As hard as it seems to believe, another year has passed and it’s again time to evaluate our past work and project new goals for the upcoming one. Some of the central strategies throughout this year involved the development of consistent content marketing strategies to enhance users’ engagement and experience. This, on the other hand, led to countless analyses and assessments of the SEO aspect of content creation and more importantly, how to write SEO content articles that drive traffic.
Traffic was not the mere aim of the marketing efforts, however. The star of the show was the experience one can provide through storytelling and useful content. This is a trend set to continue over time. That’s why we’ve prepared a detailed guide on how to write SEO content articles in 2019!
Keyword Research
A vital aspect of the preparation for writing an SEO article is the keyword research done beforehand. This is also what will actually create the foundation for your further optimization.
The keywords you end up choosing will actually be the searches you would like your website to rank for. To perform keyword research, a number of factors must be considered.
- Relevant topics. Choosing the topics that you consider of top importance for your activity. Carefully considering the topics you’d like to rank for allows you to prioritize your SEO efforts.
- From topics to keywords. The topics you come up with will not necessarily be keywords you could use when writing an SEO content article. In order to transform them into convertible keywords, relevant research is required. Marketing automation tools such as SEMRush and Ahrefs allow searching for keywords and seeing their relevant parameters such as the number of monthly searches and results.
- Long-tail keywords. These are the keywords that are much longer than one or two words and allow a higher precision for search ranking. With fewer people looking for topics containing longer keywords and therefore, fewer SERP results on those, using long-tail keywords will allow you to provide the exact content without having too much competition.
Engaging Writing
Keywords might be the logistical basis for your further SEO efforts but what actually engages users is the writing of an article, its informativeness, and how relevant it is rendered by the individual reader. Even though readers will differ immensely and thus, their needs, the thing in common in all of them is the desire to find something answering their initial search engine inquiry.
This is why, when writing an SEO article, keep in mind who the users that will land on your page will be and why they’ve performed the search in the first place. Writing enthralling content does not happen overnight and might take you more time than expected. Nonetheless, there are numerous blog writing tools that can help you polish your style and convey the desired content with ease.
On-Page SEO
To cut to the chase, on-page SEO is actually the factor with the largest impact when it comes to how to write SEO content articles. The anatomy of a well-optimized page usually includes a certain number of elements that all work together in ensuring the effectiveness of a web page.
First and foremost, making your URLs as neat as possible allows search engines to identify your page’s content just by looking at its slug. These would ideally include your keyword and will be as concise as possible. The length is important for engines and humans alike. Serving as a hint to humans and search engines on the page’s topic, the URLs need to be as neat and short as possible.
Title tags are another way to communicate the hierarchy of keywords to machines. This is what engines consider when grouping and categorizing pages by topic. Therefore, the structure is also what will make people click on the page when faced with a full page of results on a search engine. Title tags are your most important on-page SEO element.
Something many people forget that needs optimization is media. Make sure you include focus keywords in the name of the media files (focus-keyword.jpg). This not only helps their performance but also is much more user-friendly than dsjdasj.jpg. The keyword has to also be part of the Alt Attributes of the images as Google reads them as a key detector for relevancy.
Link-building
Finally, once a finished and optimized article is prepared, it’s time to build quality backlinks to your page. This is an impactful factor that engines consider when ranking content. Having successful and authoritative websites pointing back at your article ensures the transfer of a portion of that authority to your own website.
Receiving backlinks from other websites plays an important role in overall SEO. Backlinking is the bone of off-page SEO as it has the capacity to demonstrate your relevance and appreciation by other websites. When you provide informative and useful content, you are much more likely to receive a backlink as a reward.
In conclusion
Any marketing strategy you prepare for the upcoming 2019 will be insufficient and incomplete without including a number of effective SEO content practices. The preferred practice is typically writing articles and blog posts optimized for search engine ranking.
This, on the other hand, involves deliberate and consistent work towards achieving the goal of driving quality traffic that has the potential to convert. Keyword research is the building block of any SEO content article and it’s a necessary step in the beginning. Thereafter, writing engaging articles is what will enthrall your audience and keep them reading. It also enhances your chances to get shares on social media. On-page SEO is the anatomy of the article and including tags and relevant media signals the search engine of the quality of your pages. Finally, earning well-performing backlinks gives you authority, drives traffic, and improves your overall optimization.
All of these together work for your website’s performance and help your marketing efforts bear fruits. And this is a new year we’re eager to be!