How to become a better writer
Content is essential for SEO as Google reads and understands the content. And, reading and understanding content is easier when a text is well-written. Both for humans and Google. Some people are blessed with great writing skills, but others are struggling a bit more. However, if you’re bad at writing now, that doesn’t mean that you can’t get better at it! There are many aspects to a good blog post that you can learn to do well.
In this blog post, I’ll share 5 tips that’ll help you become a better writer.
1. Preparation is everything
Especially if you’re not an experienced writer, you should always start with proper preparation. And, proper preparation means that you have to think a lot. Think about questions like: why am I writing this article? Who are my readers? What do I want my readers to know, understand, or do after they have read my article? What’s the topic of the article? What is the main message I want to send to your audience?
Read more: Preparing your blog post »
2. Structure, structure, structure
You should always make sure that your text has a good structure. That’ll make all the difference for your audience (and for Google for that matter). If paragraphs follow each other in a logical order, it will be much easier to grasp the main message. Think about the different things you want to discuss in an article. Think about what order you should address these issues. And, then write that down. Write a few words about every paragraph you’d like to write.
Structuring your text means helping your reader grasp what your text is about. Help your reading by adding subheadings and images. Make sure paragraphs aren’t too long. And, make sure that you use transition words.
Keep reading: Practical tips for setting up a clear text structure »
3. Write short sentences
Don’t write sentences that are longer than 20-25 words. If you’re not the best writer (yet!), make sure that you write short sentences. Longer sentences are just so much harder to read. People are capable of handling 20 to 25 words in their minds. If you write sentences longer than that, people need much more cognitive power to digest it. In order to truly understand, your audience will need to reread sentences or read at a much slower pace. Above that, writers tend to make more grammatical mistakes as sentences become longer. For every writer that is starting, my advice would be: make those sentences short and sweet.
Short sentences are just one aspect of readability. There are some other things you can do in order to make a text easy to read. Try to limit your use of passive voice, write short paragraphs, and make sure to use transition words.
Read on: 5 tips to write readable blog posts »
4. Add examples and little stories
Adding examples, fun facts, and little stories to your article will make it much more appealing for your reader. Using stories in an article may sound daunting for many writers because it might seem like next-level writing. But adding examples is an excellent way to make an article nicer to read. If you’re writing about a product, make sure to add some user stories or give examples on how people use the product. Examples help people to understand what you mean and make your text more fun to read.
Keep on reading: What is storytelling and why should you use it? »
5. Round things up!
Try to get back to the main message of your text in your conclusion. That’s a way of rounding your text up. It’ll make it more probable that the message of your text will resonate with your audience. If you use an example in your introduction, try to use that same example (slightly different is the best) in your conclusion.
Read more: Obtain an attractive writing style! »
Conclusion
Everybody can learn how to write better. Everyone can improve their writing skills. You just need a little practice. Start with making sure to write readable texts. The Yoast SEO readability analysis will help you to achieve that. We’ll give feedback and make sure your sentences aren’t too long, that you’re using transition words and you’re not using too much passive voice. The feedback will improve your writing for sure! Combine our plugin with some effort on preparation and structuring your text and you’ll be drafting great content in no time. Good luck!
Keep reading: The ultimate guide to content SEO »
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Hi Marieke,
As a new blogger, I have learnt that writing good content is most important and it plays a big role in search engine optimization. This results in better traffic from Google search.
As per some experts an article must be of 2000-2500 words (minimum). Your article is always short and sweet. Does it really matter to create a long content?
Thanks,
Jeangam Kahmei
Thanks for all tips and after reading this article I realize that I am using sentence more than 20 words. Now I am going to avoid long sentences in my blog post.
Great to hear, good luck!
Totally True!!! you perfectly highlighted the important areas. apart from these factors good quality images that are inline with blog content also play a vital role. Thanks for information
It is such a brilliant blog for that person who wants to write but can’t able to write attractive or impressive. I was searching for this type of blog which helps me during writing. Because I am very fond of writing but can’t write impressive. But after reading this blog I got many points that can help me to improve my writing skills. Thanks a lot for giving me this suggestion.
Really good post but sometimes I feel a lack of motivation to write content. Please help me for seo my site not ranking 2 yers ago
Hmm!! Well Explained But here a Question Arises, i have also studied it somewhere that use of useful keywords according to the topic attracts people more and engage their interest well! I would say to give your opinion on this Thanks!
Hi Marieke , Great Valuable post. However I would like to add a point in your attention. Many blogger just start writing about their idea without thinking about the headline. Headline is one of the most important part of writing any post or article. If you don’t have a strong headline many people will ignore the article, no matter how good it is.
If you just go to grocery store you will see a lot of magazine with Strong headline like ‘How to lost your belly in 15 days’. As from headline it attract the attention because it is strong!! But it is impossible to lose belly in 15 days, but it demonstrate how strong and effective it could be, if used properly. Thank You
Really good post but sometimes I feel a lack of motivation to write content. Please suggest me some techniques that help me to keep getting motivation for writing content.
The plugin is a real deal! Thanks for sharing.
The tip about posting some article that is relevant to the latest blog post on the Facebook page like a good idea.
Thank You For Sharing…
Hey!
Thanks for those tips.
I’m new in SEO world and I want to learn a lot of things. I just started with my website and next step is create a great and usefull content to my website.
Thanks :)
A good writer always is the king of the content. A good write assemble their mind thoughts into words on paper,
Thanks for the tips.
How many articles should I publish per week for having a good rank?
Great post, simple and valuable for us. Thanks for this article posting here I also use a yoast SEO plugin. Yoast SEO plugin is very helpful for SEO keywords ranking in search engine
Thank you for the tips! Content writing is something I really struggle with.
Great post, simple and to the point. The problem is does it work for seo? We all know that google loves content. So wouldn’t long sentences and essays 1000 words long be best? I am not sure.
Thanks for the tips. I’m quite new in digital content marketing and still learning to become a better writer. Yoast really helps and perhaps I can rank better from time to time at least in my country… thanks again.
I think relevancy and authenticity are the two major things that are responsible to make you a better writer. It not as easy as it seems to become a writer. You need to understand the psychology of readers before writing anything.
Thanks for this article. I already installed your plugin.
Text is commonly written to communicate information to a specific audience, so one fixed system for evaluating every webpage is not practical. A medical doctor writing a blog for his colleagues on a new heart valve replacement procedure will be very different from the blog written by the same doctor for his patients. The text for every webpage should be judged in terms of the specific audience that the webpage was written for. This is not done today by Yoast or Google, so how can this disparity in grading the quality of written text be eliminated?
Hey guys,
Great article and good tips! Just a little heads up; there’s quite a few grammatical mistakes in this text and I think you’d probably not want that in a text about writing ;)
Hi Iris,
Thanks for your kind words! Something weird happened and the edits that we made before publishing didn’t save correctly.
We’ll look into this right away! Thanks for noticing.
Hanneke
Hi, I am also using yoast plugin for my travel blog website. It is really awesome and easy to optimize as SEO.
Hey, I am using your plugin it is very useful and I optimize it as per your recommendation. But then also not getting traffic.
Hi! There are several things that can cause this. You could give this post a read: https://yoast.com/post-ranks-but-no-traffic/
Hope it helps!