Go back through your article or blog post and look for areas where you can add your target keywords in a natural way. Don’t just force them into random sentences.
Now, Google may or may show your optimized meta description based on the search query the content is ranking for, but you don’t need to worry about that. The SEO relevancy has already been established by inserting your keyword into that field.
Reboot Online Marketing Ltd conducted an outbound linking experiment (twice) that revealed external links can help improve a web page’s rankings. However, this 2016 article on Search Engine Roundtable indicates otherwise (i.e., John Mueller said links to specific websites are not a ranking factor).
Copy your SEO friendly meta title tag into the H1 tag, which is typically your blog post or article title. That’s it.
This content doesn’t include any H4 to H6 tags; however, your article could have those HTML elements if you find it’s necessary to write sub-points under other sub-points. But just make sure you structure your content correctly with these subheadings based on the article topics and not as stylized elements. Otherwise, you could confuse the search engine crawlers as to what your article is really about and how it should be indexed in the SERPs.
4. Pick the Best Article Length
An SEO friendly article is a type of content that’s written in a way that helps the search engines rank it high in the SERPs. Articles that are SEO friendly include target keywords on the page, match the search intent of the user, and contain high-quality content.
How Do I Know If My Article Is SEO Friendly?
At this point, you’ve completed the bulk of the writing process. Now, you need to go back through your article and add SEO friendly images to further improve the relevancy of the content for your target keywords.
You’ll need an SEO plugin like Yoast, RankMath, or All In One SEO if you’re using the WordPress content management system to write optimized meta tags for your content because that feature is not available by default. After one of those plugins is installed, you can make adjustments to the meta title tag and meta description.
I hope you enjoyed this guide on how to write SEO friendly content.
Go through and fill out each section of your content outline without worrying about inserting your SEO keywords. Write for humans first, then optimize the content for the search engine crawlers as explained in the next step.
6. Add SEO Keywords to the Content
The URL structure of your blog posts and articles is also important for SEO. To optimize this HTML attribute to make it as friendly as possible for the search engines, all you need to do is put your main target keyword in the URL.
To do that, just do a quick search on Google to find out what type of content it’s favoring for your target keyword. Then make something similar.
3. Create An SEO Friendly Content Structure
If you see a table, for example, include a table with similar data in your article with a relevant H2 tag above it. If you see a paragraph snippet, analyze the bolded words being used and try to write a better (and more SEO friendly) paragraph with a keyword-optimized H2 tag above it to hopefully grab that Featured Snippet spot.
8. Add SEO Friendly Images
If you’re serious about writing SEO friendly articles, then you need to know how to optimize the H1 tag properly. You can read my complete guide on SEO H1 tag best practices or just follow this simple tip for your blog posts:
After you’ve gone back through and included your SEO keywords in the article, the next step for writing SEO friendly content is to find sections you can optimize for Google’s Featured Snippets.
Now, you just need to write the blog post or article.
There are four common formats for Featured Snippets:
- Paragraphs: This is a 45 to 50-word snippet that provides users with a brief definition or answer for the topic.
- List: This is a bulleted or numbered list that shows the steps of a process or identifies items in a product list.
- Table: This is a two or three-column table that helps users visualize data for different types of comparisons.
- Video: If Google’s algorithm determines that a video provides the best answer for a user’s search query, then it will place a video in the Featured Snippet position (typically from YouTube).
A good rule of thumb is to add one image for each keyword you’re targeting in the content to make it the most friendly for SEO. For example, if you’re targeting 3 keywords in a blog post, then make sure to have 3 images uploaded to the page.
You can see that I’ve followed this same advice throughout this entire article by linking other relevant pages on the SEO Chatter website.
10. Add Authority Outbound Links
If you need help with this step, then you can check out my Keyword Accelerator Playbook to learn a proven process for finding the best—and easiest to rank—keywords that are perfect for your individual blog or website.
2. Identify User Search Intent
To optimize your content for Featured Snippets, you should go back to Google and do a search for your target SEO keywords. This will show you what type of Featured Snippet is being displayed for that search query. Next, you’ll want to add something similar to your blog posts and articles to help improve your chances of ranking your content in that position.
But in this July 2019 Google Webmasters video, John Mueller said: “Linking to other websites is a great way to provide value to your users. Oftentimes, links help users to find out more, to check out your sources, and to better understand how your content is relevant to the questions that they have.”
As you can see, each keyword Google ranks content that is SEO friendly which also matches the format and structure its algorithm has determined is the best match for the user search intent. Therefore, you need to make sure your articles and blog posts do the same.
Additionally, you want to structure the outline properly with the following HTML subheading tags:
- H2: Use this subheading to break up the main ideas in your content.
- H3: Use this subheading to add sub-points under your H2 tags.
- H4: Use this subheading to add sub-points under your H3 tags.
- H5: Use this subheading to add sub-points under your H4 tags.
- H6: Use this subheading to add sub-points under your H5 tags.
Another good tip for improving the SEO friendliness of your articles is to add authority outbound links throughout the content. This means linking out to high-quality sources that are relevant to the topics discussed on the page.
Once your article has the basic structure in place, the next step you should follow before actually writing the SEO content is to pick the best length for it.
Before you click the publish button for your new article or blog post, you should do a final review of the content. Go back through and check to make sure you followed every step of this guide and put all of the best practices into place for SEO friendliness.
The links below explain more about SEO friendly content to help you better optimize your articles and blog posts. Use these resources to expand your knowledge on the subject.
Writing SEO Friendly Content Summary
Below is a list of tools you can use to check, verify, and write SEO friendly blog posts, articles, and other types of content for your website.
- Clearscope
- Frase
- Grammarly
- Hemingway App
- Page Optimizer Pro
- Searchmetrics Content Experience
- Semrush Writing Assistant
- Surfer SEO Content Editor
- Text Optimizer
- WebSite Auditor Content Editor
- Yoast Real-Time Content Analysis
Learn More About SEO Friendly Writing
The next step for how to write SEO friendly blog posts is to create a good content structure for your articles.
By using this strategy, you’re practically forcing Google to use your meta title as is. Otherwise, the search engine may rewrite your meta title or swap it out with your H1 tag that may or may not be well-optimized for your target keywords.
13. Create An SEO Optimized URL
After going through step 2 above, you’ll already know the basic format for how your content should be structured based on the user search intent. However, there are a few key elements you need to pay attention to in order to make your content the friendliest it can be for the search engine crawlers.
So just add these links naturally throughout the content without any specific number to aim for. As you can see in this section of the content, I linked out 3 times because it was necessary to back up my ideas with quality citations.
11. Make the Meta Tags SEO Friendly
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