What’s the #1 thing that helps you build a money-making blog?

If you said “great content”, you’re absolutely right.

Starting a blog is so easy. But creating great content isn’t easy as it sounds. You need to make sure your content is informative enough to help people and has enough commercial intent to sell itself.

That being said, if you’re struggling to create content that sells, this post is a treat for you where you’ll find a PROVEN 5-step process to create high-quality content in 2019. Are you curious to find out? Let’s jump into the details.

The 5-Step Process for Creating Content That Sells

Step #1: Brainstorm topic ideas

The first step to creating great content that sells itself is to come up with great topic ideas. Here’s where most people fail. They often pick random topics to write about. Most beginners even write almost anything under the sun.

If you want to build a profitable blog, that’s a wrong approach.

Decide on the RIGHT keywords if you want to succeed online. Make sure to spend quality time finding great keywords with low competition.

While doing keyword research, don’t go for any random keywords. You need to pick only those keywords which you can use to get more traffic and sales from search engines.

Commercial Vs Informational Keywords

There are a ton of various keywords you can find and use to increase website traffic but there are 2 types of main keywords you need to target (to increase traffic and sales).

Commercial keywords

Informative keywords

Let’s talk about both these keyword types so you’ll better understand what they are all about and how they can increase your traffic and sales.

Commercial keywords are those keywords which help you drive “qualified visitors” who will buy stuff from you. Here are a few examples of commercial keywords;

Buy now

Discounts

Cheap alternatives

web hosting solutions

Promo codes and so on

Informative keywords are the keywords that educate your target audience about particular products, services and so on.

Here are a few examples of informative keywords;

How to

Ways to

Free and so on

So how to decide which type of keywords to use?

If you’re aiming for long-term results, you should target both the keywords i.e commercial and informative keywords. As they help you drive both search traffic and also sales.

That being said, here are few tools that you help you with keyword research.

Ubersuggest

io

Ahrefs

LSI Graph (for finding LSI keywords)

I personally use SEMrush for doing keyword research as it helps you find a ton of profitable keyword ideas which have low competition and high CPC.

Pro tip: It doesn’t matter what tool you use for keyword research but make sure to find long tail keywords which have low monthly searches (aim to find keywords below 500 monthly searches). That way you can increase your chances of getting into the first page on Google even if you have a new site.

Step #2: Research, research, research

You need to spend more time researching your topics. That’s why step 2 is so important if you want to create content that actually gets traffic and sales.

So where to research your blog posts and topic ideas?

Competitor analysis is a MUST

Make sure to find at least top 10 blog posts (first page results on Google) around the topics you’re trying to rank for.

That way you can easily find out how their content quality is, what points they are covering and how they are crafting their blog posts to get into top 10 search results for your target keywords or topics.

You can also check out the domain authority of the sites (DA) which are already ranking in the first page for your desired keywords so you can avoid those topics where only authority sites or big brands are showing up.

If you can find even low authority sites (below DA 30) are getting top 10 rankings for any of your desired topics, then you should consider creating blog posts around them as you can outrank them easily if you can create better content.

That said, here are a few more ways to spend time on doing research for your blog posts or topics.

Spend time on watching videos (if there are any related to your topics)

Read more books

Read more blog posts which are written by authority sites as they tend to cover a lot of details around most of the topics.

Listen to podcasts (if any which are relevant to your keywords or topic ideas)

Step #3: Outline everything

Once you’re done with the research part, you need to outline everything that you come across including references, videos, articles and any links which can be helpful for creating in-depth content for your topics.

The key here is to include as many references as possible so it becomes easier for you to create great content.

While outlining your blog posts, don’t start working on your introduction as it takes a lot of time. Instead start writing anywhere which means, you can include subheadings like h2, h3 tags and use solid points to expand them.

Use lots of bullet points while outlining so you can easily elaborate later while writing your blog posts.

Quick note: I highly recommend you to use tools like Google Docs for outlining and writing your blog posts as it saves even when you’re offline so you won’t lose any data and you can literally access your blog posts from any device including smartphones, tablets, laptops and so on.

