9 Blogging Tips and Tricks to Skyrocket Your Content [and SEO] In 2022

A lot has happened in the digital world in the past few years. Businesses around the world went online, new formats and approaches took over, and suddenly, as if overnight, everything got digitized.

There’s one thing, however, that’s always been effective for business and will remain so in the foreseeable future.

And that is blogging.

Content is the heart of every marketing strategy and is essential for building your image and reputation.

In this article, we highlight the top 9 blogging tips and tricks on how to skyrocket your website content in 2022.

Some of them are evergreen rules in the industry with a fresh twist, while others cover the hottest blogging and SEO trends, and how to successfully implement them.

Still not sure you need a business blog?

Well, it’s no secret that if managed and optimized properly, your blog can become your prime channel for lead generation. It can also boost your SEO branding, organic traffic, and conversions.

And moreover, quality content can build trust in your brand.

It’s estimated that businesses with an active blog produce 67% more leads per month than those that don’t regularly maintain one. And a recent survey reports that 41% of B2B buyers review at least 3-5 blog articles before contacting a salesperson.

So how do you make sure readers choose you, over the 31.7 million other bloggers in the US?

to stand-out.

Here are the best blogging tips and tricks for 2022:

1. Invest In Video Content

You may get bored with everyone talking about video and its superpowers, but that’s because it really works.

A survey of marketers shows that 88% of businesses who invest in video marketing have a satisfying return on investment (ROI) and will continue to use it. In addition, 93% of those surveyed admit they have acquired new clients through video content distributed on different channels.

Video can have many benefits for your blog and introduce visitors to your business. If your content is valuable and engaging, the audience will spend more time on your site.

At the same time, 74% of customers report that a brand’s video has positively influenced their intentions when buying software and apps.

This means it can also assist in boosting your conversions, lead generation, and customer retention. In addition, it could potentially reduce your customer support inquiries and help users get to know you better.

The best strategy for incorporating video content on your blog, of course, depends entirely on the nature of your business. But as with any other type of content, it’s best to make it about the information you already have that can be useful to your viewers.

Video content should balance between what you want to share with your customers and what they really would like to see.

Here are some examples for different industries and business profiles:

• SaaS enterprise. Start with making video-tutorials about using your product – account settings, new features, FAQs, etc.
• eCommerce website. Feature video reviews of your products, industry-related interviews, shopping trends, opinion videos, etc.
• Dev company. Make videos about new releases, explain new updates, make tutorials about using your software, etc.
• Restaurant. Shoot a blog series about some of your recipes, show customers where your fresh-produce supply comes from, make napkin-folding tutorials, etc.
• Delivery company. Record your parcel processing steps, make tutorials, for example, on gift-wrapping or how-to pack fragile items.

These are just a few examples to show you that for every business blog there are topics that will engage customers and promote products and services.

Here are some practical ideas on how to produce video content on your blog:

Turn Your Articles Into Video

Repurposing your content is the easiest way to start. You can use graphics, animation, video templates, etc.

Turning your articles into video is not that hard, no matter your skill level. There are many free and paid tools available that you can start with such as Lumen5, InVideo, and RawShorts. Most of these have an AI and a database of stock photos and are very user-friendly.

Make Video-Tutorials

People love tutorials. Video-tutorials are something applicable to almost every business and brand, and are highly shareable content.

Making step-by-step video tutorials about your products and services, as well as on topics relevant to your business, shows your customers and blog readers that you care.

It also helps you rank better in the search results and can lead to increased conversions.

Caption Your Videos

Adding captions to your videos is very similar to adding subtitles, but it goes the extra mile.

Video captions include notes on sounds, emotional expressions, and other details that can only be heard. They make your videos more accessible to people with hearing disabilities or impairments, or to anyone who prefers reading to listening.

If you are using WordPress for your blog, you’d be happy to know that since the 5.6 “Simone” update, WP features better video captioning that allows you to upload them within your post or page.

Give Your Brand a Face

You can make your business more recognizable by giving it a face your customers will identify and sympathize with.

