According to Ahrefs’ analysis of roughly 14 billion pages in its index, 96.55% of them get zero organic traffic from Google. Note that the data says zero organic traffic and not “low traffic.” That means most blog posts published today are written and published but never found by a single person through search. However, a lot of them think they know how to write a blog post that ranks on Google.
Well, that’s not a reason to give up on blogging. Rather, it’s a reason to stop writing the way most people write. Getting a blog post to rank isn’t about being a better writer than everyone else in your niche. There is more to do, and that’s what this content covers.
This guide walks through the full process. It begins with how to pick a topic Google will actually send people to, how to structure a post so both readers and crawlers understand it, and what to do after you hit publish, since that’s the step almost everyone forgets about.
A Step-by-step Guide on How to Write a Blog Post that Ranks on Google
If you want to write a blog post that ranks on Google, follow the process below.
Step 1: Start With a Keyword and Not a Topic
The biggest structural mistake in blogging is picking what you want to write about before checking whether anyone is searching for it. See, if you want a blog post that ranks, you need to flip that order.
A keyword is simply the phrase your reader actually types into Google. “My Thoughts on Client Onboarding” is a topic, while “how to onboard a new client” is a keyword. The difference is that the latter is specific, phrased the way a real person searches, and you can check whether it has demand before you invest a single hour writing.
How to search for keywords;
Use a keyword research tool (Ahrefs, Semrush, or Google Keyword Planner all work) to check three things before committing to a topic:
- Search volume: Is anyone actually searching this? Low volume isn’t automatically disqualifying for a niche business, but zero volume means zero potential traffic no matter how well you execute.
- Keyword difficulty: How entrenched are the current top-ranking pages? A new or lower-authority site competing head-on with page-one results from established publishers is fighting an uphill battle. Long-tail variations (three or more words) are almost always easier wins early on.
- Search intent. What is Google already showing for this query (guides, product pages, listicles, tools, videos)? That’s your biggest clue for what to build next.
Step 2: Study the SERP Before You Outline Anything
Once you have a keyword, open an incognito browser and search it. You can look at the top 5-10 results and pay attention to four things:
- Format: Are the top results step-by-step guides, listicles, comparison tables, or long-form explainers?
- Depth: Roughly how many subtopics does each top result cover? Note every H2 and H3 in the top three or four results. These headings tell you exactly what Google’s algorithm currently considers “complete” coverage of this topic.
- Content gaps: What do all of the top results miss, gloss over, or handle poorly? Often, they lack a specific example, an updated statistic, or a step nobody explains clearly. All these are gaps you can use for your opening. This is the difference between writing “another post on this topic” and writing the post that finally covers it properly.
- Freshness: Are the top results recently updated, or are they years old with outdated information sitting there because nobody’s challenged them yet? Recently updated pages sitting at the top usually mean this space rewards freshness. So, if you see any stale page sitting at the top, that can mean there’s a real opportunity for a genuinely current version to take their place.
Step 3: Build an Outline That Covers More Ground Than What’s Ranking
With your SERP research done, build an outline before you write a single paragraph of the post itself. Map every subtopic the current top results cover, then add whatever gap you found in Step 2.
This isn’t about hitting a word count. It’s about making sure a reader who lands on your post never has to leave to find the rest of the answer somewhere else. That single behavior is often one of the clearest signals that your content actually satisfied the search.
A solid outline for a competitive keyword usually includes:
- A clear answer to the core question in the first few sentences.
- Every subtopic the current top-ranking pages cover.
- At least one angle, example, or piece of evidence none of them include.
- A logical H2/H3 structure that mirrors how someone would naturally think through the topic.
- A clear next step or call to action at the end.
Step 4: Write for the Reader First, and Structure for Crawlers After
This is where most advice gets the order backwards. Structure and keywords matter, but they’re the packaging and not the content. Write the draft the way you’d explain the topic to a specific person who asked you directly, then go back and apply structure.
A few habits that consistently separate posts that rank from posts that don’t:
- Short paragraphs: You should only have one to three sentences per paragraph. Dense blocks of text increase bounce rate, especially on mobile, where most search traffic now happens.
