That’s been a question I’ve typed into search engines a million times. Some other questions include:
1. What are the most popular blogs?
This one comes with lots of head scratching. Like the title question, it leaves a lot to be desired. You end up with thousands of pages on how to create a blog on a variety of blogging services, which ones are best, and which ones you should give money to. If you’re like me, that’s not what you want to know.
You also don’t want to know which celebrities have the most popular blogs, mainly because they’re all on Tik Tok or Instagram anyway, and you may not care about that particular celebrity. I’m not looking for any of that.
When I’m online, I’m either researching something for a project or looking for recipes. If it’s not either of those, you might find me researching my ancestors or reading about some obscure topic that nobody cares about. Which leads me to another question I’ve searched for.
2. What do people want to read about?
That’s a tough one because we don’t all have the same interests. We don’t all have the same passions. I don’t have one single passion that guides me through life so the results I get, which generally revolve around answers that are addressed to question one tend to infuriate me.
I have titled this post what I have because the question remains unanswered, mainly. I have no idea how to write a blog post that gets page views but I do know that the post should be engaging. But that’s a given and heads the top of every article I’ve read.
You see, I’m not a fussy woman, in most things. What to write about, however, stumps me. I could write about the art of writing, but the stories I write are from my imagination. I’m not writing about SEO tools or SEO analysis, I couldn’t tell you what any of that means or if it’s even relevant in post-Covid 19 world. Do people care about search engine optimization now? I kind of think a world left to do nothing but surf the internet probably does care about SEO now, but at the same time, it’s not my passion.
I also don’t want to join the ranks of thousands of others talking about how they’ve made 6-figures this year by doing this one single thing. Or sell tutorials of how to write the steamiest sex scenes you could ever conjure in your steamy, adventure-starved brain as you clothes the door on the real world of politics and, well, reality. Oh, and I haven’t made six figures this year, so that’s a non-starter anyway.
So, how do you write a blog that gets a lot of page views? Might I suggest things from what I’ve learned people are doing now that social-isolation is a global thing.
A. Anything to do with ancestry. It’s becoming popular to get your DNA taken and analyzed for ancestry registration. While people are trying to ignore their boss’s 10th email of the day or trying not to hear their kids having their 150th argument of the day, they’re looking up who they are, where they come from, and the people that came together to make them who they are. I have read quite a lot of blogs about my ancestors and perhaps you’d have an interesting ancestor or two?
B. Anything to do with pets. People have questions, so many questions! Especially about chickens, which I find odd, because I grew up with chickens, with a garden, turkeys, pigs, goats, and everything else.
C. Sewing and crocheting, although most of these seems to be moving to YouTube. I’m camera shy, so you’re not likely to find me hosting a video, unless I don’t actually appear in it. Maybe my hands?
D. Sports. Your team, your passion, your own experience, or lack of. People love it.
E. Politics. But this I mention only for the truly brave. It’s not an area I want to go into, because I’m just tired of arguing, avoid confrontation when I can, and have become a super-hermit. What’s a super-hermit? Someone like me that just wants to be left alone, for the most part, haha. I don’t want to discuss politics with people, but others do. Maybe create a blog where you can argue with people, if that’s your thing?
F. Vacation destinations, places you’re knowledgeable about, all sorts of things that have to do with travel. I’m from West Virginia and the one thing people all over the world know is a song by John Denver. There’s even versions of said song in different languages, and I’ve heard them all. Once people get finished singing those versus at me, they want to know about the area I come from. A lot don’t even know West Virginia exists. They think it’s part of Virginia, and some still insist on saying I’m from Virginia when I’m not. I’ve learned to go with it, though. Anyway, yeah, you’d be surprised what people want to know. Especially writers looking for knowledge about areas they can’t travel to right now. You’d be doing those writers a service!
G. Anything that isn’t in the top results when you ask any of the questions above. I think a lot of the times some of the results we get when we search a question is because people are trying to sell selling ideas. I look up top SEO results and get results on how to optimize SEO. Not what those results are, which tells me that simply writing about SEO is the top result. And if everyone is doing it, how are you going to get your result seen? It’ll be a tag, that’s for sure.
Overall, I think the top way to write a blog post that gets page views is to write about something you know, write it well, and then post it. This post, for example, will probably get very few page reads even with tags, because it’s not about Search Engine Optimization, about how to earn a 6-figure income from home or from writing, and it’s not about writing the same content that everyone else is. It is the start, I hope, to me exploring what I can write that might be of interest to others. We’ll see what tomorrow brings.