Whenever you watch a movie, what stays with you when it’s over is the ending part. When it comes to your blog post, you know you want people walking away feeling uplifted and gratified after reading it. You’ve written your blog post – what can you do at the last minute to improve it and to get the reader effect you want?
1. Work On The Ending
Leave your readers with something valuable in return for spending time with you. Work on a conclusion that rocks. You can do this with a Call To Action (CTA) that rocks, or offer a surprising bit of humorous wisdom, a challenge, or something controversial and newsworthy. Just make sure you help the audience feel happy that they dropped by.
2. Jazz Up Your Author’s Bio
Don’t use the same old Author’s Bio for every post. Make a few changes to it that are relevant to your current post. For example, if your current post talks about common fashion errors, insert something funny about your own fashion bloopers in your Bio. Make it funny and memorable and your readers will want to know more about you.
3. Include Your Photo
Take a few high-res pictures of yourself with a big smile on your face. Make sure your personality comes through in these pictures. For example, try not to look stiff at your keyboard. Rather, relax on a couch with your cat on your lap. Don’t use some super stylized cartoon version of yourself in place of the Author’s picture.
4. Rework Your Headings
Whether your post is short or long, it needs headings to break up the text. Headings help identify segments of your post and they help people to quickly scan the content of your post. Go over your text again, and put in headings that inspire the reader to read the text underneath it. Make sure each heading works with your post’s title and the objective of your post. If you have multiple levels of headings, such as Heading 1 and Heading 2, use suitably reduced size of font and bolding to indicate the hierarchy properly.
5. Replace Underlining With Bolded Text
If you want to focus reader attention on some text, bold it. Don’t underline text. Not only does underline text indicate a link, it makes your post look crammed and unreadable. Don’t underline keywords either – search engines don’t need underlining to note them.
6. Include Keywords In Your HTML Title Tags
It only takes a few minutes to edit your post’s HTML titles. You can greatly strengthen your rankings by including your best keywords into the title and heading tags of your post. Plus, when your readers find the keywords they’re searching for in your title, they know your post has relevance to their need.
7. Improve The First Paragraph
After your title, it’s the first paragraph that should seduce the reader long enough to ensure the rest of your post gets read. Draw social traffic and links by reviewing your first paragraph from a reader’s perspective. Are you impressed enough by it? What’s missing? Can you add some stats, fun facts or even ask probing questions in it?
8. Improve Your Title
Your title should be clever, catchy and extremely relevant to your post. After you read your post completely, go back and review your title. Is the title completely relevant to the post content? Can you rework it, make it shorter, and make it more appealing or more relevant? If you came across this particular title in a feed, would you click on it?
9. Proofread
Put your post aside for an hour and proofread it later for both content and grammar. Double check your links. Typos happen, even to the most meticulous blogger. Your readers may be able to forgive an occasional typo, not regular bloopers from a lack of proofreading. If you want to be taken seriously, take the time to proofread and fix errors before you publish your post.
10. Upload An Image
A post-relevant image helps entice viewers to your post, just as a catchy title does. A captivating visual can bring your post together; if your image is truly relevant, it helps convey your post’s message as well. Get an account on a photo site such as iStockphoto and look for great quality pictures that you can use.
11. Optimize Your Content
Go over the content and strategically insert the keywords that readers will use to look up your post on search engines. Also put in some time on deep linking activities within your blog. Drop link references to third-party blogs in the reference section as well for more SEO power.
12. Make Your Post Reader-friendly
Break up paragraphs, use bullet points wherever possible. Format your post to make it easy to digest and easy to read. Include quotes and other readable elements wherever possible. All these aspects help increase the reader appeal of your post.
What do you think about these points? Do you’ve any other last time suggestions for improving blog posts? Please let us know your feedback in comments below.
Opinions expressed in the article are those of the guest author and may not reflect the views of Webaholic.
Stephen works for Invesp, a conversion optimization company that helps businesses in optimizing landing pages, improving website usability and increasing the overall ROI of marketing campaigns.
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