The only way your articles, whether old or new can gain traffic is if they are SEO friendly. The only way to have constant traffic is through SEO. This means that you also have to make sure that your articles gain ranking on Google.
Every article or blog post is like a web page when it comes to SEO ranking, and the only way to optimize the articles is by using specific keywords within your niche for search engines. Writing articles requires skill because you have to make sure that you keep your readers interested. Therefore you need to be very careful how you structure.
Some of the ways to help your readers to get the main idea of your post is by using catchy headlines, subheadings, and clear paragraphs. Remember, you need them to be inclined to share, tweet, like, and link to your post for you to be able to increase the rankings. Here are some of the tips that will help you write perfect SEO articles:
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Use Compelling Post Title and Meta Title.
Most people don’t understand the difference between post title and Meta title which ends up ruining their chances of a compelling post. The post title is the title your readers will see when they visit your website. The Meta title is how your post will show in the search engines results.
In most cases, the post titles end up being treated like Meta title because you fail to specify your meta title in the Search Engine. While writing a Meta title, you also have to be keen to add your keywords. If you want to increase your Click-through rate on Google you need to make sure that the Meta title is compelling enough.
Make sure you convey the general idea of your article in the Meta title. Leave a cliffhanger at the end so that readers will want to click and find out more.
The post title, on the other hand, is very crucial for readability and SEO. They also help in your ranking because they help Google to grasp the main idea for long posts. Post titles are the face of your SEO articles because they help your readers understand the context in your article.
However, since titles get cut on SERPS, make sure your characters are not more than 66 to avoid having your title cut. You can use title generating tools like SEOPressor, BlogAbout, and Hubspot to help you come up with the perfect title.
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Include Post Meta Description
Meta description plays a significant role in ranking when it comes to SEO articles. The good thing is that most SEO plugins allow people to add Meta Descriptions to their articles. If you want to come up with a compelling Meta Description, think of it as a sales copy for your SEO article.
The plugins give you about 160 characters for the Meta description so you should make it count. Use a range of about 150 words to create a seductive description and remember to include your keywords to make users click through.
If you never wrote Meta descriptions for your previous articles you should make an effort of going back and add them. They are very crucial for SEO rankings. Optimizing the Meta descriptions ensures that all the articles you post have a potential of driving traffic to your site.
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Use the Correct Keyword and Include Variations
For any content to rank high, the keywords you select plays a big part. You’re only wasting your time if all you’re doing is looking to compete for difficult keywords. The key to perfect SEO articles is to start with easy keywords then build up from there.
To be able to use the best keywords, come up with a list of keywords you want to use and use Google Keyword Planner to sort the keywords. You can also use the keyword search provided on Ahrefs and check the keywords that at least get 100 searches every month.
Make sure always to include and use variations of keywords that you intend to have ranked throughout your SEO article. Keywords variations, also known as Latent Semantic Indexing (LSI) keywords are words that are related to the primary target keywords.
Using keyword variations will help Google to understand what the content of your post is all about. It will also rank your article for more keywords. Always make sure that your keyword density is around 2-3%. You can achieve this by using a mix of the exact match and partial match keywords. You can pass your post through Yoast SEO to make sure your post is good to go.
Why You Should Use Yoast SEO
- Allows you to formulate the perfect meta description
- It indicated the readability of your text by analyzing the content you write
- It checks the presence of images and links in your article
- Checks whether you have used the keyword in the URL of the page, the title of the post, the heading of the article, the meta-description, and the content of the article which are the most important locations
- It prevents you from competing with yourself by checking whether or not you have other posts with the same keywords in your site.
- It calculates the density and number of words focusing on the keyword of the article.
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Use The Ideal Length For Your Post
The ideal length of a SEO article should be around 1500-2000 words. If you want to gain traffic, then you need to write a long-form post. This is because they make people spend more time on your site which then leads to better rankings. Time on site is a powerful and useful metric when it comes to SEO.
Even though writing short-form articles is quicker and easier, it won’t pay off if you are looking to optimize your site. Writing long posts allows you to explore the topic carefully and more in-depth and therefore to allow you to learn new things while at it.
The trick to writing longer posts is to look up the topic you want to write on, and then condense the information using the top results. This allows you to provide more information compared to your competitors hence outranking them. However, if you make the post too long, you will scare away readers.
If you prefer shorter posts, then make sure that the minimum words you use are 300. You could stop at around 800 words as long as you make sure that 1-2% of your text has the keywords. That means if the article is short to make sure you add the keywords at least 3-6 times.
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Use Image Alt Attribute
Since Google does not read images, the text is the only way Google recognizes images. Using text is the only way you can be able to make sure that the search engines understand what the image is about. One of the biggest mistake people make is uploading an image with a name like image002.jpg.
Always make sure that the name is relevant to the image you are putting the picture. You can use SEO friendly image plugin when you want to use an image because it uses the image name as the alternative text (alt) attributes. This allows people to land on the image on your blog if they search an image on Google image search.
You can also manually add the alt attributes if you choose not to add the plugin. When naming an image use the keyword in the image anchor text for an added benefit.
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Link to Your Previous Content and High Authority Sites
Cross-linking always helps you to foster a stronger relationship with your audience and also lead to lower bounce rates. However, you need always to make sure that the content you are linking back to is relevant to your prospective SEO article. The link should also not compete with your own keywords.
