Search engine optimization is one of the most important parts of content marketing. Do you really want to know how to create SEO friendly articles?
Every webmaster wants to market their site to improve its reachability. But, it is not easy to do that. You need to do a good study of various options to create articles that can attract search engine attention.
There are many options you can try. But, while doing this you may have to maintain the quality of your content high.
If you can do that, writing SEO friendly articles will be an easy task. You just have to make some modifications to your existing content to make it SEO friendly.
I used this term SEO-friendly a lot. So, to make it more clear here I am going to explain about the SEO-friendly articles.
What are SEO Friendly Articles?
SEO means optimizing contents for search engines. The exact meaning of an SEO friendly article is that articles that create with an aim to attract search engine.
Keyword optimization, content organization, content promotion, and keyword research are some important SEO processes.
Do you know about various types of SEO friendly articles?
Check out some popular SEO friendly articles types,
Product pages:
This is the main ingredient of an e-commerce site. It works as both an SEO and a pay per click landing page.
Blog posts:
This is one of the popular and easiest ways to publish SEO- friendly content. If you can produce informatory, entertaining contents, your site can attract more links to your page.
Articles:
Most of you might be accustomed to this style of content. You can see new paper and magazine type content in this category.
Lists:
Lists are like articles with top 10 or 20 lists. There you can include keywords that can attract search engines and is a more clickable option too.
Guide:
This type includes a long-detailed content based on a topic. Full guide or an article with an expert’s opinion about a topic will work in this category.
Some other types are infographics, videos, slideshows, glossaries, directories, etc. These are some of SEO- friendly articles types you must know as a webmaster.
Next question will be the need of SEO friendly content. Here are some points that explain how SEO friendly contents can bring benefits to your site.
Benefits of SEO friendly Articles Content:
- Increase in site traffic is the main advantage. SEOs main function is to create titles, meta description, and content based on keywords. This will help to come the content on top of the search result.
- Writing SEO- friendly articles is the most economic strategy you can do, to make your content notable to the search engine. Other options are like paid advertisements and campaigns which may cost more money
- Other SEO factors like site maps, robots.txt, etc. All of them will make your site more accessible to the search engine.
- As I mentioned above, there are various types of SEO- friendly contents. If you can include SEO tactics in your content and make it appear on the top of the list, the trust toward your site will increase.
How to Develop SEO Friendly Articles content?
SEO-friendly contents are easy to make if you really have a goal while writing contents. If you are just creating content to make your site active, then it is of no use. There should be a real purpose when you do something.
1. Define your goal:
Before starting a site, you really need to define your purpose behind it. If you want to promote your business with this site then it should be optimized accordingly.
Most of the sites are created to promote a product/service and the aim of them will be making more money out of it.
For this, you need to make your page attractive with more information about your product. It should inform users about all aspects of the product such as when to use, how to use and benefits of using them. Don’t make it a self-promotional one.
If you want to explain a topic make it as simple as possible. You can present it in a conversational manner so that users will easily get all your points. You have to create adhesive contents with meaningful information.
If you can entertain users longer, this will be the prime aspect of SEO. Also, you should know your target audience and create content for them.
2. Pick keywords carefully:
Keywords are the best way to optimize your content for search engine. It is the only way to make your content visible to Google. There will be some most common searching terms users looks for to get content based on a topic.
You need to find out those targeted keywords and include it in your content. This will help your content to appear in the search result. While including keywords make sure to include it naturally.
When you use keywords just for SEO the quality of your content will go down. You must be careful when adding keywords without affecting contents quality. There are tools you can use to find popular keywords.
Use tools like Google Keyword Planner, SEMRush, MOZ Keyword explorer, etc to find out trending keywords. Depending on your content type wisely, choose proper keywords.
Keywords will not be constant, it will be changing and you need to update your content accordingly.
3. Post content frequently:
You can use an editorial calendar to monitor your content schedule. According to SEO, the main thing you can do to keep your account active is to post content regularly. This calendar shows you when you need to post new contents, topic, etc. This will help you to keep your site up-to-date.
There are tools like Outlook to create an editorial calendar. While using this feature you need to keep a decent time interval between publishing content so that, you get enough time to create a good one. Also, it is better not to plan anything too far in advance.
