396: How to Write and Format Blog Posts for Readers and Search Engines

[00:00:00] Hey friends. Welcome back to another episode. I've got my notes ready to go. We are gonna be talking about how to create blog posts that people actually want to read, so when they go to your blog, they. Are clicking on things, they're scanning it and they're like, oh yeah, I do wanna dive into this and stay longer.

[00:00:17] That is the goal. So if you've ever felt intimidated by writing blog posts or you just feel unconfident in writing them, period and wanna read that, nobody's gonna wanna read them. This is where you're going to want to start.

[00:00:33] Also stay tuned until the end because I'm so excited. We have our very first listener question that we get to play, and then I'm going to respond to, I am so, so excited for this. Thank you so much for calling in, and I wanna hear from more of you guys. So if you have a question about literally anything at all.

[00:00:56] Hopefully content creation related, but I mean, we'll see where it goes. Um, please, please call in. It's super easy. Just head to the link in the description below. It's Thrive Together blog slash ask Bree, and you can record a question for me, and then I get to answer it here on the podcast. I'm so pumped.

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[00:01:31] So how do we write blog posts that people actually read? So this is part four in our blog series. You guys have been loving these episodes. The downloads on these are so high. I am really excited about this. So if you missed any of the previous episodes, we'll link them all in the description for you or just kind of click back and you can see them in your feed as well.

[00:01:53] So we have covered choosing your platform, creating a content plan and driving traffic, but that thing that I hear often is just not feeling super confident in your writing. Let me tell you this, as we are diving into this conversation, you do not have to write a beautiful. Essay type of blog post, okay?

[00:02:19] This is not English class. You are not writing anything for a master's thesis. You're not even writing anything for a magazine, okay? This is for your blog. We want this to sound authentic. We want it to have your voice. Does not have to be perfect. Okay, so let's just clear the air there, but what I'm gonna walk you through are the things that will make it a lot easier for your audience to read the entire blog post, because if they encounter just a huge wall of text.

[00:02:52] It's very hard to get them sucked into reading because it's not a book, right. It's not, a paper, right? That they're having to read for anything. Right. It's something that they're wanting to read for leisure, to learn something, or to be, be. Maybe told a fun story, right? If it's more personal, but they don't wanna read a huge block of text.

[00:03:14] So we're going to talk about how to really format a blog post in order to make it so people are sticking around and reading the entire thing. And for that, we are gonna kind of go back to English class. So remember how when we were younger, yay, back in the day, we had to outline. Papers, right. And they had to have all the fun Roman numerals is what I remember of like I being the main topic and then A, B, and C being the sub points under that.

[00:03:44] And then one, two, and three being the sub points under each of those. And then it would start all over again. Right? Until you were done outlining your entire paper. We wanna structure our blog posts in a similar way. Now, I am not saying you have to go through and do all the Roman numerals and do all of that, but when you think of it in that way, it's going to make it a lot easier for you to make sure that you are delivering the content that you want to in a way that is going to be super easy for your audience to read and absorb.

[00:04:12] So we wanna make sure that we're having easy to scan content, okay? We want a clear structure. And the other thing that we want is visible breaks. So, like I talked about, we don't want a huge block of content, just text after text, after text, right? So we're gonna break that up in a few different ways.

[00:04:33] We're gonna break it up with hierarchy with those H one, H two H threes. That probably just sounds like I just said mumbo jumbo if you have not had a blog yet, but I promise it's super easy and will make sense. Basically it's like title subtitle. Okay. So think of like your book title and then the chapter, and then maybe there's a different section inside of the chapter.

[00:04:55] The other way that we can break up those walls of text is going to be white space and opt-ins and pictures. Okay, so we're gonna do a lot of really fun different things and this is where you really, blogging for me is fun. It's fun to like lay things out and be creative and make sure it's a really enjoyable experience for anybody that is gonna read a blog post.

[00:05:22] And I think this really talks to creatives in general, so my background. Is in graphic design. And so I am very much focused on like the visual aspect of something, but I think that goes for content creators in general, right? Like it's why we promote flow desks as what we wanna use for our email platform because of how it looks.

