You’ve got the writing chops. Just this morning you caught yourself aggressively nodding in self-admiration at your latest blog post. Forwarding a particularly witty piece to your mom for praise is not beyond you.

It feels good.

But as a writer in the #steemit age, you’re also responsible for producing content that potential customers or subject-matter enthusiasts can actually discover – and earn pocket money easily and quickly.

1. Win with quality

Provide your target audience with quality content on a subject you both care about. Useful, unique, and authoritative information results in people upvote, commenting, and resteeming to your posts, which earns you brownie points with #Steemians.

When brainstorming your next juicy blog topic, ask yourself these questions:

• What information gaps exist?
• How can I fill them?
• Will this be valuable to my target audience?
• Am I deceiving my audience?
• Is this credible and engaging?

If you’re going to start anywhere, it’s quality – otherwise, you might not get much more than a participation trophy.

2. Research keywords, but don’t stop there

Drink some caffeine, grab your favorite pen (or pencil, or eagle feather quill), and do a good old-fashioned brainstorm. What words or phrases best describe your blog’s topic? Narrow your list down to one or two keywords or keyword phrases with relevance and strong search volume.

This’ll give your post and optimization efforts focus. Consider long-tail keywords, too – these hyper-targeted phrases of three or more words will drive less traffic overall, but more qualified visitors.

Search engines work hard to satisfy user intent, so you should, too. Your keyword and content strategies should take your audience personas and their intent into account.

3. Use keywords naturally

Sprinkle in keywords, phrases, and related word variations, but keep the language organic. Google is smart – it’ll understand context and takeaways without being bashed over the head by keywords! It’ll actually penalize you if you stuff your post with the same keywords, too.

For starters, try popping keywords into these places:

• Title (aka headline): Google only displays the first 65 characters or so of your title on the search engine results pages (SERPs), so keyword inclusion at the beginning of your headline is crucial to establishing relevancy – especially for readers! Even so, don’t forego catchy titles – you still want to attract and motivate peeps to read.
• In-Article: Incorporate keywords throughout headers and body text. If you focus on addressing your reader’s needs, keywords have a way of naturally landing where they need to be. Funny how these work out when you put quality first, right?
• Post URL: Give each post a unique URL that contains relevant keywords. Separate words with hyphens and remove unimportant articles like “a” and “the.” (Tip: your blogging platform might do this for you already!)
• Internal and External Links: Search engines give extra consideration to linked text, so it’s beneficial to include keywords as part of or next to hyperlinks.
• Image File Name: You know that old idiom, “a picture is worth a thousand words?” Well, that’s only true on the web if you tell the search engine what to “see” with keyword rich text. When you upload your images, resist the temptation to keep default names like “IMG0005.jpg.” Instead, make names descriptive, like “Octopus-wearing-cowboy-hat.jpg.”

4. Write scannable text

Nobody reads.

Sorry to break it to you, but that perfect verb you agonized over may go unnoticed – skimming is all the rage online, and has been for decades.

Experiment with ways to make your post easy for humans and robots to scan.

• Highlight keywords
• Organize with headings and subheadings
• Bullet and number lists
• Break up text with images and GIFs
• Box out quotes or tweetable tidbits
• Use white space
• Focus on one idea per paragraph
• Keep it conversational

In the age of information overload, you’re competing for attention. Be succinct, engaging, and most importantly, ORIGINAL. If you drop some enlightening info on readers, they’ll not only read your post – they’ll want to share it!

5. Length matters (sort of)

Pay attention to post length, as Google values in-depth and informational (aka quality) content. As a general guideline, 300 words is widely considered the minimum, whereas posts in the 700-2500 word range signal more subject-matter depth and can get a little more search engine love.

Don’t feel like word count is your first priority, though! Write as many words as needed – no more, no less – to clearly communicate information to your intended audience.

5. Market it

Yes, high-quality content, when optimized properly, should drive traffic to your blog. However, it’s not a “set it and forget it” kind of business. Give your posts a little rocket fuel with proper distribution and publicity.

That means getting your social hustle on.

Don’t assume that because you launched a post into social cyberspace that everyone caught it (or cared). Distribute your posts across your social channels!

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