12 Essential Things To Include In Every Blog Post

Tired of writing blog posts that don’t rank on google, get any views, or engagement? While it’s important to create a lot of blog posts on your website, you need to make sure that the blog posts you’re publishing are quality. They should either solve a problem, answer a question, educate your audience, entertain your audience, or all of the above. If you’re ready to start creating quality blog posts and give your older blog posts a makeover, below I’m sharing 12 things to include in every blog post.

📌 SAVE THESE 12 ESSENTIAL THINGS TO INCLUDE IN EVERY BLOG POST FOR LATER!

Disclaimer: This post may contain affiliate links. If you purchase by clicking on the link, I may be compensated – at NO additional cost to you. Read the full disclosure here. My blogging dreams would not be possible without you, so thank you for your continuous support. It means the absolute world to me! XO

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The Importance Of Writing Quality Blog Posts

When I just started blogging, I would write about literally anything without following a specific structure. I didn’t have SEO in mind. I didn’t have my audience in mind. And quite frankly, I had no idea what I was doing, haha. As a result, I was barely getting any traffic and I wasn’t ranking on google.

I was just blogging to blog and that didn’t get me anywhere. I had a lot of blog posts published on my website, but they were all a MESS. After doing a lot of researching and learning from other bloggers, I started fixing my older blog posts and writing my new blog posts with intention and structure (keeping my audience and SEO in mind, always!) This completely changed the game for me.

Not only did this save me time from writing posts that won’t bring in traffic, but my posts started ranking high on google, my views started increasing, my email list started growing, and my blog started growing altogether.

What makes a good blog post?

A good blog post is a post that contributes to the growth of your blog. This post is either ranking high on search engines, bringing you a lot of traffic, increasing your authority on a topic, gaining you a lot of subscribers to your email list, or bringing in leads to increase your revenue. But, what should a good blog post include?

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12 Essential Things To Include In Every Blog Post

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There are many factors that make a blog post good, but I’m going to share what has worked well for me. Below I’m sharing 12 essential things that I like to include in my blog posts and you should include in yours as well.

1. A GOOD KEYWORD

If you want your blog posts to rank on google (which I’m sure you do), you need to include a keyword in every blog post. A keyword is a phrase or a word that a user types into a search engine to find what they are looking for. Let’s say someone is looking for healthy breakfast recipes to make every morning, the keyword would be “healthy breakfast recipes“

So, every single post you create and publish needs to include a keyword throughout your post. We’ll get more into this later on in this post.

But what keywords should you include in your posts?

Keywords that:

• rank high on search engines
• aren’t too long
• do not have too much competition
• are related to your niche
• are long-tailed keywords

2. CATCHY HEADING

A good blog post includes a catchy heading that will compel people to click on your post and help google rank your post on search engines. Your heading should also always always always include your keyword.

For example, if you are writing about healthy breakfast recipes, a compelling SEO optimized heading for this blog post would be:

10 easy on the go healthy breakfast recipes

This heading isn’t too long or too generic. Plus it includes the keyword you want to rank for and related keywords like “easy” and “on the go”.

PRO TIP: Do not include any kind of dates like “2022” in your headings. Try to keep your headings as evergreen as possible.

Instead of using this as your heading –

10 tasty healthy breakfast ideas to try in 2022

Use this as your heading –

10 tasty healthy breakfast ideas to try now

The first heading sounds great but once 2022 is over, the post is no longer relevant. However, the second heading would help the post stay relevant years later. And you can promote this post during any time of the year.

3. LEGAL DISCLAIMER

As always, you want your blog to stay away from any kind of legal conflict. So including a disclaimer in every single blog post will help you protect your business from being held responsible for what you publish on your website. Your disclaimer doesn’t have to be long or different in every post.

You can create a disclaimer and save it as a reusable block on WordPress so that you can add it to every single blog post. This is my disclaimer:

Disclaimer: This post may contain affiliate links. If you purchase by clicking on the link, I may be compensated – at NO additional cost to you. Read the full disclosure here. My blogging dreams would not be possible without you, so thank you for your continous support. It means the absolute world to me! XO

My disclaimer is pretty short, but it includes a link to my disclosure page.

If you haven’t yet, make sure you create a disclaimer for your website that includes your disclosure page. You can create a disclosure page, here! (Aff)

4. COMPELLING INTRODUCTION

Every quality blog post starts with a good, compelling, and seo optimized introduction. Whenever you’re creating a blog post, don’t just start throwing out your ideas without having a clear introduction first.

Your first paragraph should be THE paragraph that:

• briefly introduces your topic
• includes your keyword
• includes a call-to-action
• grabs your audience’s attention
• includes either a question, an interesting fact or statement
• includes relevant related keywords or key phrases

Personally, I like starting my posts with a question that can typically be searched for on search engines and will be answered later on in the post.

I also like ending every introduction with a phrase where I can include my keyword. It can be something along the lines of:

Below I’m sharing 10 easy on the go healthy breakfast ideas.

5. RELEVANT SUB HEADINGS

There is nothing more annoying that a blog post that includes ONE LONG paragraph with no sub headings. These kind of posts are very difficult to read and make you look like a rookie blogger (I used to do this myself!)

