- In this video I'm gonna show you how to write a blog post that
gets hundreds of comments. Thousands of social shares,
and first page Google Rankings. In fact, I use the exact
process in this video to grow my blog to a
426,496 visits per month. I'm Brian Dean, the Founder of Backlinko, the place where marketers
turn for higher Rankings and more traffic. Keep watching. Let's face it, getting
traffic to your blog is harder than ever, in
fact I've recently teamed up with BuzzSumo to analyze
912 million blog posts. And we found that the vast
majority of blog posts that are published, get
zero links or social shares. When I launched my first
blog way back in 2009, things worked completely different. Back then, getting links and social shares was relatively easy. You could publish a 500 word
blog post and call it a day. 490 words, 499 words, 500 words, done ski. Flash forward to today and
things are completely different. According to WordPress, 2.3
million blog posts come out on their platform everyday. So for your content to stand
out and get shared today, it needs to be amazing. Lucky for you, that's exactly
what I'm gonna show you how to do in this video, step-by-step. Starting with Step Number One, find a proven blog post topic. It's no secret that your
blog post topic is huge. Here's exactly how to
find blog post topics that actually work. First head over to Udemy. Udemy is a blog post topic
goldmine, here's why. Udemy doesn't just show you content that people are interested in, instead you see content that
people are actually paying for. (cash register rings) You can search for courses
by category or by keyword. Either way, you'll find content
that people are actually paying to access. For example, let's say you run
a blog about graphic design. Well head over to the
Design Category in Udemy, and scroll down to their
best-selling courses and within five seconds you
have a list of proven topics. Very cool. The next place to look for
proven topic ideas is Amazon. To use it, just search on
Amazon with the keyword that describes what
you're blog is all about. Then look for a book on that
topic with lots of ratings, this shows you that people
actually bought the book. Finally, click look inside,
to see the table of contents and just like with Udemy,
you get a list of topics presented to you on a silver platter. Last up we have conference agenda's. First head over to a conference
website in your niche, go to the agenda or schedule
page, and you'll see topics that people are paying
to learn more about. Which leads us to Step Number Two. Write your headline. Now that you have a proven topic, it's time to write your
blog post headline. You might have seen the stat before that 80 percent of people
read your headline, but only 20 percent click
over to the actual post. Is that stat true? Who knows, but I do
know that your headline is super important. With that, here's exactly how
to write blog post headlines that stand out and get clicks. First start your headline
off with proven phrases. BuzzSumo recently analyzed
about 100 million headlines. So what did they find? That headlines that start with
these 20 words and phrases, get the most shares on social media. For example, when I published
this post on my blog, I made sure to start my headline off with one of those phrases. Obviously you don't need to
start every single headline off with one of those phrases,
but when it makes sense try and use them. Second, make sure that your title uses brackets or parentheses. A study by Outbrain found that
adding brackets to headlines can improve click through
rate by up to 38 percent. And this study confirms what
I've seen in the real world. In fact, six of my top ten all
time, most popular blog posts have brackets or parentheses in the title. Finally, you wanna use long headlines. That study of 900 million blog posts that I mentioned earlier, found that posts with long
headlines got 76 percent more shares compared to posts
that used short headlines. With that, it's time
for Step Number Three, write an attention-grabbing introduction. Topic, check. Headline, check. Now it's time to write an introduction that grabs your readers
attention right off the bat, how? The PPT Formula. This formula is killing
it for me right now. By the way, the PPT stands for Preview, proof, transition. Here's a breakdown of the formula. Now I'm gonna break down
each part of this formula and show you how it works
with real-life examples. First up, you have the preview. This part couldn't be any more simple. Just let your reader know
exactly what to expect. That way when someone lands
on one of your blog posts, they know that they're in the right place. Here's and example. Next, it's time for the proof. Here's where you show people that you know what you're talking about. Now what if you don't know
what you're talking about, well you've got bigger problems
than blog post introductions but that's another story. Now you can show proof
with personal results, years of experience, number of clients, credentials or certifications, or anything that shows
that someone should listen to your advice. Here's an example. Last up we have the transition. Cap your intro off with a transition, a transition that pushes
your reader to keep reading. For example, you can see
that of used the phrase, "Let's dive right in," at the
end of this intro, simple. Moving right along to Step Number Four, Write and awesome post. Is there a formula for writing blog posts that people will link to and share? No, if there was, everyone would use it. That said, there are proven strategies that you can use to make your
content ten times better. For example, one technique
that's working really well for me right now, is using
lots of section sub headers. Sub headers are great because
they break your content up into easy to read chunks,
which is super important if you publish a lot of
long-form content like I do. For example, this post
for my blog is super long. In fact, that post is 4,300
words, so I broke up the content into little chunks, using
dozens of sub headers. I also recommend using lots
of visuals in every post that you publish. Now when I'm talking about
visuals and talking about things like screenshots, charts,
pictures, infographics, basically don't be afraid to
use a ton of different visuals and just lots of visuals
in general in every post. For example, this post for
my blog has 95 visuals. Next, use a font that's
between 16 and 20 pixels, if you've ever read
anything at medium.com, you've probably noticed
that their articles are super easy to read. How do they do it? Well besides a clean layout,
they use 21 point font. And if you're using anything less than 16, you probably missing
out on a lot of readers. That's why we use 18 point
font here at Backlinko. Finally when it makes
sense, publish content that's at least three thousand words. Our BuzzSumo Industry study,
found a clear corelation between long-form content
and social shares. In fact, our data showed
that long-form content got an average of 77
percent more social shares, compared to traditional short blog posts. Obviously this doesn't