Convincing the company CEO or a member from upper management to share videos on first-hand knowledge of your business’ niche can make great content for your blog and social media as well.

You can also provide insights on successful work strategies, product reviews, and company achievements.

Personal videos build trust in your brand, show you as more relatable to your clients, and make your webpage distinctive.

Take as an example our own DevriX CEO Mario Peshev.

2. Make Content More Accessible With Podcasts

Our next blogging tip is to consider podcasting.

Podcasts have become one of the fastest-growing digital media markets with an expected 24.6% CAGR between 2020-2026, as more than 75% of Americans are now familiar with podcasts.

Nearly half of users nowadays listen to a podcast monthly, and the market is not even at its peak yet.

Benefit From Investing in Podcasts for Your Blog

The accessibility of information is the main benefit of podcasts. In this format, customers can listen to your content while on their lunch break, doing chores, running, or while stuck in a traffic jam.

For convenience, you can provide the content of the podcast as both an audio file and written text. This way your content will still be more recognizable for search engines.

Also, including mixed media in your blog post helps your page rate better on Google.

You should also consider using your blog content to launch a podcast – the simplest way is to provide a “listen to this article” option, and use a plugin or other tool to convert posts into audio. The files can be featured on the respective blog pages, as well as uploaded to platforms such as Spotify, Apple music, etc.

If you are willing to go the extra mile, you can start a live podcast show and use topics from your blog.

Ready to make the step?

Read our detailed article on how to convert your blog into a podcast:

How to Convert Your Blog Content into a Podcast [2021 Guide]

Take Audio Blogging to the Next Level

The prime difference between audio blogging and podcasting is the length and the focus of the content. Podcasts are more appropriate for a business blog because they are usually topic-centric, rather focused on a person.

Podcasts are typically longer and offer a deeper insight into a subject.

Depending on how you approach audio content, you can organize your blog listings into a series, or group related content into blocks of information on relevant topics.

Try Different Podcast Hosting Platforms with WordPress Integration

To start a podcast, you need a hosting platform where your audio files will be stored. Hosting platforms have editing and episode managing tools, player, analytics, text and notes, and more.

Some of the best Hosting platforms have WordPress integration with custom plugins, which means you can make podcasts directly from your WordPress website:

• Buzzsprout
• Seriously Simple Podcasting
• Fusebox
• Podlove Podcast Publisher
• Libsyn Podcasting
• Simple Podcast Press
• Blubrry PowerPress

For some awesome examples of the best business and marketing related podcasts, you can check our Best Business and Marketing Podcasts You Should Listen to in 2022 article.

3. Focus on Mobile Optimization

When it comes to blogging tips and tricks, mobile-optimization is a must have one.

Internet users spend most of their time online browsing on their phones. Research shows that 81% of online content reading is done on mobile phones or tablets.

When your pages are not optimized for mobile, your customers might be driven away from your blog and choose an easier read.

Provided you are using WordPress for your blog, it’s a safe bet that you can benefit from responsive design. However, to ensure that everything looks fine on small-screen devices, you should take advantage of the mobile preview and test option.

Here are some tips on making your content more mobile-friendly:

• Don’t use long sentences. Compound-complex sentences are harder to comprehend on mobile devices. The longer your sentence is, the greater the probability your reader might miss something and have to go over it again.
• Make paragraphs shorter. Divide your text into smaller, easier to follow portions. This will make it less likely for your reader to get confused and for information to get lost between the lines.
• Leave enough breathing space. Leave sufficient blank areas to separate paragraphs. This makes the content structure more eye-pleasing and readable.
• High-quality visuals. If the resolution of your images and infographics is low, chances are details will not be clear on mobile devices.
• Use bullets and numbers. Structuring information in lists helps to break up longer pieces of content. It makes information easier to digest.

Another very important reason to invest more effort in your website’s mobile version, is that from as of 2021, Google switched to mobile-first indexing.

All websites that have a desktop version alone will not be shown in search results on mobile devices. Only the content available on the mobile version of pages will be visible and ranked.

