How to write website posts?

Once you have done your keyword research and have decided on the heading of your article, you may start writing the content of that article.

In keyword research, we just analyzed whether a particular keyword of article topic is worth investing our time and effort, whether we have any chance of ranking for that keyword, whether a particular keyword has the potential.

Now, we need to focus on putting our best foot forward to convert that potential into reality. This is done through on-page and off-page SEO.

The focus of this article will be on on-page SEO tricks and tips to be kept in mind while writing an article.

Table of Contents

• How to align our Keyword research and Article writing
• How to write an Article?
• Software for Content Enrichment

How to align our Keyword research and Article writing

Optimize each page/post only for one keyword. Its variations and synonyms etc. are counted as that one keyword only, e.g. coffee shop in Delhi, coffee shop near Delhi, etc. are the same keyword.

If you will try to optimize each page for 10-15 different keywords you will not be able to optimize that page for anyone of them. You may focus on and add some more keywords with time, by updating the article later on based on feedback that you get from SEO tools and Google webmaster reports, etc.

Find your main/seed keyword (word or phrase); find its long tail variations that people search for. Write articles using all these long tail variations of your main seed keyword - use them in title, headings, main content, meta tags, etc.

If there is lot of competition in your niche then use Sky Scrapper Strategy – see your competitor’s site, identify a piece of proven content, and then write better and longer articles than them, revolving around that particular seed keyword and its long tail variations. Then promote that article with zeal.

Note

Do not do keyword research one at a time, i.e. for every article just before you write it, or you will get writer’s block.

Rather invest few hours in a week solely for keyword research and write 15-20 good headlines with self suggestions regarding the competition to beat and the keywords you are aiming for. Then get in the writing mode, and start writing articles on them.

Tips for Bilingual site owners

If your site has content in multiple languages, say English and Hindi, you should include some Hindi specific keywords in your headings and body text.

For example, the title (h1) of this article is ‘How to write website posts?’. Along with this you may also include ‘Website posts kaise likhein?’ or ‘वेबसाइट पोस्ट कैसे लिखें?’. You may write this in the heading itself in brackets, or include it in the introduction or body of the article.

Also, there’s no need to learn hindi typing, or use voice-to-text application of Google.

Voice-to-text application of Google is not perfect, and its performance may vary from one speaker to another. This is the case with almost all voice-to-text applications, e.g. Dragon Naturally Speaking, Speechnotes, etc. So, you will still have to bear the frustration of correcting the Hindi text.

It is definitely faster to use voice-to-text applications if you are making original content in Hindi. But if you already have written English version of your article, it’s much better to just use:

• Google Translate for translation.
• Google इनपुट उपकरण for editing translated text.

This is my work flow. You may try it and see if it suits you.

How to write an Article?

While writing, write naturally for the topic, without focussing too much on the keyword. Once finished, optimize the article for that keyword before you publish it.

So, writing a SEO-friendly article is not much different than writing a general article. 90% of this creative work will be done using your writing skills. Afterall, content is the king. It’s only 10% that we tweak in an article to make it SEO-friendly. But that’s important nevertheless.

As far as writing skills are concerned, you may follow the following steps:

Step 1: Generate Ideas

• Brainstorm - Think what you know about the topic at hand, and just write it down. Do not think about the sequence and order that much right now.

• Reference - Have a look at what your competitors have written, see some videos on your topic. Have a look at the popular articles/blogs on such sites, if they have such a section on their website. This will provide you a lot of ideas and content. However, do this after you have done brainstorming on your own. Otherwise, you will just end up copying the ideas of others.

Step 2: Heading and Title of the Article

It’s a small but most crucial part of article writing. Generally, your article heading and title must have the root keyword, which is the main keyword that you are trying to rank for.

However, as per some experts, you should write your heading and title more for CTR, i.e. keeping in mind the reader. So, be creative and write a very interesting title - something that may force a person to click on it.

If you can have your root keyword in the heading while doing so, then it’s a win-win. However, it is always better to write a good heading without the root keyword, than to write a boring one with the keyword.

Note

However, make sure you are not using clickbait tactics. That is considered a bad SEO practice and will cause more harm than good to you in the long run.

Your article must deliver what it promises in the heading and the introduction part.

