Components of a Good Blog

Getting Started

Producing a blog post isn't complicated once you know the basics. This article will walk you through the elements of a good blog post. 

A good blog post contains these components:

  1. An engaging title
  2. Text that is at least 250 words
  3. A photo or video or both
  4. A category and a few tags

About Blog Content

Your blog post (blog article) should be at least 250 words long. It can be as long as you want. Most blog articles are between 250 and 750 words in length. 

Most blog articles will be about one central subject and may contain several points. Think basic essay guidelines: a central theme statement with supporting paragraphs.

For example, an article titled "How to Throw a Community Theme Party" will have an intro paragraph followed by supporting paragraphs with subtitles: 

  • Decide on a Theme, 
  • Research Ideas for Activities and Decorations, 
  • About Vendors and Entertainment, 
  • Planning Ahead, and 
  • Sample Themes.

A blog article on a landscaping website about staking trees may include paragraphs on which trees need staking, how to stake a tree, and practices to avoid (for example).

Put Images Into Your Blog Post

What's a Good Image?

Adding good images to blog content makes a blog post more attractive to readers. A good image is:

  • relevant to the blog topic (intentional)
  • interesting
  • informational
  • sharp; it has high enough resolution to be clear and crisp (not blurry); consider images that are under 1 MB in size for ease in uploading. Images of pixel size 640 x 427 or 1280 x 855 usually work best.

Where to get images? 

There are many photo sites that contain a huge array of images. 

  • Free photo sites include Pixabay , Unsplash , and Pexels.
  • Shutterstock is a well-known provider (paid) of stock photographs, footage, and editing tools
  • Google Images has free photos. To find Google photos that are free to use, follow these steps:
  1. Search for your image on Google ("ferris wheel images") 

  2. Click on Advanced Search under Settings.

  3. In the Advanced Image Search screen that opens next, go down to the Usage Rights filter at the bottom. From the drop-down menu, select "free to use or share, even commercially." Click on Advanced Search in the blue box.

  4. This will bring up all images that you can legally use for free on your blog post. Simply download them and add them to your blog post.

Adding Video

You can also put videos on your blog post. Get videos for free from YouTube or Vimeo.

Check out the information at Material.io for a great education on imagery principles and usage.

Menus, Categories, and Tags

You want visitors to be able to find your blog posts. To ensure this, add your blog page to your website menu. (We show you how to do that in a separate article.)

You will also want to create a category and tags for your post. You'll add these on the backend of your website, in editor mode. We'll show you how to do that in the article called How to Post a Blog Article on Your Website.