How To Craft A Brilliant Blog Post

1. Creating a blog post that people will want to read and Google will want to index, is unfortunately not just a case of just writing your heart out and hoping for the best.
2. There are several things that you must take care of before you hit the publish button, to ensure that millions flock to read your post!
3. Do these 21 things beforeyou publish your blog post, and you will be on the right track to creating a well-structured, focused and engaging article that gets ranked on Google.
4. If you haven’t done so already see my post 24 Essential Settings After Installing WordPress which will give you a headstart before you begin.
5. Disclosure: This article contains affiliate links. When you click these links, I may get a small commission. It won’t cost you anything, but it helps me to run this site.Find out more.
6. 

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1. Do your keyword research, choose a keyword phrase

Keyword research deserves its own post, but here are some pointers to help you choose.

Before you start writing you should always have some keywords in mind and ensure that your content is based around those keywords.

To find keywords, search for a phrase that you think people might use for your chosen topic and then refine that phrase into a few words.

Here are some free tools to help you find keywords:

• Google Keyword Planner
• Google Trends
• Ubersuggest

Once you have your keywords find some long-tail keywords that you can also use within the content usingYoast Suggest.

Long-tail is a refinement of the main keyword, for example, ladies summer shoes is a long-tail of shoes. It is going to be much easier to rank for ladies summer shoes than on shoes alone.

Depending on the popularity of your main keyword, it might be better to write your whole post about a long-tail keyword instead because you are more likely to rank for it.

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Here is a post from Yoast.com that I found helpful: How to choose the perfect focus keyword.

2. Make an outline

Once you have decided on keywords, take those words and then search again. The type of posts that come up will give you an idea of whatkind of articles people are seeking and is known assearch intent.

Are you seeing lots of list posts, instructional how-to guides, recipes, products to purchase? This information will help you to decide on a structure for your post.

In the previous step, you decided on your keywords and if you also found some long-tail keywords to include, use them to create some or all of your headings.

If you are making a list post, write down all your points.

For each heading or list item add a short summary, and any research notes and links you have found. This helps to prompt you what to write when you come back to the post later.