Let’s just get right to it, you’re a brand new blogger with a brand new blog and you’re ready to write your first blog post and you’ve been searching for a how to write a blog post for beginner’s step by step guide with instructions from beginning to end, well here it is.
I’m going to go over step by step starting with getting it on WordPress and everything else in between that’s needed.
Table of Contents
How to Write a Blog Post Step by Step
Target Audience
Knowing your target audience will help you to write a better-optimized SEO-friendly blog post.
What is SEO? it’s search engine optimization and is a topic you need to know about.
SEO is all about optimizing your site, which means making your site better.
Knowing your target audience will help you to know what to write, it’s like someone saying to you, “we’re having a conference about ______ and we’d like you to speak on your niche, which is _____”, no one said, “we’re having a conference about every subject under the moon and you can just talk about whatever” because that’s when people not interested in what you have to say get up and walk out and those are the people who are not your target audience.
- Who are you talking to?
When you know who you’re talking to then you’ll know what you need to write about.
Topic
You need a topic because you have to start somewhere and if you know your target audience then you’ll know what you need to write about.
How do you Research a Topic for a Blog Post?
- Have an idea about what it is you want to write about
- Start in Google Trends
- Then hit the internet
I’ll be using this post, “how to write a blog post for beginners” as an example.
I know that my target audience of beginner bloggers may look for a guide to writing their first blog post.
There’s my topic, “writing a post”, but before I get all excited and just start writing whatever it is that comes to mind, I need to do research on the topic.
Head to Google Trends, this is already about to be a super long post, so you’ll have to research on your own how to use it. But Google Trends is all about finding out how popular your new blog post topic is.
I entered the search terms “how to write a post and how to write a blog post” and the graph shows they’re about the same.
And that’s all I use it for, there are other ways to use it and you’ll find that out when you start researching it.
Title
These two terms are very broad for my narrowed-down niche, but I know that they’re being searched for.
And this is how I come up with my titles.
- I know it’s for beginners because that’s my target audience
- it could be a how-to
- could be a guide
- since it’s step by step, it could be a numbered list
- it’s not an easy to do post, so I can’t go with that
- it’s not quick so can’t use that one either
- I could call it definitive because it is with authority
- I can’t go with tips because it’s way more than that
- I plan on writing how to do it from beginning to end
Once you’ve thought of a topic, think about all the ways it could be written.
Think about how you would search for it if you were looking for this information on this topic. Think like your audience.
Start writing titles down, don’t even think about it, just write.
Now that you have a few titles, look up some power words and see if it makes sense to add some to your title.
Go through all your titles that you came up with, and even mix and match the titles up to try to come up with new ones.
I always start with the very first title that comes to mind and I’m going with “how to write a blog post for beginners”
I’m not going to spend hours trying to research my title.
I know my best resources and I stick with them, so before I got a paid tool I used itiswp, a headline analyzer, and depending on which SEO plugin you use there may be a headline analyzer included in it. Use your headline analyzer to get a score on your title and suggestions on ways to improve it.
Keyword Research
If you’re a beginner blogger, you should definitely know what keyword research is, it’s one of the major things that is going to help your post rank.
If you haven’t started learning how to do keyword research to optimize your post for keywords, you need to stop and go do that research now.
Keywords and phrases are the terms people use to search when they need to find something on the internet and those words and phrases need to be in your post so that search engines can understand what your post is about.
Blog Post Outline
It’s easier to get all your thoughts together and organized when you have them in front of you, and this is where a blog post outline comes in.
What is a blog post outline?
It’s an outline just like the ones back from your school days, nothing fancy or different about it, and I’ve written a post about it called “how to write a blog post outline”, in case you need a refresher.
Create your blog post outline however you want, just because someone does it a certain way doesn’t mean it’s your way.
Figure out how it works for you.
Researching a Blog Post
In order to create a blog post outline, you’ll need to do research on your topic and take notes.
You’ll also need to come up with sub-topics that are relevant to your post.
The best places to find blog post ideas are: forums, Facebook groups, ask the public, people also ask, and related searches, the last two are located on the pages of search engines.
Now you should have your topic, title, keywords, subtopics, outline, and have researched for your content.
Starting the Post
With all your research ready to go, it’s time to create your post and that means getting your blog post content on WordPress.
In the WordPress Dashboard, go to:
- Posts
- Add New
- And enter the title
- Click Save Draft
The title of your post is your H1, it stands for Heading 1. You can only have one H1.
So the rest of your sub-topics will be H2, H3, H4, H5, H6.
Write your content using your keywords and phrases naturally. Use your title in your first 100 words.
You need to grab the reader’s attention fast, your first paragraph is your first impression, make it count.
What is the post about and what will the reader get out of it?
Now start writing your new blog post!
Images
I hear a lot of talk about making short sentences and adding images in posts to break up text because people have short attention spans.
So add some images where it makes sense to add images and where it helps your content.
Your images should be uploaded to the media library first and then added to your posts from the Media Library.
Alt Text
Add your Alt Text to the media library when you upload your images.
External and Internal Linking
Internal linking is keeping your reader on your site.
External linking is taking a reader away from your site.
Best practice is to link to some of your relevant posts and link to external sites that have authority, meaning they’re trustworthy.
Affiliate Links
Now is the time to add affiliate links if you can, you do not have to wait on this, if you’re ready, do it.
Don’t forget to set the no follows.
Affiliate Disclosure
Now that you’ve added affiliate links to your post, you need to add the affiliate disclosure before the first affiliate link.
You can also add it at the top of your post, make it stand out, it needs to be seen.
(This post may contain affiliate links, which means I may receive a commission, at no extra cost to you, if you make a purchase through a link. Please see my full disclosure. (Link to your disclosure.)
Related Posts
Add your related posts section, this is very easy to do with a plugin and it will do all the work for you.
Search engines crawl this section along with your post and will follow these links.
How to Write a Blog Post Conclusion
Include a Final Thoughts section and sum up what went on in the post.
Use the keyword phrase in your conclusion.
Example: conclusion for how to write a blog post or final thoughts on writing your first blog post as a beginner.
The point is to get your keywords in the title.
CTA
Give a Call to Action, and tell your readers what to do next.
Editing your Blog Post
If you have an SEO plugin installed, it’s going to give you red and green faces. You are not going to hit green every time and don’t stress out about it either.
This is just a guide, suggestions to improve your SEO, sometimes you can’t do what it tells you to do and that’s ok, move on.
If you’ve optimized your post well and made it quality content for your readers, search engines are smart and will figure it out.
You can look to see what it tells you to improve on and if you can do some things then do it, if not, then don’t.
Install the Grammarly Chrome Extension and read your post, and check for punctuation and spelling.
Take some time and walk away then come back with fresh eyes and thoughts and read it again.
When it’s done, hit Publish.
Conclusion on Writing Your First Blog Post
- Know your target audience
- Decide on a topic
- Get your blog post outline ready to write
- Do your keyword research
- Find some sub-topics
- Research the sub-topics
- Organize your blog post outline
- Start in WordPress
- Add some images
- Check your Alt Text
- Internal and external linking
- Add Affiliate links where it makes sense
- Affiliate Disclosure
- Add a related posts plugin
- Add a conclusion
- Tell your readers what to do next
- Reread and edit your post
- Take a break and reread it again
- When you’re ready hit publish
If this post helped you or you have any questions, let me know in the comments.