[00:05:42] It's why we spend so much time editing our photos and our videos and making sure that it looks a certain way and transitions a certain way because we want it to have visual appeal. It's the same exact concept when it comes to writing a blog post and formatting it. So let's talk about how to structure so people wanna read them and stay until the end.

[00:06:02] Okay. And the very first thing is going to be, is it scannable? So we need to be able to use clear headings, subheadings, we wanna break text up into short paragraphs. Not huge, huge chunks of text. Using bullet points and numbered lists are. Wonderful. And then we can also bold important parts. Like you couldn't do that in an English paper, right?

[00:06:29] There was no, like, this is really important. I want somebody to make sure they read this part, but your blog, your rules, so you can 100% do it in a blog post. And then we're gonna add whitespace, like I said, so that way the page just doesn't feel too crowded. So the test for this is if someone scrolled through your post in five seconds.

[00:06:52] Okay. They click on it, they're scrolling to kind of determine if they want to read it or not. The test is if you do that test with your blog post and you scroll, would somebody want to read it? Odds are you could probably make it a little bit better, right? Or maybe you're a pro, and I don't even know why you're listening to this episode, okay?

[00:07:11] But I'm guessing that you're here because it could lose a little bit of work, and you need a few tips.

[00:07:17] So what we're gonna do is we're going to talk about headings. So headings is that H one, H two, and H three. And I'm going to tell you exactly what that means and why they matter. Okay? So this is important for your audience because it's going to make it easier for your audience to read a lot of text. H one, H two, H three.

[00:07:38] Those headers are also going to signal to Google what this blog post is about and why Google should put your blog post up higher in the rankings. Okay? So it is twofold and it is going to be beneficial across the board. So that's why we wanna kind of understand when do we use them and how. So the best practice is to use one H one per post.

[00:08:03] So what I mean by this is whenever you are in WordPress or in whichever platform you're using, you will start to type and it's usually. Designated as like, oh, this is paragraph text. And then you'll see a little dropdown. Typically it's like already said at H one, and you can like select your text and choose it, change it to H one.

[00:08:22] You're gonna notice immediately visually that it looks a bit different. Right? It's usually bolder and bigger text. And then you'll see when you click on that, oh, I could make this H two, H three, H four. It's not just to look different visually. Okay. So it is, but it is also to determine the structure and the.

[00:08:41] Way that your blog post flows and what it signals to Google, not just for pretty, okay. So it is really important. So that is why make sure that you're only using one H one in your blog post. Don't like if you were like, oh, what? I really love how that looks. You can go and change the appearance of things in the backend, but only use one because that first H one is what tells Google.

[00:09:06] This is what the blog post is about. This blog post is about the world's best chocolate chip cookies. Okay? So we wanna make sure we aren't confusing it with anything else. We want to send the traffic to that.

[00:09:21] Now H two. Think of this as your main sections or think of it as like, okay, these are the chapters in a book. Okay, so what are the main sections in your blog post? Those are going to be your H two. Now, when I say this, you never wanna make a paragraph an H two, right? This is truly a title. It is only a few words, a short sentence that you will ever use the h designations for. Okay? You will never use this for more than like a short sentence for a title of something. And this goes for H two, H three, H four, H five, h, h six, however far down you go for, for all. Just peace of mind. You can really write probably 99% of your blog posts using only H one, two, and three.

[00:10:14] Okay, we're gonna keep it very simple. I'm not even gonna talk about what to use those H four five and six four because again, we're not writing super technical jargony stuff. And if you are, then just think of that as like you can just go further down in your outline and outline all the tiny little pieces of it.

[00:10:33] But for the most part, we only need one, two, and three. So H two is gonna be your main sections. Think of them as your like chapter titles, those main parts of your blog post. And then H three is going to be subsections to order things under your H two.

[00:10:50] So this is going to create a clear flow in your blog post that it's going to be really easy to follow for your audience. It's also gonna help with SEO for Google because Google is going to crawl these blog posts and really look. At those different hierarchies, the different H one, two, and three to really see, okay, what is this article telling me about and is it something that I want to make sure a lot of people are seeing?

