How To Create a High Traffic Blog Content (+FREE CERTIFICATION)

Blogs are vital for inbound marketing. They enhance SEO, boost traffic, and generate leads, all within the buyer's journey. But how do you make sure your blog outshines the millions of others published today? In this video, I'll walk you through step by step instructions for creating irresistible, share worthy blog content and show you the delicious secret sauce behind optimizing it to shine the brightest. Let's Cook Start by choosing a topic to write about. You can do this in two ways, the easy automated version or from scratch. Let's start with automation. For the folks who like to save a bit of time, HubSpot has a blog topic generator that'll instantly jumpstart your creative process. Just head to HubSpot.com blog topic generator put in up to 5 nouns to get started. Let's go with Marathon, Balance, Sneakers, Nutrition and Schedule, Hit Give me blog ideas and boom. Now just scroll through these ideas that were generated based on your keywords. We offer five here, but you can get more than 250 ideas if you sign up. No pressure though. For the hands on crew, we've got some simple yet effective strategies that'll add more polish and value to your content. Dig in to Buyer Personas this detailed description of your ideal customer is derived from deep audience research and helps you better understand how to your customers and prospective customers. Let's say your buyer Persona is named Gregory. He's a 42 year old beginner runner who wants to complete their first 10k but doesn't have much time around work and family to attract him. Your blog topic could be how to maintain a work life balance through running or how to choose the best running shoes for 10k races. By understanding your ideal customers, needs, behaviors and questions, you can write content that specifically addresses their interests and concerns. You'll also want to do keyword research, which is key to brainstorming blog topics that both people and search engines care about. This gives you the words your audience uses when they're searching for your product or industry. By creating a set of topic clusters focusing on long tail keywords, highly specific search phrases of three or more words, you can tap into what your audience is really searching for. For example, if your main keyword is running shoes, a blog post like the 10 step beginner's guide to choosing the Right Running Shoes uses long tail keywords to reach people looking for guidance on running shoes. So no matter which tactic you go with, remember when choosing topics, focus on educational content about your industry, not yourself. The goal of your blog should be to help your audience accomplish tasks and they need to complete at work and in their everyday lives. By the way, remember that this is just a taste. If you want to dig deeper into choosing a topic while also elevating your content creation skills, then my friend, check out our free certification course. Now, before we shift gears to another equally crucial part of your blogging journey, there's something you should know. On average, 8 out of 10 people will read headline copy, but only 2 out of 10 will. We'll read the rest. This means 80% of readers won't even make it past your headline without a compelling promise that turns a browser into a reader. So the better your title, the better the odds of having your post read by more people. So what makes a great title? Hmm, should have grown my beard longer so that I could shortcut more emphatically well. It's one that includes these three things your long tail, keyword or why behind a search query, a reason to click, or your value, and your unique take on the topic. Let's say our Persona from earlier is searching for Best running shoes for 10k on Google. A working title for your post, like this one, for example, is now long tail and specific. We know that someone searching for this is likely a runner who wants a shoe designed for comfort and performance. So the value here is the promise that you'll get a list of the 10 best running shoes for races. If you read this guide, you also have your unique angle here. This variations of your angle could be 10 best running shoes for 10k races, elite runner's guide, or 10 best running shoes for 10k marathons. Researched and tested. They're both somewhat similar, but each gives a unique reason for someone to click on your posts over another one in the search engine results. Now, what about title length? Well, HubSpot studied our own blog post titles to understand what works best. Here's a backstage peek at the consistent principles that we found. 60 characters is the ideal title length, and titles between 12 to 14 words are liked most often on Facebook. Google typically displays the first 50 to 60 characters of a title tag. If you keep your titles under 60 characters, you can expect about 90% of your titles to display properly. If you're unsure how your title will display well, run it through mose's Title Tag Preview tool. Type in your title here and see how it appears in search engine results. If your headline title is still too long and you're stuck on how to cut it down, remember to be specific and customer centric. Stay on topic, prioritize the main points, and include your primary keyword at the beginning for a concise and clear title. Your title and content should match. Period. Come up with at least five to 10 different titles for every blog post you write and choose a few to test with your audience. Make it a rule that you spend a minimum of five minutes brainstorming these ideas and keep a log of which types of headlines work best for your target Personas and use them shamelessly. If your blog doesn't meet the expectations of your readers, they'll bounce from your site and look for information elsewhere okay, now that you have a topic and a title for your blog post, the next step is to create and structure its content. A blog post has four main ingredients an engaging lead, short, informative paragraphs, use of subheadings and keyword cadence, and a powerful call to action. Your lead should grab your visitor's attention. Use humor, be empathetic or or group the reader with an interesting fact or statistic. Start strong by including your keyword in the first paragraph of copy. Describe the purpose of the post and explain how it will address your buyer Persona's current situation, thoughts, or emotions. Frankly, it should be a follow up to that tempting title that you just crafted. The body of your blog post is where readers will undoubtedly derive the most value. At HubSpot, we found the ideal post length is is between 2,100 to 2,400 words, but that will vary depending on your topic. Always solve for the reader first and break up your post with short bite sized paragraphs. A simple rule is to try and keep paragraphs to three sentences or less. Splitting paragraphs will vary depending on the topic. Generally though, you'll want to express one thought in a paragraph, then move on to another. You got this idea here and then that one over there. You to keep things nice and neat and separated. You