The amount of time you likely pour into the maintenance of your blog would naturally justify your growing need for it to generate you some returns and bring in some income. Consequently, it can become very easy to fall into the trap of constantly seeking to churn out content just to keep up with Google’s encouragement of new and fresh content. You do ultimately want to rank high so that some organic traffic can flow to your blog, but that can often lead to just publishing sub-par content, for the mere sake of staying fresh.

There’s absolutely nothing with targeting specific keywords or key phrases so that your content has a better chance of being ranked high, but amidst all of that, one should not lose themselves to the trappings of chasing high rankings. Often that leads to a deterioration in the quality of the content you publish. To guard against that there are some fundamentals of online content publishing to honour.

Focus on providing value

You could have heard this a million times and it probably still won’t have been enough, but yes, make sure everything you publish on your blog gives the reader some value. Remember that value can exist in the form of the reader having saved a few hours reading your post instead of the time they would have rather wasted doing their own research about the topic you’re presenting. At times it’s not even about jumping on ongoing trends to try and get in on the “hot leads” action. Just think about what frustrates you when you’re looking for some information on a specific topic and you can’t quite find exactly what you’re looking for, or if it takes you a lot longer than what you would have liked.

Finding value

Since the typical blog post is usually only around 500 words, most bloggers tend to focus on satisfying all the criteria for a high search engine ranking, but there’s something more to the 500-word standard.

500 words make for a nice and easy read, much like a first-language essay you might have had to write at school, so it’s about being concise and maintaining the reader’s concentration – keeping them engaged. So how do you find that value which you’d want to pass on to your readers?

It’s a simple matter of going back to how you’d put yourself in the shoes of your reader. Firstly, is the headline captivating enough to suggest that you’re going to cover a topic they’re really interested in? Secondly, is there some information a reader will come away with and be satisfied that they’ve learned something new?

If someone is searching for something specific, like a Long Island Divorce Attorney for instance, the post you’d be writing around that search would likely have information such as where exactly they can find one and for which specific issues they might be seeking to address in searching for said legal professional.

Don’t fall into the trap of relying on click-bait to generate a buzz in your numbers. Those numbers disappear very quickly.