So you have started blogging in the quest to get massive traffic.
It surely is a wonderful way to acquire new customers, get traffic and humongous exposure.
But writing an article and sharing it on your social channels is not nearly enough. Unless your articles are ranking well in Google search, forget about any progress. But, fret not – with some SEO juice you can persuade those Google spiders to increase your website rank.
In this article, I will share some proven and it goes without saying, simple tips to make your article SEO friendly so that it can tank better in search engines. Because, you don’t want your gem of an article to sit undiscovered amidst other countless posts online, do you?
Here are some cool and practically applied SEO tips that will give much-needed signals to those pesky spiders and will hopefully convince them into increasing your ranking.
1. Keyword Optimisation
Optimizing your article according to the right keywords is perhaps the most important aspect of SEO. Notice the emphasis put on “right”.
Keywords are so important that you have to do it right so as to understand what keywords are best for your article. Research is the key here. Before getting down to the writing part understand which keywords are the best for your SEO strategy.
Here are some Keyword optimisation tips that will do wonders for the SEO of your blog:
- Include Keyword In Your Title
First and foremost task is to include your keyword in the title – and hopefully at the beginning of the title. Because, the closer your keyword will be to the beginning, closer you will be to the Google rankings.
Have a look at this example below:
When I searched for “Adidas Originals Shoes”, this came up. This search gives a perfect idea of how important it is to have the keyword at the beginning of the title.
- Use The Keyword A Bunch Of Times In Your Article
Okay, so now we have included the keyword in the title, but the magic of keyword won’t work just yet. Make sure that you use your keyword a few time in your article without overdoing it.
And it should sound perfectly natural. You’d say, “natural in what sense?” Have a look at this text below:
“We sell the best custom-made shoes. Our custom-made shoes are made of Italian leather. If you are thinking of buying a pair of custom-made shoes, contact our custom-made shoe specialists at custom-made.shoes@example.com”
Surely, you wouldn’t want to read anything so annoying? This is exactly what you should avoid. While there is no ideal keyword density, however, somewhere between 0.5% to 2.5% would look perfect.
- Include The Keywords In H2 Or H3 Headings
The thing is, you can never outsmart Google crawling spiders – they dissect every information before ranking your page. To show them that your article covers the keyword that you have included, make sure to list your “keyword” in your H2 or H3 subheadings.
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2. XML Sitemap For Search Engines
A sitemap works exactly like any other map – it shows the right path to Google robots so that they can crawl and index all your posts and pages.
If you want to make your blog post/article to rank better in Google search engines then you have to submit your website’s XML sitemap to Google Search Console.
Either you can generate a sitemap using various plugins or you can simply search using “http://www.yourdomain.com/sitemap.xml” to display your sitemap.
It should look something like this:
3. Your Content Should Be Fresh And Original
Posting good content is necessary but not enough. It should be fresh, original and helpful to your targeted audience. Because something that is important to you might not be important enough for your visitors. Therefore, the key to an SEO friendly article lies in the fresh and relevant content.
While you are at it, make sure that you update your previous articles as well. Come to think of it, something that was relevant five years ago from now, might not be relevant today. Don’t worry about deleting it altogether, sometimes, all you have to do is to update it a bit to add some latest, trending content. Sometimes, all you need to do is to update your keyword search or brush up your call-to-action buttons.
And yes, one last thing – don’t let your article sit idly, keep promoting your content, on every possible social media channel.
4. Your Article Should Perform Well On Mobile As Well
An independent web analytics company StatCounter stated that mobile and tablet devices accounted for 51.3% of internet usage worldwide in Oct 2016 compared to 48.7% by a desktop.
But unfortunately, while people leave no stone unturned in making their blog post SEO friendly as per the desktop norms, they completely overlook the mobile site. But when mobile users exceed the desktop users, surely you need to work on making your mobile site SEO friendly as well.
And if rumors are anything to go by, Google might even start penalizing the web pages with crappy mobile sites. If that’s the case with you then might as well say goodbye to your Google Rankings.
So, make sure that your blog post works wonderfully on your mobile site as well.
5. Track Your SEO Results
Are you tracking how your article is performing when it comes to its aspect of being SEO friendly? If not, then have you ever wondered, how will you fix something without knowing if it needs to be fixed in the first place? Thus, tracking your SEO performance is very very important.
Make sure to track these factors to easily discern where you might be going wrong:
- Check how your keywords are ranking on Google and other search engines.
- How are your outbound and inbound links are performing?
- Which social media channel is getting most of the traffic.
- How many visitors are you getting from different search engines?
This analysis will give a better insight into what part of SEO you need to work upon so that you don’t waste your timing on something that is perfectly okay. Rather, you can inject your energy into fixing the things that are going wrong.
6. Format Your Article Properly
You have written a quality content.
You have made sure that your content is relevant to your targeted audience.
Your content is 100% original.
But wait… aren’t you forgetting something?
What about proper formatting? Nothing works more against your SEO than a poorly formatted content.
Make sure your content is formatted properly so as to make it look attractive and considerably easy to read.
Here are some factors that you need to keep in mind to make your article properly formatted:
- Use H1 tag for the main title of your post.
- Use H2 tags for the sub-headings of your post.
- Avoid chunky paragraphs. Write crisp, brief paragraphs and leave whitespaces to make your visitor’s reading experience easy.
- Draw attention to important points using italics and BOLD.
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7. Add Outbound Links
Adding the outbound links is one of the strongest strategies for making your page SEO friendly and making it rank highly in Google.
But make sure that you are linking your article with relevant, credible and high-authority web pages. It would be great if you learn to recognize the difference between quality links and links that need to avoid.
Make sure that you avoid the links from sites from the PPP domain, that is – Pills, Porn, and Poker. If you are associated with something like this then Google might penalize you by dropping down your rankings. So this is something you don’t want to be associated with.
8. Add Inbound Links
Most people tend to overlook adding inbound links in favor of external links. If you are doing this then you are making a big mistake. Inbound links are an important aspect of SEO. These are the links that point to other paged within your website itself.
Have a look at this example:
Once you click at the given “Inbound Link”, you will be redirected to the link that lies within the website itself. However, don’t get carried away with this. A couple of inbound links, 2-3 links to be exact, should work fine for the SEO of your post.
Parting Words…
All the mentioned SEO points are not only simple and easy to implement, but also secure as well as cost-effective. You don’t have to spend a dime, neither do you have to tweak some complex code. Furthermore, these points wholly follow the terms and guidelines provided by Google.
Once you follow each and every point to make your post SEO friendly, your post is likely to rank higher in search engines resulting in massive traffic and traction. So, give them a clear read and start implementing these tips today.
Do you have more ideas to make an article SEO friendly? Let us know in the comment section below!
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