Take it from me, when I started out my business over ten years ago I wish I had someone to give me all their best blog writing tips so I could avoid a few blogging blunders. Creating content is a an essential part of having a successful blog, so the more comfortable you are writing writing, the better chance you have of earning income from your efforts.
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Every blogger will have their own writing style and approach, but there are a dozen or so blogging tips that every new blogger should know by heart and use to craft their articles.
If you want to improve your writing by years and turn blogging into your professional career, then read more below! In this guide, I’ll cue you into all the best blog writing tips that I myself have used to churn out consistently “rankable” content over the years.
As a side bonus, even if your blog doesn’t take off right away, or you lose steam somewhere down the road, writing online very profitable even though it’s pretty competitive. Getting hooked up with the right blogging partner means you could earn a full time income freelance writing, and still enjoy the benefits of working remotely, without actually managing the blog itself.
15 Blog Writing Tips To Improve Your Articles
1. Don’t Write for Word Count
One of the biggest mistakes bloggers make is writing to fulfill a word count. If there is one golden blog writing tip to follow – it’s to not write to reach a word count.
When you focus on satisfying that word count limit, you are potentially sacrificing the quality of your article. Instead, write as much as you need to in order to thoroughly answer the query.
No matter if it’s listicles, how-to’s, or product reviews – stop writing for word count. Google is getting smarter at knowing that everyone is trying to do a “1000” word count limit, anyway. Just because you write to satisfy the minimum word count doesn’t mean your article is any good.
Focus on the content, not the word count.
2. Use Active Voice
While it’s fine to speckle your writing with passive voice here and there, it’s best to use active voice whenever possible. That means writing your sentences with the subject performing a verb’s action.
The active voice is much better for readability and it’s easier to understand as well. For example, instead of writing this passive sentence, “The metro was packed full with people”, you could write “People packed the metro full” to make it active.
By writing in the more active and present tense, you will engage your reader better and for longer.
3. Do Keyword Research
Knowing the “seed topic” of what you’re going to write about will greatly improve your blog writing. Keyword research is at the core of any good article writing, especially if you have plans for that article to rank in search engines.
There are many blogging tools available – like Ahrefs, Moz, or SEMrush – to help you navigate the realm of keyword research so you can do it more efficiently and with better precision.
4. Use Short(er) Sentences
Writing extremely long sentences that just run-on and on and on… You know the type. Don’t be that blogger. Use short sentences. Even if they aren’t always perfect.
By using shorter sentences, you improve the amount of time people spend reading your blog. Doing so results in a lower bounce rate percentage, which is a good indicator that people are liking what they see.
Eyes tend to “browse” a blog article. So when you use shorter sentences, you help people read more of your content. Not less. Win-win.
5. Write First, Proofread Later
Too many writers start typing out a sentence, just to backspace it all back to blank. When you constantly correct your writing, do you know what happens?
You over-perfect it to a point of non-existence. Literally. Too often, bloggers try to edit as they type, and that often prevents them from getting the story out.
You can always go back and edit your article and polish it up at a later time. But first, just let the words flow. You’ll see how much quicker you can finish a blog when you do that, too.
6. Engage the Reader’s Inner Voice
To seriously improve your blog writing, you should always aim to evoke the reader’s inner voice. Hello, can you hear me now?
When you write in a natural tone, as if you were speaking, it helps to keep the reader interested and engaged. If you start sounding like a Wikipedia page, then you will soon be ousted for another blogger who adds a little more variety to their article.
It’s not exactly that you would type what you’d say. No, it’s more like type what you hear with your own reader’s voice. Chances are, what you “hear” – and how you translate that into words – will be how others will “hear” it too.
7. Use Grammarly to Correct Mistakes
No matter how many blog writing tips you read, nothing will clean up your writing as efficiently as Grammarly will.
If you don’t know about Grammarly, it’s basically a virtual writing assistant that corrects your writing in real-time by highlighting grammatical errors and offering suggestions.