- Answer the core question early. Don’t make readers (or Google) scroll through three paragraphs before you get to the point. Set the context in a sentence or two, then deliver the core answer.
- Active voice and specific numbers. “Google ranks pages based on relevance” reads faster and more confidently than “pages are ranked by Google based on relevance.” Also, “92% of pages” is more credible and more citable than “most pages.”
- One idea per section. Each H2 or H3 should make a claim, support it, and move to the next one. If a section is doing three jobs at once, split it.
- Cut the filler. Delete “in conclusion,” “it’s important to note that,” and any sentence that could disappear without losing meaning. Every sentence should be earning its place.
If you want a second opinion on clarity, you can run your draft through a readability tool like the Hemingway App. It will flag sentences that are harder to parse than they need to be.
Step 5: Handle the On-Page SEO Basics Correctly
Once the draft is solid, these elements determine if Google and readers correctly understand what the page is about:
- Title tag: Include your target keyword, keep it under roughly 60 characters so it doesn’t get truncated in search results, and make it specific enough that someone would choose it over a competing result.
- Meta description: This should be a concise yet honest summary under about 155-160 characters that includes the keyword naturally. You can think of it as ad copy for your own content. Know that it doesn’t directly affect rankings, but it can impact whether someone clicks your content.
- URL slug: Make it short, readable, and keyword-relevant. /how-to-write-a-blog-post-that-ranks/ beats /post-id-48291/ for both readers and search engines.
- Headings: One H1 (the title), with H2s and H3s that mirror your outline and naturally include variations of your target keyword where it reads naturally.
- Image alt text: Every image needs descriptive alt text, both for accessibility and because it’s one more place Google reads context about the page.
- Internal links: Link to relevant content elsewhere on your site using descriptive anchor text, and make sure other pages link back to this one once it’s published. An unlinked page is much harder for search engines to discover, no matter how good the writing is.
Publishing consistently but still not showing up in search?
It’s usually one or two of these fundamentals quietly working against every post you publish. Get a free content audit from Rankova, and we will show you exactly which fixes would move the needle fastest for your site.
Step 6: Prove You Actually Know the Topic
Google’s quality systems increasingly reward what’s often shortened to E-E-A-T (Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness). In practice, that means a post grounded in real specifics beats a post built entirely from other posts.
Concretely, that looks like:
- Citing real data, studies, or documentation instead of vague claims like “many experts agree.”
- Including specific examples, and not just general principles.
- Naming a real author with relevant credentials, rather than publishing anonymously.
- Being upfront about limitations or caveats rather than overstating certainty.
- Prioritize Answer Engine Optimization.
Step 7: Edit Like the First Draft Was Never the Goal
The first draft is the raw material and not the deliverable. Before publishing, go through the post specifically looking for:
- Sections that repeat a point already made elsewhere in the post.
- Claims without any support. You can either add evidence or cut the claim.
- Paragraphs that could be cut entirely without losing meaning.
- Places where jargon needs a plain-language explanation for a reader who isn’t already an expert.
- A spelling and grammar pass with a tool like Grammarly, on top of your own read-through.
Note that;
How deep this editing pass needs to go depends on your starting draft. If you’re writing the first version yourself from scratch, expect the edit to mostly be tightening and cutting. If you started from an AI-generated draft, expect the edit to be heavier because you need to add the specific examples, real numbers, and the firsthand details a generic draft won’t have included on its own.
Step 8: Publish, Interlink, and Promote It
Publishing isn’t the finish line. Once the post is live:
- Link to it from other relevant pages on your site, and make sure it links out to related content in turn, so it’s never sitting orphaned with zero internal links pointing to it.
- Share it wherever your actual audience spends time. The goal here is to enjoy early engagement, and any resulting links are part of how a new page starts earning trust.
- If the post covers a subtopic that belongs under a broader theme you write about regularly, treat it as one piece of a larger structure rather than a one-off, which is exactly the logic behind building a content pillar instead of publishing disconnected posts indefinitely.
Step 9: Track It and Update It.
New pages rarely rank immediately. Ahrefs’ research found that only 1.74% of newly published pages reach the top 10 for even one keyword within their first year. That’s not a discouraging number. Rather, it’s a reason to treat “publish and forget” as the actual failure mode, and not slow initial rankings.
