How to Write a Blog Post That Ranks for (almost) Any Keyword on Google
By: Florian Frese
Tags: Business, Content Marketing, Marketing, Blog, SEO

How to Write a Blog Post That Ranks for (almost) Any Keyword on Google

A case study of going from 0 to 3,000 organic monthly hits

Credit: Adobe Stock

Writing blog posts is difficult and seeing first results takes time. I started about 16 months ago intending to reach a bigger audience in container logistics. Looking back from now: it takes time to see first results, it feels sometimes difficult to convince your boss that this is the way to go and it’s much more difficult than “just writing a blogpost”. The overall success of writing a blog post has to do with the right keywords, topic clusters, domain authority, backlinks and so much more.

Our increase in organic traffic in the last 16 months

That’s why I try to keep it simple — let’s look at how to write a good blog post first before you care about the rest. Here are 13 steps that have helped me grow our blog from 0 to almost 3000 organic users per month … with a conversion rate of >3%.

Step 1: Define the goal of your blogpost

Before you start to think about a topic or writing the blog post itself you have to answer questions: (1) What’s the goal of my blog post and (2) who do I want to reach with it? Talking about goals I like to find about the Awareness, Interest, Desire, Action — Model.

Most of our blog posts aim at creating awareness. We try to rank for important keywords that get us a few clicks or sometimes we just interviewed interesting people to make them share the article on social media. Why? To build up a funnel! Once they know who you are and remember your logo, people are much more likely to respond to a retargeting campaign or sign up for a newsletter. In this case, a simple blog post would be the first step of a marketing funnel.

Another goal is to create a desire or trigger an action! What if people already follow you for ages on social media or receive your newsletters since day 1? At one point you might want to convert them into inbound leads and show them your product. How? You write blog posts that convert! It could be a customer success story demonstrating how much value a competitor gets from your service or a blog topic such as “alternatives to Mailchimp” if you’re an email provider. In our case, as we offer access to SOC containers, a blogpost comparing the benefits of SOC and COC containers was the logical choice.

Step 2: Keyword research with Google Keyword Planner & Ubersuggest

Now that you have a goal — let’s say you want to create more awareness — it’s time to find the right keywords. Most people start by looking at their own product first, talk to colleagues or industry experts and read industry magazines to create a list of potential keywords. I usually differentiate between evergreen content (content that will still be relevant in 5 years), newsworthy content (hot right now — Coronavirus news, for example — but this news will be hardly relevant 5 years from now) and thought leadership content to prove that you understand the complex industry you’re in.

At one point you will come across keyword research tools such as Ubersuggest or the Google Keyword Planner. Such tools help you get a better picture of the entire keyword market including search volume, search difficulty and insights on what your competitors rank for. You can use it to build up your keyword list or to just fine-tune your idea for a new blog post. Just type in a keyword to get an idea of how difficult it might be to rank for it.

Both tools, in this case, I only explain Ubersuggest, tell you how much people search for “shipping container” or related keywords per month in the United States and indicate how easy it is to rank for a keyword (SD = search difficulty).

Ideally, you only target keywords with a SE < 40 otherwise it might be too difficult. On the right side, you can see who already ranks and how many backlinks they have to get a better feeling for if it makes sense to write a blog on this or not. It’s like in trading — the cheaper you buy a product, the bigger the margin ... spend a lot of time researching keywords. If you spend too much time writing articles for the wrong keywords you’ll waste a lot of money!

Step 3: It’s all about structure!

Always start with the structure. Spend a lot of time researching the topic, reach out to people who know more about the specific topic and collect all the information in a doc. But before you start writing, structure the topic and talk to one of your colleagues to challenge the story. The structure is the most crucial part, you should never start writing something before the structure makes sense and follows a logical order. Why? Your goal is to capture the reader. After reading the first sentence, your job is to convince the reader to read the second sentence ... after paragraph 1, make the reader excited about paragraph 2. And a good structure helps you get people excited and understand the topic.

Even more important than structure: the headline! No one is going to read the blog if your headline is boring, and it won’t rank on Google if it does not contain the focus keyword. It’s a tricky challenge but it’s worth spending some time on it.

Write down headline idea after headline idea on a sheet of paper and slowly develop a scheme. Don’t give up, it takes time! Headlines are the best way to differentiate your content from the competition. If you look at search results for competitive terms such as “online marketing” … how do you decide where to click? You’re right … for most people it is the compelling headline.

Step 4: The basics

Here some of the most important basics that are unavoidable if you want to rank for any search term of Google:

Write in paragraphs: Split up your text with subheadings into different paragraphs to make it easier for people to read through and scan your blog post

Use descriptive subheadings and most of them should contain your focus keyword. People don’t spend a lot of time on your blog, if they cannot get any value from it after a few seconds they will bounce.

Use a lot of images (with alt tags) — images belong to a good blog post … full stop.

My biggest learning? People buy from people! No one cares about another company, write like a human being. Be fun, show personality and try to have a conversation with the reader.

Other than that, internally link to articles that add more value for the reader. The bounce rate is one of the most important metrics for a successful blog, internal links can help you direct the reader through your website

Step 5: ACTION BABYYY

Some people like me write for fun — but most people write for businesses or at least intending to make money from it. Ideally, you can pitch your story, services or company within the blogpost, but great ways to increase conversion rates are banners, lead magnets or pop-ups. A banner can be as simple as “Interested in |YOUR BLOGTOPIC|? Schedule a free demo now” to make the reader aware of having the option. Even better: If you have a blogpost about demurrage & detention charges, add a link to a demurrage & detention calculator … people might be interested in calculating demurrage charges for their port locations and submit a contact form to receive the results via email.

Another great tool is Hellobar. It lets you create small pop-ups to capture email addresses or direct traffic to a /demo page. They offer different formats and goals such as collecting emails, sending traffic to an URL or sending people to your social media profiles. It’s relatively easy to set up and gives you the option to A/B test different ideas. We’re still experimenting with different styles, but the best version has at least a conversion rate of 2.6% … newsletter subscribers that you can turn into customers later on.

Step 6: Proofreading

Yeah, it sounds boring ... but is so important! Send the final draft to one of your colleagues. It does not matter how good you are, they will also identify 1–2 typos and ask questions that help you make your blogpost way better. Sometimes you spend so much time on a blog and just want to get it done in the end ... even in such a scenario, sending the article to one of your colleagues for proofreading makes so much sense. You’re almost there … stay patient!