8 steps to write SEO-standard articles to help boost website rankings and traffic

SEO-standard articles are content that is deployed and optimized to satisfy user needs as well as promote rankings in search engines. The 8 steps below will help you create quality content.

1. Keyword research

The ultimate goal of SEO-standard articles is to provide potential customers with valuable content that satisfies their concerns. In addition, the article is also optimized for keywords so that search engines understand your content.

1.1 Find the main keyword

The main keyword is the shortest keyword and represents the main topic of the article.

For example, if you want to write an article about “baking recipes”. In the keyword research tool KWfinder you enter the keyword “baking recipe”, select the country Vietnam and the language Vietnamese as shown:

You immediately have the results list of keywords related to your topic.

The results show that the keyword “baking recipes” does not have the most searches. The keywords that users are most interested in and searched for are:

– Flan recipe

– Birthday cake recipe

– Flan recipe

– Dumpling recipe

Thus, the keyword “Flan cake recipe” will be selected as the keyword for this article of yours. When clicking on the keyword, looking at the chart on the right, you can see that the search trend for this keyword also increased from May 2021 to August 2021.

1.2 Find long-tail keywords

Adding long-tail keywords to the article helps support the main keyword.

To find long-tail keywords you can use Google Search Box.

You enter the keyword in the Search Box but do not press search. Google will immediately suggest long-tail keywords for you.

In addition, you can also expand your long-tail keyword list with the Keyword Tool.

2. Analyze Search Intent

Google’s algorithms focus on accurately assessing users’ search intent. Therefore, to achieve high rankings in search results, your SEO-standard article must match search intent. 3 factors you need to pay attention to when analyzing Search Intent:

–  Look at the high-ranking Web pages, are they blog posts, products, categories or landing pages? For “Flan recipe”, all the articles are blog posts.

– The articles are tutorials, product lists, useful information sharing, tips, tricks, news articles or opinion sharing, reviews, FAQs, comparisons, etc. With the keyword “Flan recipe”, all are how-to articles.

– Look at the titles and descriptions of the pages to better understand the needs of the users. Are they “newbies” or “professionals”? What appeals to them? Are they looking for a quick solution or something in-depth? Returning to our example, the pages all introduce simple, smooth, and non-porous Flan recipes.

3. Optimize the Meta Title tag

The title tag or Meta Title tag/ Title Tags most accurately describes the content of a page and is displayed outside of Google search results.

The Meta Title tag is very important for SEO, users often rely on this information to decide whether to click on the website or not.

To make your title tag attractive to users and search engines, optimize it according to the following basic rules:

– Write a separate title for each page. Don’t use the same title for multiple web pages.

– The title solves a problem or benefits the user. Use numbers, emotional words or words that arouse curiosity to stimulate users to click immediately.

– The title tag is usually a maximum of 60 characters long. If the title exceeds this length, Google will automatically truncate it.

– The title contains the main keyword. Google will also use the title to understand whether the content is relevant to the query.

4. Optimize Meta Description Tag

The Meta Description Tag is the short snippet that appears right below the Meta Title tag in Google search results. This is an effective way to encourage users to click on your website instead of your competitors.

– Make sure all pages on the website have a Meta Description. Each page has a unique, non-duplicated description tag.

– The description tag contains keywords. However, do not try to cram too many keywords into the tag.

– The Meta Description tag usually has a maximum length of about 150 characters. However, to display properly on both Desktop and Mobile interfaces, you should write about 120 characters, which is best.

– Add words that evoke emotions and call to action combined with a positive tone to create highlights and attract users to click.

– The title tag must highlight the topic of the content and provide a solution to the problem.

5. Optimize the H1 tag

The H1 tag is the first title displayed on a page.

– Create a unique H1 tag, each article has a different H1 tag.

– Use the 5W1H formula to develop the article title. This also helps readers know what they will find in your content. Titles such as “instructions”, “how to”, “methods”, etc. also boost organic traffic.

– Using numbers such as “TOP 5”, “10 things”, “20 ways”, “30 secrets”, etc. for H1 also helps the website receive more traffic and interaction than other types of titles.

– The H1 tag must summarize the content of the article. If H1 and content are not related, Google will rate the content as low quality.

6. Optimize SubHeading tags H2, H3, H4,… and URL

– Use Subheading tags to clarify the content and layout of the article. H2 tag will state some main ideas of H1, H3 tag states the main idea of the previous H2,…

– H2 tag contains the main keyword, H3, H4 tags are not required. Do not try to cram keywords into H tags, otherwise Google will consider it as keyword spamming.

– Normally, a standard SEO article has 2 – 5 H2s, which is reasonable.

– URL contains the main keyword, the shorter the better, easy to read, easy to remember but still ensures the correct meaning.

7. Add images and videos to make the content more visual

In addition to text, images are also an essential element for quality SEO articles. Images help articles become more vivid, attractive, and convey information to users more quickly and attractively.

Another benefit of images and videos with articles is that they can rank highly in Google’s Images and Videos section, and even be included in Featured Snippets, attracting more traffic to your website.

Make sure to optimize your visual content by:

– Reducing image size to increase page load speed

– Giving the image a descriptive name, containing keywords, for example “cong-thuc-lam-banh-flan.jpg”.

– Add image Alt tags.

8. Use Internal Links and External Links

Internal Links are a great way to optimize content for users and search engines. Users can easily find other related content on your website. Search engines will index pages, thereby understanding your website structure better.

External Links help improve your website’s ranking on Google. By adding external links to authoritative websites, your content will be more SEO-friendly.

Each SEO-standard article should have 3 – 5 Internal Links and at least 1 External Link.

Adsmo provides reputable and quality SEO-standard article writing services. If you have any needs, please contact us immediately for further advice.

See more:

• What is Semantic Search?
• What are LSI Keywords?