By Kristie Parker
Writing can feel like a chore. Like cutting the lawn or paying bills. Humdrum.
And it’s no wonder when most of us grew up composing snoozefest essays about school-mandated books that were as unappetizing as boiled unsalted broccoli.
Maybe if we hadn’t been shackled by punctuation rules and stuffy text we would have learned how to use writing to help people or make them laugh, that it’s ok to write in the voice you speak with, and that there’s no law on how many words to write. When you realize there aren’t any grades or rules, writing isn’t like paying bills; it’s a friendly conversation with your readers. And a friendly conversation is a business owner’s comfy well-worn T-shirt. It’s where we feel at ease.
When you think about it, blogging for business owners is really just writing down the stuff you talk to your customers about all the time. It’s a place to share all of your tips and tricks to help people who don’t know as much about your topic as you do. You can blog about the stuff that you’re enthusiastic about or your pet peeves. Anything that’s useful to your website visitors.
And it has an added bonus…
When it comes to free SEO you can’t beat blogging because it adds pages to your site, and each post can include a keyword or phrase that tells Google what the post is about. And since Google is constantly crawling the internet looking for these types of useful pages to recommend to potential visitors, blogging can be a great way to boost your ranking on Google (aka showing up as close to the first page of search results as possible).
You don’t have to overthink your topic or use fancy words. In fact, that can actually make your writing sound stuffy and confusing. But you may not want to wing it either. Because without a little guidance your advice may be invisible online, lost on the island of Google’s land of misfit blogs. These 8 tips are simple, actionable and will help get more eyes on your posts.
What do potential customers typically ask you? What do they worry about? How can you help them?
Here’s an example from Scott English Plumbing, who wrote a post titled “6 Ways to Unclog a Bathroom Sink”. He walks us through 6 DIY steps that will clear up most clogging issues and then ends his post by letting us know that if we’re still struggling we might have a bigger problem that requires professional help, and here’s where he invites his website visitors to hire him. He advertises his service, but only after he’s offered helpful free advice establishing himself as an expert and increasing his trustworthiness.
Writing an appealing post is one thing, but how do you increase the chances of someone actually seeing it? It’s crucial that the words you use throughout your post and in your headline are the same words that your customers say and type.
They’re called “keywords” which is a boring fancy tech term that means: words people type into Google. When I type “how to unclog a bathroom sink” Mike Diamond’s post popped up on the first page of search results. The title contains keywords that are almost identical to what I was looking for, so the Google algorithm knows that this would be useful to me.
My search: how to unclog a bathroom sink
Title of the blog post: 6 Ways to Unclog a Bathroom Sink
In addition to the title of your post, it’s important to put your keywords in a few other places. In our example, our keyword phrase is “unclog a bathroom sink” so I’d want to make sure that I use that term in the first 100 words of my post, and to really punch it up, in at least one subheading (more about subheadings later) so Google knows that the content of my post matches the headline.
In our post “The Super Simple Free Thing Literally Anyone Can Do to Get More Website Visitors” we mentioned that speaking to our customers in boring industry jargon turns people off.
I used to own a CrossFit gym, and I’d often hear this from coaches describing CrossFit to newcomers: “It’s constantly varied functional movement performed at high intensity.”
I imagine those potential new members thinking: “Huh? I walked in feeling out of shape and now I feel out of shape, confused, and bored.”
We can make our in-person customers and website visitors feel warm and welcome, not alienated, if we explain how our service can benefit them instead of throwing around words that we think make us sound smart.
It works for keywords too. If we want to attract new customers, our blog posts and titles need to include words that they use, because that’s what they’re typing into Google.
Sometimes we’re so deep in our industry we don’t even know when we’re using jargon.
If you’re not sure how many people are searching a particular word or phrase, use a keyword search tool, like Moz Explorer. It’s super easy. Just type your keyword into the search bar and Moz will display that exact match plus others like it alongside the number of times per month people search for it.
