How to Write SEO Friendly Articles for your Blog?

In this post I will explain how to write SEO friendly articles for your blog.

Writing SEO friendly articles is essential if you want to rank on Google. No one will read your articles if it is sitting on the fifth page of Google Search Results.

If you don't rank on Google, you will not get any traffic. If you don't get traffic you won't make revenue. This is as simple as that!!

But how to ensure a better ranking?

How to Structure Your Articles for better SEO?

Let's see how you should structure your article for SEO.

Article Name, URL and Meta Description

Let's start with the article name first!

Whenever you create a new post, you must give it a name. The name of your article should have the main keywords that you are trying to
rank.

For example, if you are writing an article on Best DSLR cameras, your article name can be "Best DSLR cameras to buy in 20XXX" or "Best DSLR Cameras for Beginners."

I use a free SEO Plugin called Yoast SEO to write SEO-friendly articles and structure my content.

Let's see how this tool works.

Once you install and activate this plugin, the SEO tool will appear on every post and page you create.

In the tool, you have to mention your focus keyword that you want to rank for.

Apart from that, you have to mention your article name, a meta description and a slug.

Your SEO article name will appear in the Search Results of Google, and it can be different from the title of the article that you put on your blog.

For example, you can write an article with the title "Best DSLR cameras for beginners" on your blog. But , you can change the SEO title every month so that it looks something like this, "Best DSLR Camera Oct 20XX."

Slug will be the url extension of your article such " best-dlsr-cameras-for-beginners"

In Meta Description, you will give a short description of what your article is all about. The meta description should contain the focus keyword of your article.

The tool evaluates your overall article based on structure, heading, subheadings, keywords, length, and indicates how good it is.

If all the criteria match, the SEO indicators turn green.

If you achieve a green in most of the parameters , your overall SEO score is also green. This means your article is more SEO compliant and it is likely to rank on Google.

Headings and  Sub Headings

WordPress offers many heading tags - such as Heading 1, Heading 2, Heading 3 and so on.

Your leading article title must be your heading 1 and then you can structure the entire article under different headings and subheadings. The ideal practice is to use keywords or relevant or similar keywords in headings and subheadings.

This will help Google to identify the topic of your article.

Write Small Paragraphs

I have seen many bloggers writing unnecessary lengthy paragraphs. If you do this, not only your article will look clumsy, your readers will have a tough time reading this.

Further, it will create a negative impression on your reader's mind, and they might go to some other website.

As a result.... your website Bounce Rate will be higher and it will impact your Search Engine Rank Position (SERP).

Write your article in short and simple paragraphs. This will create a better reading experience. Try to use bullet points, features wherever possible and make it to the point.

Use Images and Videos wherever Possible

Try to use relevant images and videos wherever possible. Visual aids always create better impressions and tend to convert better.

So if you are promoting products like DSLR camera, make sure you include their images when you write about them. If you are writing about 10 Best DSLR Cameras, make sure you upload all the 10 cameras' images.

You can also use YouTube videos or explainer videos on your blog (even it is not your own video). YouTube videos are a great way to increase your reader's overall engagement.

If you embed a relevant video about DSLR cameras on your article, a reader will most likely spend some more time on your website. This is a good signal for SEO and it can improve your position in search engine rankings.

Write for your Readers

Imagine yourself as a reader!

Why do you read a blog? To gain knowledge about, be more aware of products or services.

Now imagine your readers who are reading about best DSLR cameras or DSLR cameras for  beginners. They come to read your blog with certain expectations, and they have their knowledge level.

Some are complete newbies. They have no idea what DSLR camera is or how they work.

Some of your readers might already know about the basics of DSLR cameras and how they work. Now they want to know some best DSLR cameras in the market within a specific price range.

So you have to write your articles in such a way that it satisfies all your readers. As a blogger, you have to take them through a journey and ensure they get what they came for.

So how to do that?...Keep reading!!!

Use Internal Links

Use internal links to link your articles within your blog. For example, if a reader comes to your website to read about DSLR cameras for beginners, mention your Best DSLR Cameras article link as well. This will give them a complete reading experience. 

 Internal Links are also a great way to increase your session time, though it has no direct SEO benefit as such.

