Anyone can write a blog for their website

A step-by-step guide!

Writing content to keep your website fresh and updated can be a daunting task for many online retailers and businesses. We believe that you can write your own blogs. Without AI assistance. Without copying from competitors or other websites and without hassle or stress. Follow our step-by-step instructions to blog writing and blog up your website.

Facing the blank page. The blank page can be daunting and scary for many people. The best way to tackle that is to fill it up by following our suggestions and it will be populated with witty and wonderful words in no time.

There are just a few things to think about first. It is good to be reminded that you are the best placed person to talk about your own company. You have all the knowledge, and you know what you want to tell potential and current clients. If you are Irish, you may need to go against your cultural norms and ‘big’ yourself up! Humble is good when eating pie, but its not a selling point! Get ready to feature your best features.

Some quick questions to ponder before you type?

Who am I writing for?

You have two audiences. One is Google and the other is your clients, customers, and potential customers. Google is the main target. Google will pick up your blog, particularly when you are hitting all the right ‘keywords’, and assist in getting your website ranked, and getting more traffic. If you are writing with your audience of potential buyers in mind, you will also hit the Google audience too, and conversely, when writing for Google, you will attract your market too.

Why am I writing?

Content is king on websites. Keeping your website updated and with fresh and new information will help to drive it up the Google rankings and drive more traffic to where you want it to go. So, you are writing because you want to attract business, and ensure that your company is considered among the market experts. Sometimes you are writing to increase the knowledge base on your site, and always you are writing because it is a relatively low-cost method to add high-cost value to your site.

Choose the subject.

The subject can be a product, a lifestyle around your product or industry news. It can be anything that you want to sell. It can be a seasonal topic or an evergreen subject. But do remember that a blog takes time to rank and be read, so think a few months in advance. Print your Christmas blog as soon as Halloween is over. Publish your summer blogs in April or before. Of course, blogs don’t necessarily have to be about your product directly, but can be lifestyle based, information sharing and most importantly, expert knowledge sharing from your company and you. This will hit all the right keywords.

Choose the Title.

Choose a working title and don’t worry too much about it. It may change as you put the words on the paper. Once the blog has been written, a totally different title might reveal itself. Pick something that is easy for Google to track and easy to rank and use keywords if possible (more about the magic of keywords later, but basically it you are writing about tortoises, than you should put the word tortoise in the title. Feeding your tortoise for €5 a week. Ten things you never knew about tortoises etc.) Don’t get hung up on the heading on your blog and there are always free blog title generators if your tired head goes completely blank.

Tone and language.

The tone and the language used to convey the vibe, the atmosphere and nature of your blog is ultimately determined by the writer. The industry and subject matter will generally influence the tone and language in a blog. Here, I am striving for friendly, approachable professional. (how am I doing?) This would not be appropriate on a legal site, a financial service or when giving medical advice. Obviously, a more professional tone would be needed. Writing in casual first person is very comfortable for some website owners and it usually reads well as a genuine and normal way of writing. It can be almost like chatting. Tone is whatever you feel is appropriate and comfortable. The language you use should never be negative, but rather warm and positive. So, for example, a courier firm writing ‘we strive to avoid the arrival of damaged and broken goods’ would be using negative language. The subliminal use of broken and damaged is not helpful. It is better to say, ‘At Joes Delivery we take all precautions to ensure the safe and timely arrival of your goods.’ Joe is still doing the same thing, but the reader does not see the words ‘damage’ and ‘broken’ but warm word like ‘safe’ and ‘timely’. Think positive and you will write positively.

Now… lets write.

First Steps:

Divide the page into bite size paragraphs. The first paragraph is your intro. The second and third are the content or the ‘meat’ of the story. You can add in as many paragraph headings as you think you might write and leave space between them. Plan what each section will be about and put a note in.

This could look like this, using the tortoise blog example.

Intro: Write about tortoises as pets and how much they are loved. Ask the question, is your tortoise eating well? Can you feed him better and for less.

