Do you want to write SEO friendly articles and are looking for a few tips for that?
Well, this is an art which could take your blog or writing career to a next exceptional level. I will be sharing a few tips for writing SEO- optimized and friendly articles in this article that will help you rank better in search engines.
To begin with you must be aware of the fact that every blog post is like a web page in terms of search engine ranking and you need to optimize each post with specific keywords for better ranking on search engines. Coming up with a SEO-friendly article takes much more than just spraying keywords around your posts, videos, and other forms of content. Therefore when you aim to write SEO friendly articles, there are several things that you should keep in mind.
But before we move any further, let us first understand what is meant exactly when the following phrase is used- write SEO friendly articles.
What does a SEO friendly article mean
SEO friendly article contains the type of content that’s created in a way that helps the search engines rank it higher.
Although some marketers think this refers to your article being stuffed with keywords, this concept has a much wider aspect. It is in reality also a means to help the search engines find, understand, and connect your content to the topic you’re trying to cover.
How to make your content SEO friendly
1.By use of headings and subheadings-
Using headlines and subheadings serves a major role in helping you write SEO friendly articles.
First, it makes your writing skimmable and therefore provides easier readability to your readers. People are more likely to take interest in articles that are easier to read.
The same goes for search engine crawlers. When crawling through your site and reading your article, they’ll recognize your headlines and subheadlines which will help it in better understanding of your content. Also, having headers and subheaders increases the keyword saturation of your article but you must remember not to use this in a spamming and irrelevant way just to game the system.
2. By adding links to your previous content-
One of the ways through which the search engines ranks your content is by the number of backlinks they get. Therefore adding links to your previous content is a must thing for you to do that makes it easy for you to write SEO friendly articles.
A good content always tends to get a lot of backlinks- both external and internal. If you are aiming to drive more traffic and rank your older content higher, then you must never forget to link them to your newer posts. This will help both the search engine crawlers and the users to find the best articles to suit their needs and in better scrolling through your content.
Links to high-quality, reputable websites also increases the validity of your own website. The better the links, the higher your page ranks in the search results. Use of credible sources within the body of your text also creates higher trust in your readers.
3. Make the content shareable-
After you have successfully managed to write SEO friendly articles that are content rich and reader engaging, the next step is to make them shareable. Websites like ShareThis and AddThis make it easy to add social media buttons to your website so that people can easily share your content. This helps in ensuring more engagement to your page and your article reaches out to more and more people.
4. Choose your keywords wisely-
Some marketers or bloggers just prefer to sit down and start writing. They leave the SEO optimization task for the last moment.
But this is not something that should be preferable. To write SEO friendly articles, you must first plan out all the keywords that you want to incorporate in your content and then start writing. This is the standard approach that should be used.
5. Write high-quality content-
The best way to get people to read and engage with your content is to write content in an informative and eye catching manner. Quality is the most important factor than other factors on the list. The quantity of your content holds no value to the readers if your content is of no worth or has no informative value to it.
You must use SEO friendly tools for simplification and improvement in your writing process. There are a lot of free SEO tools available that could surely help you to write SEO friendly articles in a more easier and effective manner.
Related: Top 10 SEO tools for blogging
6. Optimization of your images-
Use of images is an effective way of making your content more eye catching and shareable. You must make sure to optimize the size of the photo without compromising their quality before you add it to your article. Pictures that are too large will increase the load time and hurt the SEO.
There are many tools and apps that could help you in this job like Image resized, PicResize etc. So make sure you optimize images when you aim to write SEO friendly articles.
How to start writing SEO friendly articles ( Guide for Beginners to Pro)
Step 1: Start with your research
Without proper research on the topic you are to write on, you may miss out on a lot of potential points that you could add to your content- the ones that could make some real difference to your own self or to your client in case you are writing for someone else.
To write SEO friendly articles, first you need to determine the following things:
-Keyword to target
-Length of the article
-Type of the article
-Analyze existing articles for the outline
Use a few tools that could help you with research, for example the SEMrush.
Step 2: Plan the type of content: Keyword Search Intent
Put your target keyword in the Google search to see what kind of articles are currently ranking in it. This is that part of the research that will help you understand what kind of article Google thinks is better for such queries. You might notice a few patterns in the search results that could provide you help to write SEO friendly articles.
