Writing a 7500-word Blog Post

Recently, I wrote a 7500-word blog post for UntalkedSEO on a topic related to Dental SEO. You can refer to the post as the complete Dental SEO guide that covers all the basics as well as advanced SEO techniques.

So, what was the writing process like? How did I organize all the information? And how much time did it take to complete?

I will try my best to explain the complete writing process in detail–from researching to writing and editing. I would not be covering the publishing process here, as it’s an entirely another topic to talk about.

Let’s see how I approached it…

1. Research

To be honest, I do not have a fixed process to conduct research. Before starting to write on a topic, I would randomly start looking here and there–google things, read other posts, go to forums, watch some related videos, discuss with my colleagues, etc.

In this case, I read several guides on the subject, went through Reddit and Quora discussions, and brainstormed with my friend Bikash. And the desired outcome of this step was to come up with certain sub-topics that I could cover in the post.

Whatever felt like an important aspect of the guide, I would just note them down in bullet point format. And eventually, it got developed into a powerful outline that looked like this:

One important thing is that my outline is never final; it can be modified if I get a better idea while writing. Because, during the writing process, your thoughts become clearer, and you have a better understanding of how to frame or organize the information.

2. Writing

After I had the basic outline, I got started with the writing process. It took me several hours (split through 2-3 weeks) to complete the writing process.

And one thing I have trained myself to do while writing is, start from the body first. I never start by writing introductions. The flow looks something like this:

1. Body
2. Conclusions, and then
3. Introductions

But, why?

I believe introductions are critical for the readers to stay interested in reading the entire post, and you should give proper time and effort to write introductions. So… when you spend hours writing the body, again, your knowledge and grasp of the subject becomes stronger, and you are able to form better sentences and ultimately write better introductions.

Some writing guidelines that I always sub-consciously follow are:

• Keep the spell and grammar checker turned off while writing
• Write simple and shorter sentences as well as paragraphs
• Always organize information into headings, from the start—H2s, H3s, H4s, and sometimes even H5s
• If in doubt, read others’ posts on the topic to look at it from a different perspective
• Add markers where I think an image can be added in the final published version

For the dental SEO guide, the first draft was around 8500 words and was around 33-35 pages in Google Docs. And as I mentioned earlier, it took me hours to write that.

3. Editing

I always start the editing process the next day, after finishing the first draft. That way, I can skim the article with a fresh perspective and understand if it still satisfies the search intent that it was supposed to, initially.

For the guide, I turned on the grammar checker and there were hundreds of spelling and grammar mistakes. I would go through each and every highlighted phrase and try to correct it. Believe me, it’s a time taking and tiring process.

After going through the guide once, I sent it to my friend Bikash, and he went on to read the whole article and suggested a few changes in the article that I reviewed and implemented.

I went through the guide line-by-line once again, and the final version was ready. It came out to be around 7500+ words and 28 pages in Google Docs.

In fact, here’s the link to the final draft of the dental SEO guide. It’s already live on UntalkedSEO, though.

After that, it was time to take screenshots and create infographics for the post to be published. I will be covering the publishing part in a future post.