When you post on your blog you want your posts to be the most effective they can be and to be able to reach a bigger audience. There is nothing more disappointing than writing a post and it not gain the views and engagement you were hoping for.
There are a lot of elements that make up a successful blog post and to ensure that your post is the most appealing to your audience. When you are sharing your content you want to make sure you have the fundamental elements to improve your SEO and that your posts are user friendly. Some of the essential elements are sometimes easily missed or mistaken, just some of the blogging mistakes you should avoid to help grow your blog.
Here are the 5 essential elements you should ensure your blog post has before you hit that publish button.
#1 Include a featured image
A featured image is the first graphic your audience sees when you share links on social media or when they click on your blog to read your post. Having a featured image is great placement, as an image that is placed above a headline the latter text ends up being read 10% more than when the image is placed lower. If you are sharing a review about a product it is much more appealing for readers to have an image featured of that product. If you are struggling with image ideas you should use stock images that are relevant to your post. Just ensure that if you are using a stock image you always credit the original creator.
#2 Use headings or subheadings
How many times have you been put off by large paragraphs of text? Using headings or subheadings can break down these larger paragraphs and it will be less daunting for your readers. A reader may have only visited your post for specific information therefore with headings and subheadings it can be easy for them to navigate them to that information. Not only does having these headings and subheadings make your post more appealing but it also boosts search engine optimisation.
Photo by Ella Jardim on Unsplash
#3 Include powerful call-to-action
Every blog post that you share should have a call-to-action, it could be leaving a comment, could be to read another blog post or check out a product or service you are sharing. Having these actions in your posts means you are seeking further engagement with your readers.
#4 Include images or graphics
Are you ever put off reading blog posts that are just reams of text and no images? It is important to share images especially if you are talking about products you are using or a place you have experienced, it can help your readers relate to your writing. As I said with the featured image you can use stock images with the appropriate credits. When using images in your posts it is important to include alt text, this helps improve your sites accessibility, help you rank in Google Images and it serves as an anchor text for image links. A post that has several images are so much appealing to an audience.
Photo by Ella Jardim on Unsplash
#5 Interlink your content
Do you like free advertising? That is exactly what interlinking gives you. When you are writing a blog post you may have relevant content that your audience could also benefit from. Interlinking content is great for SEO, it increases the number of pages per visit and increases how long visitors are on your site which helps Google recognise the time spent on your posts.
Focusing on these 5 areas can not only help you share effective content, but can help with SEO an driving engagement. They all work together to help improve your blog. I have been working on these especially for my older content and it has improved my DA and has been driving more blog traffic.
Do you have other elements that are a must for each of your blog posts? I’d love to hear in the comments.
Wonderful advice. I use all of these elements in my blog posts. If I could add one more item to your list, it would be “good formatting.” The easiest blog posts to read are the ones that are written in simple grammar and formatted properly. Headings, italics, bullet points, etc. should be given high priority.
Yeah definitely a good idea too! Thank you for reading and commenting.
Great advice! I’m definitely more likely to click on blog posts if they have pictures!
Serena / http://www.ramblingsofanotherunigraduate.com
Me too! Thank you for reading and commenting.
Totally agree, I always try to incorporate these five things 🙂
This is a great post! I definitely appreciate when people put effort into formatting their blog posts. Headings and images make SUCH a difference x
Definitely! Thank you for reading and commenting.
These are great tips. I didn’t discover featured images and headings until I had been blogging for 6 months. Now I am going back and slowly updating my earlier posts. It’s a learning process. 😀
That’s great! It is a learning process, I am constantly learning too.
That’s what makes it fun!
Great advice, good photography and pictures for me is a good for my blog esp. for the food posts it makes people wanting to re-create of the recipe 🙂
Nic | Nic’s Adventures & Bakes
Definitely! Thank you for reading and commenting.
These tips are fab – thanks for sharing!
Nat | https://www.nataliehanson.co.uk
Thank you!
Thank you for this. Your posts are helpful as always 😊
Thank you!
Amazing advice! SEO and DA’s are still super new and confusing to me and I don’t fully understand them yet but hopefully these things will help. I don’t know what kinds of sites to interlink to. I have a book blog so does linking to my other posts count or does it have to be to amazon or Goodreads etc?
No interlink to your own content always. So if you have written a review by the same author before you could link that or link your previous post. It’s about keeping people on your site and visiting other blog posts 😊
Thank you! I definitely will do that more <3
Great tips! I think learning how to use SEO is so important when blogging… There are some awesome plugins to help you out with that too!
Jenna ♥
Stay in touch? Life of an Earth Muffin
Thank you for reading and commenting. Can you send me another link, that one doesn’t work.
Nice tips…I definitely do not incorporate enough CTAs into my posts and this is a great reminder – thank you!
Thank you for reading and commenting.
Interlinking content is so helpful for increasing engagement and blog views! I’m also really trying to increase my image quality atm too 🙂 Love these tips gal – so helpful xx
That’s awesome! Thank you for reading and commenting 😊
Headings! I’m guilty of not using it before because I don’t know how to lol.
Where it says paragraph next to the bold italic and underline, click that and choose heading.
Thanks for this info..
Thank you for reading and commenting. Can you link your blog.
Thank you for reading and commenting. Can you link your blog.
I hope it helps. Thank you for reading and commenting.
These are awesome tips! I need to get better at adding in images to my posts. I try to add at least one pin style image per post, but sometimes laziness gets me and I just skip it.
I didn’t realize images higher up increased later text reading! I’ll have to look back on my posts and make some changes.
Thank you for sharing!
Yeah definitely edit your older posts, it really helps.
