How to Write Blog Posts That Rank on Google

I still remember the exact moment I almost quit blogging.

I’d published my 14th post a genuinely useful guide about setting up a home espresso machine and it had 3 views. Two of them were me, checking if it was live. The third was probably a bot.

Meanwhile, some article from 2019 with worse information than mine was sitting comfortably on page one, collecting traffic like it owed nothing to anyone.

That was the point where I stopped writing “for the internet” and started actually studying why some posts rank and others rot on page 7 forever. It took about eight months of trial, error, and a lot of staring at Google Search Console before things started clicking. Traffic went from a trickle to a few thousand visits a month on that same blog, and a chunk of my posts now sit in the top 5 for their target keywords.

None of this is magic. It’s mostly a handful of habits done consistently, plus a few mistakes I’d love for you to skip.

Start by understanding that strong writing alone does not guarantee success.

This was my biggest misconception starting out. I assumed if I wrote well, people would find it. Google isn’t a literature judge — it’s a matching engine. It’s trying to figure out which page best answers a specific question someone typed in, and it uses hundreds of signals to guess.

Writing well matters, but it’s step three or four, not step one. Step one is figuring out what people are actually searching for and why.

Step 1: Start with the search, not the topic

Before I open a blank document now, I open a keyword tool. I’ve used Ubersuggest, Google Keyword Planner, and lately Ahrefs’ free keyword generator, but honestly even just typing a phrase into Google and looking at the autocomplete suggestions and “The “People Also Ask” section can provide a large amount of useful information without any cost.

Here’s what I’m looking for:

• What are people actually typing? Not what I think they’re typing.
• What’s the intent behind it? Someone searching “best coffee grinder” wants a buying guide. Someone searching “why is my coffee grinder clogging” wants a fix, not a review.
• Is there a realistic shot at ranking? If every result on page one is from a massive site like NYTimes or Healthline, a new blog isn’t cracking that anytime soon. I look for “long-tail” phrases — more specific, less competitive — like “coffee grinder clogging with oily beans” instead of just “coffee grinder problems.”

I made the mistake early on of writing about whatever I felt like that day. Passion project, zero strategy. Some of those posts are genuinely some of my best writing and get almost no traffic, which stings, but it taught me the lesson fast.

Step 2: Actually read what’s already ranking

I open the top 5 results for my target search and skim them — not to copy, but to see what they’re missing.

Usually I find gaps like:

• They’re outdated (prices, screenshots, or steps that don’t match the current version of an app)
• They don’t answer a follow-up question a reader would obviously have
• They’re overly generic and don’t include real examples

That gap is basically your content brief. My espresso machine post started ranking once I added a section about descaling with citric acid instead of the usual vinegar solution — something I’d tested myself because vinegar left a smell. That one addition became the section people quoted and linked to.

Step 3: Structure it so both humans and Google can skim it

Nobody reads a blog post top to bottom like a novel. People scan. I write assuming the reader is going to skim first and only slow down when something looks relevant.

A few things that made a real difference for me:

• Short paragraphs. Two to four sentences, tops. Big blocks of text feel exhausting on a phone screen, and most of your traffic is mobile.
• Descriptive subheadings (H2s and H3s). Not cute or clever — literally descriptive, like “How to Descale a Breville Espresso Machine” instead of “The Secret to a Happy Machine.” Google uses these to understand your page structure, and readers use them to jump to the part they care about.
• Answer the core question early. I used to save the “answer” for the end, like I was building suspense. Big mistake. If someone searches “how long to boil an egg for hard boiled,” give them the number in the first two paragraphs. You can explain the nuance after.
• Use bullet points and numbered steps for anything sequential. It’s easier to scan, and Google sometimes pulls these into featured snippets, which is free extra visibility.

Step 4: Write like you’re explaining it to a friend, then edit for clarity

My first drafts used to sound like I was writing a college essay — stiff, padded, trying to sound smart. Nobody wants that from a blog post about fixing a leaky faucet.

Now I write the way I’d actually explain something to a friend over coffee, typos and all, and clean it up afterward. Tools like Hemingway Editor are great for this — it flags sentences that are too long or too complex and pushes you toward plain language. Grammarly catches the small stuff.

One thing that genuinely helped my rankings: cutting filler phrases. It is important to note that” and “In order to” often make sentences longer without adding real value. I use the find function and just delete them wherever I spot them.

Step 5: Add things only you could add

This is the part most guides skip, and it’s honestly the biggest ranking lever I’ve found.

Google’s algorithm (and its human quality raters) explicitly look for what’s called E-E-A-T — Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, Trustworthiness. That first E, Experience, got added a couple years back specifically because there was too much recycled, AI-generated fluff online that technically answered questions but added nothing real.

So I started doing things like:

• Including my own photos instead of stock images (even bad ones taken on my phone)
• Mentioning specific numbers from my own testing — “it took me 11 minutes” instead of “it takes some time”
• Admitting when something didn’t work for me, not just what did

A post I wrote about a budget standing desk includes a photo of the wobble I noticed after three months of use. That single detail gets referenced in comments constantly. It’s the kind of thing a generic content-mill article would never include, because nobody actually owns the desk.

Step 6: Don’t ignore the boring technical stuff

I dragged my feet on this for way too long because it felt tedious, but it matters:

1. Page speed. I moved from a bloated theme to a lighter one and compressed my images using TinyPNG. Load time dropped from about 6 seconds to under 2, and rankings genuinely improved within a few weeks.
2. Mobile friendliness. Check your site on your actual phone, not just the desktop preview.
3. Google now mainly uses the mobile version of a website when indexing its pages.
4. Internal links. Link your new posts to older, related ones on your own blog, and vice versa. This helps Google understand your site’s structure and keeps readers on your site longer.
5. A clear title tag and meta description. Keep your title under about 60 characters and write a meta description that sounds like a reason to click, not a keyword list.
6. Alt text on images. Quick to do, helps accessibility, and gives Google more context about your content.

None of this is glamorous. All of it adds up.

Mistakes I made so you don’t have to

• Chasing keywords with zero relevance to my actual expertise. I once wrote about a topic purely because the search volume looked good. It ranked briefly, then dropped, because the content was thin and I clearly didn’t know what I was talking about. Google’s gotten better at sniffing that out.
• Publishing and forgetting. Some of my best-performing posts today are old ones I went back and updated with fresh info, new photos, and better structure. Rankings aren’t permanent — content ages, and refreshing it works.
• Obsessing over word count. I used to think longer automatically meant better and would pad posts to hit 2,000 words. Readers notice padding, and so, eventually, does Google. Keep writing until you have given the reader a complete answer, and avoid adding unnecessary information.
• Ignoring Search Console. This free tool shows you exactly which queries bring people to your site, what your average position is, and what’s almost ranking on page 2. I check it weekly now. It’s basically a map of where your easiest wins are hiding.

Where this actually leaves you

Ranking on Google isn’t a trick you unlock once. It’s closer to tending a garden — you plant with a bit of research, you shape it with structure and clarity, and you keep coming back to weed and water it.

The posts that took off for me weren’t the ones I wrote fastest or the ones stuffed with keywords. They were the ones where I clearly knew what I was talking about, answered the real question someone had, and included something a reader couldn’t find anywhere else.

Start there, and the rankings tend to follow on their own timeline.
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