5 Essential Things Every Blog Post Needs to Get Noticed Online

When you spend time and energy creating great blog posts, you don’t want them to just sit there on your website. You want people to find them, read them, and love them! The good news is there are a few things you can do to get noticed online.

The internet is crowded and it can be hard for a new blogger to get noticed online. And if you’re just starting out it seems like there’s so much to… how do you know where to put your time and energy so that your posts get found, read, shared, and engaged with?

While it’s not enough to just write great posts, you also don’t have to do all the things to stand out. It’s all about using your time and energy on the right tasks – ones that will give you the best returns – and not overwhelming yourself with trying to do everything.

Here are 5 things you need to do for each blog post that will help people find you and grow your business.

1. Graphics

Social media where the majority of people get their information these days, which means our feeds are full. In order to stop people from scrolling, you need graphics that get their attention. The other benefit of graphics is that they take up more space in people’s feeds, so they have more time to see your post and stop scrolling.

For each post I recommend you create 3 graphics:

1280 x 720 px for Facebook and/ or Twitter
1080 x 1080 px for Instagram and/or Facebook
1000 x 1500 px for Pinterest

If you use a program like PicMinkey or Canva Pro, you can create templates for yourself, so each week you can simply enter your current post info and save yourself time. Using a template also helps you have a consistent look for your blog posts – people will start to recognize your work!

2. SEO

Search engine optimization, commonly known as SEO, is what allows search engines like Google and Bing, and Yahoo! To understand what your blog post is about and recommend it to people when they enter search criteria.

Yes, search engines do crawl your content to “read” it, but to help them get a better idea of the focus of your post you need to set an SEO keyword, meta description, and URL slug.

I recommend using the free plugin Yoast to make managing all of this as easy as possible. Yoast will scan your post and give you an SEO rating, as well as recommendations as to how to improve your SEO. Once you review and follow Yoasts recommendations a few times, you’ll start to build the techniques into your posts automatically.

3. A Great Title

For your blog posts you want to craft a title that is both catchy and clear. A potential reader should know what they’re going to get when they click on your post. When bloggers try to get cute with post titles, it leaves readers confused as to what the post is about. Since we all have an extremely limited amount of time, people are far less likely to click on an unclear post title.

As Donald Miller of Business Made Simple says, “When you confuse, you lose.”

Instead of clever, aim for clear.

The free Headline Analyzer tool will read your post title and give you a score based on a set of criteria. You can pay for deeper analysis, but I’ve always found the free version to work just fine.

As an added bonus, a great title can also boost your SEO by making your posts primary idea even more clear!

4. A Concise Description

When your post comes up on Google or social media, an easy to understand description will give viewers a clear idea of what your post will contain. This further helps them decide to click on your link or not. In this case, brevity is your friend because Google will clip your description at 155-160 characters, so it’s important to have a succinct 1-2 sentence summary of your post.

To save time, you can use the same description for Twitter. Once you add a link to the post, you’ll be close to the 280 character count.

When it comes to other social media, you typically have more space to use for your post description, so play around with various lengths to see what works best for you.

Pinterest limits you to 500 characters, Instagram to 2,200, and Facebook to just over 63k.

Another bonus, a clear description can boost your post’s SEO even more!

5. Distribution Strategy

Last, but certainly not least, you need to have a plan to distribute your blog post so even more people can find it.

Before I even get to strategy, let me state that there is no need to create a complicated distribution schedule. In fact, as you get started, I suggest that you choose a single platform on which to share your content, then expand slowly once you get your system down.

Email. Every time you publish a new post you should email your list. These are the people who value what you have to say so much that they gave you their email address! They want to know when you’re sharing more good stuff, so let them know!

Social Media. Pick a social media platform to start with and decide when you’re going to share your new content. It might feel excessive at first, but share your post more than once. People are busy and social media feeds move fast, so you can’t assume that people will see your initial share. In fact, only about 3-5% of your social followers will see your post at all thanks to the algorithms that control the feed.

Pinterest. Not a social media platform, Pinterest is a visual search engine and another place for you to share your content. Like social media, you’re going to want to share on Pinterest more than once because the website has stated that they want “fresh pins,” meaning unique descriptions and images each time you share.

Interestingly, getting your post into more hands via social media and your email list can boost your SEO reach even further! More visits to your site, especially if they stay there for a while and read multiple posts, tells Google that you’re an authority and people find your site valuable… making them more likely to recommend you!

Remember that you don’t have to focus on all of these tasks at once. Just do one thing at a time, give yourself time to master it, then add in the next task.

With time and continuous effort, these small changes will add up and your blog will grow.

Ready for the next step? Check out Content Made Simple and learn my proven 3-step system for planning, crafting, and distributing your content!