Blogging is a skill. Good blogs keep the audience engaged, and do this by structuring the blogs content in an appealing way. Readers are then more likely to read the blog through to the end, and share it with their friends via social media. When people interact with your blog in this way, your blog’s Google rankings improve, which is the ultimate goal of blogging.

In addition to writing to appeal to readers, it is also important to write blogs with search engine optimization in mind. While you would not want to solely cater to SEO, because your blog would be a myriad of keywords and have very little readability, it is important to your overall search rankings.  Writing to appeal to both may seem like a challenge, but when you use the tips below, you can learn to write great reading material and a blog that ranks well too.

Here are some tips to help you do this well:

1. Plan before you write!

As with any kind of writing, think about what you are going to write before you start writing. Ask yourself questions like: “What is the message I am trying to get across?”, or “What questions should be answered by this post?”. When you answer these questions before you write, the post will have a clear, focused message.

2. Think about the structure of the blog.

Similar to writing a 5 paragraph essay, you want an introduction (introduction of the topic), body (main message and more information about the topic) and conclusion (summarizing the ideas that you presented) in your blog post. Think about what should be covered in these sections, and create an outline that will help guide you through your writing.

3. Write in paragraphs.

In this technology age, where we use acronyms, emoticons and hash-tags to express ourselves, we have moved away from traditional writing guidelines. When writing a blog, however, you’ve got to write in paragraph form. Remember, there should always be a reason for moving onto a new paragraph. Every paragraph should contain a main idea sentence that is followed up by subsequent sentences that explain the main idea.

4. Use headings and sub headings.

Many people scan articles. Thus, using headings and sub headings will help them be able to find the information that they are looking for quickly and easily.

5. Let others proofread your post.

This trick is as old as time, but still essential in good, effective writing. Before publishing your blog, let someone else read it and give you feedback. This is an opportunity to correct any typos, misspelling or sentence structures that aren’t correct.

In conclusion, write to captivate and educate your audience, while also keeping in mind that you want your content to be rich in topic related words and information. The value for good content far exceeds poor writing quality, and has more potential for links to social media. So keep the content quality high, folks, and happy blogging.