Grammarly’s starter plan is free and performs basic corrections, but if you want complex style, tone, and clarity improvements then you can upgrade for around $12 per month.
8. Blog in Second Person
Unless I have a personal experience to share, I always blog about YOU. And you should too.
Blogging in the first person works sometimes, but if you want your writing to stand out and appear professional then you should be using second person.
It’s also much easier to write in second person when creating a guide or how-to. If you scroll through my recent blog articles, you will notice how often I employ “you” to further engage the reader. (See what I did there?)
9. Use Affiliate Marketing Strategically
To make money from your blog, you’ll likely want to use affiliate marketing – aka using affiliate links in your articles to earn commissions on any purchases from click-throughs.
However, using affiliate links in every article could potentially “water down” your content. If you are only promoting products and services all the time, your writing will start to lead away from providing value and instead become focused on “how can I make more money.”
Yes, blogging can be about making money but most bloggers start a blog in order to do that – blog. Don’t lose sight of that in the process.
10. Add Pretty Visuals
Any good blog will have a healthy variety of visual media – gifs, images, Pinterest pins, videos, etc. This is so that the reader stays active on your article longer. It’s also just nice to associate your writing with something visual for reference, especially if you are writing in a storytelling manner.
11. Break Up Long Blocks of Text
Speaking of visuals, you can use images strategically to break up long blocks of text. But you can also do this just by adding line breaks between paragraphs and long sentences.
Instead of writing a block of 6-8 lines, for example, break it down to a digestible 3-4. You’ll even see some blogs or landing pages that have line breaks every two sentences.
However often you want to do it works, just as long as you’re not pushing it to novel-level. Remember that most people who read blogs won’t read everything or even make it to the end of the article.
So remember to break it up every now and then!
12. Use an SEO Tool
Mastering SEO is simply a means to an end. It shouldn’t be the purpose of your writing, but it sure helps your writing perform better in search results by giving you markers on what to include in your post in order to please the Google gods.
If you want your blogs to rank in SERPs but aren’t currently being “guided” by an SEO tool, make sure to download either the All-in-One SEO (AIOSEO) or Yoast SEO plugin.
13. One Paragraph = One Idea
You will often read that one sentence should represent only one idea. That’s fine, but blogs usually tend to have one idea for one paragraph.
This blog writing tip is not set in stone. It’s more of a rule of thumb to remind you that you don’t’ have to create large, flowing paragraphs like with typical essay writing.
14. Back Up Facts With Sources
Quality content is almost always backed up by quality external links.
If you are writing a blog article that shares any bit of factual information or information that didn’t originate with you, make sure to link out to it.
External link quality also plays a factor in good SEO. If possible, link to sources that you know is high-quality (i.e. like a .edu website) instead of a random blog that’s been outdated since 2010.
15. Always Seek To Add Value
Last but not least, the ultimate blog writing tip to take away from this article is to always seek to provide value with your writing. Everything you type should have a purpose. Even if it’s just some funny side pun – if it adds to the article, keep it. If not, toss it!
No one likes to read misleading content or being fooled into clicking on your blog only to read a bunch of fluff. If you truly seek to add value to your writing then people will notice that. That’s why writing for a word count is ultimately fatal.
If Google ranks your post, but no one wants to read it because it’s not got anything really of “sustenance”, then they will bounce off and your article will consequently drop in rankings in the end anyway.
If you follow all of these above blog writing tips, then you will definitely see improvements in your writing! Are there any other tips you can think of that didn’t get a mention? Drop your best blogging tips in the comments below.
Nathaniell
What's up ladies and dudes! Great to finally meet you, and I hope you enjoyed this post. My name is Nathaniell and I'm the owner of One More Cup of Coffee. I started my first online business in 2010 promoting computer software and now I help newbies start their own businesses. Sign up for my #1 recommended training course and learn how to start your business for FREE!
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