How to write a blog post step by step

Learn how to write a blog post that attracts and persistent used engages your target audience.

We’ve broken down the entire process. To help you achieve your content marketing goals and become a better writer.

Let’s get persistent used started

1. Choose a blog topic idea
First, decide what to write about.

The topic must be relevant to your brand. And interesting to your target audience .

If you haven’t already, create buyer personas like the one below. To better understand your target readers. And what kind of content they’re interested in.

A buyer persona created with the Semrush Persona tool
There are many ways to propose topics:

Check out our list of blog post ideas

Conduct a brainstorming session with your team
Look at competing blogs for inspiration
Ask your audience what they want to read about (on social media or via email surveys).
Perform keyword research (step two explains how)
For a data-driven approach to blog post ideation, try Semrush’s topic research tool.

Click on ” + Enter the domain to find the content on “.

Topic search tool
Enter a broad topic idea. And your country and domain.

Then, click on “ Get content ideas .”

“mountain bike” and an example domain entered chinese in europe into the Topic Research search bar
The tool will provide a number of content ideas.

Those marked with green are already present on your site. While those with the flame icon are trending.

Search Topic “Content Ideas” for “mountain bike”

Click ” Show More ” in each subtopic to see it:

Subtopic Volume: The search volume (average number of monthly searches) for the subtopic keyword.
Difficulty: The topic keyword difficulty score , which measures how difficult it is to rank highly for that keyword.
Topic Efficiency: Measures the search volume of a subtopic relative to its difficulty (higher = better).
Titles: Titles related to the subtopic (with links to the articles)
Questions: Questions and answers related to the subtopic
Related Searches: Queries from Google’s “Related Searches” section
The “Topic Strength”, “Titles” and “Questions” sections are highlighted in the topic search dashboard.
To proceed with an idea, click on ” .. .” and choose one of the options.

The “…” menu opens with the options “Get ideas on this topic,” “Send tasks to Trello,” “Create SEO template,” and “Reject this card.”
Tip: For a more strategic approach to content production, create a content plan . This document lists all the content you’ll be creating over the next few weeks or months. This includes blog posts.

Discover the topics that interest persistent used your audience

with the Topic Research ADS illustration
2. Perform keyword research
Keyword research tells you what people are searching for in search engines like Google.

This is important because adding keywords to your post can help your search engine optimization (SEO) efforts. This means you will rank higher on search engine results pages (SERPs).

Additionally, keyword research helps you identify how to set it up and how much does it cost topics with the most SEO potential. This is important if you are using blog posts to drive organic traffic (traffic not paid for by search engines).

Get started with Semrush’s Keyword Magic tool .

Enter a word or phrase to base your search on. Then, choose your country and click ” Search “.

“mountain bike” entered in Keyword Magic Tool search bar
You will see keywords that include the source term. Or a close variant.

To find relevant keywords for your post, focus on search intent, or what the user is looking for when they search.

The search intent type is listed in the “Intent” column. Here’s an overview of each:

I (informative): Users want to know more about something
N (navigation): Users want to find a spam data specific page or brand
C (commercial): Users want to do research before making a purchasing decision.
T (transactional): Users want to complete a specific action
Keyword magic tool results for “mountain bike”
Blog posts typically rank for keywords with informational search intent.

So, let’s apply a filter for this type of intent:

“Intent” filter drop-down menu in Keyword Magic Tool
To better understand the search intent of a keyword, perform a quick SERP analysis :

Click on the “View SERP” icon in the “Results” column.