Another month, another blogging tips post! Welcome to my third post in this series, which is all about how to plan and write great blog posts! Thanks for your support so far. These are still among my most popular posts, which really kind of astounds me because I only just started out… Surely there are more qualified people to provide tips than me! Maybe I’m just relatable.
Missed my other two posts? You can find all the posts in this series here.
ANYWAY, I mentioned above that today I want to have a crack at explaining how I plan and write my blog posts. As time goes on, I really feel like I’m getting better at writing posts that people find genuinely helpful (or will, once travel is allowed again). I’ve also been complimented on my motivation and how my blog posts flow through as series’. So in this post, I’ll be sharing what I do, in the hopes it helps or inspires some of you guys.
In this post, I’m mostly going to be using this post, and my other most recent post, my Banff Summer Guide, as examples. If you missed it last week you can read it here.
Part 1: Plan to write great blog posts
Before I start, I’m super excited to announce a FREE DOWNLOAD for you all to help you with your blog planning! I have made a monthly planner (which I use myself) and a blog planning template. All you have to do is sign up to my newsletter below! I promise I won’t spam you or anything. As a subscriber, you will have access to my free resource library, which includes not only the aforementioned planners, but other free downloads as well! Sign up below to get the password.
How do you decide what to post?
What destination:
Anyone who knows me in real life will know that I am the most indecisive person ever. Like seriously. If I can’t even decide what to have for lunch, how on earth do I decide what to write about on my blog!?
If you’ve been here since the beginning, you might remember that I put up a poll on my Instagram and my Facebook to see whether you guys would be more interested in hearing about Africa or China first. After that, I knew I wanted to post about my home country of Australia because I went on a couple of short trips at the beginning of the year.
After that, I chose to post about Canada. There were a few things that factored into my decision here. In terms of timing I felt it was better to write about Canada than China, which was my alternative. Also, the longer I wait to write about Canada, the older and more out-of-date the information gets! It’s approaching FOUR YEARS since I left!!! How insane is that!? Time flies. I also looked at my Instagram feed, as lame as that sounds. I had a picture from Eat Street Markets in Brisbane that I wanted to post, which was pink. And a photo of a Canadian sunrise that I wanted to post, which was also pink! So I put them next to each other in my Preview app and started writing about my exchange.
In future, I’ll probably write about my most recent travels as they come. I might also ask my subscribers what they’d like to hear about next! Want to have your say? Be sure to sign up below with your name and email address!
Sorry for the shameless plug. Continuing on.
What content:
Right now, I’m sharing tips and experiences from my old adventures. I will write about trips as far back as 2015; anything beyond that is MUCH too out of date. I’m happy to write about any and all adventures – whether it’s a 6 month trip to Canada or a 6 hour trip to the local beach. So long as I can write something that someone will find helpful, I can share about it!
I try to break larger trips up into regions. For example, for Canada so far I have written about Vancouver, Vancouver Island and Banff. I also try to think about what people would find helpful. For example, someone planning a trip to Vancouver and Banff would want to read about things to do in Vancouver and things to do in Banff. But they might also want to know where the best places to stop are along the way. So I have a separate post outlining all of that information.
A really good way of thinking about it is trying to think of what you would google before heading on a trip somewhere. For example, if I was heading to Canada, I might google “what to do in Banff in summer”. So to answer that question, I wrote my Banff summer guide.
How do you stay motivated to write about the same destination all the time?
I’m the kind of person who isn’t motivated all the time. On some days, I’m super productive and will smash out one or more blog posts! Other days, I do absolutely no work on anything blog related. And some days, I do absolutely nothing productive in any aspect of my life. But that’s normal, right?
There are two ways that I go about writing my blog posts: I either write about what I feel like, when I feel like it; OR, I am motivated by a deadline.
For example, over the Christmas period, I wrote about four different destinations: China, Singapore, Africa and Japan. So far, I’ve only actually posted about one of those. Sure, I could post the blogs in the order I wrote them, but I like the idea of having a series better. It gives me time to plan what posts I want to share and what order they would flow best in for any of my returning readers.
On the other hand, at the moment I am writing my posts in order (as well as a few bonus random ones for later!). I find that having a deadline really helps to motivate me to write. This month, I have also started a monthly planner to help me more clearly see what posts I want to share when. So far, I’m finding it really helpful. But I guess we’ll see if I continue to use it in the long run!
Part 2: Write those great blog posts from your plan
What should you name your blog posts?
Now we’re getting into the realm of things that I’m still working on, so you’ll have to bare with me.
