Article Guide for Search Engines:
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Getting your articles to rank well in the search engines is very important for your business. There are a lot of complex techniques that go into search engine optimisation (SEO) but luckily the basics are fairly simple. Here’s my quick and easy guide to writing an article for the search engines.
First up, choose your keywords before you start writing. Every article should focus on one particular keyword phrase. More about choosing those phrases in another article. Our keyword phrase for this article is going to be, obviously, “article guide search engines.”
Also remember, that while we are trying to rank well in the search engines, if a user doesn’t visit our page it makes no difference. You need to make your article stand out in the search engine result pages (SERPs), or else you still have nobody clicking on your result. The best way to do this, surprisingly, is to have the exact information the searcher is looking for.
Now, the way the search engines rank webpages is constantly changing and some tags become more important than others constantly. However, I believe if you stick to this guide your webpages will stand the test of time and outlast the fads that plague the search engine optimisation industry.
Now to the header tags:
Title tag - keep the title short and try to avoid joining words like “and”, “in”, etc. Your keyword phrase should come first and if you want your company name in the title of each page, put it last. This is what the searcher will see when your results come up so make sure it is meaningful and interesting to humans as well.
Meta Description tag - This is the plain language description of what your article is about. Some search engines use this for their results so write a good one that tells the reader exactly what to expect. Most search engines only display a maximum of 160 characters so keep it under that.
Meta Keywords tag - This is where you can list your targeted keywords. Always put your main keyword phrase first, then a few variations that use the same keywords. No use getting general here, remember that this article is targeting a specific keyword phase and your list of keywords here should reflect that.
Ok, these tags all go in the header tag, right at the very top before any javascript or other crap you have in there. Let’s see our example:
<head>
<title>Article Guide for Search Engines | connexted</title>
<meta name=”description” content=”How to write an article that ranks well in the search engines. All the tags to use while not forgetting your human visitors.”>
<meta name=”keywords” content=”article guide search engines, search engine article guide, search engine article writing guide, article rank well search engines”>
</head>
Next we start writing the article. My rules for this are quite simple:
- The keyword phrase goes in the title.
- The keyword phrase or variation goes in the first sentence.
- The keyword phrase or variation goes at the end of the article.
- You don’t force the keyword phrase anywhere else in the article.
Those are the only places I’d definitely focus on putting keywords and it can be done completely naturally. Your introduction to the article, and your conclusion to the article should also mention it.
Since you are writing about a topic, other keyword phrases will fall naturally into the body of the article without you forcing them. Just forget about them completely is my advice, there’s nothing worse than reading an article that was blatantly crammed with keywords.
So what tags are important for the body of the article. All the ones that make complete sense to use when structuring a website.
Header tags - your article title should be in <h1> tags, subheadings in <h2> tags, and so on.
Paragraph tags - use them for the body of the text, they should surround text rather than tables or some other bad design flaws.
Bold tags - These are used to highlight important parts of your article, these can highlight your keyword phrases. Though only use them when appropriate.
Other text formatting tags - Things like underline and italics could have more weight in the future, so don’t be afraid to use them if they’re appropriate. They also make things easier for your reader, like using bullets or numbered points.
Image alt tags - If you have images in your article, make sure you include a description in the alt tags. This makes your webpage more accessible to those with visual problems and are very popular for search engines at the time of writing.
As for other tags, structure it the way html should be structured, and pay attention to tags that make your website more accessible. With this approach you really can’t go wrong.
Now for the example:
<h1>Article guide for search engines</h1>
<p>Getting your articles to rank well in the search engines is very important for your business. There’s a lot… …Here’s my <b>quick and easy guide to writing an article for the search engines</b>.</p>
<img src=”" alt=”Download my article guide for search engines.”>
<p>…rest of body text…</p>
<p>…Remember these points when optimising your articles for search engines and you can’t go wrong.</p>
So there we have it. I’ve given you a complete framework for writing search engines friendly articles. It can be as simple as following these few simple rules to ensure your search engine content is ranking highly for your chosen keywords.
Please let me know if my search engine article guide was useful to you by leaving a comment. Or if you have any more tips, feel free to leave those too.
