How to Start Writing Blog Posts That People Will Actually Read

(Updated on 1/29/2018)

This may be hard to hear, but I want you to throw most of what you learned in school about grammar out the window right now! Yes, you read that right.

Why? Because are not a robot or writing news articles. You are a human being writing a blog post. Your goal is to connect with your audience. Writing like a robot won’t do that.

Writing blog posts is more casual and conversational than other forms of writing, so you need let your personality shine through. This helps you connect with your audience.

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Writing Blog Posts

Think about it. If I started this post with something like this:

“Writing blog posts isn’t as easy as you may think. Studies show that blogging has become increasingly popular over the past several years…”

Yawn. Would you be eager to read more? I wouldn’t either.

Your writing should be personable and conversational. It should be easy to follow and relatable. Writing long sentences and using formal writing doesn’t accomplish that goal.

Bloggers should take 2 things into consideration:

• Readability
• The audience

I’m going to look at both of those topics in this post. Knowing how to both of these things will help you write better for blogs and connect with your readers.

Readability

If you recall, in my “6 WordPress Plugins that are the Key to Your Blog’s Success“ post I mentioned the Yoast SEO plugin. That plugin is already telling me my readability on this post as I write. This is a great tool for bloggers.

Notice the area above that I circled in red? That is my Yoast SEO readability indicator. Below it is the SEO indicator. The readability indicatior lets you know how easy or difficult it is for readers to read your blog post. Pretty cool, huh?

So, if your indicator isn’t green, how do you know what you can change to improve your readability? Simple. Scroll down below the text box of your post and you will see the following Yoast SEO box.

Notice the tab that I circled in red, labeled “Readability.” Click on that tab and you will see the following.

Now you will see exactly what you need to work on to improve your readability score. Readability is just one of many factors that will determine whether a reader actually reads your post.

The things you need to improve are orange or red and the good sections will have a green one. To be honest, this can be a challenge for beginners. It has taken some time and training, but over time, this has become much easier.

If you don’t know which sentences are off, click on the eye to the right of the problem area and it will be highlighted for you. This will help you locate and make edits to your text quickly.

Headers and Subheaders

Headers and subheaders allow your audience to skim points in your post. That way they can find what they are interested in quickly. Since many people read blogs on the go via a mobile device, this is important.

From this screen, I can tell that the post needs a “Subheading” or title above the paragraphs. To do this, you will need to use H2 HTML tags in the text tab before and after the heading title.

If you don’t know HTML, no problem. Simply highlight the title and click on the drop-down menu with “Paragraph” in the text editing bar above your text, as seen below. Choose “Heading 2” for a secondary header or H3 for any heading that falls under an H2 section.

Be sure to only highlight the letters in the text you want to change to a header. If you go over one space too far, it can turn entire paragraphs into H2 sections. If this does happen, press the “Ctrl” and “Z” button at the same time to undo the action and try again.

Concise, Short Paragraphs

Paragraphs in blog posts should be short and written in active voice. If you need to know more about how to write in active voice, you can check out this article from PlainLanguage.gov. The point is to be concise.

Keep your paragraphs short and to the point. All of them should be less than five total lines on a mobile device (one to three sentences).

It is also recommended that you use a new subheading every 300 words or less. This helps the eye glide more smoothly down the page from mobile devices.

SEO and Subtitles

Search Engine Optimization is important to gain organic traffic. In order to rank highly on Google, or any other search engine, you will have to use headers. Search Engines use headers to help determine your blog’s content, so make sure to use keywords in at least one (but not all) subheaders.

Search engines also see a blog post with headers as higher quality than those without. This means the search engine will rank you higher on their Search Engine Results Page, or SERP.

The higher you rank on a SERP, the more traffic you will receive. This should be part of your blog marketing strategy. You can read more about SEO and marketing here.

If you don’t want people to read your blog, there’s no need to worry about SEO. However, if you wish to blog professionally or make any income, follow the SEO rules. Yoast SEO helps you to do this!

Flesch Reading Ease Test

The Flesch Reading Ease is a test that determines how difficult a reader would find your blog post. If you have difficulty with this section, write more concise sentences that use active voice.

Revise your post so that your sentences are short, direct, and to the point. Use smaller, more understandable language and review your grammar and punctuation carefully.

Transition Words

To be honest, I can struggle with this one sometimes. This is a problem for me because I have because I tend to forget transition words.

I know that sounds silly, but transition words give your readers direction and smoothly lead them from one thought to the next. When you don’t use transition words, your sentences are abrupt and more difficult to read.

Using transition words helps your reader read your post more easily. This is the whole point of readability.

Writing for SEO

I have touched on this topic, but it really deserves more attention. SEO is used by all search engines to locate your post and determine its quality and relevance to a search query. There are many things that factor into SEO, but Yoast SEO will help you to with the process.

Below the Readability indicator on the sidebar on the right side of your text, is SEO. Chances are, it says “Not available.” To change that, scroll back down to the bottom of your post and click on the tag that says, “Enter your focus keyw..” to the right of the “Readability” tab.

You will see the following screen under this tab.

You will see three sections: the snippet preview, focus keyword, and analysis. Each of these sections plays an important part of your SEO ranking.

Snippet Preview

This section is what Google will display on the SERP. You will need to optimize it using the keywords in your post. This is the preview that potential readers will see, so you need it to capture their attention and know what to expect from your website.

Focus Keyword

You want your page to show up as high as possible on the SERP when someone searches these words. Choose keywords that are as targeted to your post as possible.

The more targeted toward your audience, the more likely your audience will see your post. Your post is competing with thousands of other posts, so try to choose keywords that will stand out as unique.

Analysis

This section is similar to the one used in the “Readability” tab. The same rules apply to this analysis. Try to improve SEO for your posts by using this tool as a guide.

The Snippet Editor

Enter a Keyword

Enter the keyword(s) that you have chosen for your post. In this case, I will enter the words “writing blog posts.” Once you do this, you will receive instant feedback from Yoast about improvements to optimize your post.

As you can see below, the SEO for this post is already in the “Good” range, but we want it to be better. In order to do this, you will need to edit your snippet.

Edit Snippet

Now, click on the button that is circled in red above. This will allow you to change the information in the snippet to reflect the content of your posts. Make sure to include your keywords wherever possible.

Each of these sections affects a different part of the snippet. Below is a color-coded screenshot highlighting the areas of the snippet editor and the corresponding areas of the snippet.

As you type in these boxes, you will notice the information changing in the snippet.

As you can see below, once I entered text into these fields, my fields turned green to indicate they were properly optimized.

Make sure to include your keywords at least once in each section of the snippet editor. Once you are finished, click the “Close snippet editor” button at the bottom of the editor.

Review Your Analysis

If you have anything in your analysis that needs to be addressed, make changes as you did for your readability. In my case, all of the bullets in the analysis are green. Happy dance! The good news, these are pretty straightforward.

Each one of these bullets is important to your SEO. For the most part, they are pretty self-explanatory. The meta description data was in the snippet and if your keyword is low or not used in an H2 heading, simply add it a time or two to the text.

Congratulations!

You are ready to begin writing blog posts! Once you are ready to publish, simply scroll to the top of the page and click the blue “Publish” button in the right sidebar. You are done, my friend!

Please feel free to comment below and share this post. Make sure to sign up for the newsletter to get updates on new posts. Once again, thank you for reading! You are awesome!