[00:11:17] So common mistake that happens with writing blog posts. Okay, and maybe you kind of clued into that when I was talking about like visuals and making it look pretty. So a common mistake you may have been making is only using bold.

[00:11:31] So like, okay, I'm going to manually change this text to make it bold and make it stand out and make it look like a header without actually giving it the code to say this is an H one. And when we are missing that part, it may, you know, look more appealing to your audience and that's good. However, you're missing that crucial piece that's telling Google, Hey, this is what this is about.

[00:11:58] This is why you wanna send more traffic there. it's not actually helping with the structure or with SEO in the long run.

[00:12:06] So let's put all of this together. Okay. So with all of those different headings, and then with this idea of making it more easy to read and scannable and not overwhelming, how we're going to format our blog post is we're going to start with that introductory paragraph. Okay? And in that introductory paragraph, you wanna make sure that you have the keywords in there that you are wanting to rank for.

[00:12:32] You're gonna use H one for the title of the blog post, and that first paragraph in that introduction really needs to hook them in so that way they'll want to read more. Then what you're gonna do is use your H twos to organize the main parts that you want to cover. So if there's steps or topics, that's what you wanna kind of go in and outline for yourself.

[00:12:56] And I really do find that when I outline a blog post, it makes it a lot easier. It really helps me to organize my thoughts to make sure I have. Everything out that I want to tell the reader that I'm not missing anything. So I do like to go in and kind of plug in like those sections and be like, okay, first I'm gonna talk about this, then I'm gonna talk about this, then I'm gonna talk about this and I'm gonna end with this.

[00:13:19] Cool. And let me make those, the H two, and then I'll plug in my paragraphs in the middle. Okay. So. If you need to go even further into something, you can use h threes to break down certain sections. So let's say for example, you're writing a blog post on creating a container garden. Okay? So you could have one topic being about filling the garden.

[00:13:42] Um, what do you, what do you fill the garden with, right? You make this beautiful container garden, but then it needs not just like the flowers or the vegetables, but it needs dirt, right? So h threes could be different ways to fill it. So it could be soil, it could be branches, it could be manure, it could be leaves, it could be.

[00:14:02] Whatever, right? Those could be H threes underneath your H two, and then you could talk a little bit about each of those different types of things to fill your container garden with. So that's how you would use those H threes. So then once you have your structure, fill in your paragraphs, try to do two to four sentences for each paragraph.

[00:14:22] Try to again, think of it in terms of like, yes, scanability, yes, you wanna give your audience. All the information, but also you don't want them to have this massive chunk of text. And then when listing steps, make sure you use bullet points or numbers or bold text in there than to say step one, step two, step three, to make it again, a lot easier for you to visually consume.

[00:14:50] And then make sure to utilize white space. Don't cram everything together again. We want to avoid just massive chunks of text. We want to really have it easy to read, and white space allows your eyes to breathe. Sounds weird, but it does. Then after that, you wanna fill in with photos when you need them. I love a good picture or multiple pictures and also an opt-in.

[00:15:20] This is a great place to make sure that you put a cute little form, maybe you're using float desk. Plug that in there and grab some emails from that blog post traffic. Finally end with a conclusion and a call to action. And just remember, you don't have to be. This ultra amazing writer, okay? This is not a place where you're trying to impress anybody with fancy words.

[00:15:47] Often that could even like turn them away and be like, whoa, this is just, this is not even sounding like something I can read right now. It's too much, right? You're trying to teach them something. You're trying to show them something and you're trying to be their friend, and if you are trying to impress an English teacher.

[00:16:07] In your blog post, that might not be the best thing in English majors. Please don't come after me here. I know you're amazing writers, but I'm just saying for the average one of us who did not excel in creative writing, I promise you can write great blog posts that people are going to want to read.

