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What are the key ingredients that make a great blog Background
What are the key ingredients that make a great blog

What are the key ingredients that make a great blog?

What are the key ingredients that make a great blog

What are the key ingredients that make a great blog?

Despite understanding their importance, many businesses see blog writing as merely a “box-ticking” exercise. They know that content can increase their visibility online, so they bung in a couple of keywords, throw a blog together and hope for the best.

It may come as a surprise to hear that this isn’t exactly the best strategy – so what are the ingredients of a great blog? What makes some shoot to the top of the SERPs (search engine results pages), while others lay around collecting dust?

There are a few steps to follow when putting your content together, to ensure you’re reaching (and converting!) your target audience, which we’ll take a look at below.

Having an SEO-mindset is key

If you’re wanting to get the most out of your article, you’ll need to have a clear keyword in mind to shape your content around – in other words, writing blindly and hoping for the best isn’t, unfortunately, much of a strategy.

You’ll also need to know exactly what action you want your readers to take when they land on the page. Do you want them to buy tickets to an upcoming workshop? Sign up to your monthly newsletter? Whatever the purpose of the article, there needs to be a clear call to action to secure the best chance of conversion.

Not only this, but it’s important to know where your article fits in with the rest of your SEO (search engine optimisation) strategy…

Avoid duplication

Writing a lot of similar content runs the risk of keyword cannibalisation (you can read more about that here).

This means that while it’s tempting to try and emulate past blogs that may be converting well, you’ll want to make sure you don’t have multiple pages competing for the same keywords, as this can lower your website’s ranking overall.

The same goes for competitor articles that have found success – you might think a suitable shortcut would be to “borrow” content from another website, but not only is this detrimental to your ranking, but you could also find yourself in serious trouble legally.

ChatGPT – to use or not to use?

On the topic of taking shortcuts, more and more businesses are turning to AI (artificial intelligence) software like Gemini (formerly known as Bard) or ChatGPT to write their content for them.

From a time saving perspective, using AI makes a lot of sense. A blog that could have taken anywhere up to an hour, written in less than a minute? When time is often of the essence, this can seem like a lifeline to busy business owners and their employees.

However, if it’s too good to be true, it usually is – and using AI comes with a caveat.

Google priorities content that is written by humans, and to have a good chance of ranking well, you’ll need to make sure you’re following its E-E-A-T (Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness) guidelines – in other words, you need to be offering something that is unique.

AI isn’t at a point (yet!) where it can think for itself, and it can only take information that already exists online. This in itself comes with a fair amount of risk, as there is a wealth of misinformation out there on the web – and as AI can’t tell the difference between fact and fiction, this leaves you vulnerable to spreading information that is outdated or downright false, damaging your business’ credibility in the process.

That’s not to say you can’t use AI at all. The technology can be great for putting together a content plan, or coming up with article ideas for you when you’re running short. Just don’t rely on it to pen your next masterpiece for you – and it’s never a substitute for your original thoughts and experiences. That’s what your audience REALLY want to hear from you.

At Engage Web, we offer our SEO clients human-written content from an experienced team of writers and editors. If you need help coming up with a content plan that speaks directly to your target audience, as well as keyword research conducted by professionals who understand the market, get in touch with the team today.

Lia Bartley

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