Linking back to your previous articles on the same subject shows your readers that you have authority on the subject. You want to people to have faith in your work so linking back to high authority links as well as your previous sites gives you that advantage. It also makes your readers stick around longer. Use the anchor text technique to make your SEO articles stand out.
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Structure the SEO Articles with Bold Font, H Tags, Alt Text on Images, Introduction, and Conclusion
Make your keywords bold in your article to increase their relevance. It is also vital to use H tags, i.e., H1, H2, H3. The h1 heading should be used for the post title. For the following subheadings you may use H2 heading, and H3 consecutively.
If you are writing a long post, using H tags will be essential. Always include an introduction and conclusion for your SEO article. To make the content more engaging, you should include images and use alt text them.
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The Post Permalink Should Always Include the Main Keywords
While keeping the main idea of the SEO article, make the post URL short. The permalink should include the main keywords you are looking to rank. In some cases, the stop words like “the” “a” “is” are removed while in some cases you can just leave them.
For perfect SEO articles, you need to understand the URL, know how to honor it, and find out how to use the SEO-friendly URLs. Avoid using the long URLs and focus on using those that are SEO-friendly because they are easy to grasp and much easier to read and understand.
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Make Your Site Mobile-Friendly
Not everyone owns a computer or a laptop, and the mobile marketing has significantly grown. The thing is, most internet users access sites and read posts via their smartphones. This is why you need to make your website mobile friendly if you want to increase your rankings.
You also need to make sure that the mobile-friendly site has no speed-related issues. To allow the users to go through your content, you need to make sure that your site’s speed is impeccably fast. For static content, use Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP) to help you build rich content.
The AMP allows you to create content that will load instantly on the mobile device. This optimizes the experience of your readers and avoids frustrations that people get when the page has issues loading. If you have basic HTML knowledge, this will be easy, if that’s not the case look through coding samples and online tutorials with clear instructions.
SEO is All About Content Marketing
SEO and content marketing go together. They work well together. Most people have the assumption that they need to eliminate SEO when they are dealing with content marketing. The thing is content marketing, and SEO can be compared to a person with two separate personalities. The two overlap!
Even though SEO is more technical, it is narrower. Content marketing on the other side is more holistic and broader. If you want to apply SEO in your SEO articles in a broader way, you have to channel its technical aspects into content marketing. Implementing the SEO techniques ensures the success of content marketing.
Let’s compare a conversation between two people if one makes a demand the other has to fulfill the demand. In this case, SEO makes the demands and the content marketing meets the demands. Therefore, content marketing satisfies the requirements of SEO.
What’s The Relation?
- Content marketing is the content SEO demands.
There can’t be SEO without content; you have to include substance, words, keywords, and articles. So far, it is apparent that content is the essence of any SEO article. Content marketing, however, is all about content.
- When SEO demands the use of keywords, content marketing uses the keywords.
Researching the keywords, utilizing them and tracking their rankings in the SERPS is what we refer to as content marketing. So as long as you use SEO and content marketing in harmony, then you will be good to go.
- Content marketing introduces linkbacks, while SEO is what demand the linkbacks.
So the two can only be successful if used together. To make the SEO articles successful, you have to publish killer content that will make your audience link back to it. So the only way to have linkbacks that pave the way for SEO is by apply content marketing.
- Content marketing needs great UX while SEO requires onsite technical optimization.
SEO is not just about blog posts, linkbacks, and keywords. It’s about enhancing metadata, constructing a strategic sitemap, and utilizing proper tags. It’s all about the technical stuff. When the SEO article is perfect so is the user experience perspective (UX).
It all comes back to content because the reason you want an excellent sitemap is so that people will easily access and find your content. The reason you want the right tags is so that your content can get accurate search results, stellar indexing, and more people to read your content.
- Content marketing requires consistency while SEO demands consistent output
For a long time now, Google has always preferred fresh content. Fresh content registers higher in SERPs, and it also gets rapidly indexed. You can be sure to have a SERP boost if your SEO article has fresh content that appears on your site with historic authority.
This means that to have perfect SEO articles, you need to have a consistent output of the content. For consistent output, you need to do content marketing right. There is no other way around this. Content marketing needs to be constantly done.
Therefore, for SEO to prevail, content marketing has to be implemented. Unless you integrate content marketing, your SEO campaign will fail before you can reap anything from it. And clearly, content marketing is only successful when SEO features are included. This is because your content will not reap any fruits unless it’s searched and found, in which case only SEO can ascertain that. Your content should also be:
- One of a kind. It should not appear elsewhere on the web
- Relevant enough to meet the intent and topic of the searcher
- Valuable in a way that no one else or a few others can be found in the search engines
- Helpful to your readers. Unless it helps them solve some of their queries, they will not stick around. So make sure that is accessible, transparent, and helpful
- Pleasurable and easy to use on any device to ensure great user experience. Using a responsive design will make this much easier.
If you would prefer to focus on other areas of your business or you are not a fan of writing, you can outsource your work to freelancers. Make sure though, that you choose high-quality writers because the content generation is essential. Make sure you don’t lose valuable traffic gained to a competitor by hiring unqualified writers.
If you follow the guidelines we have given you in these post you will start writing perfect SEO articles. To reach a wider crowd, make sure that your website is SEO-friendly. Remember the aim is to have your pages, content, and site gain more popularity in the search engines