Adding subheadings to your posts help you:

• Include more keywords in your post
• Organize your ideas effectively
• Make your post SEO friendly
• Create articles that are easy to read
• Ask and answer specific questions related to your topic

6. ENGAGING SEO OPTIMIZED BODY

What’s a blog post without an incredible body? Your blog post’s body is the reason why your audience came to your website and clicked on your post.

In your body, you’re finally addressing your topic, keeping your audience hooked, providing a solution, and/or selling a product or service.

But what does a good body include?

• Your keyword throughout your paragraphs. But please be careful with keyword stuffing! Only include your keyword where it’s necessary.
• At least 1,000 words. I’ve noticed that my longer posts rank better on google, so I try to make to write at least 1,000 words in each post. Sometimes I’ll write more, but never less.
• Relevant keywords and phrases throughout the post.

PRO TIP: To find related keywords to use in your post, search up your keyword on google and scroll to the bottom of the page.

Example: If you search “healthy breakfast recipes” on google, this would be the related searches (keywords) you can include throughout the post if relevant.

7. BEAUTIFUL FEATURED IMAGE

To compliment your text perfectly, you need to include a beautiful featured image in every single blog post. I like to use stock photos from Styled Stock Society because I simply don’t have the time to take my own photos and I absolutely love their gallery of photos! So, I download the stock photos from SSS weekly, upload them to Canva and add some transparency to the photos to give my featured images a cohesive look when I add them to blog posts.

To SEO optimize featured images, make sure to:

• Use the heading of your blog post to name your featured image.
• Always include your keyword in the image’s ALT text.
• Compress your image. Heavy images will slow down your site!
• Choose images that relate to your topic.

8. STUNNING BRANDED PIN

Personally I don’t include many graphics in my blog posts (you can if it works for you), but what I do include in every single blog post is a branded pin. I’ve created a Pinterest template for myself so that I can easily change up the title every time I need to create a pin for a blog post.

What to include in your branded pin?

• The post’s title.
• URL to your website.
• Your brand’s colors.

I don’t like using images in my branded pin because I prefer a minimalist and more branded look, but if you want to include images go for it.

Here are three previous Pinterest templates I’ve created for myself:

Make sure to also include your keyword in your Pin’s title, and Pin’s alt-text.

If you don’t know how to create a pin, no worries. Click here to learn how to easily and quickly create a Pinterest pin that actually converts!

PRO TIP: Above your pin, include the following phrase “Save (insert your heading here) for later”. By doing this you’re not only prompting your audience to save your Pin directly to Pinterest, but you’re also including your keyword naturally.

I like to include my branded pin after my disclaimer, but for the sake of this example, I’m including this pin here.

9. RELEVANT INTERLINKS

Another must-have in every blog post is interlinks.

Including links to older blog posts in your posts is a great way to:

• Bring new eyes to older posts.
• Increase your page views.
• Rank higher for keywords.
• Rank higher on search engines.

You can go about this in a couple of ways, but I’m going to share three ways I like including interlinks in my blog posts.

A) Naturally

With this method, you would simply include links to relevant posts by adding the link to keywords or phrases in your sentences.

EXAMPLE:

Grow your blog effectively this year by following effective blogging tips from pros.

B) Related Posts

If you want to highlight a related post, you would simply write your paragraph/point and below that you would included the related post.

EXAMPLE:

Related Post: 87 Blogging Tips For Beginners Who Want To Succeed

C) More Posts You May Like

What I like to include in every single blog post is a “More Posts You May Like” section. In this section, I include links to related posts.

This is a very easy way to interlink and to also highlight other posts your audience may like.

EXAMPLE:

More Posts You May Like

• 87 Blogging Tips For Beginners Who Want To Succeed
• 30 Blogging Mistakes To Avoid + What To Do Instead
• 15 Best Blogging Resources All Bloggers Need To Have

10. EMAIL SIGN UP FORM

Your goal should always be to retain your users and have them join your email list. However, if you don’t make it easy for your users to subscribe to your list, it’ll be very tricky to gain subscribers!

My favorite way of gaining subscribers is by creating fun and relevant printables and offering these printables to those who join my list.

So, I’ll introduce the printable and give a sneak peek in the post.

But I’ll include the sign up form right below and prompt my users to first enter their name and email address (sign up to my email list) to get access to download the printable. This is a very easy way to increase your subs.

At the end of this post I’m going to include a printable and show you an example of how I get users to sign up to my email list!

11. EPIC META DESCRIPTION

Because the meta description is what google displays in search results, creating a good seo-optimized meta description is very important.

A good meta description includes:

• Your keyword
• A call-to-action
• Up to 155 characters
• Compelling words that will make users want to click on your post

12. CLEAN PERMALINK

Lastly, to further optimize your post for SEO, make sure your URL slug:

• Easy to read
• Does not include dates
• Includes your keyword

EXAMPLE: 12-essential-things-to-include-in-every-blog-post

If you are unfamiliar with permalinks, below I’m sharing a screenshot of how WordPress defines permalinks.

DOWNLOAD “12 ESSENTIAL THINGS TO INCLUDE IN EVERY BLOG POST” CHECKLIST!

I created a free checklist so that you can refer back this checklist every time you are creating a blog post. Do you want this printable? Enter your email + name below to receive the password to my resource library! You’ll find this printable among many other printables (that you can download!)

I hope you found this post helpful and will use these indications to create blog posts that rank on search engines and bring you traffic.

Much love always,

Gabby Abigail 

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