How to Write A Seo Friendly Article? (11 Killer Tips)

More money is coming! It’s excellent news for any website owner. Being on top of SERPs can drive you to this situation and that’s why making your content a seo friendly article is so important.

Although the phrase may sound too complex, it is not! If you follow some simple principles, you’ll succeed in writing one. Stay with me through this and I’ll teach you seo friendly content writing.

First things first! Let’s define the word SEO-friendly.

What do we mean by being SEO-friendly?

Simply, it is about getting good ranks in search results! When a piece of content or a web page ranks high in SERPs, they are SEO-friendly!

SEO stands for search engine optimization and surprisingly, it’s not just about Google!

Wherever you see a searching box, SEO is there too! Youtube, for example, or other search engines like Bing.

But Google is top of any other and has a firm algorithm to provide the best answer for the searcher.

Let’s review the most significant part again. Google always tries to give the best answers to its users. So:

Does your article answer the problem in a good way?

If yes, then you have a seo friendly blog post in hand. If not, stay with me to learn how to make one.

I am going to examine some great seo friendly content writing tips!

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11 Useful Hints For Writing Seo Friendly Content

Optimizing content comes in when you are making a content marketing strategy. (Don’t tell me you are doing without a defined strategy!)

Alongside that, when you are writing a piece of content, there are some rules that you have to obey.

The following hints cover both sides:

1 Do well-defined keyword research

Keyword researching is vital for building a strategy and also creating seo friendly content.

When you are planning a comprehensive strategy, you should know about your target audience’s concerns.

What problems do they have? What questions do they ask frequently?

So you can find the correct topics to cover by doing keyword research.

Also, keyword researching is necessary for writing a seo friendly content! I’ll tell you why.

Consider this post as a case study.

I decided to address tips for writing seo friendly content. It was the first step. After that, I should have known the phrases that my target audience uses. It is where keyword researching comes in. Look at this picture:

As you see, the phrase “seo friendly content” has the highest volume of searching.

Note: Column B gives the average search volume for the last year. I think this information is enough for making my article a seo friendly blog post! So I’ll stick to that.

Remember that you should take one keyword as the main one and consider others as the additionals for support.

In the picture above, I might make a mistake and chose the highest number for this good, but fortunately, I didn’t. Do you know why?

Although the 870 is a seductive number, it is so competitive! Imagine a girl (or boy) that is 100 percent hot! Being with her (or him) is a dream come true for sure. But have you seen the line? The line of people who are trying to win her (or his) attention?

So, keywords with a large average number of searching are heavy to lift! Especially for me, it is my second post in Medium, for god sake!

Now look at the picture below:

Look at the highlighted rows. Among 21 phrases, I chose one of them as my main one, which you can identify by the darker green color.

I also chose six additional keywords to support the central phrase. You can see them in light green. Now I must distribute these phrases among my words in a meaningful way.

You can use Quora to get ideas too. Try spying on your competitors; what keywords do they use to drive traffic to their sites?

Using Google autocomplete is a good option, likewise. You type a few characters and google shows what people have been searched around the topic.

There is a part at the end of SERP named Related Searches. This part is known as LSI keywords. Use them in your list.

As you see, keyword researches are essential. But not enough!

The writer must know the intention behind searching.

2 Recognize Purpose of Searching

What does your target audience need? I talk about the purpose behind searching. I take this article as an example again.

I think people who search the phrase “seo friendly content” are looking for information! They want to know if creating seo friendly content is possible.

Now I know the intention, I can write helpful content. (I hope so)

I will help them find their answer with the keywords I chose earlier.

Among all possible search intents, these four are more common:

• Knowing: Sometimes, readers want to get information over a topic.
• Acting: In some cases, searchers want to do something! For example, my audience wants to write a seo friendly article.
• Finding a place: People may search for finding a place they want to visit.
• Buy something: Nowadays, online shopping is rocking; the intent behind a search can be about purchasing something.

Although knowing about search engine algorithms is not that necessary for a writer, it is an advantage to know some of them.

3 Learn about the search engine’s algorithms

SEO is not just about creating content (Although this forms a significant part of it).

There is another side of SEO that refers to technical abilities. Experts examine the changes that occur because of a new algorithm. (They do more than this that I am not going to cover here.)

As a writer, you’d better know about algorithms like Penguin and Rank Brain.

Some of these algorithms changed the game in the near past. For example, Penguin forced people to stop keyword stuffing.

Back in the day, using a lot of keywords was the key to rank! The quality didn’t matter. One day Google woke up and said:

We should end this bullshit!

So it put out some new algorithms. It also warned that it is going to penalty web pages filled with meaningless keywords.

So take a peek at algorithms.

Now you have your chosen keywords. You found the intention behind the search. Also, you have a little knowledge about search engine algorithms (The last one is not that important).

No doubt it is time to write.

4Build a strong structure for your content

A solid structure helps both readers and crawlers.

Note: Crawler is a robot coming from search engines to web pages. It has the duty of finding your content for Google or any of its competitors.