These are some great tips. They seem so simple, like duh obviously but sometimes we forget the basics. Thanks for the reminder and this is great for the newbie blogger.
Thank you for reading and commenting.
Great ideas!
Brianna | http://briannamarielifestyle.com
Great tips! I definitely suggest putting links to outside sources as well. It might make people leave the blog but adds some more value 🙂
Thank you for reading and commenting. Can you link your blog.
These are great tips! I love that they’re simple enough to include in every single blog post with minimal hassle.
Definitely really simple. Thank you for reading and commenting.
Great advice! Thank you for sharing this! I want to start adding more photos to my blog posts.
Definitely give it a go, it really helps.
Great post! Thank you for the helpful information. SEO is definitely something I’ve never been great at!
Thank you for reading and commenting. I hope it helps.
Really good tips, thank you so much for sharing. I need to work on my ‘call to actions’ in my posts, so thanks for the reminder!
Thank you for reading and commenting. Can you link your blog.
Love this! I need to have a checklist before posting any blog and this is a perfect template! Thanks for sharing!
I hope it helps. Thank you for reading and commenting
I’ve never thought about internal linking being free advertising but you’re spot on! It’s on my to do list to go back to older posts and start linking them to newer posts but there’s never enough time in the day, haha. These are all some really great tips, Lauren, super helpful, thank you for sharing! Lisa xx
Yeah I am working my way through doing older posts. Thank you for reading and commenting. Xxx
Great advice Lauren. I have found a call to action has really increased engagement on my posts. It makes a huge difference and is so simple. Linking content is a great idea too, works well when you have a strong niche.
Thanks for sharing x
This is really helpful: I know I’m guilty of using text rather than images as I’m definitely more of a word person than a visual one! I’m currently struggling with adding featured images: I can see how it should work, but it just doesn’t (I add a featured image, hit ‘update’ and… nothing happens. I’ll keep trying having read this and seeing how important it is!
I follow most of these apart from the featured image. That is usually an image with text over it, to add as a bit of a title image…might have to change that up! I now need to go through old blog posts and make sure they are up to scratch with the newer ones.
Great advice!
Aimsy xoxo
Aimsy’s Antics
That’s great. I hope it helps. Thank you for reading and commenting.
I like longer posts to have an easy-to-follow layout, so subheadings and headings and especially paragraphs are important to me when I sit down to write a longer piece. I do not often use more then one image, but I recently used three within a post to illustrate a point and was surprised at how much more effective that was then trying to explain it in words. 🙂
Thanks so much for sharing!
That’s great! Thank you for reading and commenting Jaya.
I read somewhere once that you didn’t want to start a blog post with an image (although this was years ago) so now I’ve been too worried about using a featured image. I’ll definitely be doing it from now on though. This was such a useful post – thanks for sharing!
I haven’t heard of that before. Featured images help with SEO and google. I am glad it is helpful. Thank you for reading and commenting.
It was a few years ago so maybe I misunderstood and never researched it again!
Great tips for every blogger. Thank you for sharing your knowledge.
Thank you for reading and commenting.
These are such great tips! When I first started out I underestimated the importance of a good feature image for my posts xxx
Me too! Thank you for reading and commenting. I hope this post helps.
I need to use subheading a little more. I also need to do some more interlinking. Your other tips are a must for my blog.
Great suggestions! I’m surprised by the number of bloggers that are still overlooking the importance of the basics. For example, headings and subheadings – not only do they help to break up the text to make your post more reader-friendly, but Google LOVES them when determining how a post rates on search. There are other ways to break up a wall of text as well. You can add more images, create lists or use white space strategically.
Definitely the basics are what people often miss but help the most. Thank you for reading and commenting.
These are wonderful suggestions! I’m still fairly new so this is all good advice!
Glad it is helpful!
Definitely agree with all of these!
Great ideas! I think its time for me to start using these tips in every blog post.
Thank you for reading and commenting. Can you link your blog
I hope this isn’t too dumb of a question, but what do you mean when you say interlinking?
Linking your older posts.
These are some great tips my dear. I try to focus on images and I think I have improved in that. But I need to work on headings and sub headings. Long paragraphs go et boring I try to break it down with adding images. Thanks for sharing this. Its really helpful. 🙂
Via | https://glossnglitters.com
Glad this post is helpful. Thank you for reading and commenting.
These tips are some of the mosy helpful. Many of them I have heard time and time again, but your call to action is so very important. Hiding it or try not to bother anyone with it by sounding pitchy often does not work. I recently increased my Amazon conversion rate by 100%+ which is crazy. Simply by putting a super obvious text link call to action. Your points are well proven in my case. Keep up the good work, wonderful information!
Thank you so much for your kind comments! I definitely find them useful for me and wanted to share them with others. That is an awesome achievement!
Can you send your blog link
I hope it helps! Thank you for reading and commenting.
That’s such a great idea to interlink content – I definitely need to start doing that x
Roni | myelevatedexistence.com
Thank you!
These are great tips, especially for people who are beginners! One thing I didn’t realize was important til adding hyperlinks within my site and outbound of my site! Great post lauren xxx
Melina | http://www.melinaelisa.com
Thank you for reading and commenting.
Great post! Very succinct, but meaning!.
Some great tips Lauren I’m going to add a few of these into my reviews! Thank you!
Sarah
That’s awesome! Thank you for reading and commenting.
These are some wonderful pointers. A very informative and helpful post!!
http://towardsbetterlifestyle.com/
Thank you.
This post is so helpful! I’m so much more likely to read blog posts if they have images, and linking to older posts is a great way of increasing engagement!
Serena / http://www.ramblingsofanotherunigraduate.com
Thank you for reading and commenting.