Here’s something for the nonfiction writers and people who aren’t just posting short stories and poems to their blog.
When you get down to it, blog posts are one of the easiest pieces you could ever write. You just flop your fingers on the keyboard for a while, and whatever you come up with, you publish. (That’s what I’ve been doing on here for nearly a year. And if I can fool these guys, then you can surely do this!)
Think about what a blog post really is. At its barest essence, it’s a long email, it’s a diary entry, it’s our rambling thoughts on a random topic.
But that’s just a post.
I like to write blog articles — I call them “articles” because it sounds more professional and newspaper-y — because they require some more thought, they’re easier and more enjoyable to read, and they just look like they can impart more knowledge and wisdom than that flopping-fingers thing.
That’s because I format my articles to help with search engine optimization (SEO), and to make them easier to read. Here are a few formatting tips you can use in your next blog article, whether you’re writing one for your own website or your favorite writers association website.
Why SEO?
SEO means preparing your website or blog for better search engine readability and ranking. That is, the better a search engine understands what your site is about, the higher your site will rank on Google and the more easily it will be found. (Yes, there are other search engines, but Google owns roughly 75% of search engine traffic, so focus on what they want first.)
A few years ago, you used to be able to trick Google by using certain tactics like using a specific keyword or phrase a specific number of times, using it in the title, linked it to another website, and blah blah blah dirty spammer trick blah blah.
And because we can’t have nice things, marketers and spammers overused and abused SEO, so Google penalized nearly all the dirty tricks. These days, Google wants good quality content that people want to read. Their search algorithms measure things like how many people actually read an article, how long they stay, and whether other people link to it from their own websites.
But that doesn’t mean SEO is dead — far from it. It’s still useful, because it tells Google what a particular website, page, or article is about, but you can’t trick your way to the top of the search engines. Instead, you have to use these other techniques, plus creating top quality content, to get people to actually visit your site.
How to Write a Title
There are two titles you can use on a blog article: the headline, which is what people see, and the title tag which is what the search engine bots see when they index your site.
The headline tells people what your article is about, but the title tag tells Google. You can actually have a headline that’s different from the title tag.
To write an effective headline AND title tag, do the following:
- Use your keywords or key phrase. That way, people who see it know they’ve found the right article.
- If you don’t want to do it in the headline (what people see), at least do it in the title tag (what Google sees). For example, if I wanted to use “blog articles” as the keyword in this blog, I would use the title tag: How to Properly Format Your Blog Posts — Ideas for Writing Effective Blog Articles. Notice the first half is the headline you can see at the top of the page, but the second half would be visible to the bots, and they would see my keyword.
- Try to tie your headline into the actual topic of your article. Resist the urge to be overly clever or obfuscating. While I know we’re all writers and we love being clever, the problem is the readers don’t always share our senses of whimsy and goofiness. So your blog headlines should always be clear, even if it’s boring. If you want to be clever, use a sub-head (see below).
- Use numbers, like list posts. Had I really been clever, I would have called this Four Ways to Properly Format Your Blog Posts, but I didn’t want to. People still respond to list posts, so use them when it’s appropriate.
Use Sub-Headings
That line up there ^^^^? “Use Sub-Headings”? That’s a sub-heading. That is an H4 sub-heading. It’s the 2nd biggest heading on the entire page. The biggest one at the top of the page is an H1, which is the headline.
This is an H3 sub-heading
This is an H4 sub-heading
And so on. To be honest, I couldn’t tell you why to use one and not the other, unless you’re getting into sub-heads, sub-sub-heads, and sub-sub-sub-heads. If you’re getting into sub-sub-sub-sub-heads (H5), that’s just silly and you’re probably writing a scientific treatise. Or you’re alone in a cabin somewhere and have spent five years writing your 300,000 word manifesto.
Otherwise, people switch between H4 and H3 sub-headings just because they like how it looks on their website. For the most part, I use H3 subheads on my own blog because I like the way it looks. But on this blog, they use H4 and H5 instead for the same reason.
A sub-heading does two things. First, it helps your SEO efforts if you use a keyword in a sub-head somewhere. Secondly, and more importantly, it breaks up the text and makes it easier to read. We’ll talk about white space and readability in a minute.
Break up Your Text Visually: White Space and Bullet Points
In fact, let’s talk about that right now.
Do you see all that white space between my paragraphs?
Any English teachers gnashing their teeth at all the white space and the fact that I’m breaking 7th grade composition rules by not using 4 – 5 sentences in a single paragraph?
I do this on purpose. For one thing, it adds punch to the writing. But more importantly, it’s to appease the skimmers in the crowd.
Most people skim web pages these days, they don’t read. And if there are whacking big clumps of text on their laptop or mobile device, their eyes just sort of glaze over and they swipe and swipe and swipe until something catches their eye.
Like a sub-head or some white space.
And if they see that white space, their brains will stop them and say, “Wait! That next sentence might be important. See what it says.” And then their eye wants to skim some more, until their brains stop them again and says, “Wait! That next sentence might be important. See what it says.” And on and on until they’ve reached the end of the page.
Remember, you’re writing for today’s Internet reader, not your 7th grade English teacher, so keep your paragraphs short whenever possible.
There’s actually a whole lot more that goes into writing professional blog articles commonly used by content marketers, businesses, and anyone who wants to boost both their readership and their search engine ranking. But these are a few of the most important factors to consider. Get good at these, and you’ll see a big difference in things like Time On Site (the average length of time readers spend on your articles) and Bounce rates (whether they visit another page on your blog or not).