shouldn't go more than two paragraphs without something to break it up. This can be an image, a bolded list, an outtake, or a subheading. Bold subheadings are another on page SEO element. They help build the structure of your post and help your content come together with clarity. Think of them as the bun of a burger. Yum. Now it's not unusual for your readers to be skimming instead of closely reading every word. Crafting useful and meaningful subheadings means they'll get more from their selective gazing. Subheadings should be emphasized in bold text and written with H2 tags or smaller, never H1 tags which would signal a title. Notice how this post uses H3 subheadings as well to further break up body copy and make it easier to digest. You'll also want to mention your keyword at a usual cadence, in your subheadings and throughout the body of your post. Remember, your primary focus should be on tangible benefits to your reader, not how many times you can include keywords in your content. That would be keyword stuffing, and I think we all know what happens when we stuff ourselves with empty calories. And if you're doing a good job explaining your topic, Google will understand you don't have to overindulge with robotic keywords. To finish, include a powerful call to action at the end of each post so readers can learn more about your topic or take a specific next step. CTAs complete your buyer Personas experience, drawing them seamlessly into your contact forms landing pages and inviting them to take one or two more actions to get to know your brand. If you need additional help structuring your posts, we put together six essential blog templates for the most popular content types that you can grab from the link in the description below. So you've crafted the perfect post. I'm very proud of you. Now you'll want to optimize it to help search engines understand your site and find the right audience when it comes to blog optimization, E E A t Friendly content is the answer. E E A T stands for experience, expertise, authority, and trustworthiness, the four criteria that Google uses to determine high quality, original, authoritative content that meets users search intent. EAT is essential for SEO because it boosts your website credibility. You can also increase your chances of earning valuable backlinks from other high quality sources, further increasing your website's authority and credibility. Now, we've already covered optimizing blog title and content using EAT guidelines, but there's a list of other optimizations you should consider as well. Let's start with the URL. According to Google, a site's URL structure should be as simple as possible. Doesn't have to be an exact match of your blog title, but make it a best practice to shorten the URL without losing context to what the post is about. Notice how the URL of this post is shorter than the title. This way I can update the content over time without updating the URL. Words that add little or no meaning to the URL like and or that can be removed for the sake of brevity and readability. Also don't include numbers in your URL like years or steps. This way, if you update the content in the future, you won't have to update the URL. Updating the URL creates a 301 redirect. A 301 redirect is a permanent redirect from one URL to another. Making updates to URLs hurts your SEO, and you don't want that Moving on to Image Alt Text Also called alt tags and alt descriptions, Alt text is the copy that appears in place of an image if the image fails to load on a user screen. This text helps screen reading tools describe image to visually impaired readers and tell search engines what an image is about, which ultimately helps those images rank in the image section of search engine results. Consider optimizing your images with different descriptive variations of your long tail keyword and add context that relates to the topic of the post. You'll also want to insert links strategically throughout your post. Adding internal links encourages users to explore other relevant content on your site, which can also increase time on the site and reduce the bounce rate. Additionally, it can help search engines crawl and index your pages more efficiently. Internal links with optimized anchor text or clickable words or phrases within a hyperlink can further enhance your keyword targeting strategy. For external links, make sure to use authoritative and credible sources, as it can boost your blog's authority and build trust with your readers. Link only when it's helpful or supports a stat or claim you're making, and consider having that content open in a new window without redirecting people off your site. Which brings me to my last point. Link to important content on your site that supports conversations. For example, consider inserting a CTA link after the first few paragraphs. Try including a passive CTA through hyperlink text as opposed to using an image to avoid looking too pushy too soon. It's important to include these passive CTAs near the top, as you can't always count on your visitors reading your entire post to take the next step. Or you can include an image or text CTA near the most relevant content in the body of your post as the best time to support a conversion is just after educating someone. Notice how the CTA content is similar to the content it's paired with. Now what makes a good blog post an outstanding blog post? Sure, some are reliant on quality ingredients and tasty SEO, but the entire thing becomes a masterpiece when you add the secret sauce that brings it all together as one conversational copy. For instance, let's take our blog example from earlier. Instead of a dry, impersonal introduction, imagine kicking off your blog post like this. Can you see the difference? This style is engaging, personal, and immediately pulls the reader into the conversation. It's the difference between a simple blog post and an outstanding one. Now remember when I said millions of blogs published every day? Well, make sure your stands out with search intent focused, well optimized content. This enhances search visibility, draws relevant audiences, nurtures customer relationships, and builds authority. This video hit the spot and you're ready to master the art of compelling content creation, my good friend. Take our free certification course. You'll gain insights from industry experts on crafting appealing, share worthy content that drives conversions and even learn how to work with influencers to increase your reach. Make sure to like, comment and hit subscribe to stay up to date on the latest inbound marketing tips and strategies. Now, if you'll excuse me, I'm going to go eat my way through my through my kitchen. You know what I'm saying? I'm feeling a little peckish. Feeling a little hungry. If you'd like to join for a snack, you'll know where to find me. Until then, I'll see you next time. I can find this client info have you heard of HubSpot? HubSpot is a CRM platform so it shares its data across every application. Every team can stay aligned. 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