Stay On Topic in Your Blog Posts

You’ll find differing advice about how many topics you should include in a blog post. An article on Blog Herald, for instance, recommends that you stick to one topic per blog post and give some very compelling reasons why this is the case. One of them is quite simply the fact that it’s good for search engine optimization. It allows you to craft a very specific and directed headline and that makes people want to click on your post and makes the search engines regard the post as a potentially good resource.

Another, less technical, reason is simply the fact that people tend to like reading things that have a point and that get to it right away. Remember that writing is a little bit like fencing: you always leadwith the point, at least if you’re good.

Is it possible to mix multiple topics in a blog post? Yes. If you’re a good writer and you can pull it off, you can probably get away with it and make great posts out of multiple subjects being mixed together. However, the advice on Blog Herald is definitely worth heeding in most cases.

READ: 3 Tips for Creating an Effective Blog

Sharpening the Point

When you pick your topic for your blog post, make sure you pick something that you really can write about for a given number of words. As a resource, Weblogs at About.com has a list of different topics that you could write about. This is a good resource if you’re out of ideas and you’re just trying to think of something you can put on your blog to keep it alive.

If you can’t think of anything original to write about, you can always pick a photo and write about it. It might seem silly until you think about how many words are spent every year writing about art. People actually like reading this type of thing and, if you find something interesting and you want to share it on your blog – even if it’s off the beaten path for what you normally write about – having a focused, point driven blog post is still worth it in terms of keeping your readers engaged. As another benefit, Premium WordPress Themes and other blogging tools allow you to organize your old blog posts into an archive based on tags, and if your tags lineup with the point of your blogs, your archive instantly becomes more useful to readers.

ALSO READ: Inbound Marketing: 5 Basic Tips to Improve WordPress for SEO

Remember that, once you pick your point, you do need to stick to it. Here are some common pitfalls that you can avoid and that you’ll see all over the Internet.

The Hazards

First, avoid talking about yourself unless you are the topic of the blog post. Simply put, this has gotten out of hand on the Internet. Even news stories are quite frequently more about the reporter than they are about whatever they are reporting on. Remember that people come to your blog to read what you have to say about a subject, they don’t come to your blog to listen to you talk about yourself.

The second, be sure that every one of your paragraphs feeds into your main topic. One way to do this is to write too much to begin with. The best writing is usually what remains after the fat has been trimmed away. If you want a 450-word blog post, write a 600 word blog post and cut out the parts that don’t need to be there. You’ll end up with 450 very engaging words about whatever subject you’re writing about.

Going back to the fencing metaphor, remember that the steel on any sword really exists to support the point. Make sure you have a good point, make sure you stick to it and you use it as your primary reason for writing the blog. If everything else supports that point and feeds into it, you’ve probably got something that’s very much worth reading and that will give you a good reputation as a writer.

About author

Anny Solway is a dedicated writer at ThemeFuse – a web studio that creates original WordPresstemplates, that can be used out of the box. She loves to share blogging and technology tips.