SEO and content marketing are two sides of the same coin.
Without SEO, it would be hard for search engines to rank your content on the first page. Instead, it will be found somewhere on page 50 of Google; and we all know that the traffic on those pages is almost non-existent. But good SEO requires good article writing – they’re like two peas in a pod.
What is the Purpose of Google (and other search engines)?
Google, the undisputed leader of search engines, handles more than 3.5 billion searches every day. Their mission is to organize information in such a way that it makes knowledge accessible around the world. Their algorithms are constantly being refined to determine high-quality content. They rank blogs based on the order of their usefulness to the user who is performing the search.
This means that for your articles to have any SEO value, they need to be useful to the person who is searching for the answer.
How do you make sure your content is beneficial?
Google’s recommendation about content is that it should be:
- Useful and informative
- Valuable and original
- Credible
- High quality (a certain degree of wordsmithing is required)
- Engaging
These are the five ‘key ingredients’ that Google says your article must have to be useful. When these ingredients are in place, you maximize the potential of your website’s SEO. Without these ingredients, however, your article won’t have much value.
Search Engines Want to Solve Common User Pain Points
Search engines are constantly refining their algorithms to optimize their user experience and solve pain points. Articles that solve their user’s questions, answer their curiosity, and handle their pain points do well in terms of SEO. Good articles are written based on the reader’s problems – so you need to know what ‘ails’ your prospects.
To this end, keywords on search engines help SEO writers accurately gauge what the user is actively searching on the internet. They can then come up with an article that addresses those concerns. The advantage of article writing is that it positions you as an expert in your industry.
As long as your article is interesting and informative, and you will do better than your competition.
Social Validation is Only Obtained Through Quality Content
The most effective way to get social validation is through high-quality content writing. When your articles are great, they deliver value, and people find what they are looking for through your blog. This improves visibility and engagement on your website. When they share your links on their social media, search engines see this as social proof and then use this to improve your rank.
But, creating good quality content is just one part of the puzzle. There’s a technical side of content writing that you need to be aware of as well. And that brings us to the next point: SEO.
Why You Must Optimize Article Around SEO
Here’s why optimized blogs are important… you cannot improve your search engine ranking without them.
As you probably already know, there are several factors at play here.
On the one side, you have to create content based on keywords and SEO. On the other, you have to make sure your content is central to your audience’s pain points as laid down by Google.
You have to do the research on what your audiences want to read and understand. The technical side of content writing requires an understanding of things such as keywords, meta tags, meta titles, and backlinking.
General Guidelines for Article Writing
Most article writing services stick to the following guidelines to curate optimized articles, there are as follows:
1. Keyword Research
This is the most important aspect of article writing. You can either start writing based on your own creativity, or you could find ideas from trending keywords. There are many tools that let you find out what users are actively searching for.
SEMrush and Moz will reveal thousands of keywords in your niche. You can then decide what topic you want to write on. You can also find keyword ideas by simply searching for them on Google. The entries you find on the first page can serve as your starting point.
Pro tip: Use long-tail keywords and avoid highly competitive keywords if you just started your blog.
2. Develop an Outline and Optimize for Readability
When you write a new blog, you have to first create an outline so you don’t get distracted from the main theme. Internet users have notoriously short attention spans – according to one research, less than 8 seconds.
This means they won’t stick around long if your blog continues to stretch on forever. Instead, it is best to stick to between 1 to 3 sentences in total, although it’s okay if you stretch it to 4 sentences. But anything more, and you’re pushing it!
Also, you have to make sure that you insert sub-headers every 150 to 300 words to divide the article and make it more visually appealing.
3. Stick to Your Topic
When you first start writing content, you have to make sure you stick to the topic and only target the keyword you initially chose.
Don’t try to write about quantum mechanics in one paragraph and then go off on a tangent about the Big Bang theory in the next. Don’t target as many keywords as possible.
You cannot take a scattershot approach to content marketing. Doing so what be a waste of time and prevent you from writing what Google constitutes as ‘useful and relevant’ articles in your niche.
4. Include Internal Links Throughout Your Article
One of the hallmarks of high-quality content is linking to trustworthy and authoritative websites that validate your claims. This applies to data, statistics, and numbers as well as any claims you may have made. As a result, search engines start seeing you as a little more trustworthy.
So Why is Article Writing Important for SEO Again?
Because when content is optimized, it significantly improves your ranking on search engines.
Without this kind of visibility, your content will be just another one of the millions of blogs that are posted every day on the internet.
Nobody sees them. Nobody shares them. They just occupy space.
But you can easily gain visibility if you know what you have to do.
If you want to improve your rank, you have to commit yourself to the daily grind of creating consistently optimized articles.
About the Author
Dave Brown leads a team of article writers at Content Development Pros and has helped thousands of businesses launch their marketing campaigns. When he’s not busy writing blogs and articles, Dave can be found at the gym or experimenting with his food skills. Send him questions about SEO on the official website!