This means that if your website is not mobile-friendly, you may lose all of your mobile organic traffic.

4. Benefit From the Newest WordPress Version

WordPress is considered the best platform for blogging.

In fact, it’s been estimated that 64% of all webpages running a blog use the WordPress Content Management System (CMS), and more than 43% of all the websites on the internet are powered by WordPress.

Get the Most of Blogging with WordPress

If you haven’t tried WordPress yet, or had time to test out all it has to offer, now might be the time to remedy that. WordPress is flexible, reliable, easy to use, SEO-friendly, and features thousands of themes and plugins at your disposal.

Furthermore, by regularly updating your CMS to the latest version, you can benefit from a myriad of advantages.

Each update comes with a new default theme and provides cutting edge improvements to the WordPress core, including, but not limited to, more intuitive interface, easier management, more customization options, SEO upgrades, and technical and design improvements according to the latest trends.

All you have to do is to make sure you regularly update your CMS.

Advantages of the Gutenberg Editor

If you’re already using the most awesome CMS out there, make sure you look into the advantages of the latest Gutenberg Editor.

Although a lot of experienced WP users are still a bit skeptical about Gutenberg, there is no denying it brings managing your blog to the next level.

Answering the call for mixed-media content, the new editor focuses on flexibility and personalization. Content elements such as paragraphs, headings, images, video, audio, quotes, etc., are grouped in blocks you can insert, rearrange, and style to your liking.

With the Gutenberg editor, you don’t need to be a developer, a techie or a skilled blogger to make your blog posts unique as managing content is more intuitive.

It is even optimized for mobile, so you can make quick edits on the go.

Moreover, even if you prefer the classic editor and you were quick to install the switch-back plugin the moment Gutenberg became official, it may not hurt to give it another chance in 2022. It’s getting better every day.

5. Answer the Hunger for High-Quality Content

With low-quality content taking over the internet, this is not so much of a blogging tip or trick, rather that a golden rule – create high-quality content.

Since the start of the covid-19 pandemic, online content consumption has, not surprisingly, doubled.

Furthermore, contrary to popular belief, even the attention span of the average internet user has expanded.

About 77% of online users read blogs and now invest more time looking for more meaningful content. At the same time, 67% of consumers report they now investigate their information sources more thoroughly when considering a purchase.

To answer this growing “hunger” for quality content, you need to up your business blog game adding more value to what you are posting.

Create Meaningful Blog Posts

Longer posts have been proven to deliver stronger results, but more words alone do not add value to your content. The era of cheap tricks and keyword stuffing is way behind us, and Google’s algorithms have evolved to recognize meaningful content that matches the user’s search intent.

The best tip here is to not just write for SEO, but focus on the readers instead and create high-quality marketing copy that answers their needs:

• Spend more time writing. To create meaningful content you need to invest more effort in research and drafts. A survey reveals that spending more than 6 hours working on a blog post significantly increases its quality and value.
• Do better research. Composing research-based and research-backed articles increases the credibility of your blog and this, among other things, can boost your Google EAT. So when quoting information, always add links to the studies you derive it from, and make sure that they are reliable and reputable.
• Data-driven content. Your business’ data is your best source of ideas. Analyze it and use it to write on topics you know best.
• Write evergreen pieces. Quality evergreen content will keep bringing traffic to your site over the long run. Of course, you can also cover other topics if they are important to your business, but make sure to also write about things that will stay relevant with time and that your audience will search for.

Although there is no official confirmation by Google, it’s known among the industry that the time users spend on a page is one of Google’s “user experience signals” for ranking. Meaning that if your articles are engaging and of good quality, people do not just leave your page after a quick scan, but stay to read your content.

And this signals Google that your page is relevant.

So keep up the good work, and results will follow.

Focus on Posts Quality

Consider working with an editor. Having a second set of eyes go over your articles is guaranteed to increase the quality of your blog. Most bloggers prefer online tools, but even the most sophisticated AI is not as good at comprehending the subtle details of the written word that a human being can notice.

Also, this goes without saying, but – always double-check names and dates, and make sure your grammar and spelling are correct.