For example, CrossFit gyms are technically called “affiliates.” Does the average person know or care about that? Let’s see. I typed “CrossFit affiliate” into the Moz keyword explorer and it gets 50% less searches per month than “crossfit gym.” This lets me know that if I want to attract owners or other insiders to my blog post, I might use “affiliate,” but if I’m writing for new customers, or a larger audience, then I should use “gym.”
This isn’t 8th grade English class. There’s no 5-page term paper due on Monday on the use of iambic pentameter in Shakespeare’s MacBeth. If it’s boring no one will read it.
Don’t bury your helpful tips and other valuable gems in 2-point times new roman font and stuffy industry speak. Loosen up. You can even tell a story to prove your point.
I subscribe to Rachael Kay Albers’s email list. She’s a branding expert and knows a thing or two about how to connect with people. She sent out an email about a new workshop she’s offering, but she didn’t write, Hey Guys I’m offering a new workshop for people who aren’t afraid to be creative and think outside the box. It starts on Monday. No.
She told a story about how she disliked a staircase in her house. It was a typical beige staircase, the kind you wouldn’t even notice. She wanted to paint it rainbow colors, but felt self-conscious about company making judgments about her loud decorating. Finally she went for it and said this:
“I never stared at my beige stairs once and felt like a better person.
But I gaze at my rainbow stairs for just a few minutes a day and I honestly feel like the whole world is mine.What took me so long???
What was I afraid of???
This whole time I could have been the type of woman with rainbow stairs, reaping all the emotional and creative rewards that come with it, but instead I’ve been trapped in the prison of beige by default.” – Rachael Kay Albers
We can all relate. And once she captivates us with her staircase story, she leads into how infusing liveliness and bright color into her life made her more creative, which inspired her to create this new workshop and take on fewer clients, the kind who infuse rainbows into their business, and by the way, would you like to be one of them?
This is an effective way to communicate because her story lingers with me like ocean salt long after I’ve left the beach, and it’s crafted like she’s sitting across the table confiding in me even though it’s written to a large audience.
Remember when we said that the MacBeth 5-page essay is boring? It’s not just the content. Long paragraphs with no breaks or font changes are difficult to read. Zhush up your post with small paragraphs, one-word sentences, subheadings, and at least one image.
A lot of people skim, so make it easy for them by using lists, checklists, or numbered points. Google likes this too. Blog posts that are easy to scan rank higher than long- paragraph posts.
If your business is hyperlocal, meaning all of your customers are within a specific radius of your location, then your blog should cater to those visitors. There might be fewer searches overall, but you’ll target your potential customers. After all, as much as 46% of all search traffic is local, so use your location in your headlines.
For example, if you’re a landscaper in Miami, Florida, you might write a blog post like, “How to Use Native Plants for a Lush Miami Landscape” or “The 5 Easiest Fruit Trees to Grow in South Florida.”
Keep it relevant to your industry, but that doesn’t mean you can’t incorporate advice or recommendations outside of your exact niche. For example, if you’re a wedding cake bake shop you might make a post on your top 5 favorite local wedding venues, but steer clear of writing a review of your town’s bowling alleys. Since it has nothing to do with cakes or weddings it can be confusing for your readers.
I was once planning a road trip through Georgia. As I researched hotels, restaurants, and hikes I came across this post, “Everything You Need to Know About Hiking in North Georgia.” It’s got lots of in-depth info on all the hiking trails, way more than a standard travel blog because this was clearly written by someone who lives in the area.
At the bottom of the post is this subheading, “Where to Stay After a Day of Hiking in North Georgia.” It’s a description of a boutique inn in the Blue Ridge Mountains. It was only then that I noticed that I had been reading the blog on the inn’s website. The post closes with the author extending an offer welcoming us to their beautiful property and includes a link to their availability calendar. We would easily glaze over a typical ad, but here the author has captured our full attention.
If your headline is generic or dull no one’s going to bother reading what else you have to say, so give us something engaging. Here are 3 surefire ways to pique interest in your topic:
A. Something you wish you had known when you started out or the answer to a question that clients ask all the time. Asking it in the form of a question or alluding to something that piques curiosity makes us want to know more.