mean that you need to pad your blog posts with a
bunch of fluff or filler. But if it does make sense to publish a long-form blog post or guide, go for it. So now that your post is in the books, it's time for the next
step, Step Number Five, write your conclusion. Here's the deal. Most people use throw away
conclusions like this. But professional bloggers
know that your conclusion is super important. Especially if you wanna get
lots of comments on your blog. Well I've recently developed
a three-step process for writing awesome conclusions. It's called the TAC Process. Here's how it looks. First start your conclusion
off with a transition. This sentence lets people know that the meat of your blog post is over and it's time to sum things up. Here's an example. Next, it's time for the ask. Here's where you ask your
reader a very specific question. In other words, you don't
wanna ask something vague like what do you think? Instead, give your reader
an insanely simple question that's easier to answer. For example, in this
conclusion you can see that I asked people
something that will take like two seconds to answer. And you wanna end your
conclusion with a CTA. Your CTA can be whatever you
want your reader to do next. You can ask your readers to leave comment, share on social media, sign
up for your newsletter, subscribe to your YouTube channel, the exact call to action that
you use is totally up to you. But the important thing
to keep in mind here, is that you got someone
to read your blog post all the way to the end. Which means they really
enjoyed your content and they're ready for the next step. And as long as you give them that next step in your
conclusion, you're good. We do a conclusion in the
books, let's head over to Step Number Six,
optimize your post for SEO. Obviously there's a lot more to SEO than I can cover in a short video. In fact, I have an entire blog and YouTube channel about SEO. That said, SEO is super
important for your blog posts long-term success. So I do wanna quickly cover
three simple techniques that you can use to optimize
your blog posts for SEO. Because the truth is, traffic
to most peoples blog posts look like this, a huge spike on day one, then it flattens out to pretty much zero. But when you optimize
your post the right way, you still get that spike,
but your post still brings in consistent traffic month after month. For example, I first published this post over five years ago. Now I've updated it a
few times since then, but it's basically the same post. And because that post
if optimized for SEO, it still brings in over
12,000 visitors per month from Google. So the first on page SEO
technique is to include your target key word in your introduction. Google and other search
engines put more weight on words and phrases that show
up at the top of your page. So you wanna make sure
to use your keyword once in your blog post intro like this. Next use short URL's. When it comes to Google Rankings
there's no doubt about it, short URL's work best. In fact, Google themselves
actually recommend that you use short descriptive URL's. That's because short URL's
make it easy for Google to understand the topic of your page. Plus people use your URL
to figure out which result they should click on. Which is why lots of
industry studies have found that short URL's get clicked
on more than long URL's. Finally, add internal links to your post. Now internal linking doesn't
have to be complicated. In fact, when it comes to internal links, I like to keep things simple. Whenever I publish a new
post, I add two to five internal links to some of my older posts. Now you could also go back to older posts and link to the new post
that you just published. For example, when I published this post about keyword research, I
linked that to related content on my site that I already published. And added a handful of
internal links from older posts to my new guide. And before we end this video, I have a quick bonus step
for you, promote your post. I know this video is designed to show you how to write a blog post,
but here's the deal. Most blog posts, even good ones fail, because they're not promoted enough. And no, sharing your content
on Twitter and Facebook doesn't really count as promotion. To get your content seen today,
you need to do a lot more than just share on social media. In fact, I usually spend
about 20 percent of my time writing content and 80
percent of my time promoting that content, that's how
important content promotion is. With that, here are three quick
content promotion strategies that you can try. Our first strategy is the
content announcement newsletter. When it comes to content promotion, email crushes social media. And it's not even that close. For example, I published
this post on my blog a few months ago. And like I do for all new
posts, I sent out a Tweet. I also sent out this simple, plain text announcement newsletter
to my email subscribers. And when it was all said and
done, the newsletter got nearly 13 times more clicks than my tweet. To be clear, I do have
more email subscribers than Twitter followers. But still, there's no denying that email is way more powerful when it comes to promoting
content compared to social media. Next, we have Facebook retargeting. It's no secret that
Facebook's organic reach is pretty much zero right now. Fortunately you can still
get your Facebook followers to see your posts,
without paying a fortune. The secret is to boost your posts, but only boost to people
that have visited your site. In other words, retargeting. For example, I paid
about 50 cents per click on this boosted Facebook
post, which is dirt cheap considering that I'm in the competitive, expensive B2B niche. Finally we have Email Outreach. If you don't have an email list yet, Outreach is probably the best
way to promote your content. That's the good news. The bad news is you
can't just send the same spammy email to 100 people
and expect it to work. In fact I get generic emails
like this all the time, you probably do too, and I
delete them within two seconds. But I don't automatically delete every Outreach email that I get. If someone takes the time to
send me a personalized message, I'll usually at least
check out their post. And if the post is something
that I think the Backlinko community would enjoy, I'll share it. So, there you have it. My Seven Step Process
for writing a blog post. If you like this video,
make sure to subscribe to my YouTube channel right now. Just click on the Subscribe
button below this video. And if you want exclusive SEO techniques that I only share with email subscribers, head over to Backlinko.com and
sign up for the newsletter. It's free. Now I wanna hear from you. Which strategy from this
video are you gonna try first? Are you gonna promote your
content with email Outreach, or try using shorter blog post URL's? Let me know by leaving a
comment below right now. When I've... Did you hear that beeping? I hope blowing your ears out. Finally... (mumbles). Testing, testing. With that, oh. Okay, okay. Next, use. Okay, I'll try take of that.
