7 Important things that should be in Every Blog post

Last Updated on January 21, 2021 by scottkandh

When you write a post one of the most important things is to keep your audience in mind.

In this post, I’ll discuss the 7 Important things that should be in nearly every one of your blog posts. The only exception being the cornerstone post, which we’ll get to in a moment. 

The reasons for these tips is to help steer your audience for them to find other information on your website, improve your Search Engine Optimization (SEO), and most importantly so that when you write posts that you’ll be able to make a headline that people will want to click on to see what you’ve written. 

1.      Ask a Question, or Create a Call-To-Action

This contains two parts:  1.  Ask a question and 2.  Create a call-to-action.  These are the two parts that you want to get your audience engaged in your post.  By engaging your audience, they are likely to return to your website. 

Ask a Question

At the end of your post ask a question or two.  It’s an excellent way of encouraging people to leave comments on your blog.  Just be sure that your question doesn’t require a simple yes or no answer.  Allowing them to elaborate will build your SEO ranking on google search engines. 

Create a Call-to-Action

If you wrote your post with a specific purpose in mind, such as getting people to sign up for your email list, be sure to include a call to action at the bottom of your post.

For example, if you want people to sign up for your email list, your call to action could be something like this:

“If you enjoyed this post, you’ll love my weekly emails. Subscribe to have updates delivered to your inbox.”

You would then include a form for your readers to subscribe to your list. I recommend providing an opt-in incentive such as a free helpful resource.

2.      Assign a Category

Assign a category to your blog post.   This will allow people to click on a category to quickly find a subject matter that they might be researching.  I would recommend at least a minimum of 5 – 7 categories. 

3.      Create a Catchy Title

When creating your post titles, you want them to entice people to read your content. Your post title is what will not only be seen on your blog, but on social media networks, and in search engines as well. 

With so much abundant information out on the Internet, you want to ensure that your content is what people are choosing to read first.  The tips in this blog post will permit that happen provided that you utilize these suggested tips. 

A great program for analyzing your headline is the Headline Analyzer. 

To bring your SEO to the next level and increase your web traffic, use Headline Analyzer (from Google Analytics for WordPress by MonsterInsights).  Note:  The program Headline Analyzer is within the aforementioned plug-in.  So you’re getting a two for one special for free. 

The staff at MonsterInsights were using this program and loved it so much that now they’ve made it available for the rest of us to use. 

Judge for yourself, I honestly believe that the added content to this post is going to be unbelievably valuable to significantly boost your SEO for Blogging. 

By combining the power of Yoast and Google analytics MonsterInsights Plugin Header Analyzer you can get those green bullets on your SEO Analysis and increase the likelihood of getting your headlines clicked.

With this aid of this new program, you can try entering different headlines for your post title to see how it compares and beefs up your potential to get clicked. 

I’ve often used the program to increase my scores from a low 40 to more than 70. For example, by using the program with this blog post, the initial title I was going to use was: 7 Things that should be in Every Blog post. By trying a new headline and simply adding one word (“Important”) the title’s post score changed from 47 to 72: 7 Important Things that should be in Every Blog post. It’s a simple matter of trying alternative titles to see what one or two extra words will change the likelihood for your heading to get clicked.

4.      Fill Out the Title and Meta Description

Two things that should be filled out on your posts to ensure that your properly getting ranked in search engines are the title and meta description.

If you leave the meta description blank and don’t fill it in, your metadata will get automatically filled in with information that’s not relevant to your site.  This is something that you shouldn’t overlook.

I personally use Yoast Premium SEO to quickly and easily insert my title and description into each and very post.  There’s a free version and a paid version which gives you the information highlighted below:

Free Version

• SEO analysis: an invaluable tool while writing SEO-friendly content with the right (focus) keyphrases in mind.
• Readability analysis: ensures that humans and search engines can read and understand your content.
• Full language support for: English, German, French, Dutch, Spanish, Italian, Russian, Indonesian, Polish, Portuguese, Arabic, Swedish, Hebrew and Hungarian.
• A Google preview, which shows what your listings will look like in the search results. Even on mobile devices!
• Innovative Schema blocks for the WordPress block editor, so that your FAQ and HowTo content can be shown directly in the search results.
• [Premium] Internal linking blocks to easily improve the structure of your content. Easily add a table of contents block, a related links block, a subpages block, or siblings block! Plus, we’ll keep adding these easy-to-add blocks to improve your site structure.

Premium Version

• [Premium] Social previews to show you how your content will be shown on Twitter and Facebook.
• [Premium] The Insights tool that shows you what your text focuses on. This way you can keep your article in line with your keyphrases.
• [Premium] Optimize your content for synonyms and related keyphrases.
• [Premium] Optimize your article for different word forms of your keyphrases, as the singular and plural. But also different verb forms, synonyms, and related keyphrases. This makes for more natural content!
• [Premium] Automatic internal linking suggestions: write your article and get automatic suggested posts to link to!
• [Premium] An orphaned content filter to detect posts that have no links pointing towards them!

Update your Metadescription:  Click on Edit Sniplet (located on the left side) to edit the Metadescription (this requires installing the Yoast SEO plug-in). 

If it’s not visible, click the down arrow on “Google preview”.  The length of the Metadescription has up to 156 characters available, use the space and shoot for more than 120 characters.  Use the space. 

5.      Link to Older Posts

Never publish a post, share it a few times, and then forget about it. Whenever possible, you should be placing links to your older content, within your new content.  Keep your old information, current and up—to-date. 

Linking to older posts allows you to elaborate on a point quickly. It also drives traffic to your older content and increases your page views.

Add Internal Linking Suggestions (related posts)

At the bottom of every post add related posts.

1. Internal Links (on your website)
2. External Links  (away from your website). 

Add cornerstone content (if applicable)

Cornerstone content should be the most important and extensive articles on your site. Learn more about Cornerstone Content.  These are helpful to layout your website’s site structure when you add your internal links. 

6.      Use Heading Tags

Using headings in your posts is a great way to break up your content, bring focus to major points, and tell search engines what your content is about.  By using headings you are also making your website’s readability easier, hence people will read further.  There’s nothing worse than going to a site and getting quickly discouraged because it’s too hard to read. 

In WordPress, you have six headings. They range from H1 to H6. When writing your posts, you should be using H2 or H3 tags for your headings. Never use H1 tags, as those are reserved solely for your post titles. I mainly use H2 tags within my blog posts.

7.      Use Images in Your Post

Whenever you create a blog post, you should always include images.

I add images to my posts for two reasons:

1. We are a visual society and people like to see images.
   
2. Since Pinterest is my highest traffic source, I want to make sure I always include a pinnable image. I highly recommend Canva for creating pinnable images.

In addition to those two things, if you’re writing a “how to” post, images can help make your post easier to follow. Images also help to make your post easier to read by breaking up your content.

Always keep in mind that images are copyrighted, and unless you have permission to use the image, they should not be used on your blog.

Try to get into a good habit of making at least two images per post.  One of the two images is going to be your featured image.  That way people can get a depiction of the blog post from looking at the image in addition to reading the heading. 

Now it’s your turn. 

What’s something you include in every one of your blog posts?
Let me know in the comments below.