An interesting approach to text editing is reading your article starting from the end to the beginning. Sounds weird, probably, but it really can feel like reading it for the first time. This gives you a new angle and helps with noticing repetitions, typos, and inconsistencies.

Aim for a Personal Approach

Digital users around the world feel that brands and their approaches have not been personal enough in the last few years. The reason probably being that for some companies this was the first time they had to go digital and they had to do it in a short time.

Focusing too much on checking all the boxes in an online strategy means that one might miss the most important thing – your clients’ personal needs.

When creating content for your business blog, think of your buyer personas, what they identify with, and what feels tailor-made to their needs. Research what your customers are searching and write meaningful articles on those topics.

Compile How-to Posts

People use Google to find solutions to their problems, and that keeps “How-to” posts on top of the wave.

Writing quality tutorials on topics relevant to your business will bring you good website traffic in 2022, generate leads, and will continue to help with conversions.

6. Optimize for Featured Snippets

If you are running a website or a blog, you already know that SEO is tough but vital. Alas, you want your content to reach its target audience, so better get down to it and work on all of the 4 pillars of SEO.

If done properly, your efforts are bound to pay in building a stronger digital presence, improving the UX of your website, and attracting organic traffic from the search engine result pages (SERPs).

Among the beneficial SERP features, featured snippets stand out as one of the biggest wins. That’s because they are located above the organic search results and are considered as the “position zero”. Their contents are directly pulled from a page with relevant information, rather than compiled.

You cannot “apply” for a featured snippet or request approval from Google. But actually, what you can do is write quality relevant content, optimize it properly, and do it with a content structure in mind that can get you featured.

Choose the Type of Featured Snippet to Fit Your Content Best

The most common types of featured snippets are paragraphs, lists, videos, and tables. As mentioned, Google doesn’t create the snippets – it uses ready made information that matches the users query and intent.

This means that in order to improve your chances of ranking in position 0, you need to ensure you have properly optimized content on your pages that Google can directly borrow.

• Paragraphs. Paragraphs should be rich in content, to the point, and exclude extra fluff. If your content answers a question, it’s best to give a word-to-word definition that’s objective and unbiased. Sections of up to 50 words or 300 characters usually play out the best.
• Lists. Longer lists are featured more often than shorter ones. The experts’ guess is that they are probably considered to provide more thorough information. Lists of more than 6 items have a stronger performance.
• Tables. Tables are composed of information you include on your page, but, as with other types of featured snippets, Google favors tables that are premade. So if your content is already formatted as a table, the probability of being featured increases.
• Videos. Video featured snippets are mostly similar to regular video results, with the difference that they are shown at the top of the search results, and take up larger SERP property. More often than not, they are pulled from YouTube results, so it’s best to up your YouTube SEO, and, if you directly upload video content on other communication channels, optimize it as well.

Use Long-Tail Keywords

A SEMrush and Brado research shows that one of the keys to successful featured snippets is long-tail keywords. Because featured snippets appear more often as answers to specific queries.

That is why SEO experts believe that it is better to create content around long-tail keywords, expressing certain intent in the sales funnel. That’s also why question-related keywords tend to rank higher in the SERPs.

So if you aim for more specific long-tail words, your chances of success in the featured snippets are better.

Date Your Content

Dating your content also helps. Although many pages prefer to avoid dating their content to make it seem more relevant and evergreen to users, from an SEO perspective, it’s a plus.

Google favors recently dated content and ranks it higher. Most featured snippets are from date-stamped pages with information updated not longer than 3 years ago.

Featured snippets are intended to provide quick answers and solutions. For this to happen the information they show has to be valuable and up-to-date.

You can get around this by updating old content (more on this later).

Keep the URL Short And Relevant

Pages with shorter, to-the-point URLs are more likely to get featured. Organizing your blog content in subfolders or categories by keywords is also a good idea. You can customize your URLs to make them shorter and more relevant.

