How to Write SEO-Friendly Articles

We know that blogs are a power tool and should be at the center of every businesses content strategy. They not only allow you to showcase your authority within your niche and engage your customers but are key to SEO and helping your website ranking hire and be more visible on searches. However, it is fine and well know what you need to do but how to do you write engaging SEO articles?

TIP 1 : DO KEYWORD RESEARCH

This will provide valuable insight into what your target audience is searching on Google. By identifying popular keywords that are gaining a high number of searches per month, your business can then utilise these within your blog posts in order to rank highly in search engines.

What kind of topics would you want your business to be noticed for when searching? Keyword and SEO tools exist to help you to think of more keyword ideas, such as KeywordTool.ioand Google Keyword Planner which may give you alternative keywords you might not have yet considered.

TIP 2: EYE-CATCHING TITLE

The title of your article is the hook that brings in readers, therefore you have to make it eye-catching. Make sure your title accurately describes the content of your post and utilises the keywords you have found to be effective for your target audience.

Optinmonster claim that titles with 6-13 words attract the highest and most consistent amount of traffic. Additionally, if your headline is 6-8 words, it can increase the click-through-rate onto the article by 21%.

Once you have created your title, you can check its score on CoSchedule, a handy tool you can use that analyses the grammar, readability and tone of your title. 

TIP 3: STRUCTURE

Utilising subtitles throughout your article can improve readability by helping to categories the information displayed. Also, ensuring paragraphs are short-and-sweet will make your content seem visually appealing and can engage the user more. Try keep sentences to maximum of 20 words and have no more then 300 words without adding in additional sub headers.

For a typical blog post, the recommended length is around 300 to 500 words. However, longer content tends to rank higher in search engines, therefore, Backlinko advise 2,000 words to be the optimal length of an article.

It is also recommended to use images throughout your article. Images can be used as a great visual-aid for what you are writing about. Articles with images get 94% more views opposed to those with no visuals (Optinmonster).

TIP 4: META-DESCRIPTION AND ALT-TAGS

The meta-description of your article should summarise what it is about, including your keywords. This description will show in search results in Google so it is important to accurately describe the contents of your article. MozBar deems the most appropriate length for a meta-description to be between 140-155 characters.

When alt-tags describe images accurately, they can attract traffic from an image search on Google, whilst also allowing the visually impaired to understand the image. Therefore, using relevant alt-tags is important for SEO in order for search engines to understand what the image is to determine the best results.

TIP 5: OPTIMISATION

Currently, 55% of individuals worldwide use mobile to surf the web (Global Stats), more than desktop users. Therefore, it is important that your blog has a responsive website design that is available on both devices. It is also essential for you to optimise your blog as Google tends to rank mobile-friendly websites higher. 

Blogs that are optimised for mobile-use means that users will have a positive user experience on your site and may be likely to return to your blog in future. 

TIP 6: HIRE A STUDENT FREELANCER

Blogs are important marketing tools to drive web traffic, build authority and engage with your customers. However as highlighted above its not as simple as putting some words on a page, and for many businesses, owners or managers, it can be an extremely time consuming task. As is often the case, hiring a full time member of staff to look after your copywriting and blog is not a realistic option for many businesses, which is where hiring a student freelancer for short ad-hoc projects allows you to set up and run your blog whilst allowing you to focus on your larger business needs.

In an age dictated by technology, student freelancers possess many of the traditional copywriting skills but with an in depth understanding of SEO, user behaviour and optimizing technology. All of which go hand in hand in allowing your blog to grow and help you achieve your marketing goals.