Asking what makes the perfect blog post is like asking for the secrets to life! It is different for everyone and every post., but there are key elements that every blog post should have. But I’m not saying you have to put them all into each post. You just need a little sprinkling of some of these things to make every post magical…
Keywords
10 – Keywords
While most people might ignore this if they are a life blogger or just writing a personal blog they shouldn’t. Using a keyword research tool like Google Keyword Planner you can find out if people are looking for your blog topic even before you start the first line.
SEO
9 – SEO
You don’t have to be an SEO master to do this. Just make sure of the following things. The title is under 55 characters, the meta is between 150 and 160 characters and all images have alt tags and captions. By doing these 3 simple things every time you post you will ride high in the rankings without any need for outside help.
Layout
8 – Layout
Even if you wrote a blog post that Shakespear himself would have approved of it wouldn’t matter if the layout was all wrong on the blog theme. Is it readable? Is it mobile friendly? I always test posts by reading them on both a tablet in preview mode and my mobile. Something as simple as a wrong break in the sentence can make things looks terrible.
Read it
7 – Read it
You can read your own blog post a thousand times and you might never find all the spelling errors and grammar mistakes (of which I am guilty all the time) but reading it through at least 3 times should get rid of most of them.
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Links
6 – Links
Are there any links that might prove valuable to your readers? Not only can this be good to the reader, but you can also use Zemanta to earn links on other people’s blogs! Two in, one out is always a good math to use. So at least 2 links back to your blog (inbound) and 1 going out (external).
Social Media
5 – Social Media
For every blog post you publish, make sure you post it to social media channels like Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. And make sure people can do the same via social media buttons on the page. Sharing is caring and making sure you care enough to share with your social media followers is another side of that.
Text
4 – Text
Overall, 74% of posts that are read online every day are readable in under 3 minutes and 94% can be read in just 6 minutes. So keep it about 1,000 – 1,600 for the perfect length.
Title
3 – Title
Now we are getting into the most important elements. Only the first 3 words and the last 3 words of a blog title tend to be read. Rather than focusing on letter count, you should focus on making it 6 words long and making every word count.
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Video
2 – Video
Even if you haven’t made one yourself why not include someone else’s that captures what you are trying to get across. Just remember that the most popular videos on TouTube are pretty short and stats say that under 3 mins are the perfect capture time.
Pictures
1 – Pictures
The idiom “A picture is worth a thousand words” refers to the notion that an idea can be conveyed with just a single image and never is that truer than in a blog post. Sure, showing off your writing skills is all well and good because people love things to read, but it is always nice to break up all that text with an image or two (or ten!)