog posts for 5 consecutive days then automatically on the sixth day you will feel that natural urge/ tendency to show up for writing and publish content. 

Because by learning how to write a blog post every day we are actually training our own minds to focus on blogging activities regularly.

So, in that way blogging will become a routine for you.

But on the opposite side if we don’t write any content in a month then you would have lost your writing flow and touch. 

And suddenly if you make your mind one day to write content then it can become kind of very burden and heavy work.

Because blogging will always demand your efforts, interest, and time investment. 

So, if you are not consistent in blogging they you start feeling it like a heavy boring thing. 

Hence it is very important to train our minds to be disciplined in writing content regularly.

Edit the content and Fix the Grammar issues

When you write long and lengthy content I suggest you use the Google doc for editing the article.

Because Google Docs will allow you to write and edit the content without any interruption. This won’t break your writing flow. 

After creating the content you can always go back to your wordpress editor and publish the content on your blog.

I always prefer to use Google Docs over wordpress editor to write a blog post.

Because the flexibility and experience offered by Google Docs are unmatched and superior when compared with the wordpress editor.

It also helps me to save a lot of time by allowing me to fastly edit the content.

Google doc supports many addons which can be utilized for the article editing process.

Also, Google doc has a much easier navigation feature to select and pick the required editing features (like number list, text font, Undo or redo, image block, heading/paragraph block, etc) when compared with the navigation of wordpress editor.

From my personal experience, I found that using a wordpress editor for editing longer content is not a suitable option. 

Because it kind of slows down your writing speed as the editor keeps on getting hanged. 

This may be due to the fact that the wordpress editor is unable to handle large and lengthy articles or text blocks. 

Also, wordpress will suddenly save an auto-draft of your content every time when you edit the article. 

This will also cause an interruption in your writing process.

Leverage Grammarly While Learning How to Write a Blog Post

And I suggest you have the Grammarly extension installed on your browser. This will help you to fix the spelling, vocabulary, and grammar issues while you are writing the blog post.

It is very important to remove the grammar errors in your article. 

Because too many spelling and vocabulary errors can hurt the user experience of your blog. Grammar can make your readers confused or unhappy about the content. 

And eventually, the Google algorithm would also push down your blog rankings for having too many grammar errors. 

Hence while writing your article you must avoid and solve every grammar mistake in your content.

After finishing the writing and editing process you must format the article properly. 

This will make your content look more professional with proper line spacing and relevant text/paragraph styles.

5.Write the introduction, explanation, and conclusion part of your post

The first paragraph which your blog visitor reads will make a huge impact on their minds. 

It will allow them to decide whether your blog post is worth reading or not. 

If your introduction paragraph can strike the chord in your audience’s mind then readers would spend more time to further read your article.

The introduction paragraph should give an idea about what solution, benefit, and tips the reader can get by reading the rest of the post.

You must write a niche overview of your post in the introduction paragraph. So that will lead your users to the next part or paragraph of your post to get more details/information.

Learn How to Write Explanation Part of Your Blog Post

The explanation part could consist of multiple subsections and actionable steps.

This is where you will write in detail and elaborate on your topic to give more in-depth information.

You can include multiple steps to divide your content and give more specific information.

You might want to try to practically demonstrate your solutions and logic in the explanation part. 

Also, it will be helpful to the readers if you can insert relevant screenshots and visuals.

Wherever possible add stats, graphs, and data to your explanation.

After you finish writing the explanation you should write the conclusion and summary for your blog post.

In the conclusion part mainly you will have to focus on summarizing your article.

In my main blogging guide, I had already given detailed information about writing the introduction and explanation part of the post. You can go through the same to get more insights.

6. Add visuals. Graphs, images, and screenshots to your content

Writing an article without using any images can be quite boring for the readers. It is kind of tough to just read along and lengthy posts without having any images. 

Images will help blog readers to visually understand your topics and visually get clarity about the subject/logic. 

You must only create authentic and original images for your blog post.

To explain any practical steps in your post you would want to insert screenshots to visually demonstrate the procedure.

For example, in my how to start a blog guide, I inserted relevant screenshots for each and every wordpress customization step.

And you can create charts and graphs to represent the data or stats which support your topic.

Adding graphs and charts will also improve the authority of your blog post.

Because when your article is backed by relevant stats/data then it shows your expertise and knowledge in the field to the audience.