Also, make sure that your heading is in the h1 tags. You should not use more than one h1 tag in any given page or post.

Warning

In many Wordpress themes, ‘article heading’ is placed under h2 tag by default. Because the ‘site title (i.e. the name of the website)’ is placed under h1 tag by many Wordpress themes. Make sure you rectify this if your theme has such an issue.

The best way to find out if your website comforts to this rule is to right click and select ‘VIEW SOURCE’ on your browser window and search for h1. If you can find more than one, then you need to either fix it or hire a programmer to change your theme or website to fix this issue.

Apart from the heading, you should make sure that your article/post/page title is also fine. Page/Post Title (i.e. title tag) is not visible to the user on the page/post as the heading tag is. HTML title tag is found within HTML header tag.

It is not displayed inside the page but on the browser tab and search engine results. See the difference in article heading inside the page and the title of the page shown in the bowser tab below:

It’s called SEO title in Yoast plugin (as shown in the screenshot below). I have configured my Yoast plugin to show “post heading – site title” as my post title, as shown below:

So, it’s automatic. I need not do anything except when it’s too long and I need to truncate it, especially in Hindi version of my site where I use both Hindi and English in my post heading which will eventually make my title long too, or when I think that I should modify it a bit manually for better click-through rate (CTR).

The title tag is one of the most important things in SEO optimization (remember the 80:20 principle). The title should be 50-60 characters long. Too short and you will miss out on keyword benefits and if too long it may get truncated. It generally gets truncated beyond 60-65 characters. But it’s not fixed, as it’s based on pixels and not characters as such. Character limit is often given by SEO experts so that a newbie may understand.

Add some mystery in the titles of posts. Make the visitors curious enough to click your article and find out the rest of it. Do not write spammy-looking titles which look like ads, as if you are promoting a product. Be very direct in titles. A title must tell what you really have in the article. Do not deceive readers.

Even if your title does not have the exact keyword that you are aiming for it’s ok. Do not give up an awesome title just to forcefully embed the keyword in it. Google is smart enough.

To make your post title more interesting, you may:

• Use title tag modifiers, e.g. best, review, free shipping, checklist etc.
• Use numbers in your title to boost CTR. Titles with numbers get more clicks, esp. odd numbers.
• Use time-sensitive words like fast, now or today.
• Use parentheticals - A parenthetical phrase is a construction that can be used to extend the meaning of a word or phrase but is not one of the main constituents of a sentence (Hence, placed in brackets/parenthesis). For example, the last part of the sentence: “I bought a chocolate yesterday (and it was really good!).”
• Use emotional words, and marketing power words that arose curiosity or emotion.
• Google recommends that we include our website name and/or our website URL in the title of our pages/posts. We can separate it with the rest of the title using a hyphen, colon, or pipe.

Meta Title

Apart from Post heading and Post title, there’s also a thing called ‘Meta title’. But it’s not that relevant now.

Even if we decide to write it then keep in mind that you write a post title for readers (read CTR), as it is what gets displayed in search results, and meta title for search engines. Create a meta title of less than 65 characters (not keyword-stuffed).

However, for all practical purposes now your post title works as meta title too. So, you may leave the meta title box empty in your SEO plugin.

Step 3: Structure the article

Now, properly structure the article into - Introduction, Body, and Conclusion.

Writing Introduction

The most important part is the introduction and the heading of your article. This is what will be shown to a user on search engine page results (SERPs) and this is what a reader will see first when he/she lands on your page. The first paragraph is generally shown in SERPs to the user if you have not given a meta-description of your page.

Make sure that the first couple of lines of your article are super interesting, and they make the reader curious. That will act as a hook and force him/her to:

• click on your page on SERPs, thus improving your CTR (Click Through Rate).
• force your reader to spend more time on your page, as he/she will be curious about what you have to offer. It will improve your AET (Average Engagement Time) for a page.

Both CTR and AET are important SEO parameters that Google looks into, and your page rank will depend on them. You may see them using Google Analytics and Google Webmaster tools.

Basically, if readers/users like your page/post, Google is bound to like it. The same is true for other search engines to some extent, and even social media platforms like Facebook, Pinterest, etc.

Note

While writing an article, give utmost importance to end user - give them genuine and useful information, and solve their problems.

