I’m just going to go ahead and say it: blogging is hard.

There are so many moving parts when we’re blogging with strategy in mind, and myriad little details that we need to pay attention to, that it’s almost impossible NOT to leave something out. If we just had a checklist with everything we should do, step-by-step, to skyrocket our blog traffic, this process would be so much smoother.

Well, that’s exactly what I’m giving to you today: a checklist with 6 useful things you need to do to skyrocket your blog traffic! Before you hit that publish button, make sure you cover these 6 steps to ensure that every single blog post you create boosts your blog traffic and gets an insane number of followers, readers, and subscribers.

1) Do your research to find share-worthy content

It’s one thing to sit back and imagine what our target audience wants to read from us. It’s another one completely to take the time to survey our audience, and find out exactly what their pain points, struggles, and desires are. By writing content that addresses those issues head on, our content will strike a chord with our audience, generate more blog traffic, and keep them coming back for more.

Now, when I say survey, I don’t only mean creating a poll and sending it out to your target audience. There are a number of ways you can do your research to find share-worthy and traffic-generating content:

• Create valuable, evergreen content for your blog posts: Evergreen content, also known as pillar content, is content that’ll be as relevant today as it'll be in a week, in a month, in a year, or even in 5 or more years to come. This means that if you write a blog post today, and in 3 years I access your blog, that blog post will help me as much as if I had read it the following day you posted it. Need some ideas of evergreen content you can create? Here are 9 examples of epic, evergreen blog post ideas you can create to boost traffic!

• Look at Google Trends: This goes hand in hand with writing valuable, evergreen content. Search terms, like ‘March madness’ and ‘Christmas cookies’ spike during specific months of the year. To ensure that your blog posts are always relevant, and thus shareable, focus on writing content that doesn’t have any peaks or up and down fluctuations throughout the years. Instead, write content that produces a more linear and steady search result.

• Research keywords with the Google Keyword Planner: You need a Google AdWords account (don’t worry, it’s free) to be able to access the Google Keyword Planner. Once in your account, type in the keyword or keywords of the blog post you’re thinking about writing, for instance, ‘blog post’, ‘social media marketing’, and ‘facebook ads’, and the Google Keyword Planner will sort, by order of relevance, other terms related to that search. You can then include these keywords within your blog post to boost blog traffic, since those are the exact terms your audience uses when searching for this topic on Google.

• Start typing your proposed topic in the Google and YouTube search bars: When we start typing something in Google, it automatically suggests a number of search terms, right? Well, those terms are things that are on the forefront of people’s minds, and have a high search rate at the moment. Since you’re looking for more blog traffic, it’s a good idea to include those exact terms within your blog post, or even dedicate an entire blog post to the topics that pop up.

• Pay attention to the questions that are being asked in Facebook groups, Yahoo Answers, Reddit and Quora: By hanging out where your target audience hangs out, you’re not only able to pinpoint the questions they’re asking, but also how they phrase those questions. When writing your blog post, use the exact terms and phrases that they use, so that when they read your content, they’ll be amazed at how you’re able to get into their head and talk directly to their pain points, struggles, and desires.

• Analyze the kind of content that gets most shares: If someone else has written a blog post that has a huge number of social media shares, it’s safe to say that that specific topic resonates with a number of people and, as such, with your target audience. You can find share-worthy content by using Buzzsumo’s free trial, and typing in what you plan on writing your blog post about, by analyzing Pinterest pins that have the most saves, as well as by simply researching blog posts and videos that have gone viral.

2) Create an attention-grabbing headline and permeate the blog post with subheadings

Just think about it: if a blog post’s headline doesn’t catch your attention, you’re not going to click it, even if the content inside it is amazing. That’s why you need to create an attention-grabbing headline for your blog post that also includes your keywords.

A handy tool you can use to write better blog post headlines is CoSchedule’s free Blog Post Headline Analyzer. It analyzes the overall structure, grammar and readability of your headline, based on the number of common, uncommon, emotional, and power words that you include, to guarantee that your headline drives more traffic, shares, and search results for your blog.

If you don’t know what power and emotional words to include in your headline, make sure to check out Sumo’s extensive list with 401+ ridiculously useful power words to increase conversions. By adding these words to your headline, you’ll automatically invoke emotion and trigger your target audience’s curiosity.

Once you’ve brainstormed some headline ideas, and decide on a champion, your work isn’t done yet. Make sure you plan out your blog post content before you start writing, so that you can break it down into bite sized pieces. The absolute worst thing for your reader to come across is a huge chunk of text without any divisions.

Related: How To Write Killer Blog Post Your Readers Will Love

And that’s where subheadings come in. Writing a blog post for the internet is completely different from writing a novel: we usually have multiple tabs open, and skim through the content on each page. By including subheadings in your blog posts, as well as short paragraphs composed of 5-6 lines maximum, you ensure that they’re easy-to-read and digestible for all readers.

3) Include a call to action in the concluding remarks

Imagine a member of your target audience just finished reading an extensive blog post that you wrote. The natural thing for them to think once they reach the bottom of the page is ‘what’s next?’.

Instead of having them wonder ‘what’s next?’, explicitly state what that is with a call to action. You need to get your target audience to take action so that they get results as soon as possible (remember: you wrote that blog post to address your audience’s pain points, struggles and desires).

Related: 100 Epic Blog Post Ideas For Online Entrepreneurs That Will Blow Your Mind

This will ensure that they view your content as something that’s valuable and useful, which will thus get more shares. Don’t be afraid to ask for comments and shares, point blank! Tell your readers to add a comment on what they plan on doing based on what they just read, to add any additional remarks or ideas, or even tell them to come back to your blog post once they’ve set things up to share the results they’ve achieved.

It may sound simple, but by asking those questions and by including a call to action in the concluding remarks, you’ll lift your target audience off the couch and push them over the fence to take action. At the same time, you’ll hear their perspective on the topic, which will give you fresh ideas of new blog post content to create, and you’ll build a loyal relationship with your readers.

4) Add backlinks to improve your blog post’s SEO

The more time your target audience spends on your