Blogging best practices - 11 Marketing tips for effective blogging

If you have a website, you need a blog, and here are three reasons why. The problem is, blogging can feel like an intimidating commitment. You may be an incredible business owner, a leading voice of authority in your industry, or even a savvy social media influencer… but… blogging? When it comes to discovering how to market your business with blogging, there are two primary opposing perspectives.

Perspective 1
Blogging is too confusing, complicated, and time consuming.

Perspective 2
Blogging is easy! Just some thoughts/words on a webpage whenever I have time for it. No big deal!

Both perspectives are a problem.

If you overcomplicate blogging, you’ll never publish quality content on your website. You’ll never capture that potential SEO, nurture potential clients, showcase your brand’s value to the world, and you won’t have the leverage for securing unique sponsorship opportunities. And if you oversimplify blogging, the results (or lack thereof) likely won't be worth the effort. My personal opinion is that the only thing worse than not having a blog is not having a good blog.

Case in point…

I see so many blogs that don’t get any hits. Not a single visit. The blogs don’t attract any organic web traffic, they don't cultivate brand interest, and they don’t do the website or the brand any marketing favors simply because they’re unformatted, un-curated, and not-optimized. They fail to accomplish what they’re meant to do because they’re not done properly.

Fortunately, all problems have a solution.

In reality, good blogging does require some expertise, but it’s not that complicated. You just need to know the best practices. Without further ado, here are the top 11 tips for how to blog effectively.

11 Blogging best practices

1 - Have a content plan.

In a nutshell, your blogging strategy should function like a spider web. Have 4-5 primary topics or broad themes that reflect your brand’s overall focus. Then come up with blog topics that can each be categorized under one of those umbrella topics. This way, every blog you post will connect to, build on, or build off another blog, and all your content will present itself cohesively.

For more details and examples about how to create a blogging strategy, read my other blog:
Create a cohesive blog strategy in 4 easy steps - examples included

2 - Be as consistent as you can.

Search engines and algorithms love two things: consistency and whatever is most recent. This is why major media conglomerates like Forbes, HubSpot, and Healthline publish multiple blogs every single day. They want to saturate their markets by showcasing how consistent, recent, and reliable their information is. In doing so, they earn digital popularity across all trending topics within their niche.

Of course, publishing daily is not practical or sustainable for non-media conglomerate companies, and that’s ok! Because chances are, your competition is not Psychology Today, and your brand isn’t competing on a national or global scale. Most businesses compete either in a local or niche market with brands and companies that are similar to them in size and offerings.

For most smaller companies and influencers, blogging weekly, bi-weekly, or even once a month is enough. As long as you’re being consistent and following these best practices for blogging, consistent quality is far more competitive than sporadic quantity.

3 - Consider graphic design elements.

You don't want to go too overboard with colors, fonts, and pictures, but incorporating some aesthetically pleasing visual aids can enhance your readers' experience. Specifically...

• Source 1-3 photos per standard blog.

  A standard blog is approximately 1,000-1,500 words in length. Original, organic photos are definitely the best but not required. If you use non-original photos, be sure they are Royalty Free. View my favorite photo resources for marketing here.

• Use two types of fonts.
  Typically, serif fonts are best for primary headers and sub-headers. Use an easy-to-read sans-serif font for paragraph text. An occasional third ‘accent’ font may be appropriate, but avoid using more than three types of fonts.

• Avoid using more than one or two accent colors.
  Black text on a white background provides the highest contrast and is best for readability. If appropriate and applicable, you can certainly use an accent color for your headers, sub-headings, and hyperlinks, but use a black on white design for body text whenever possible.

4 - Ensure your blogs are well-formatted.

If your blog is unformatted text spilling out across a webpage… that’s not good. Reversely, if your blog features multiple different fonts, colors, text sizes, etc.… that is also not good. Blogs need to be quickly scanned and absorbed, which means a thoughtful content layout is needed.

• Use headers and sub-headers to break up your content.
  Your site's visitors should be able to instantly assess your blog's outline and structure at a quick glance.

• Format your headers and sub-headers.
  Headers and sub-headers should be significantly formatted so they stand out against paragraph copy.

5 - Keep your paragraphs short and not too wide.

Blog paragraph height should be around 5-6 lines max. Additionally, consider the horizontal width of your blog. To keep readers' eyes from getting lost, blog text should not extend across the full width of your web page. Examples of blogs with a good, easy-to-read, ‘narrow’ width include Mark Manson’s blog, my blog, and this other blog.

6 - Diversify your content structure.

Use bullet points and numbered formatting whenever appropriate and at least once in each blog to break up large bodies of text.

7 - Organically weave focus and related keywords throughout your blog.

Make your headers and sub-headers SEO-friendly whenever possible. The crawlers that search engines like Google use to scan your web pages and blogs use your sub-headings to help index the page. If you don’t have sub-headers, or if your sub-headers are not keyword-rich, the crawlers will struggle to effectively read and index your page content – making your page less likely to appear in on the SERP. At least three, SEO-friendly sub-headers per blog is good.

8 - Consider your word count.

Best practices for blog length vary as far as SEO is concerned, however every blog should be at least 600-800 words minimum. To be competitive, a good blog length is generally around ~1,250 words.

Depending on your market and topic, longform blogs between 1,500-5,000 words may be more appropriate. For instance, finance or technology blogs and most how-to articles tend to do well with a more longform style. Health, wellness, and lifestyle blogs tend to thrive around the 1,000-1,500-word length.

9 - Optimize your blog titles.

Only have one H1 header per blog page, and make your H1 header SEO-friendly by optimizing it with a headline tool. I love the headline analyzer tool from CoSchedule.

10 - Always end every blog with a gentle Call to Action (CTA).

Blogging is not the same as essay writing. A blog isn't finished after you've sufficiently made your point or concluded instructions. (Remember - blogging is a foundational marketing tactic.) When you finish a blog, you need to provide crystal clear directions for what action(s) you want the reader to take and also provide information for how prospective clients and site visitors can further engage.

Most blog CTAs guide readers to contact you, subscribe to your newsletter, follow you on social media, or else read another blog/article. Here's an example of one of my own CTAs.

11 - Curate every blog.

The final tip is all about content curation. Content curation is the practice of linking blog posts together in a way that creates a cohesive and interconnected network. (Again, think spiderweb.) This isn’t just about adding hyperlinks within your blog posts; it's about carefully connecting topics in such a way that readers are guided to further valuable information.

Hyperlink key words and phrases within your blog so they redirect visitors to other topically related blogs, pages, or resources on your website. There are many examples of curated content throughout this blog, and here's another example of how to curate your content so it hyperlinks/connects to your other blogs:

Every good marketing professional knows that one blog can turn into at least 10 different pieces of content. Learn how to use your blogs as inspiration for other marketing.

Don’t have time to blog?

If you don't have time to manage your website's blog, it may be worth considering professional ghostwriting services from an SEO-knowledgeable freelance copywriter. As a full-time marketing consultant and freelance ghostwriter, blog writing for SEO is one of my specialties. You give me a topic or idea, and I infuse it with your brand voice and bring it to life.

To learn more about how ghostwriting works please visit my FAQ page. To request a project quote, please contact me. I’d love to hear from you!