Then, once you have done that, you may optimize your page/post for Google spiders and other such search engines. This task is secondary. Some people make it their primary goal - a mistake, a big mistake!

Probably, that’s why many websites get hit badly after every Google Algorithm update. Because the tricks they were using earlier stop working for them.

As Google AI is getting smarter with each passing day, the role of SEO will keep on reducing, and the role that good quality content plays in page ranking will keep on increasing.

While writing the introduction, you may:

• Tell your readers the Outcome/Benefit that they will get by reading your article. OR
• Give Conclusion/Result if you are writing a review/comparing etc. OR
• Provide Preview of the content to come in the article.

It depends a lot on the nature of the article you are writing and of course your writing style.

In the first sentence connect with the reader, say e.g. showcase yourself to have faced or facing the same problem. First line should be a catchy description (similar to what you write in the meta description).

The first paragraph of the article should contain a heavy amount of words relating to your main target keyword (or the main root keyword itself that you are aiming to rank for). The reason for this is that Google will recognise these related words and recognise very quickly what your article is about. After the first paragraph, you can be less restrictive and write naturally about the subject matter.

This first sentence of the post will also be displayed in the description part in the SERPs (unless you write something else in the description part of your SEO plugin).

Then write a small paragraph containing the answer (if you are writing a response post, wherein you answer some query). So, give a conclusion here itself in the second para, i.e. provide clear answers. That’s why we often call the second paragraph as answer paragraph too. It may be 3 to 4 sentences long, usually bolded - you earn snippets in google using this technique.

Before or just after the Introduction, you may also provide a table of contents. If its items are clickable, then it will make your article easily navigable. However, even if it’s not, it will help your readers understand the structure of the article much better.

Writing Body of Article

While writing an article, you should examine your content to ensure it provides the best, most complete answers to satisfy a query, whether you are trying to rank for an informational page or selling a product/service.

This is the most important factor in SEO. Apart from this, you need to focus on the following factors regarding the presentation part of an article.

Small Paragraphs

You should divide your content into small, easily readable paragraphs. Any new idea must start from a new paragraph.

Write 3-5 subheadings to develop a structure - thereafter, just fill in the data. Write 200-300 words under each subheading and boom your 1500-word long post is ready.

In general, the size of the paragraphs that you will find in online articles is very less as compared to the essays, articles, and editorials that we are used to reading in newspapers and magazines. This is done deliberately, as attention span of online readers is significantly less. They probably won’t stick around reading lengthy paragraphs.

Why is it so?

That’s because, while reading a magazine or a newspaper, there’s no distraction. You have one thing in hand, and you read it. However, online there are a lot of options to choose from and readers often hop on from one article to another.

Sub-headings

Moreover, to make your article scannable, do provide proper sub-headings in your article. This will help a reader to jump to his area of interest quickly. It will also enable him to get a bird’s eye view of your article quickly and decide whether to read it or not.

For this purpose, you may also provide a table of content at the start of the article, or in a vertical column beside it. This will depend on the theme and plugins that you are using.

You should try to add your root keyword and the other related keywords in the sub-headings, as well as in the content body - the keywords that you finalized in your keyword research phase.

Also, make sure that your main sub-headings are in the h2 tags. You can use more than one h2 tag on your page or post.

If there are sub-headings within your sub-headings, then you may use smaller heading tags, i.e. h3, h4, h5, and h6, in that order.

Note

Use h2, h3, h4, ... instead of bolding the sub-headings, as this will tell the search engines that this matter is semantically important. Otherwise, if you just use bold or italic then it will only add styling to your page with no added semantic meaning or indication for search engines.

Moreover, when you use these tags, the related content gets bolded and enlarged anyways. You may further style it using CSS.

You may use Latent Semantic Indexing (LSI) keywords here. These are the keywords semantically related to your main keyword. They are not synonyms, but are contextually relevant and related to the idea/concept of the root keyword.