4. Optimize article length:
Length of your article is an important factor to Google. When it comes to creating content, you should try to make it more than 300 words.
Google always like lengthy contents, but it is difficult to engage readers when you post a lengthy one. You need both Google’s and audience attention. If you can keep the length up to 1000 words then it is fine.
A lengthy article should engage the audience with it. Otherwise, it is difficult to get readers for your articles. You can also create them as part by part if you cannot explain everything in short content.
In the end, you can give the link of the next part also. This is a very good strategy every SEO follows to reduce content length. Include important search term in the content and place them well.
5. Gather information:
Before writing about any topic thorough research is essential. Your potential users will expect to get an answer from your article for their question. If you can’t explain them well then there is of no use in writing articles.
You can do that well after gathering all the information related to your topic. Make sure to choose the right sources to gather information. Refer as many sources and possible and include them in your content. Make your content as informative as possible.
6. Present your content well:
Content appearance is also important in SEO articles. On-page SEO is very important to follow while creating one.
- Add a unique title, introduction and split your contents into short paragraphs.
- You can bold important words or sentence and use bullets to define important points.
- Make your article attractive by adding attention grabbers like ‘here is what I got’ ‘find out’, ‘keep reading’ etc.
- Make sure that keyword density should not exceed more than 5% of your total word count.
- Make content length more than 300 words
- Link internally and externally to ensure maximum reachability of your content. Keep in mind not to include irrelevant links. Both internal and external links should be relevant to your content.
7. Image optimization:
According to SEO experts’ contents with images and infographics will get more reachability when compared to other contents.
So, it is always better to add any attractive images to your content. They will attract more viewers and your content will spread to a wide audience.
2 – 3 images should be there at least so that you can easily optimize it for search engines. Adding images will also improve your content shareability.
How can you optimize images?
It is very easy if you can include relevant keywords into an image file. Also, include Alt tag with all your images.
Image optimization is not only about adding keywords and alt tag. You need to make the image size small with good quality.
You can compress it using various tools before adding it. If the size is larger it may take more loading time. it is better to reduce the image loading time and keep it optimized.
8. Internal links:
Links are very good to promote your page. Internal links and backlinks are different.
Internal links mean you can include the popular topic links in your page. If a reader likes your content presentation, he will go and click on various links that you have given.
The links could be of anything like a content related to the current page or popular topics of your site etc.
Have you noticed such links before?
Most of the sites publish their popular topics below the content or on the right side. There will be a list of topics. Most of them will be related to the current page topic.
If somebody clicks on those links the popularity of your site increases and thereby site ranking. This is one of the common opinions of every SEO experts.
9. Make the content shareable:
Now you have successfully created quality content. The next step is to improve its popularity.
For that, it should reach as many audiences as possible. How can you do that?
It is not easy. One option is that you can add all social media buttons on every page and give a catchy call to action.
Another option is to promote your content using an influencer. They can share it among their contact and that’s another way to spread your content.
To get influencers to share your content is not easy. It will depend on your content’ quality always.
If you can give some exclusive price for sharing your content, then most of your users will do it. Conducting promotional programs and campaigns are also good.
10. Watch analytics:
After applying all the above tips, you need to monitor your content response. There are tools like Google Trends where you can monitor your content performance and compare it with your competitors.
This is a great way to keep an eye on your content performance and if some of the tactics do not work, you can rework on your content.
The main job of SEO is the best ranking and wide reachability. Both of them are very important if you want to be successful in this field.
Check bounce rate, keyword trends, link performance, etc using this analytical data. SEO is not about writing contents but users should enjoy reading it also.
Reduce bounce rate by improving content quality or appearance. Rate your performance and try to make better.
Final words:
From this article, you will get an idea of the ways to make an article SEO-friendly. Anyone can create content but it is important to make it optimized for the search engine to assure its visibility.
There are many tools like Ahrefs, SEMRush, MOZ, etc to help you with search engine optimization. Each tool has its own specialty and you can choose the best according to your needs.
Follow the above steps properly and see the wonderful result. Keep in mind that content is the backbone of SEO and these tips will only be effective, if you can apply them in a strong, well- written content.