Take advantage of your company blog today.
Whether you’re an eCommerce business selling beauty products or a B2B organisation looking to drive memberships, you should never neglect your blog/news section.
A blog that’s been designed to appeal to your target customers, provides valuable content and is SEO optimised can really add to your digital presence.
Why is creating a successful blog important?
Why should I write a company blog?
- Build a more positive brand image,
- Show you’re a knowledgeable and trusted source,
- Provide website visitors with valuable content,
- Rank better organically for your chosen keywords,
- Provide content for sharing on other channels.
9 Great tips for creating a successful blog layout and design
The first thing that your website visitors will notice is what your blog looks like and how easy it is to use.
Make sure you’re not putting visitors off your blog before they even get a chance to read it!
- Make use of white space in between elements. It can help draw your website visitor’s eyes to important elements.
- Ensure that it’s optimised for social sharing. Using easy to share social buttons to your blog is a great way of improving discoverability.
- Think about using ‘Blog Cards’ – this is where you show a featured image, title and blog excerpt on your blog listings. Featured images are great for enticing readers.
- Use eye-catching imagery to help support the points you’re making. It also helps to break up long pieces of content!
- Instead of using long paragraphs, consider using bullet points or lists to make the content more digestible.
- Use the appropriate heading tags to group the content. This also helps improve accessibility as it’s what screen readers use to navigate pages.
- Simplify blog navigation – your website visitors should be able to easily find the content that they’re looking for. For example, offering to view by date or blog category helps improve the ease of navigation for your users.
- Highlight the best content that drives the most traffic or provides the most worth. The common way to do this is by adding a ‘featured blog’ choice during the build.
- Make sure that your blog design is optimised for mobile viewing, as the majority of your visitors are likely to be using a mobile or tablet device.
7 Top Blog Writing Guide
To have a successful blog, it needs to do more than just look good.
We’ve put together an easy to follow blog writing guide which will help you make your blog a hit with your website visitors.
1. Plan, research, and use good resources.
Choose your topic wisely. Make sure that it’s something that you’re comfortable writing about.
It should also be something that you think your members/customers would find interesting or useful. Think frequently asked questions.
Always research the topic using trusted sources to make sure that what you’re offering valid information and advice.
2. Always read it out loud – sometimes redraft.
Reading the blogs out loud or asking another person to read it helps make sure that your blogs make sense.
Often your content may need redrafting to ensure that you’re using easily accessible language.
3. Break into digestible blocks
Using subheadings can help make your content scannable so that your readers can easily find the information they’re looking for.
Another great way to make your content skimmable is to use bullet points or numbered lists.
4. Make sure it’s easy to read
You need to write most of your content as if you’re writing for a novice in your field.
Using complex terminology can make your blog reader feel intimidated. Using a YEOST plugins will give you a quick indication of how difficult the language in your content is.
5. Think about Search Engine Optimisation (SEO)
Blogs are a great way of driving more organic traffic to your website.
Writing about a range of topics related to your field offers you a chance at using the keywords you want to rank for.
However, it’s best to avoid forcing as many keywords as you can think about into your text. Your blog should read naturally and provide value.
6. Link internally
Linking internally to areas of your website, or other blog articles can be a good search engine optimisation tactic. It helps indicate to Google which pages are valuable within your website.
It’s also a great way of showing your website visitors where they might find useful content. This will increase dwell time and customer engagement.
7. Use clear instructions
Always think about the purpose behind the blog – whether you’re trying to drive bookings or enticing users to sign up to an email newsletter.
You should always clearly tell people what you want to do. Take care in making sure that your call to actions (CTAs) are not too forceful. It isn’t another sales pitch.
Let Copper Bay Digital help you make use of your website blog.
We have an experienced team of digital marketers covering all areas of digital marketing. Including a team that is fully capable of creating a successful blog for your business.