[00:16:25] So here's your steps. Okay. Now that you're ready to go and tackle your next blog post, you are going to research your keywords. I'm gonna say it again. Research your key words. Okay? We talked about this and how to get traffic, so make sure you go and listen to that episode. If you missed it, then you're going to outline, then you're gonna write.

[00:16:46] Then you're gonna insert your images and opt-ins, and finally just review it yourself. For Scanability, is there any place where it's like, oh my gosh, this is like five. Paragraphs that are huge and I've been scrolling forever without white space and it's too much for me to read, then that means it's probably also too much for your audience to read as well.

[00:17:07] So if you want help with this, help with growing your blog, then come and join us over inside Bold fluence. Okay? We have so much information over there to really help you grow your blog, to monetize it, and also to monetize other income streams. You're gonna get coaching, you're gonna get community support and everything you need for your creative journey to really see.

[00:17:33] The most success in 2026, because it is like my mantra this year is that I want everybody to make a crap ton of money. Okay? That is what I am so passionate about, and with recent world events, it has just made that passion and go up even higher. I want you to make so much money that it is not even a concern anymore, that you can go and.

[00:17:59] Do whatever you wanna do. Your family is safe. You are safe, you feel secure, you feel happy. You're able to show up as the powerful person that you are. That is what I want for you this year. Okay? Bold Fluence is where we are going to help you do that. So come join us over there.

[00:18:17] The link is in the description below or Thrive together blog slash bold fluence. Alright now. At the beginning, we have our first question from our listener. Let's tune in.

[00:19:30] Okay. Wix versus WordPress. Alright, Sabrina, I'm gonna send you an episode and link it for you guys in the description where I really dove into all of the different blogging platforms. But here's the thing, when it comes to Wix versus WordPress in particular. Wix is really missing a lot of the deep SEO control and that deep customization that you're able to have with WordPress.

[00:20:14] So. My answer to you is also in the form of a question. Is blogging something that you are wanting to be this long-term plan where the goal is that it is generating 5K plus revenue months for you automatically through ads. If that is the case, then your SEO game is going to have to be on point, and not only just in your blog post, but throughout your entire website.

[00:20:44] And so if that's the case, I do recommend starting to look into a self-hosted WordPress site. It is gonna be a little bit of a learning curve. I think probably the most, that you're gonna have to deal with there is learning a new way to customize things. Because with Wix it is super easy for you to like, make it look a certain way.

[00:21:08] WordPress unfortunately does not have that fun drag and drop element that you're getting with Wix. However, there are lovely themes out there that you can purchase to really make it look a certain way. You can also usually get them to be installed by the creator. You can pay them a little bit more and they'll install them for you, which takes a lot of that pain point out of it.

[00:21:34] And what you're gonna find that in the long run is that WordPress really does have endless customization opportunities. WordPress is used not only by bloggers and creators, but I mean it is used by some of the biggest powerhouse websites. Out there, and that's because it is like this open source framework where anybody can use it.

[00:21:56] You just have to have it hosted on a platform. We use psych round. We have also really loved big scoots, and so there's a lot of different hosting options out there. We'll link some of them in the description for you to check out, but long-term, if a blog is what you wanna have as your main monetization stream, or at least be a significant chunk of your income.

[00:22:23] I would consider at some point moving over to WordPress, you're probably fine for now, but just remember like the further you get into it, that means that more that you would have to go in and optimize for SEO at the end. If you wanna chat about this, if. Even more with me. Please hop over to our Facebook group, tag me over there in a post and we can chat more one-on-one over there in the Facebook community.

[00:22:47] Otherwise, hopefully I will see you over inside of bold fluence because we can really dive in deep over there.

[00:22:54] So you guys, that's it for this episode. If you want me to answer your question next on a podcast, I would love to get a message from you. Thrive Together. Blog slash ask Bree is where you can go and do that. We'll link everything in the description below, and also let us know if you are watching over on YouTube how you are liking the format.

[00:23:16] What are you guys. Think of the video. I'm trying to make sure that I'm talking to the camera and talking to my mic correctly. So let me know what you guys think. Alright, talk to you guys soon. Bye.

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