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Your blog content either makes you or breaks you. It can be overwhelming at first writing a blog post. These 8 best steps to Write Your First Blog Post will make you master writing in no time in no time.
I know the feeling. I’ve written one sentence and waiting for the rest to come, and I was still blank.
You can get a free PDF blog post checklist so that every time you apply them to each post.
Writing post over and over, I eventually got the knack for it. So, let’s get into the eight steps to write your first blog post.
Table of Contents
# 1. Do some research on your keywords
The very first thing you need to do in figuring out how to write a blog post is to research the keywords that you’d like to target.
Doing keyword research is essential as it highlights the focus of your blog post.
Proper research gets your post in front of people.
The biggest free traffic sources you should target are Google and Pinterest.
You don’t want to make the mistake of spending hours on an article, and no one gets to see it.
What I do with every post, before I start the keyword research, is to open up a new word document and type all the keywords I want to use.
Find Keywords in Google
One of the easiest ways to that is to use Google auto-complete option to find a blog topic that you can write good content.
Go ahead and type in a word or phrase relating to your niche into Google, and it will give some suggestions. Every keyword or phrase that shows up below up is the actual terms that interest people. Make use of it.
Because you’re a new website, and you don’t have much authority, you want to target keywords that have relatively decent traffic but difficult low scores on Google to improve your chance of ranking.
With Ubbersuggest, which is free, you can do this search, and it will show how easy it is to rank for a term as well as suggest other keywords as well.
Ideally, to be ranked, the keyword difficulty score should be 35 or less.
Let’s say you want to write about “How to start a money-making blog” keyword, let me show you step-by-step how you can determine if it’s an excellent term to use.
Also, choose the country you want to target.
That keyword has a search volume of 1000, which is a decent amount of traffic that you can target. Also, it has an SEO keyword difficulty score of 23, so it’s a good keyword to use.
You can play around with it, using all of the keywords you have and choose the best option to get ranked.
Just ensure that the keyword that you use has a difficulty of 35 or less, the lesser the number, the more chance you have to rank.
SEO keyword difficulty tells you how easily keywords can be ranked.
Find Keywords in Pinterest
Just go to Pinterest and type your keyword in the search bar.
There will be some words that start to appear in the drop-down menu. These are actual keywords people are searching for, so make a note of those keywords.
As indicated by the arrow below, these give you keyword ideas that will provide you with blog post ideas. That is a gold mine, and many people overlook it so that you can capitalize on that.
#2. Structure the layout of your post
This is where it gets interesting. This is where you are actually starting writing the blog post.
When writing your blog posts, it is always best to have an outline or structure of how your blog post will look.
It makes the process of writing a blog post flow more easily as you will see what you plan to write about.
Break the post into Title, subheadings, and conclusion. You want to make your post easy to be read by visitors to your website. Your goal is to make the readability of post spot on.
#3. Write the post
Login to your blog – use (http://www.writeyourURLhere.com/wp-login.php).
After you’ve logged in, click on post located at the top left on the dashboard.
Click on “Add New”
From there, you should see an editor similar to an editor, you’re going to write your first blog post here.
In this section, you can add Title, add featured image, and select a category.
You’ll be able to create a post with Gutenberg blocks with a free theme.
Write an eye-catching title. Here is a list of blog post titles that converts into click. Use it as a guide to come up with your blog post titles.
Introduction
Write an introduction paragraph that is to be concise and appealing.
You will want to make sure your topic is clear from the beginning.
Body
From your keywords, break each into different subheadings and incorporate your keywords throughout content at least seven times.
Make it readable by breaking the contents into paragraphs. The bulk of the text is going to it look exhausting to read.
#4. Adding Categories to a blog post:
You’ll certainly want to apply categories to your blog the minute you start writing.
Go to the post, under post, there’s an option for categories. When you hover over categories, you’ll see the option to add a new category
Let’s say your blog post is about “Ways to save money,” you could use ‘Saving Tips,’ Tips on Saving’ as the category, or if it is tips on “How to start an online business,” you could have an Entrepreneurship category, etc.
Categories provide useful and organized information about your content to your readers.
#5. Add Images To Your Blog Posts
It is essential to include photos in your blog post.
Every photo that you’re adding ensure:
- You save it as a JPG File.
- Name the photo name as your keyword.
One of the things you should ensure as well is to have a featured photo saved as the keyword. Also, have at least pictures in your post saved with keywords in each post.
Along with the keywords in your post, your photo with keywords will tell Google what your post is about and will outrank other sites with no image or just one image.
