Writing a blog post

So, here's another very quick guide that I wrote for the TPA to accompany my SEO one. Again, I'm not actually an expert by any stretch of the imagination so if you actually want to learn about these things I suggest you use Google. However, here's some basic things that you should keep in mind when writing a blog.

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Hey guys, a lot of you seem unsure about how to write a blog? Or your blogs seem more like essays than blogs so here are some general things to keep in mind

Audience and purpose: Always keep your audience in mind. How much do they know about the subject? If you're unsure, assume an intelligent reader with no prior knowledge of the subject at hand. That means explaining any acronyms, using shorter, clearer sentences and telling a story rather than presenting an argument.

Tone: Conversational and simple. As if you were explaining a concept to a friend of a friend.

Content: Again, keep it simple but interesting. Don't get bogged down by the nuances of the story. Link to a source on another site if you need to. As a guideline length should be around 500 -750 words.

Images: Only use them if they contribute something to the experience of the reader rather than from decoration. In this case centre them on a new line rather than wrapping the text around the image. Make sure you give a detailed descriptions in the image tag.

Example: I quite like Mana's blogs Manchester's £3.5 million black blob of glass and Taxpayers to pay hundreds... so Councillors can learn how to run the Council.

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Jordan's really short guide to blog optimisation

This is literally an email I sent around a while ago which I have since forwarded to so many people that I'm preserving it for reference. What follows is a copy and paste dump that has only been edited very slightly.

This also only pertains to writing. If you're writing your own blog then you'll need to think about many other things. Here's a good short guide from Moz on those other things.

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This is probably the most optimised blog I've seen on our webpage!

Here's a quick guide to why it's nearly perfect. Don't worry about this for short blogs, but if you're writing something substantial you might want to keep these in mind.

Reasons why it's perfect / Jordan's quick guide to blog optimisation:

Long form: Over 1000 words means its less likely to be ranked as spam

Keywords: E.g Tax, Spending Plan are repeated

Related words: (If you're writing well, you shouldn't have to think about this) You can't just write keywords like tax, tax, tax in every sentence. Google and Bing now use 'context words'. It differentiates between people complaining about high taxes and accountancy websites by checking for context. If this blog also contained words such as 'efficiency' 'accounts' 'money' 'future' it would rank poorly for a someone googling 'conservative government tax policy' for example.

Headings: Like in essays, used to break up text (good for readers) and the words in headers are given more 'weight' by search engines. Here we have headings with keywords in them double points.

Links: Make sure your 'anchor text' (ie the text attached to the link) is attached to keywords or descriptive words. "Click this link" "You can find the full article here" and "For example" are all examples of bad anchor text.

Bold: Bold your key words and phrases. Someone should be able to read only the bolded parts of the article and understand the key points of an article.

Pictures: People like pictures. Google likes pictures with long titles. Graphs count as pictures by the way.

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