Crawlers love logical structures. It is easier for them to index such content.

On the other hand, readers love structured articles too. Because they are easy to consume, they don’t need to put in a lot of effort. Miracle of structuring. Right?

To write a seo friendly article, you should stick to the rules. All the blog posts on the web consist of three phases:

1. Introduction
2. Body
3. Conclusion

Back in my former post, I told about the power of a good introduction. You can read about it in the 7 principles of content writing.

After that, we get to the body. It is where you should give the demanded information. Whether it is a comparison between two brands or it is a step-by-step guide to doing something.

Use as many subheadings as possible to break the script. Divide what you want to say into different parts.

As you may know, you can use one H1. No more! After that, the introduction comes in.

Then it is body turn. Your primary message comes here. It is where you can use a lot of headings. Subheadings and lists make your text more readable. Use them. Please!

The final phase or conclusion is where you summarize all you said earlier.

So never forget about the structure.

But how many words should you put on the screen? What is the ideal number?

5 Write long enough!

There isn’t any magic formula. The ideal length varies depending on the topic, the audience, the type of content (Is it a “how to do” article, or its a product description), and of course, the length of the competitor’s articles.

Some SEO assistant tools tell the ideal number of words for a topic.

If you want to know these seo friendly content services, I invite you to read Top 25 SEO Writing Tools by SEJ.

Photo by Unsplash

6 Create unique content

Plagiarism won’t be tolerated over the net. Yes, many pages are doing that, but to write a seo friendly article, you should not!

Copying entire content from somewhere else and pasting it into your web page is a waste of time. Google will penalty you. No one is going to read your writing. Absolute failure.

No one says that you should only write about things that are not accessible on the net! Just say it your way. Make it unique.

Find others’ mistakes and solve them to make better content.

Well, words alone are no good! Some pictures, videos, or even sounds can make the blog post easier to consume.

7 Use optimized images

Remember, most readers scan the whole blog post before reading it. This process is for making the big decision. Is it worth my time?

Using images inside your writing gives a better overall view. It can increase the number of people who decide to start reading the first sentence.

Although, just using them is not enough. Optimize images for search engines. Thus, you are going to have a seo friendly blog post.

First, you should reduce the size. Big images slow down the site and raise the bounce rate. Do not forget, reducing size must not affect the quality.

Besides that, there is a section called alt tags. You should describe the image in this section. Do it like you are explaining to a blind person!

Photo by Unsplash

Have you noticed that I linked to some other web pages above? It is essential to write a seo friendly blog post.

8 Use a link building strategy

I haven’t said anything about linking till now, but it is necessary as hell!

It can be outbound or inbound links. Each of them has its advantages.

Internal links benefit you in two ways:

1. Help crawlers to index more pages of your blog.
2. Keep the visitors in your blog for more time.

An outbound link is also beneficial. You can gain those links authority for your web page. If some authoritative websites link to your content, Google will like it more and rank it better.

Link building requires another post itself. But for now, let’s say it is almost impossible to create a seo friendly article without link building.

If the readers share your content with others, the chances of ranking better are going high.

9 Make your content shareable

Sharing can help you a lot. If you make valuable content, people like to share it with others. The more people see it, the chance for ranking good is higher.

So, first of all, your content must be good! No one is going to share shitty information.

After that, you should make it easy for readers to do the sharing.

Use social media share buttons. If you have a Facebook sharing button at the end of your text (or anywhere else), the reader uses it to share the content with friends on this social media.

So don’t give them any excuses. Make the process as easy as possible.

The next tip is about your first impression.

10 Write a Cathy SEO title and snippet

Take a look at this picture:

It is one of the results for searching about how to write a seo friendly article.

The top red box shows the SEO title. It is where you form your first impression. It must be a catchy one that grabs attention. It must convince the searcher to click on the link.

The lower box shows the snippet. It is a small section that you should summarize your whole script into two sentences. The better you do it, the more visitor you are going to get.

Pro Tip: Try to use the main keyword in your headings (including H1) and your snippet.

If you don’t get it by now, let me say it straight. You should do your best to make the readers’ time as pleasant as possible.

11 Make a memorable user experience (UX)

It is funny. If you want to make Google happy, you should make your visitors happy. It makes sense.

I said earlier that Google or any other search engines try to provide the best links and answers for their community of users.

So making the people happy ranks you high!

If you provide helpful information for readers, they are going to like your content. Besides that, your blog speed must be reasonable, or the visitors leave you ASAP.

So do something about providing a fun time for your visitors, in all aspects.

Let’s Summarize

To write a seo friendly article that ranks well in Google results, you should satisfy this search engine. To do that, you should satisfy the readers. Answer their questions and give them what they need. Thus, you will be pleased with incoming traffic. It is a circle of satisfaction where everybody is happy.

In this article, I tried to cover everything about writing a seo friendly blog post. If I forget to mention anything, please leave a comment for me.

Please don’t be shy and let’s interact.

Thanks for your precious time.