Example: 5 Little-Known Ways to Save on Your Water Bill
B. A tip or list of tips teaching your visitors how to do something faster, better, cheaper, etc.
Example: 8 Tips for Creating an Instagram-Worthy Closet Without Spending Big Bucks
C. A step-by-step guide or how-to manual.
Example: The Ultimate Guide to a DIY Manicure
Once you have a working title, plug it into a headline analyzer, like Coschedule’s Headline Analyzer. It’s free and will quickly analyze your title and give suggestions to make it more click worthy. Is it too long? Too short? Should you use more power words to encourage your readers to take action? It’s a helpful tool because it looks at your title from a perspective other than your own, but take the suggestions with a grain of salt. It’s a computer, after all, so it won’t know your particular audience as well as you do.
A glance at Coschedule’s analysis of the title of my previous post:
Not sure which headline words to capitalize or lowercase? Check out CapitalizeMyTitle.com. Type your title into the bar and in 2 seconds they’ll do it for you.
Don’t hold back. Respect your reader’s time and give them something good. Your blog is an opportunity to connect with your visitor to show them you’re the hard-working, caring, experienced professional you’ve said you are so don’t ruin it with a time-wasting sales pitch or a bunch of obvious fluff.
You don’t have to tell people you’re hardworking and detail oriented. After all, you’re a stranger so I’m not going to take your word for it and it can come off condescending. Instead, show them the 5-step process to priming a wall before painting it. Or the complete guide to prepping your backyard garden for spring blooms. Sharing your knowledge establishes you as an expert without having to scream “Buy my service I’m the BEST!!!!”
Giving free advice establishing you as an expert and a likeable person. Plus teaching someone how to do something doesn’t mean they’re going to do it.
Say you write a post explaining the best methods for painting a bedroom. Some people will read it and dive right in. Cool, you’ve helped them with their weekend DIY project, but others would gladly pay a professional rather than wander the aisles at Home Depot for supplies, lay tarps, prep a room, etc. and a lot of us are worried that after all that effort the finished product will be lackluster anyway. Maybe once I see how much work it really is I realize it’s worth hiring a pro and now that I’ve read your post your name is at the top of my list.
Subheadings are like mini titles. They introduce a new idea or tip and are visually pleasing because they break your content into snack-size bites instead of long dull paragraph style. You can use font style, color, and size to punch it up too. And it’s an opportune place to mention your keywords again.
If your topic is broad and has been written about a million times by a million other people your hard work will be buried deep, deep down in the Google abyss where no one will ever find it. So write something specific. Choose a topic that will grab the attention of your customers. Pretend you have a trendy store in Manhattan that sells drinkware and you want to write a blog post about your best selling coffee mugs.
Too broad: The best coffee mug
Better: New York coffee mugs to match your urban style at home or on the go
The better option may have a lower search volume than “best coffee mug” but it will be visible to people who are more detailed in their searches. In tech speak these specific, not broad, topics are called “long tail keywords.”
Writing a post about a specific small topic also helps you stay on task and get into the nitty gritty of that subject. You can offer actionable advice or detailed explanations that only your audience would understand or care about.
An unnecessary hyphen won’t kill you, but lots of misspelled or double words can detract from your message and make people question your attention to detail. Give it a slow once over yourself and then pass your blog post on to a friend for a final look before posting.
Paralysis By Analysis
I was reading this blog, burritobowldiaries.com. It’s a guy who writes amusing posts about seemingly random stuff. Someone commented at the end of a post wondering how he chooses his topics. He responded:
“It’s hard to know for sure what motivates me. I have several serious posts that just didn’t feel right. Usually the ones I end up posting I put together in an hour or so but the ones I spend tons of time on I end up overthinking and they remain drafts. Go figure.” – Mr. Burrito Bowl
That makes sense to me. It’s a good reminder when I’m struggling to finish a post. It’s not brain surgery both in the sense that it’s not complicated and not high stakes. Just give ‘em useful info and make it interesting and you won’t overthink yourself out of a great post. Do you agree?
