5 Things You Need to Include in Every Blog Post

When you’re writing a blog post, you’re not just writing it so that your blog has substance. Each post you write is meant to directly serve your audience, solve a problem and bring traffic to your blog. When writing a blog post, you simply cannot just write a post and hope it does well. There are certain elements you need to include in each post to ensure it is working maximally to boost your traffic and rank high amongst search engines. Below I’m going to walk you through 5 things you need to include in every blog post so you can start structuring your blog posts to work harder for you!

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Related Post: 5 Reasons Why You’re Not Getting the Blog Traffic You Want

5 Things You Need to Include In Every Blog Post

Below are a list of 5 things you need to include in every blog post. Don’t fret, if you haven’t included these in past blog posts, there’s nothing to worry about! You can go back and edit your posts to include these things!

An Attention Grabbing Title

An attention grabbing title is something you need to include in every blog post! The title of your blog post is the first contact the reader has with your post. If the title is dull and drab, the chances of the reader clicking on your post lessen! In order to catch the reader’s attention, you need to have titles that are compelling and beg the reader to open them!

This can be done through the use of adding attention grabbing words! Using powerful words such as need, secret, mistakes, tricks, the best, simple, today, limited, stunning, proven, free, new, easy and many more! These words are powerful and create a sense of urgency and excitement when paired with other information people are looking for!

Your headline should entice the reader to want to read more. Setting up your headline to include powerful words, as well as structuring your headline properly can increase the number of clicks you receive. Check out the different types of headline structures with Hubspot!

At Least One Eye Catching Image

Every blog post should contain at least one eye catching high quality image! Why is this? While we preach not to judge a book by it’s cover, we do just that. How many times have you picked up a book off the shelf because something about the cover drew you in? Having a high quality image on your blog post can help tie in the content you’re trying to share with your reader!

When adding an image to your blog post, you are also giving your post a chance to be ranked high when it comes to performing a google image search! This will affect your post’s rank on search engines and can bring you more traffic! For more information on how to optimize your posts and images with SEO, click here!

Pro Tip: I use Styled Stock Society for the stock photos on my blog! This ties my blog together and makes it look more professional! You can check out stock photo options here!

Related Internal & External Links

Every blog post you publish should contain both internal links (those that link to another page on your site) and external links (those that link to other websites). Each post should contain RELATED links (for example, a link to your latest post, or a post that is similar to the content you’re publishing that your reader may find useful!). External links are useful as well, as they can aide in ranking your site higher when it comes to SEO. (Yoast SEO recommends always internal linking, check out the source here!)

You can introduce links directly into text like I did above (by highlighting a key word and embedding the link!) or, you can add a ‘related post’ paragraph and introduce a post there. Either or ensures you have a link embedded within your post, and prevents orphan content (when you have a post or a page with no internal or external links).

Tip from Cyn: I personally make all of my links open in a separate page! That way, the reader can always return to the original content and they won’t forget what post of yours they were reading! You can do this by activating the option during embedding a link! (photo to follow)

Subheadings

Having relevant, clear subtitles in your blog posts is helpful in a number of ways to your readers. Not only does it break up the text and make it easier to read, it also makes relevant information easier to find for your readers! Not every person who stumbles across your post is going to read every single word, they may simply be skimming to extract the most important points!

Subtitles allow your text to be organized and easily categorized. Ideally all posts should be broken up into subtitles and or bullet points. Long blocks of text can turn the reader away, as they are difficult to read and make it harder to pick out important information from.

Tip From Cyn: I make as many subtitles as I have points. I then sometimes use smaller subtitles under my original subtitles to further break up text. This makes it easy to read, and my important points are clearly established!

Related Post: 5 Things You Need to Do With Every Instagram Post

Call to Action

Every post should have a call to action. Similarly to posting on Instagram, you should be asking your audience a question at the end of your blog posts. This will prompt discussion in the comments section! If you want them to check out another post or a link, let them know! Be specific – directly ask your audience what you would like them to do.

Recap

Every time you write a blog post you should be thinking about what elements will optimize your post for SEO and blog traffic. Including these 5 must haves in every blog post can aide in boosting your SEO rank and increasing your traffic. Which one is the number one item you want to work on? Tell me below in the comments!