You can get free stock photos from Pexels, Pixabay, Canva. There are two different types of images your post should contain:
General-photos
Try to make your featured image depict your blog post title.
Try telling a story with even just your featured image. The photos that you add throughout the post are to decorate your post.
Pinterest graphic.
You need to have photos to promote pins to drive traffic to your post!
It is noteworthy to say that you should make it appealing
Follow the quick tips to use while creating graphics for Pinterest
- design at least 2-3 pictures for every blog that you post post
- Ideally, is 600×900 (or any 2:3 ratio)
- Put your logo or your blog name on every graphic
- Capture attention by using letters that are big and Bold
- You can mix font but no more than 3.
- For design use bright colors
- Use catchy titles that people will click on
- Make design simple, be creative but simple.
#6. Do Grammatical and Spelling Check
Never skip this step.
If you have a lot of spelling errors and sentences that are grammatically incorrect, it is going to come off as very unprofessional. Is that something you want your readers to experience?
I don’t think so.
You can make a few mistakes here and there because the fact of the matter is we all make mistakes. Therefore, make every effort to check posts before publishing.
You can use Grammarly. This tool made life so much easier for me.
Grammarly is a tool that highlights your mistakes in spelling as well as grammar, you find and correct your errors, from spelling to grammar to even the way the post is structured.
Do you know what the best part is? It’s free.
Grammarly’s Chrome extension is so helpful because as you are typing if you make an error, Grammarly will help you to write posing in a clear tone, proper punctuation, sentence flow. Grammarly saves you so much time.
Yes, Grammarly is free but it also comes with a paid, premium, version!
Here is a screenshot of the differences between the two plans:
Why you should invest in the premium version?
Maybe your only concern regarding writing a blog post are spelling and grammar, basic would work for you.
If you see additional features in the premium that will add that you would
You can always start with the free plan and then upgrade to premium!
Both the free and premium versions offer this. It checks the spelling errors, incorrect punctuation marks and basic grammar.
>>Click here to sign up and get Grammarly<<
Grammarly is super easy to install and use!
Just go to their website, find and click the button “Add to Chrome” —-then sign up > then go to >apps > click “Grammarly for Chrome” to install their chrome extension.
As you’re typing, you can correct any mistakes you make.
#7. Add internal and external links
The next point in the steps to writing your first blog post is adding links.
You should try to link to at least post on your blog that is related to the topic.
Additionally, you should add external links to any website that you’ve mentioned in your post.
To increase your chance of ranking on google, it favors website that links to other pages on your blog as well as other websites.
You first need to highlight the text that you are going to link to, for example. “Check out these blogging free resources to help you, use your mouse to highlight the word “blogging free resources and then click on the “chainlink icon.
This pop up will allow you to enter the URL you’d like to link the page to.
#8. Go Over Everything in Post
You’re almost done with writing your blog post, all that’s left is to read over everything and make sure it is ready to be published.
Here are some things you should check before you hit that publish button:
- add alt tags to ALL your photos
- if you’re on WordPress check your Yoast SEO analysis at the bottom of the post and fix any problems
- read the article one final time to make sure it’s all good and you didn’t forget anything
- preview the post to see if everything looks good and is on its place
#9 End With A Call To Action
Whop! Whoop!! Okay, so you’ve written an amazing blog post successfully. Yes, you’ve conveyed your message to your reader-that’s awesome but what do you actually want the reader to do?
This is where the call to action comes into play. This is where you leave a charge to your readers. At this point your call of action could be as simply posing a question to your readers so that they can leave comments on the blog post. Also, it could be asking them to be a member on your email list or asking them to follow you on social media.
Essentially, what yod ask yourself is this “Once someone has read this post whats the next thing I want them to do.
What you should try to do as well is make each call to action unique to each post.
On a final note
You’re almost there, just run through these checklists before hitting the publish button. Do the research, structure your post, write the post, add relevant photos, and saving them with keywords name. Select the right tags and categories.
Ensure:
All your photos have alt tags.
- If you’re on WordPress, check your Rank Math and fix all the errors. Give it another read to make sure everything is alright.
- Click the preview button to see if everything is in place as it should be.
- Publish
And the final step-hit PUBLISH!
That’s it, my friend, you’ve just learned how to write your first blog post and many more after.
Perfect writer or not, this is exactly how you do it.
By following these seven steps, you can know how to write your first blog post beyond.
Focus on quality, not quantity.
Please remember to get the Blog Post Checklist PDF so you can keep a checklist handy each time you are creating a new blog post.
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