7. Work on White Hat Link Building

As you probably already know, links and backlinks are good for domain ranking. Backlinko and BuzzSumo, however, analyzed 912 million blog posts to find out that 94% of online content has no backlinks at all. The same study also confirms that pages with higher numbers of quality backlinks have top ranking with Google.

Even though Google constantly changes and updates its algorithms, outbound links and backlinks remain of utmost importance for a page’s ranking.

Building a white hat SEO strategy contributes to increasing your authority and the referral traffic to your website. It can be achieved by adding relevant and trustworthy links to other pages in your articles and gaining backlinks to your site through guest blogging, partnerships, exchanges, expert quotes, and other types of content.

Good inbound links signal to search engines that your website is credible. Getting backlinks from different referring high-quality domains is better than only having ones from the same domain. So work to establish long term content-exchange partnerships with different businesses and websites, to guarantee better results.

8. Embrace Influencer Outreach and Expert Quotes

When writing for your business blog, make sure to only quote reliable sources and trustworthy research. Referring to industry gurus who are already well-known and respected in your target group community, is also a great way to give your content more credibility.

To promote brand awareness and increase conversions, you can reach out to popular influencers in your field and convince them to endorse your business. One approach is to offer financial compensation to promote your brand.

Return on investment (ROI) for influencer marketing is considered to be reasonably high although it depends on too many conditions to be exactly estimated.

On the other hand, you can put in some hard work and planning, and develop a genuine mutually beneficial professional relationship with an influencer and establish a long-term partnership.

Both approaches are fine and which one you choose depends on your personal preferences and resources.

Influencer outreach is largely underestimated but has proven to lead to more social media shares of your blog posts, and bring immense traffic to your webpage.

Research on content spread shows that in most cases a post going viral is tightly related to influencer shares. Of course, not every blog post has the potential to go viral, but contacting the right person will nonetheless help you reach a broad audience of interested prospects, and a boost in sales is next to guaranteed.

9. Update and Repurpose Old Content

Our last blogging tip consists of a few often underestimated tactics that are guaranteed to deliver results – updating and repurposing.

Old content on your blog should not be underestimated. You should regularly revisit and revise it to check for outdated information. If a customer reads your article and finds out the facts in it are no longer correct, their trust in your brand’s credibility will diminish. Outdated information can hurt conversions and your webpages reputation.

Breath New Life Into Old Content

When updating old articles, first double-check if all the facts are correct. Then you can supplement them with new information on the subject. Use the writing experience you’ve accumulated since you first wrote the article to improve it and add more value.

Once you’ve finished with the corrections, make sure you republish the old article and note that it has been updated to include new information and up-to-date research.

Updated content is proven to deliver strong results, bring fresh traffic to your webpage, and rank better in the SERPs.

For more ways to remove and/or manage the old and outdated content on your website without hurting your ranking, check out our article:

How to Remove Outdated Content Without Hurting Your Ranking

Create Ebooks From Pillar Post and Topic Clusters

If you’ve been posting regularly on your blog for the past few years, you’ve probably accumulated a fairly large amount of publications thoroughly exploring subjects in your business niche from different angles.

Especially if you have organized them in pillar posts and topic clusters.

With some revisions and editing, the content of your articles can be compiled into know-how ebooks. You can then offer the ebooks free to new subscribers or loyal customers, use them to generate leads, and showcase expertise in your field.

Provided you put some extra work into page layout and design, you can sell the ebooks and not only bring prestige to your brand but make profits as well.

You can also repurpose your content into whitepapers, online courses, webinars, videos, and whatever rocks your boat, and may grab the attention of your audience.

Recap

Your blog is a powerful tool and should be maintained properly. Writing quality articles is the top priority of your blogging strategy, but to make it count, your page has to be up-to-date and should follow the latest trends in the industry.

By following the blogging tips and tricks in this article, you can up your content game and gain a competitive advantage.

So start with repurposing some old content, make it all mobile-friendly, add a pinch of backlinks and expert quotes, make a few awesome videos and podcasts, and do it all using WordPress. This recipe is guaranteed to skyrocket your business blog into 2022.

What are your secret blogging tips? Share them with us in the comments below.