Do you want your content to rank at the top and reach the maximum number of people on the web? It’s one of the most queried points when it comes to writing a good article for your site.Knowing how to convey your thoughts into writing is an exquisite quality of good content writing. But when you know how to optimize your article for SEO, it’s a next-level thing. Anyone can write a good blog, but it takes exceptional skills and practice to write an SEO optimized blog. SEO optimized articles will help you to rank up on any search engine and reach your target audience.

Through this article, I will share a few SEO tips that determine a good ranking in search engines. 

Preference of Topic

Come out with a subject that is helpful for your readers. It should be one of the most popular queries but your content should be unique at the same time. It should be one of those things that you are confident about expressing. If you don’t have enough knowledge about the topic, you need to do some research and then decide about writing it. The main objective while selecting your subject should be answering the questions of people through your article.

Know your audience

Before writing an article, you should analyze the audience you are targeting. When you have an idea, you must know how to deliver it to the mass. Write content that appeals to the interests of your target market or answers their questions. Learn anything and everything related to your subject so you can clear all the doubt through your writing. Stop guessing what your audience wants and try to make a useful data-oriented blog by doing industry research and competitor analysis.

Make yourself perfect in delivering information for your audience that is interesting as well.

Research the Keywords

Finding the SEO Optimized keywords, for your article is the very first thing to do after you select your topic. There are many tools available on the internet that can help you find Keywords‘ search volume, SEO difficulty, cost per click, and paid difficulty. For example “uber suggest” or “google trends”.

While analyzing the search results, make sure that the keyword has enough monthly searches with less competition. These tools provide a list of keywords based on their search volume and competition so you can easily select your focus keywords for your article.

Keywords (SEO optimized, density, usage)

Collecting SEO optimiized keywords for your article and correctly using them are two different things that most content writers fail to understand. You have to use those keywords throughout your article. Keywords should be placed in such a way that both your readers and search engines know what your article is about. Remember that using too many focus keywords will spoil your writing. Your readers might not find it interesting even if you are providing some useful information. Moreover, keyword stuffing will lead to the demotion of your blog in SEO ranking. Place your keywords smartly all over your post and make it look natural. You can also use the blog tags by tagging the relevant keywords for each post. Your focus keywords can also be used on the URL of the webpage of the blogpost.

Using Related Keywords

Using the related keywords instead of your focus keywords is one of the good practices. Search engines like Google are smart enough to understand if your article is overly stuffed with focus keywords. It wants you to write to the content which is loved by readers. A post which they find interesting and readable. You can use different synonyms and phrases related to your focus keywords. Using synonyms and different related phrases can make your blog look better. It is fun and challenging at the same time because you have to use correct related words. You can use various tools and plugins like Yoast SEO in your website for this.

Avoid Plagiarism

When you want to write good content you tend to gain a lot of knowledge from various sources. It’s good to have diversified knowledge but it takes a good writing skills to convert that information into creative content. Avoid copying the lines and phrases of other articles that are already established on the web. Use your sentences and phrases to make the article unique and likable. Your write-up should have some individuality that makes you different from others.

You can also use some lingo if you think that would be comfortable for your readers, to make your write-up interesting.

Structure of the blog post

Your blog post should be in a proper structure. Each post should be divided into various sections that make it easy to write. The sections may vary on every post but three basic points must be covered when writing a well-structured blog post: These are:

• The introduction (with the title)
• The body (with the subheadings)
• The conclusion (with the ending remark)

Jot down all the points you want to write in your blog and classify them into these sections. It will make the writing process faster and more 

efficient.

Usage of heading tags (H1, H2, H3)

You should know how to use the heading tags before writing an article for your website. It is one of the basic factors for creating an SEO Optimized web page. Use proper heading tags for effective SEO writing, especially when you are writing a long post. An iconic SEO optimized theme will always use the H1 tag for its title, the H2 tag for the subheadings, and the H3 tag for other headings. You should use your focus keywords in the H1, H2, and H3 tags to make your web page SEO friendly.

Correct use of Subheadings

Giving your content various paragraphs with subheadings will help your readers understand what that section is all about. Correct use of subheadings will make your article readable as well as SEO Friendly. Make them easily browse your blog in the one go. Add your focus keywords to your subheading accordingly that packs a punch to your blog. It may lead to a good user experience and will make your blog SEO optimized at the same time.

Analyze the “People also ask” section of your Title search

Do a google search for your title and go to the section “People also ask”. Select the questions that are related to your article and try to answer them. After clicking on one question Google will suggest you few more. This is how you can find the related content that can be added to your blog and consequently help you to build an SEO optimized website.

Post Title, Post Meta Title, and Post Meta Description

There is a difference between post title and post meta title.

The Post title is the title your users see the title of your post, whereas the Post Meta Title is how a search engine shows your post title in a search result.

You have to mention your post meta title in SEO settings or your post title will be treated as a meta title. Use your keywords in the meta title.

Make sure that your is around 60 characters. Google displays the first 50–60 characters of a title tag. If you keep your titles under 60 characters, you can expect about 90% of your titles to display properly.