What you call your blog post should be directly related to the topic (obviously) and should address something a reader would be interested in. I mentioned above that a great way of thinking about this is considering what you would google before heading to that destination. If you can put the exact search phrase in your title, that’d be extra amazing!
Here’s an example: my most recent post is called “Banff in Summer: where to stay and what to do”. In the title, I clearly state that I’ll be writing about Banff National Park in Summer, and will include information about where to stay and what to do. Someone who comes across that post might think “oh great! I’m planning a trip to Banff! This should be really helpful!”
Conversely, I used to name my blog posts random stuff. They also used to be written in a more travel-story format. But more on that later. For example, my post about the Namib Desert is titled “Namib Desert, Namibia: I swear I still have sand in my hair…”. Honestly, Caitlin, who on Earth is going to want to read that!? I’m planning on writing new content for both Namibia and Botswana in the near future which I hope you all will find more helpful. They’ll also have much better titles; something like “Namibia Overland Itinerary”.
How should you go about writing your blog post?
I definitely think I’ve grown as a writer since I started this blog! Most of my posts now are structured as itineraries, top x things to do, or why you should visit x destination. I often have a very clear idea for one of my paragraphs, so I start there and continue on as things naturally flow.
99% of the time I write my introduction last. This is because by the time I have written the actual content of my blog, I know what I want to highlight in my introduction. Same with the conclusion, if I have one. Whether I include a conclusion or not depends on what post I am planning on having next. If the two destinations are similar and the posts could flow on from each other, I’ll write a conclusion that promotes the next post. I’ll also write a corresponding introduction in the new post linking back to the previous one.
In terms of the actual writing, I just write the same way I would speak. This is no English assignment. Or scientific paper. So there’s no need to use big words that no one really knows the meaning of anyway.
I use the plugin Yoast SEO to check that my post is easy to read. The plugin looks at things like whether you’re using enough present tense, the length of your paragraphs and sentences, and something called the “Flesch Reading Test”. You can find all of this information under the readability tab.
What kinds of keywords do you use and how do you make your posts SEO friendly?
This is another one of those things I’m still learning about. In fact, I am currently going through all my old posts and re-writing them to make them more SEO friendly. I’m changing my keywords to be a bit more specific as well. Honestly, I’ll probably look back on this section in a couple of months and think “gee why did I think I had any right to provide guidance on SEO and keywords!?” But since this is probably the most important thing to consider as you plan and write your blog posts to make them great, I figure there’s no harm in sharing what I know already.
Keywords
When I started, I put in keywords like “Namibia” or “Brisbane” or “Vancouver Island”. Yes, this is something I’ve still been doing recently! But realistically, how is my post going to show up amongst the 50 million OTHER webpages about Namibia, Brisbane or Vancouver Island. So I’m changing my keywords. Now I’m making them more like key-phrases. Some examples of my new keywords include “guide to viewing wildlife in Africa” and “Banff in Summer“. The benefit of this is that I can have the words “guide” “viewing” “wildlife” and “africa” in any order in my sentence and YOAST will pick it up as my keyword! This is so much better than just having a keyword like “Brisbane” because the free version of Yoast didn’t pick up “Brisbane’s”. Yes really.
Keyword Research
A lot of bloggers also talk about “keyword research”. The way this works is you put your keyword in a search engine, and it tells you how many people search for that keyword. You want your keyword to have more than 1,000 hits or something like that. I did give it a go, because it sounds really cool, but the results didn’t really make any sense to me. Also, I could only look up one keyword before I was asked to log in. Everyone says Ubersuggest is free but the only “free” option I see is a 7 day trial. So I’ll just have to pass for now. Instead, I will be using keyphrases that I myself would google.
SEO
For any of you who don’t know, SEO stands for Search Engine Optimisation. It’s super important because it’s how people find your blog posts from search engines like Google! I also use the plugin Yoast SEO to check that the SEO scores for each of my blog posts is good. The plugin looks at whether you have included your keyphrase in the title, slug, meta description, introduction and appears throughout the text frequently enough. It also looks at other things, like whether you’ve used the same keyphrase twice, whether you have included internal and outbound links, and how long your title is.
Some of the things that it looks at are more important than others. For example, it is not necessary to include links or have your keyphrase in your higher-level subheadings to get a “green” SEO score. I used to spend forever trying to squeeze my keywords into my subheadings, until one day I didn’t bother and still got a good score! On the other hand, it is super important to have your keyphrase in the slug, title and introduction, and that you include a meta description for search engines to show. Writing a meta description is super easy: just summarise your blog post in a sentence or two!
I think that’s all I’ve got for writing tips. I hope some of you find this helpful and can now plan and write your own great blog posts! Is there anything else you want to know? Be sure to get in touch by commenting below!
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