Step #4: Start writing

This step is where you need to spend more time. Writing is definitely not an easy task. But if you implement the above 3 steps properly, writing becomes so much easier.

When you’re writing, just focus on writing. Avoid all kinds of distractions including email notifications. That’s the only way you can focus on crafting great blog posts.

One of the biggest mistakes to avoid while writing is this: don’t edit while you write as it drains a lot of time and energy. Just focus on writing and don’t edit. Once you’re done with writing, you can spend more time on editing and removing all the unwanted words ruthlessly.

If you’re wondering about how to write great blog posts that generate more traffic and sales, here are a few incredible tips for you.

Just like anything, writing is also a skill that anyone can master. But here’s the thing: if you’re a non-native English speaker, you need to put in extra efforts to create a great copy. So the more you practice writing, the faster you can hone your writing skills.

Get inspiration from other expert bloggers. Follow other bloggers whom you really like. Find out how they are crafting their blog posts, starting their introduction and adding more information without boring people. You can learn a lot just by analyzing your favorite bloggers and writers.

Write captivating headlines and hook your audience with a great introduction. It’s better to keep your introduction as engaging and as simple as possible. When it comes to crafting great headlines, you can use free headline generator tools like Portent.

Get into the writing zone. Few people find it easy to write in the morning while others write during the night. To find out when you’ll be most creative and get into the writing zone. Avoid all kinds of distractions and just write.

Step #5: Optimize like a pro

All your efforts will go in vain if you don’t spend time in properly optimizing your blog contents. The key here is to find a primary keyword and few long tail keywords which are relevant to your primary keyword. That way you can optimize your blog posts without keyword stuffing.

If you’re a WordPress user, I highly recommend you to install an incredible optimization plugin like WordPress SEO by Yoast.

It helps you easily optimize your blog posts for your primary keywords and gives you suggestions on where to put your primary keyword to get better search rankings.

Rank Math is another incredible SEO plugin which helps you optimize your website’s content for SEO. The great thing about using this plugin is that Rank Math’s integration with the Google Trends tool helps you easily check the Google search trends for keywords you want to rank for.

Also Read Rank Math SEO Plugin Settings 2019

Few more quick tips to create great content that sells itself

Here are a few more incredible quick tips you can use to create in-depth content that adds value to people and search engines like Google.

Use platforms like Quora: Quora is a top platform where people ask questions to get ultimate answers. For bloggers, Quora is a gold mine where you can use it to get content ideas, promote your blog posts, network with others, build your personal brand and so on.

Make sure to create unique answers while answering any topic on Quora instead of just copy-pasting your own content from your blog. It’s better to give a useful answer and then provide a link to the whole post at the bottom so people visit your site if they want to find more content.

Start using RIGHT SEO tools: It takes money to make money online. If you’re blogging, you must know one thing that you need to invest money on a few things (especially SEO tools). Although there are a ton of premium SEO tools out there the one I found extremely useful for blogging is SEMrush.

SEMrush helps you with so many SEO related things such as finding great keywords, analyzing your competitor websites, backlink analysis, performing site audits to fix your site issues and so on. To put it simply, SEMrush is worth every single penny.

Write at least 500 words every day: Writing is not easy and creating great content is definitely not easy especially if you’re a non-native English speaker like me. That’s why I recommend you to write at least 500 words every single day. It doesn’t matter what you write but what matters is whether you’re making it a habit or not.

You can use sites like 750 Words which is used by thousands of people online to get into the habit of writing and honing their writing skills. Give it a try once if you want to take your writing skills to the next level.

Final thoughts about creating great content in 2019 To drive organic traffic

Creating great content that works like a charm is not rocket science. But you need to really create a SOLID content framework so creating in-depth and high-quality content becomes easy.

That’s the reason why I gave you a foolproof 5-step process to write informative blog posts. Did you find these tips useful and do you’ve any questions in mind? Share your thoughts in the comments below.This is a guest post by Anil Agarwal:



Anil Agarwal is the guy behind BloggersPassion.com blog where he is aiming at helping his blog readers in taking their blogs traffic and revenue to the next level. Anil also runs a Facebook group to help bloggers by sharing practical SEO techniques, Blogging tips. You can join this group.