6 quick and easy tips to boost your blog content

It takes me less than two minutes to figure out whether to add a blog post to my reading list or ignore it altogether.

What’s my secret?

I am looking for certain characteristics that indicate a good article, such as:

• Does an article include quotes from experts?
• Are the images included in the piece of high quality and not from storage sites?
• Etc.

Each of these adds additional benefits for your readers, thus increasing the chances of attracting a solid number of visitors to your page.

In this post, I want to share exactly how you can overload your blog content to engage people without breaking the bank and not wasting time creating skippable content.

1. Add expert quotes

Quotes from experts make your content more reliable, which makes people want to stay on your page. Quotes are also shareable to improve your chances of getting links and engaging people in conversation.

But how do you start collaborating with influencers?

If your brand has established relationships with experts in your niche before, just connect with them and ask to share a few sentences.

They are usually more than happy to do this, as it allows them to be exposed to a new audience. But remember that at this point you need a 100% finalized article because the experts will want to know the exact background and other details.

If you don’t have a personal connection with these influencers, there is a tip for you. It’s much easier to get quotes from influencers who know your brand and have already mentioned it in their content.

You can use this search operator to find these mentions:

in the text :[YOUR BRAND NAME] -site: yoursitename.com

Here’s what it looks like for my own brand:

Additionally, you can use Ahrefs to find people who have referred to your site using a referring domains report. Just search for your site and check the Referring Domains tab.

But what if your business is just starting to build relationships with influencers?

Don’t let him stop you from using this hack. There is a neat workaround that still allows adding a quote without stepping into an influencer marketing niche.

Follow these steps:

• Find an expert quote that matches what you are writing.
• Pick a few phrases that perfectly match your content and add them to your post.
• Then send the influencer a quick message on Twitter or LinkedIn, just letting them know that you attributed the quote in your post.

Make sure the quote is well crafted so that a reader can easily spot it on your blog. Also, don’t forget to add the author’s contacts, links to social media accounts, and an image.

Collaborating with influencers is a great way to gain exposure to an established audience.

You can take it a step further and instead of requesting a quote see if there is an opportunity to co-write a study or refer to their research.

2. Refer to well-known studies and research

Do you know of relevant research for your audience?

Adding references to your in-depth analytical pieces from this source reinforces your statements and emphasizes that what you write requires their attention and is worth reading.

The only thing I wouldn’t recommend is linking to sites that aren’t an original data source.

Some of the most trusted sites that I like to link to are:

• Google Consumer Barometer, HubSpot Research, and eMarketer if your content is related to a marketing niche.
• Statista for almost any type of content.

It’s easy to get carried away with interesting facts and statistics while writing an informative article. So make sure you don’t end up with boring and unreadable information.

A great way to spice up your post is to add graphics and images.

3. Adding eye-catching images

Pictures can make or break your message.

Even a well-researched piece will look mediocre if you don’t spend the time finding great visuals to bring your text to life.

However, some niches continue to use low-quality archival footage.

For example, we have a client from a health related niche and we have found that the majority of top notch sites in that niche seem rather lifeless:

So what could you do instead of using stock images for your blog?

The cheapest option is to use tools like Canva that let you create custom images. They have tons of templates that you can tweak slightly to perfectly match your business style.

After this step, your post should be optimized for a good ranking on Google. Now is the time to make sure it gets in front of your audience using SEO magic.

4. Provide keyword research

If you want to rank in Google’s SERPs, you need to do keyword research.

In fact, the best practice is to do this before you even start writing on a topic.

Organic traffic just won’t come unless your post includes the right search queries with a decent number of searches per month.

I have a perfect example to back up my words with data.

I recently discovered a blog post on BuzzSumo that had gained the highest number of referring domains, over 1.3K:

Can you guess how many users are from Google? Well, on a good day, around 100 users, on average around 12.

There are many tools to help you get visible.

My favorite is the SEMrush Keyword Magic tool: it displays several keyword options grouped together in a convenient way as well as the difficulty of reaching the first 3 results:

This step can be a bit daunting, especially when you can’t wait to share your new content with the world.

However, taking the time to perfect your keywords will help you get better engagement and reach more people.

5. Optimization of meta description, URL and title

After making a list of keywords, you need to make sure that they are allocated in your meta descriptions, URLs, and post title.

Remember that a meta description and title have a limited number of characters, so make sure you don’t go over the limit to avoid appearing on Google’s SERPs like this:

You only have one chance to get Google users to visit your site – some of them might not even know that page 2 of Google search exists. So try to make the overview of your site descriptive and interesting.

Without a doubt, a well-written meta description and title will get you more clicks.

After you’ve worked through each step mentioned above, you should have some great content that will appeal to your audience.

But there is still work to be done.

6. Suggest related posts to your users

Once your users have liked your post, it’s good to suggest similar posts that they might like.

By doing this, you increase the average time they spend on the site and decrease the exit rate.

For example, here’s how other reading suggestions are displayed on the HubSpot blog:

Conclusion

Being a great writer is no longer enough to attract visitors to your site.

The abundance of information makes it necessary to try all the more to generate interest in your content.

When writing articles, try to stop for a second and ask yourself if it would pique a person’s interest if they only had a minute to go through it.

Remember, it has to be love at first for a potential reader to give your article a chance.

More resources:

Image credits

Featured Image: Created by Author, Aug 2019
All screenshots taken by author, August 2019