Thus it also improves the trust with your readers.

Especially when you are publishing research-based blog posts it becomes very important to show the data and stats visually to the readers through creating graphs.

I suggest you add a relevant image for each and every subsection of your content.

For example, if you are writing about “5 beautiful places to explore in the Himalayas”, then you can think of adding a suitable image to each of those 5 places while you write the post.

Create Featured Images For Blog Post

Every blog post must also have a featured image.

This featured image will appear in the top portion of your post and above the title. 

So when people land on your post the first thing they would notice is the main featured image of your post.

And if the main image was relevant and attractive then people will scroll down to read your content further.

Hence it is important for you to put effort to create a high-quality and topically relevant featured image.

Topical relevance means the image should visually describe the main topic or subject of your post. 

As you know In the digital world users will always prefer to consume content in visual format over text format.

Images contribute to the user experience of your website. 

Because if people love your images and find them to be valuable then they would start spending more time on your site to observe the content inside the image. 

This will naturally increase the average session duration and decrease the bounce rate as well.

Impact of Image SEO for Bloggers

Images have a huge impact from an SEO perspective as well.

Google already has a separate search result for Images and videos.

My own blog gets around 15% of SEO traffic from image search results.

Most of the top bloggers focus on creating high-quality infographics and visuals to drive a lot of image traffic.

These days Google prefers to rank images that are original and custom made. 

What it means is that if you just download an image from the internet and upload it to your post then it won’t have a good impact on your blogging efforts.

So, from an SEO perspective, it is better if you create your own customized and relevant image by using tools rather than downloading an image from the internet.

There are some good SEO tactics that you can implement on your images. I have already written a guide related to image SEO for wordpress. 

And I kindly request you to go through the same to get more detailed insights.

The following are some of the basic blog Image SEO practices:

• Compress every image by using the TinyPNG tool.
• Include Alt tags and captions for the image.
• Ensure that the size of your image fits into the content body properly.
• Add your keywords in the image file name and alt tags naturally wherever necessary.
• Implement a Lazy loading feature for the Images on your blog.

You must also make infographics for your blog post. 

This will help your readers to visually understand all the steps and topics of your content in one single image.

From my personal experience, I strongly recommend you use the Canva tool for creating custom images, graphs, and charts for your blog posts.

And for creating infographics you can make use of the visme tool.

You can also use a few websites like freepick, pixabay to pick relevant images for your post.

7. Learn How to Write a Blog Post For SEO

You should give prominence to Enhance content readability score and Optimize your blog post for on-page SEO by using the Yoast plugin.

In blogging, it is not enough if you just write content. 

You will also need to make your content SEO-friendly. So that will help search engines to find your article and rank the post. 

Because SEO is one of the best ways to get free targeted traffic for a blog. 

Many top bloggers rely on the SEO method to grow their traffic.

Apart from content quality, search engines like Google will consider the on-page SEO score of the post and the quality of backlinks pointing to the blog post to rank the article.

Luckily we have some amazing plugins like Yoast and Rankmath which take care of 90% of the on-page SEO factors for a blog or website. 

WordPress platform supports both Rankmath and Yoast plugins. 

You can use any one of the plugins to improve the content readability and boost the on-page SEO for your blog. 

The Yoast plugin will check your post and suggest improvements for meta tags, image alt tags, Subheadings, keyword optimization, internal/external links, readability score, and other important on-page SEO factors.

The plugin will give actionable SEO advice so that you can implement those suggestions and boost your blog SEO performance.

Here is my list of actionable on-page SEO suggestions for a blog post:

• Include your keywords naturally in the title, headings, subheadings, page URL, alt tags, and also in the first paragraph of your post
• Add relevant internal links and external links wherever necessary to give more details to your reader.
• Try to write shorter paragraphs and sentences
• Create an SEO friendly title and meta description
• Add FAQ blocks to answer the common questions of your reader
• Compress the size of your blog images and also insert the keyword in the image file name

Conclusion:

By Learning how to write a blog post you will be in a better position to express your thoughts with an audience and become a thought leader. 

This could also help your brand to connect with the audience & build trust, readership.

Picking the correct topic, creating an outline, making the post SEO friendly, writing in detail, improving the readability, and leveraging visuals are some of the key steps in writing a blog post.

I hope you got some great insights and valuable information about writing articles for your blog.

Please do share this post on social media sites with your friends.

Thanks.