If you would say that today’s online marketing ecosystem is dominated by blogs, you would be wrong. Just as wrong as you would be if you said that blogs are utterly useless for online marketing. Blogs are an important part of online marketing campaigns, and they can be especially useful for small and medium businesses that want to increase their visibility in search engine results.

Even though writing a blog post usually isn’t as hard as writing a magazine article, for example, it doesn’t mean business owners can put just anything on their blogs. To get the most out of a blog, the posts need to meet at least the basic requirements of quality blog content. So let’s dive into the very basic elements of a good blog post.

  1. A Good Title

The phrase “click-bait” is thrown around a lot when speaking about digital content. For a good reason, too, because there’s certainly more than enough content out there with the sole purpose of attracting eyeballs and making people click on links to see the content. “Click-bait” refers to images and headlines designed to tickle people’s curiosity and get them to follow a link to view the whole of the content.

While the practice of creating click-bait headlines is sketchy, no one can deny that these types of headlines can attract attention. Why? Because they’re created to cater to people’s preferences:

  • They use numbers because people like to read lists;
  • Use positive and negative emotion because people can identify with that;
  • And use questions because people would like to see answers.

These are the three traits of click-bait headlines you can include in a title without actually creating a click-bait headline. You’re skipping the sensationalism, embellishment, and misleadingness of regular click-bait headlines.

  1. Structure

A good blog post has to be well-structured. It’s important for several reasons, the most important of which are search engine optimization and readability. To be well-structured, a blog post must include:

  • A good introduction

This is what you use to fight for the readers’ attention. An intro should explain to readers what they’re about to read without actually telling them. This achieves by using the intro to explain a problem in a way that will help your audience relate to it, and also announce that the solution to the problem is what the topic of the rest of the article is going to be.

  • Headings and subheadings

Headings and subheadings, use to break up content into smaller chunks. They also help give the readers who prefer scanning over reading an insight into the content of the article, and they are a great place to include keywords.

  • Paragraphs

Walls of text are to be avoided at all costs. There’s nothing that will turn the readers off your content as a big chunk of text with no paragraphs. While the length and the number of paragraphs can vary, they shouldn’t be longer than three or four sentences, and you can put more than one paragraphs under a subheading.

  • Lists and bullet points

When you have content you can present in the form of a list, go for it. People love reading lists, and they are a great way of organizing a blog post.

  1. Images

The longer your blog post is, the more it will depend on images to break the text and give the readers a moment of rest. But even a relatively short post of 300 words should contain an image, an infographic, or some other form of eye candy. People notice images much more than they notice text. And if your skill you can use images not just to attract attention to your text. But to complement it and expand on it.

These basics are just the starting point on your journey to create quality content. They will ensure that people want to read your content, that they’ll be able to read it, and that they’ll have a nice thing to rest their eyes on when reading.