Checklist for Writing Better Blog Posts: 11 Things to Check Before Posting

Do you want your blogs to rank higher on search engines? To be more engaging, to get more clicks? Who doesn’t?

In order to achieve that, you must make sure your blog satisfies some key points.

In this article, we talked about eleven points you must check to write better blog posts.

Let’s get into it.

Make sure you choose a perfect title

Your title is your hook. Your first chance to capture the interest of your readers.

Therefore, you must choose an engaging title that will lure the readers into your blog. To be engaging, an ideal title:

• Must be informative about the article

• Can be provocative / thought-provoking

• Should have big words to draw attention

• Can include puns and wordplay

• Must directly address the concerns of the reader

• Should be in active voice

While trying to write an engaging title, you shouldn’t neglect the importance of SEO. Use related keywords with a high volume to rank higher on search engines like Google, Bing, and Yahoo. This way, you can reach your target audience with your blog.

Include images in your blog post

Including an image or two between paragraphs helps draw attention to your post. It also helps you break down large chunks of text, which makes the blog less frightening to read.

You should use alternative text in your images to increase accessibility for visually-impaired people. This also helps with SEO, as search engines can understand the content of the image and relate it with the text surrounding it.

When selecting pictures for a blog post, you can utilize stock photos or create custom graphics related to your topic.

However, you must make sure you have legal permission to use any images. Hereby, you won’t run into any issues down the road.

Pay attention to keyword density

In order to rank higher on search engines, you must include relevant keywords throughout your whole article, not just in the title.

If you do so, search engine crawlers can easily understand what your blog is about, which can help it move up in the rankings.

One thing to make sure of is you should use those keywords naturally in your article. If you use them randomly, just for the sake of including them, it will disrupt the natural flow of your blog, which is bad for readability.

Also, make sure that you don’t use too many of them to rank higher. That’s called “keyword stuffing,” which is a bad practice that search engine bots can detect and penalize. Too much repetition may lead to decreased rankings.

Add internal links

Once you’re done writing your blog post, consider adding internal links that redirect to other content from your website. Doing so, you can:

• Enrich the content of your article

• Increase your traffic

• Decrease your bounce rate

• Extend average session duration

This will not only increase reader engagement, but also ranking on search engines. That’s because many search engines factor in engagement metrics to evaluate websites.

The significance of link building is evident as Google’s own John Mueller confirms that it is “super critical” for SEO.

So, make sure you include some relevant internal links in your blog.

Don’t forget your call-to-action (CTA)

You can boost reader engagement by adding a call-to-action at the end of your blog posts. This CTA can redirect to anything — your newsletter, a product, your website, you name it!

You must make sure that it’s engaging by paying attention to some key points:

• An ideal CTA must be clear, concise, and compelling

Instead of just telling your readers to “Click here,” you should let them know what they need to do next. A CTA like “Sign up for our newsletter to get the latest updates” would work better in that aspect.

• It should stand out on your page

If you want to achieve a good click-through rate (CTR) with your CTA, you must make it stand out on the page. A good CTA should be prominent. Therefore, make sure any buttons or visuals related to it can be easily distinguished from the rest of the page.

• You should use compelling words

Another thing to do to increase the efficiency of a CTA is to use persuasive language. By utilizing the right copywriting techniques and the magic of language, you can empower your CTA.

Ensure that your text is easy-to-read & engaging

Readability is key. If your readers cannot understand your text without a hitch, chances are they won’t stick around.

To avoid this problem, you should eliminate too-long sentences and paragraphs by breaking them down into more digestible bits.

We also recommend using a combination of short, medium, and long sentences to create a text that’s pleasant to read, one which both challenges readers with thought-provoking, complex sentences and allows them to rest with shorter, simpler ones.

This balance creates harmony in the text which is essential for maintaining reader engagement.

Use relevant statistics & expert opinions where possible

You can enhance the reliability of your blog posts by using statistics or quotations from experts whenever possible.

By referring to relevant statistics, you can provide your readers with concrete evidence to be convinced of the point you’re trying to make.

Quotations, on the other hand, are especially useful in business blogs. They don’t only add credibility and support your arguments, they can also be used to highlight a key point in blogs.

Another thing to talk about is visualizing data. The statistics in your blog might be on point regarding your argument. However, it’s nothing as long as nobody reads it.

By turning the data into appealing visuals, you can both increase reader engagement and have some sharing opportunities down the road — people love a well-illustrated point!

Minimize paragraph length

Minimize paragraph length if you don’t want to intimidate your audience.

Using large chunks of text in your blog gives it a daunting look that makes the readers want to run away.

Shorter paragraphs, on the other hand, generate fewer cognitive overload instances among readers.

Therefore, we recommend using paragraphs of a maximum of 3-4 lines in your blog post. That way, it will be both visually appealing and easy to read.

Get rid of unnecessary parts

You must keep your message concise & focused throughout the article for better engagement.

In order to do that, everything in your article must be there for a reason. There shouldn’t be any unnecessary parts that extend the text in vain.

Remember what they say: “Editing is done when you’re done deleting, not adding.”

Be careful though — don’t over-delete and leave some holes in your narrative!

Proofread your blog

Make sure you proofread your blog one last time before hitting that publish button.

Doing so, you can ensure that there aren’t any typos or grammar mistakes that could be detrimental to user experience.

It’s not just typos and grammatical mistakes. You can also notice whether there’s anything missing for SEO purposes and edit your text accordingly.

We recommend reading your blog out loud to notice some points other than obvious mistakes, which brings us to our last point.

Read it out loud to make sure your blog sounds natural

An engaging text must be conversational. It should sound natural.

The best way to ensure that is by reading your text out loud as a reader. This way, you can spot if there’s anything indirect or unnecessarily long, which is bad for engagement.

You can also have a friend or a colleague read it over to give you some feedback — as the writer, it could prove difficult to spot your own mistakes sometimes.

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