The best bloggers typically conduct hours of research each week for their blogs. They reference past blog posts, stats, videos, and anything else that will strengthen their content.
Not only does research strengthen your content’s value, but the right research will also set you up for SEO success. Search engines like when you link to authority sites within your content.
However, conducting research is easier said than done. Even with our knowledge, we can’t insert links anywhere we please without copying and pasting them first. We also have to find those links.
There are plenty of ways to conduct research and get those links. We’ll explore just how in this blog post.
#1: Write The Blog Post First
Write the rough draft of your blog post without conducting any research. This is a blog post that you can write as quickly as possible. Laying out the outline will help you with this step. Your focus is to write the blog post as if you weren’t doing any research.
You want to go deep with your first draft and get it to at least 1,000 words. The longer your first draft is, the more room you have to conduct research.
This is the only stage of blogging where I’d recommend anyone gets a ghost writer as you can edit it later with the research. I am currently testing having a ghostwriter perform this part while I sharpen the content during my review.
#2: Examine Each Part
Once you finish writing the draft, the next step is to examine it while thinking of the consumer. Were all stones turned? Did you mention someone or another piece of content at least once in each tactic or portion of your blog post?
Don’t examine for typos and things like that. If you find them, great. But the focus is on these questions:
“How can I conduct research to make this blog post better? What am I missing that someone else covered?”
You can also write more content during this stage to cover more ground and provide more room for research.
#3: Create An Organized References Doc
Every week, I add at least 20 links to my References Doc. I conduct research in anticipation for what types of blog posts I will write in the future. As I examine each part of my content, I go back to this References Doc to see which links make sense in the article.
All I do in this References Doc is write the name of the article, hyperlink the title with the actual link, and mention the source.
I don’t want to focus on one source when I conduct my research. I prefer to spread the wealth to provide my visitors with more options.
#4: Mention People
One of the best ways to get people to share your content is to mention them in your content. When I conduct my research, I don’t just insert the link and move on.
I mention the author of the article and a key point that author made. That way, I can contact the author and ask him/her to share the article. People love sharing articles they’re in, and people have used this method on me a few times. It worked then and it still works now.
#5: Use HARO
For the heavyweights out there, HARO will make it super easy for you to mention people AND get them to share your content.
HARO is a website where reporters submit their queries and anyone gets to respond. With HARO, people have landed themselves on places like Forbes, ABC, The Huffington Post, and much more.
You as a blogger can also submit a query for your latest piece. As you get more people to submit their responses, you can pick some people who would be a great fit for your upcoming blog post.
By mentioning these people in your content, you do the following:
Make your blog post longer
Provide more value
Know a bunch of people who will definitely share your blog post when it goes live
That last one is powerful. If you publish a blog post every day and mention an average of five people in each blog post, that’s 1825 people who will almost definitely share your content each year. That number exponentially grows as their audiences decide to share your content as well.
In Conclusion
Conducting research for your blog posts is critical to your success. You’ll get your visitors to spend more time on your site, and you’ll attract more SEO traffic.
While research is critical, it’s a big mistake to conduct research while you write the blog post. Each time you conduct research as you write, you take yourself out of the writing flow. You also risk accidentally but habitually finding yourself on a place like Facebook when you should be writing more content.
What are your thoughts on conducting research for your blog posts? Do you have any tactics for us? Do you have a question for me? Sound off in the comments section below.