Meta Description is the text displayed below the meta title by a search engine. The length of your meta description should be around 155 characters. Search engines state that there is no direct SEO benefit from the meta description – they don’t use it in their ranking algorithm. But there is an indirect benefit: Google uses click-through rate (CTR) as a way of working out whether you’re a good result. If more people click on your result, Google considers you to be a good result and will – based on your position – move you up the rankings. This is why optimizing your meta description is so important, as is optimizing your titles.

Using Images for presentation

When you know you are a great writer and have the power of words to persuade people, you want to improve it regularly. You want your blog to look more attractive apart from writing good content regularly.

Images are a supporting tool that can take your content from drab to exciting. It takes few seconds for a reader to switch a web page if they don’t find it interesting, especially when they are reading a blog post. You have to keep in mind that your audience is indolent. This social media scrolling generation wants everything to be easy, quick, and nicely presented. That’s where images become functional to represent your information. Sort-out the relevant image and place it along with your content. It will increase the interpretability of your blog post.

Even though you are not a photographer or a designer, you can easily find relatable images on the internet. These images are available free as well as paid on various stock image websites.

Optimum Length

An SEO optimized article should have at least 400 words. There is a high probability of your blog ranking up by writing a longer blog post, but it doesn’t mean the shorter blog post won’t rank well. The only thing to keep in mind while writing a longer blog post is, that it should be interesting and well-presented throughout your blog post. The focus keyword stuffing is still not a good option. Only if you are a skilled writer, you should write a longer post. It becomes a task for your readers when it is lengthy and not entertaining. Moreover, the preference should be more on the quality of the blog rather than the quantity. You can also compare the size of other published blogs on the same topic you are writing.

Adding Backlinks and Internal links

Backlinks or Inbound links are when a website inserts links on itself pointing to another website. Generating backlinks is a very important factor of SEO optimized websites as Google weighs around 18% of overall ranks based on these. You can create the inbound links on your social media accounts and also ask your fellow bloggers to collaborate and share your blog links in their articles. Backlinks are important for your website because:

• They have a huge SEO impact
• Improves the navigation for readers

When you write a new blog post always interlink it with old blog posts of your site. It will lead your readers to the other related blog posts of your website. It will also make the search engines re-crawl your old posts and your entire website. Don’t forget to add the anchor texts for your interlinks. Anchor texts are the highlighted texts that appear in front of your hyperlinks.

Internal links are useful for your website because:

• They provide site structure 
• Reduce bounce rate
• Better user experience

Adding related blog posts consistently

Keep on writing other interrelated articles to generate more internal links within your website. Whenever a new user visits your site, they will not know how to navigate through it. It’s the way you set your web page and posts, that will decide how smoothly they can browse the content. If your visitors are confused about where to go next, then the site needs improvements. 

When a reader visits your site through a search engine, they will quickly go through your article headings, subheadings, and the related posts section. You have to make sure all three of these should be very impactful so they would never want to leave your site.

By mentioning the other related posts underneath an article, you are telling your visitors what to do next. Displaying content in a similar niche to the post they have just read will keep them engrossed on your site. The more pages they visit, the longer time they spend on your site. This is what your readers will like about your site that doesn’t have to wander around another website to find the related information. You will achieve the goal of keeping it all under the same roof.

Focus on creating a niche-oriented blog

Creating a blog that is constantly churned out by new content can be frustrating for both the writer and the readers. You should know how to stick to a particular niche and give detailed information about that. This is an important SEO aspect that most of the blogs miss out on. When you provide information about certain things, many queries may arise. This is where you have to work on. You should analyze all the queries that may arise after your niche is decided. You have to collect the doubts as to your readers’ point of view. Again this is one of the best techniques to reduce the bounce rate of your website.

Scrutinizing before publishing

Every writer wants their work to be judged before it gets published. The writers who are at an advanced level also get their write-ups scrutinized by someone. If you want to share information through your blog, you have to ensure your language, data, presentation, SEO optimization, and stats are used correctly. 

It’s up to you who you want to appoint for rechecking your articles. It could be a senior, a friend who is knowledgeable about the topic, or any family member. When your goal is to rank up in a search engine you will need to follow the SEO techniques or get it rechecked by an SEO expert.

Some extra factors that are not directly related to SEO but may affect your blog’s ranking:

• Performance of the website: Site speed is both an SEO as well as a non SEO factor. Your site should be speed optimized. Your site should not take more than 2 seconds to load. If it’s more than that, most of the visitors will quit your site. Eventually, it will affect your SEO ranking.
• Have an SSL certificate for your website: The SSL (Secure Sockets Layer) certificates are a measure of security for your website. SSL certificates are small data files that cryptographically establish an encrypted link between a web server and a browser. This link ensures that all data passed between the web server and browser remain private. Google’s ever-changing algorithm for SEO ranking, suggests that websites using SSL certificates are more trustworthy and likely to rank up.
• Well-designed website: Make your website designed beautifully with relevant colors and themes so it looks sophisticated to a user while reading an article.
• Optimization for mobile as well: Get your website mobile optimized or responsive as most of the audience in today’s world is using a cellphone to access the internet. 

In conclusion, I would say both SEO and content writing should be up to the mark to rank up in a search engine. Keep learning the SEO techniques so that your content gets its deserving rank on Google.