2nd Para: The history of tortoises and what they like to eat.

3rd Para: What your company, (named by its full name for Google), advises that tortoises should eat.

4th Para: Fun facts about tortoise.

Your last paragraph will be a ‘round up’ paragraph and a ‘call to action’.

This template can be used for any topic you wish. You can populate it with the bits you know best first. Decide which of these headings you are comfortable populating first and tackle that. Start writing. As the page fills up, you will gain confidence. Use your own voice. Keep it Positive. Use that warm language. Remember that you can delete and add later.

A Call to actions

A call to action is just that. A suggestion to the reader to drop in and test drive (not the tortoise please!), to browse our stock, to make an appointment or try a free sample of tortoise food.

Keywords

Keywords are the little magic words that act as hooks or links to direct searches toy your website. Most blogs lend themselves to the correct keywords. Make a list of the keywords that are relevant to your topic. You probably won’t use the word ‘fish’ when writing about ‘welding’, but you would use arc welders, stig welders, masks, and soldering iron etc. Long tailed keywords are best. Broad keywords are an all-encompassing phrase used to describe any word that is searched for by people. Most people searching for an item, or a professional service use broad keywords. “Teeth cleaning” or “Lego sets”, and Google will happily offer a variety of search results, hopefully for their geographic area (but that is another story). Long tailed keywords expand on this with ‘’Professional teeth cleaning’ and ‘Unique Star War Lego Sets’. Sprinkle your writing with keywords.

Plagiarism, copying and sharing information

In order for your blog to rank, it needs to be at least 60% unique or original writing. What this means, is that, if you are tempted to copy swathes of text about your subject from elsewhere, you will be making a huge error. Google will know. Google always knows. It will ignore your writing and it will elevate the site that you have copied. By all means, search for information on your subject matter, but don’t directly copy. Verify and information elsewhere and then write it in your own words. 60% unique content is the percentage you must remember. You can of course, share information that you are confident is verified and correct, but include the link to that source and give them credit. You are linking your business to theirs in the mind of your reader, so make sure you really feel comfortable with that.

AI, Chat GPt and automatic content generator

AI generated blogs are ranking on Google as if written by a human, at the time of writing. They don’t often read that well, with truncated sentences and very little or no unique information. AI blogs certainly don’t impart product and expert knowledge that you, the owner of the business with your years of experience and passion possess. The writing itself is often clipped, with short sentences and a lack of knowledge of acceptable words (fat, chubby and old) and of cultural norms. However, this technology will improve over the next few years. As Digital Marketers, our concern for long term AI content generation, is that Google, who recognise and censure direct plagiarism will, in the future censure AI content too. This would mean that AI generated content won’t gain traction online. If this happens, all the work of AI generated copy will be a waste of time. If you do feel like letting the AI, write for you, take time to edit the results carefully and if possible, insert it your own voice and knowledge. See more here.

Hyper links

Embed links to sources, your products, your previous blogs within the blog so that readers can easily find those shoes on offer, or tortoise food.

Listables

On days when you don’t have much time, try writing a listable. It will hit all your keyword, give you new content and generally takes half the time and effort. Examples of listables are ‘7 ways to write engaging and clever blogs and ’10 things that will astound you about blog writing’ or ‘The 5 hottest mascaras for a glittering Xmas party’. You get the idea!

Length of your blog

Anything under 500 words will not meet Googles exacting standards and they prefer your blog to be over 750 words. But again, there are no hard and fast rules, if 300 words is all you can manage then pop it up and if you are over 2,000 words on a small thesis, pop it up. However, I would say that human readers will need to be kept amused and engaged too, so discretion and editing need to be employe on the longer blogs.

Finally!

Check your spelling and grammar with the aid of a computer programme and then ask a kind friend, colleague, or family member to read over your blog before you publish. A fresh eye may spot a glaring mistake or a term that could be taken the wrong way.

Happy blogging.

See thesaurus.com for when you just cannot find the right word.