Pros and Cons

If you are writing a product review, mention all its pro and cons to make your readers aware of the product.

Use two separate columns about Pros and cons to list down all the positive and negative points. There are plenty of WordPress plugins which will let you create similar to the one I have shared above.

What Should be Your ideal Article Length?

Google loves detailed articles which cover every aspect of the topic. But this doesn't mean you will write 10,000 words out of which 6000 are nonsense.

How lengthy an article will be or how many words it should have is based on the topic you choose. For most of my general article articles, I write at least 1000-1500 words.

For one of my epic posts on How to Start a Blog and Make Money Online, I used 14000+ words.

If you are writing a review article on a topic like 10 Best DSLR cameras, you should ideally use 350-400 words for explaining one camera. So for 10 such DSLR cameras, your article should have at least 3500-4000 words. 

However, this is just a general guideline, and it will not always be applicable.

How will you write about a topic if you don't know anything?

This is another question and maybe even concern for many new bloggers.

Many bloggers are under the impression that since they don't have sufficient knowledge of a product or topic, they are not qualified to write about it.

However....let me tell you that no one expects you to be "know-all". But we all need to start somewhere. So what can you do about it?

The first thing that you need to understand is, you are writing an article for your reader and not for your competitors. As long as you know more than your readers, they will love to read your articles.

Now, the question is how can you improve your knowledge on a topic?

If you read my previous article on selecting a niche, I have explained Interests, Passions, Skills and Opportunities and how they influence your niche selection.

Now, if you don't know much about your niche, we can safely fit your niche selection in the "interest" and "opportunity" attributes- which means, you may not have done this before. But you see an opportunity in it, and you want to pursue it further.

So, how do you start?

Start by checking your competitors. Go to the first page of Google search results and list down all the websites.

Next, start reading articles from these websites one by one. Notice how they have structured their articles, how they have used bullet points, images everything.

Not all the articles are the same. If you look carefully, you will notice this difference as well. For example, if Website A has covered some points on x, they have entirely missed out y. Website B has covered the points y, but they have missed x and z.

If you study this, not only this will give you the knowledge, you can even get an opportunity to write a better version of all these articles by combining x, y and z.

If you do this exercise a couple of times, I am sure you will master it.

Outsourcing Article Writing

If you are just starting the best thing for you to do is writing your content yourself. I understand this a time-consuming process. But this will give you an idea of how this works.

I have explained the process of how you can follow your competitors and learn from them. Do it!! This will give you a fair idea of what you should write in your article. Do this at least for the first 10-15 articles that you post on your blog.

If you are interested in outsourcing article writing, there are many freelancing sites to order your article. I use mainly two websites whenever I outsource article writing- iWriter and Fiverr.

iWriter is my number one choice for this. They are a bit costly but their article standards are very high, and you can customize it further. 

You can mention your article's objective, such as what you are trying to achieve, what things the wtiter should mention in the article etc.

Fiverr platform doesn't have all those options that I have shown for iWriter. So the scope of customization is minimal. The only you can customize your article is reaching out to the writer and explain what you want.

Things to consider before ordering Your Article

If you outsource your article writing to any third party agencies or freelancers, there are a couple of things you should consider:

Both these steps will help you choose the right freelancer.

Use Grammarly

I am using this tool to show you how powerful this amazing tool is.

If you are a blogger, author, freelancing writer Grammarly is a must-have tool for you. The tool helps you to check for several types of errors such as Grammar and punctuation, Spell Check, Plagiarism etc. on real-time.

Not only this, but it also gives you real-time insights such as readability score, sentence-length, sentence structure, and so many other things.

And the best thing?? It's Free. You can use Grammarly Cloud-Based app or you can also install its plugin on your browser. You can also integrate Grammarly Plugin with Microsoft Office. So, if you are using Microsoft Word, you can also use Grammarly within a Word Document

Grammarly also has a premium version with lots of other features. But I would say their free version works just fine.

Conclusion: What Should You Do Next?

Once your article is ready, it's time to add affiliate links of related products. For this, we will need to join Affiliate Networks. Here in this case, we will check how to do that with Amazon Affiliate Network.

Check my article where I will explain How to join Amazon Affiliate Network and put Amazon Affiliate links in your article.