Writing the perfect SEO-friendly blogs can sometimes be a huge task, especially for beginners. We have already seen what search engine optimization is and now, we are going to take a look at the step-by-step plan on how to write the perfect SEO-friendly blog.
If you are a copywriter, the question of whether your texts are SEO-friendly is undoubtedly regularly asked of you. To content writers, search engine optimization is holy and when you're a startup with a contemporary website, you cannot avoid improving findability on different search engines. If you don't do that, your competitors will and you will end up missing out on visitors and revenue.
If you want to get started with writing SEO-friendly content but don't know how to do it, follow this extensive step-by-step plan and you can never go wrong:
Step 1: Don't think too much about search engines.
Writing SEO Texts
When writing for search engines it is tempting to immediately lose yourself in technology. You constantly wonder where to place the keywords, the appropriate SEO-friendly URLs to use and maybe the designated word count. You shouldn't bother too much with that.
Despite wanting to be found on search engines, you must understand that the content you're writing is primarily for your web visitors. Think like a visitor and come up with what you think they will like or what you think will help them find what they're looking for.
So first ask yourself these questions:
What is the purpose of the page?
For whom do I write the content?
How do I get them to purchase the products on offer afterwards?
And if they do not purchase anything, what is plan B?
By thinking carefully about this beforehand, you write better texts that appeal to readers and are shared earlier via social media and other websites. And that is good for your website's SEO.
Step 2: Determine keywords
Find keywords with Keyword Planner
You can find keywords with the Google Adwords Keyword Planner, among other tools. Keywords are the words that people type in search engines. Based on these words, Google determines who appears in the top 10 and who doesn't.
With SEO writing, you have to add those keywords strategically in your text so that you give search engines signals that your text is exactly about the words that a potential visitor types into search engines. It's basic supply and demand.
Note: The fastest way to find keywords yourself is Google Suggest. Type the main term in Google, and the search engine complements it with commonly used suggestions.
Step 3: Writing a very good text
The advantage of a predefined set of keywords is that you can take into account the intention with which people go on search engines. You put yourself in their shoes and take their needs into account when writing your text. If you don't do this, there's a chance they will never land on your text's page because it does not answer their question or help them find what they're looking for.
With this knowledge in mind, it is time to write a strong SEO-friendly text. Don't think too much about SEO for a moment, but concentrate fully on your message, your target group and the action you want readers to take.
Do you want to tell them about your services, educate them on the trends in a particular field or simply describe your products and services and then get them to patronise you? Now is the time to write a text that conveys all that.
Scoring high in Google is nice, but if visitors don't do anything on your site, it won't help you. So write a really good text with a minimum of 350 words. You may make it shorter, but search engines like longer texts and longer texts give you the opportunity to use keywords and synonyms more often.
Personally, I use Google Suggest to find the keywords I need before writing my texts. Then I write down those keywords on a piece of paper. I also visit the websites of competitors to see if there are words they use that I also need to use in my texts. After a few minutes of researching keywords, I pick up my computer and start to write.
Step 4: Use copywriting techniques
When your text is ready, in many cases it is smart to use copywriting techniques. A copywriter is - as someone once aptly described - a salesperson behind a keyboard. And what does a seller do? Convince visitors that the products they're advertising are the best and exactly what they need.
Nowadays, people have less patience for online texts: if they consume 20 to 25 per cent of a text, it is a lot. Therefore, use convincing arguments to encourage people to take a certain action and keep them on the page.
Think of:
Writing about the benefits of your product and not just the properties.
Describe "the problem" that your products and services want to solve, exactly as the customers have pointed them out.
Determining a unique selling point and emphasizing that: why are you different and better than your competitors?
Processing these types of points works particularly well with commercial blogs, but also on a 'Services' or 'About Us' page, for example. People choose based on emotion and you can use that to your advantage. Why do they have to work with you and not with the competitor?
And what is the most important task for the visitor on the page? Emphasize that, in text and design. This way you increase the chance that readers take the desired action, which is buying as many of your products as possible.
Step 5: Optimize the text with keywords
So, you have written a good catchy text while meticulously following all the aforementioned guidelines. Now is the time to see if it is SEO-friendly. SEO writing may sound complicated, especially to a beginner but it's not that difficult. Search engines are not people and they need signals to understand online texts. You give those signals with the use of keywords in strategic places so that Google and other search engines find it easy to pick up what the page is all about.
Here are a few ways of optimizing your texts for search engines:
Title:
Write keywords preferably at the beginning of the title. If the first word of the title is a keyword, a search engine immediately understands what the page is all about. This is good for your page's SEO. The title should not be more than 77 characters long.
Meta description:
The meta description is a short description of a web page. Google shows it in the search results in nine out of ten cases. It doesn't really affect the page's SEO, but it is very important because it describes in one or two short paragraphs, what the page is all about. If the description stands out, a user may click on it, even if your page is not in the first place. A meta description should be no less than 156 characters long.
Url:
By using keywords in the URL, you make a search engine clear what a page is about. It is also an advantage if someone places the URL directly on another website - such as a forum. The text that contains a link works favourably for your page's SEO and if it contains keywords, then it is a huge advantage. This is automatically the case with a search engine friendly URL.
Preface:
This makes it very clear to search engine bots what your page is all about. When writing the preface, use your most important keywords, make sure to include the name of your business and the preface should not be more than ten words.
Headers:
An intermediate header is even more important for a search engine than a regular text. Make sure you include keywords when writing headers and don't forget to use H1, H2 up until even H6. The title of the text should always be H1, subheaders should be H2, etc.
Alt texts:
If you include images in your texts, alt texts signal to search engine bots what the images are about. It's basically a description of what a picture included in a text is.
Closing paragraph:
If you close a text with the most important words on which you want to be found on search engines, you make it very clear again what the page is about. It is a final signal to search engine bots specifying that the text is exactly about the words that potential readers enter into a search engine.
Links:
If you attach a link to certain keywords, search engine bots are immediately able to understand what the linked page is all about and their connection with the text you've written. Strategically placing internal links on your website also does wonders for your website's SEO.
External links are also very important. Make sure that some popular websites out there have links to your website on their web pages. It is very good for your website's SEO and ranking.
Step 6: Pay attention to the layout
The layout of your website is also a very important factor for ranking high on search engine results pages. Your website should definitely be mobile friendly because if your web pages are graphically good and technically reliable, loads quickly and works smoothly on both desktop computers and mobile phones, the chance of ranking high on search engine results pages becomes very high.
Furthermore, a website with a professional look is worth it because it is more pleasant for readers and it invites visitors to interact and share the texts via social media and another website. This helps your website's popularity increase and also helps increase revenue.
Invest time in content promotion:
If you do your best to write a substantively strong text for your target group, it is nice if they also read it. Therefore, spend at least as much time promoting your content.
Promotion can be done by distributing it through social media, but also consider participating and sharing information on forums (not spamming!) and approaching other professionals in the same field. Other professionals can help you by writing texts with links to your website on theirs.
Writing SEO-friendly texts isn't easy. For beginners, it can sometimes be a little overwhelming. This is the reason why, on this blog, we have all the ingredients for writing texts that rank high on search results pages. However, a good SEO-friendly text is more than just an optimized page to please search engine bots.
By thinking carefully about your goals, target groups and desired actions in advance, you can kill two birds with one stone. You serve readers with a story they can relate to while also giving search engines plenty of clues for indexing and interpreting the text.
Furthermore, if you can obtain relevant links from bigger websites to your page, then all the ingredients are present for a high position in the search results and lots of visitors to your website.
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