Step 3: Find the idle Length for your article
You should use a SEMrush writing assistant to identify what is the idle word limit for the article you are about to write on. This will help you to increase your chance for ranking on the first page.
Once you are ready with this data you should manage your time to create an outline for your content. This will again help you to write SEO friendly articles and increase the ranking. You must analyze the top 10 results for your target keyword. You must be thinking that it’s a lot of tasks to begin with but then again, if your goal is to Rank#1 on the search, you need to take these extra steps to stand out. For you are competing with the content of those websites that have been doing this for ages and are already an expert in this field.
Step 4: Search ‘Scout People also ask’
While writing your content, you need to google for your target keyword in the search engine and then go to the section called “people also ask”.
You should then pick the questions that make sense with your article intent and answer them in your article. This will help you to ensure and write SEO friendly articles in a more informative manner because you’ll include the answers of the doubts of numerous readers of your article already in advance, even before they read it in the first place. But you should not stop here as even though you have included the guide to all the queries of your readers in advance, Google keeps on adding query questions after that.
This is one of the smartest ways to ensure your SEO optimized content answers all queries that people are looking for.
After this step, you can start writing and optimizing your article for SEO.
Tips on SEO copywriting
SEO and copywriting are both different words but what do they refer to when they are put together in order to imply a single meaning?
SEO copywriting is all about creation of useful, compelling and valuable content that targets specific keywords so that the readers find your content informative and gladly engage in promotion of your content on their social media platforms. In other words, it is just a technical term and it focuses on how to write SEO friendly articles. The following guide will help you in acing the SEO copywriting hack-
1.Post Title and Meta Title-
The major difference between the two lies in the fact that post title is how your reader sees the title of the post on your website and post meta title is how the search engines show your post in search results. You need to specify both these elements to ensure that you only write SEO friendly articles and not something that is vague in nature.
2. Post Meta Description-
These descriptions play a major role in search engine ranking of your content. By optimizing the meta descriptions of your posts, you ensure that each of your post has the right potential to drive a maximum amount of traffic to your site.
You can rank every post for certain keywords if you want as the search engine sees every blog post as a different web page. All this will surely help you to write SEO friendly articles and increase reach to your targeted audience.
3. Use of proper headings-
In any SEO-optimized theme, the post title always uses an H1 heading tag. So for the next subheadings it is advisable to use the H2 heading, H3 heading and so on in the following chronological order as and when needed. This is another important aspect of SEO copywriting and helps to write SEO friendly articles.
For example, if you upload a picture of an AdSense dashboard and you name the image “AdSense”, it will not be targeted. Instead you must use a name like “AdSense-dashboard”. This will ensure that people land on an image in one of your blog posts when they search for an image related to the topic of your article at Google Image Search.
4. Interlink and Anchor Text-
It’s always a good idea to link back your new post to an old one (this concept is called creation of backlinks) whenever you write SEO friendly articles that are new so that the readers will stick around your site for longer and the search engines can re-crawl through your old posts.
This helps in better navigability of your site which reduces the bounce rate which is another important SEO ranking factor.
Related: How to create backlinks
5. Image Alt Attribute-
This text helps Google in recognizing the image attached to your content. To ensure that the search engines exactly understand what the images are about, you must always use proper image names and manually add alt attributes when you upload them.
Conclusion
Delivering a very powerful closing if not more important than crafting a compelling opening. An expert always works hard to make an impression on their target audience and ensures they don’t walk away without reading the whole content and find it useful. This ensures more engagement to your articles and increases your reach among your targeted audience.
At the end of the day, all you focus on is bridging the gap between the content of your article and its SEO worthiness. By improving your online content and ensuring your written material is doing everything it can to inspire and compel your readers, you work to increase the prominence of your brand/website or whatever you are aiming to write for and make it unforgettable in the minds of your readers.
Hopefully, you must have no doubts regarding how to write SEO friendly articles now. If you use the tools and tips mentioned above, you will be able to create SEO friendly material regardless of the industry for which you are writing. You will eventually learn how to write content that people want to read and share.
SEO friendly websites get more traffic and higher traffic levels eventually improve their SEO score. What other ideas do you have for improving the SEO friendliness of your article? Do you have any additional tricks or hacks for achieving better search engine results? If yes then you are free to share them in the comments below.