A simple, sustainable review habit:
- Check Google Search Console every few months for the post’s impressions, clicks, and average position.
- If it’s getting impressions but a low click-through rate, revisit the title tag and meta description first, as that’s usually a click-appeal problem and not a content problem.
- If it’s stalled outside the top 10, compare it against whatever currently outranks it and look for gaps that have opened up since you published
- Update statistics, examples, and any outdated claims at least once a year, and refresh the “last updated” date when you do
Why Most Blog Posts Never Rank (Even Good Ones)
Before the how-to, it’s worth being honest about why the 96.55% happens, because it’s rarely about writing quality.
The most common reasons a well-written post still gets zero traffic:
- Nobody is searching for it: You can write the best article in the world on a topic with no search demand, and it will never show up in anyone’s results because there’s no query for it to answer.
- It answers the wrong question: The post matches the keyword but not its intent. For example, someone searching “best CRM for small business” wants a comparison, and not merely a definition of what a CRM is.
- It’s thin compared to what’s already ranking: If the top 10 results each cover eight subtopics and yours covers three, you’re not in the running no matter how well those three are written.
- It’s invisible to search engines: Broken indexing, a stray noindex tag, or a page with zero internal links pointing to it can keep a genuinely good post from ever being crawled properly.
- It never gets updated: Ahrefs’ own data shows that 72.9% of pages currently ranking in Google’s top 10 are more than three years old. The reason is that freshness alone does not win, but you need to maintain those pages with expansion and accuracy over time.
Common Mistakes When Trying to Write a Blog Post that Ranks
Here are the common mistakes that keep posts from ranking;
- Writing before researching.
- Keyword stuffing.
- Ignoring search intent.
- Publishing thin content to hit a schedule.
- Treating publish as done.
Frequently Asked Questions About How to Write a Blog Post That Ranks on Google
Here are some frequently asked questions about how to write a blog post that ranks on Google;
Question 1: How long should a blog post be to rank on Google?
There’s no universal word count that guarantees rankings. The right length is however long it takes to cover every subtopic the current top-ranking pages address, and whatever gap you’ve identified.
Question 2: Does keyword density still matter for SEO?
Yes, but not in the way it did a decade ago. Modern ranking systems understand semantic meaning and related phrasing, and not just exact keyword repetition. Use your target keyword naturally in the title, first paragraph, and a few headings, then focus on thoroughly covering the topic rather than hitting a repetition target.
Question 3: How long does it take for a new blog post to rank?
Often several months, and sometimes longer for competitive keywords. Ahrefs’ research found fewer than 2% of newly published pages reach the top 10 for any keyword within their first year, which is why ongoing tracking and updates matter more than most guides suggest.
Question 4: Can AI-written blog posts rank on Google?
Yes, if they’re edited to include the specific detail, evidence, and firsthand expertise that generic AI output tends to lack on its own. Search systems don’t penalize content simply for being AI-assisted. Rather, they penalize content that’s thin, generic, or fails to demonstrate real expertise.
Question 5: What’s the single biggest reason a well-written blog post still doesn’t rank?
Usually a mismatch with search intent or a lack of internal links pointing to it. A well-written post that answers the wrong version of the question, or one that no other page on the site links to, often performs no better than a much weaker post that gets both of those things right.
Conclusion on How to Write a Blog Post that Ranks.
If you’ve been publishing consistently and still checking Google Search Console to find nothing there, it’s easy to conclude the fix is writing more, or writing better. Sometimes it is. More often, it’s that the research and structure happened after the writing instead of before it.
None of the steps here are complicated on their own. The whole process is keyword research, SERP analysis, a solid outline, clean on-page structure, real expertise, and a habit of coming back to update what you’ve published.
What separates the 3.45% of pages that get real traffic from the rest usually isn’t a secret technique. It’s doing all of it, in order, on every post, instead of skipping straight to the writing.
If you’d rather have a team handle the research, structure, and ongoing optimization while you focus on the expertise only you can bring to a post, that’s exactly the kind of work we do at Rankova. Get in touch with us, and we will show you where your content has the fastest path to actually showing up in search.
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