Some other Tips

• Do good research and make your content more in-depth. Provide useful data wherever necessary. If you can do so, there’s no way anyone can compete with you.
• Make your content relevant. Give useful information with actionable content, e.g. step-by-step implementation guide, checklist/pdf to download, etc. If your content is relevant, time spent by visitors on your page will increase, which in turn will send positive signals to Google.
• Need not focus too much on keyword density, i.e. don’t be obsessive. Aim for 1.5% keyword density in the entire article (including the root keyword and LSI keywords), i.e. in every 100 words you write, you may include 1-2 of your keywords.
• Analyse your competitor in the niche related to your keyword and write better and more than him. Generally, a 1500-2000 word long article is considered long enough. But it may vary from one niche to another and from one topic to another.
• Font size of the text should be big enough. Add some space between the lines too to make it less tiring to read and easier for skim reading.
• Do not shy away from giving links to external resources in your article, especially if they can prove useful to your readers. Appreciate the good work done by other webmasters. Spread the love!
• Focus on good presentation too, e.g. use multimedia, images, infographics, etc. Try to include at least one image in each article. Generally, the image to be uploaded should not be more than 150 kb. Give proper image title and use keywords in the alt text.
• Embed the youtube video on your website, so that it plays on your website itself and the user is not taken to YouTube.
• Proofread your article before publishing it. Believe me, I have been an editor of a magazine for many years before I became a webmaster. Even if you are Mr. Perfect, you will make many silly mistakes, ranging from typos to grammar, etc. Some will surprise you.
• Find your USP (Unique Selling Point). Do something unique on your website that may help it stand out from other similar websites. Give it its own personality.
• Factor in the voice search feature (which is gaining popularity) – Add FAQs in your website, that answer the questions that people often ask through voice command, rather than by typing.
• Interlink within a post and between different posts using good anchor text.
• Also provide related article links at the end of your article (In most wordpress themes this feature in inbuilt, but becomes active only after you have published some posts)
• You may open your internal links (e.g. related articles) in the same tab, as it will be easier for mobile users this way, rather than multiple tabs opening on their mobile. Though external links should ideally be opened in a new tab. You should never kick out your readers from your own website.

Phases in which you need to build the content for your site

Good content mix should be there:

• Phase 1 - the seed: One-third should be Response posts; 1200 to 1500 words but need to do a lot of keyword research before writing them to find just the right question. These kinds of posts rank first in Google and only then the other kind of posts start getting traction. They will start ranking in around 6 months depending on how well you have done your keyword research and the content quality. Hence, start writing these posts at the very start and only thereafter write other two type of posts. These will give your site authority.

• Phase 2: One-third should be Staple posts. Write interesting sharable posts, the kind of stuff we see on FB everyday. Thereafter publisize them on social media. They will help you a lot in Social Media Marketing (SMM).

• Phase 3: Now, write the Pillar posts - big posts having high competitive keywords. Such articles need to be written at the last and not at the very start, as they need around a year to start ranking.

If you write a staple/pillar post, you will need to do a lot more research. But even here, best way to cut research time in half is to not present yourself as an expert, but as a next door neighbour or friend who knows a little bit about the topic. If you pose as an expert, then you will need data and statistics, etc. to prove yourself.

Writing Conclusion

You have already given the conclusion in the beginning, so here do not give a boring summary of article. Rather ask the readers to take some action (call to action), e.g. share on twitter, comment, download the excel file having the list of topics, checklist, etc.

Software for Content Enrichment

Now, there are a lot of software available to us that may assist us in our content writing. Here’s a small list of some of them that you may explore:

• nTopic.org - to improve the relevance of your write-up.
• Quick Sprout Analyzer - Will help you place right keywords in your title tag, or your description, or your alt image tags, etc.
• Screaming Frog - It analyzes our article and let us know any shortcomings, e.g. in titles, headings, keywords, or links.
• Spark Content Optimizer – It’s a chrome extension that scans content to assess how comprehensively it covers a topic and how well it makes use of popular search queries.

Winding Up

We hope that this article will help you write SEO friendly content on your website. It is the most important aspect of on-page SEO.

Also, ensure that you publish fresh, quality content on a frequent basis. Though regularity is not that big an issue in blogs as it is on social media.

You can post all the articles in one go; doesn’t matter that much. But in YouTube, and social media platforms (like Facebook, Instagram, etc.) there should be some spacing between posting of videos.

Note

Do not try to monetize your site from the very start - upload atleast 30 articles first.

Moreover, there are a few other things that you will have to ensure. If you want to read about other on-page SEO stuff that you need to do (apart from writing SEO friendly write-up), you may read this article of ours.