How To Write Perfect SEO-Optimized Articles in WordPress 2018 — Shout Me Loud
https://www.shoutmeloud.com/how-to-write-perfect-seo-optimized-blog-post.html
Every blog post is like a web page in terms of search engine ranking and you can optimize each post with specific keywords for search engines.
When writing these SEO articles, there are several things that you should keep in mind.
Whenever I hire a new author to work on one of our blogs, I have to give them manual inputs and checklists to help them to write better articles. Apart from selecting topics, there is a complete SEO checklist that must be followed.
(Note: I used to send this information out in an email to all the authors in my blog network. So I thought it would be a good idea to compile all of this information into a post. This way, ShoutMeLoud readers will also benefit from this information and learn how to write SEO articles as well.)
Also note that in this post I will not be covering keyword research as keyword research requires a detailed post of its own.
Writing SEO-Optimized Articles:
1. Post Title and Meta Title
First, you need to understand the difference between post title and meta title.
- Post title: How your reader sees the title of the post on your website.
- Post meta title: How search engines show your post in search results.
If you have not specified a meta title in your SEO settings, your post title will be treated as the meta title.
- It is important to have your keywords in the meta title.
You can read more about this here:
Pro Tip: Keep your post titles less than 66 characters.
2. Post Meta Description
All of the most popular SEO plugins allow you to add meta descriptions to a post. These descriptions play a major role in search engine ranking.
Think of a meta description as a sales copy for your blog post:
- In 156 characters, you need to add your keywords and create a description that is seductive enough for users to click on it.
If you have not added meta descriptions in the past, you should start doing it immediately.
Meta descriptions are very important.
You should go back to any of your previously published posts which do not have a meta description and add one.
By optimizing your post meta descriptions, you are ensuring that every post you write has the potential to drive a maximum amount of traffic to your site.
Google sees every blog post as a different web page so you can rank every post for certain keywords.
Meta descriptions are great places to put keywords.
3. Image Alt Attribute
Google can’t read images.
- Text is how Google recognizes an image.
To ensure that search engines can understand what an image is about, you must be sure to use proper image names.
Many people make the mistake of uploading images with names like image001.jpg.
- This is a huge mistake!
When naming an image, keep the name relevant to image itself.
For example, if you take a screenshot of an AdSense dashboard, and you name the image “AdSense”, it will not be targeted. Instead, you need to use a name like “AdSense-dashboard”.
Here at ShoutMeLoud, we use an effective plugin called SEO Friendly Image which uses the image name as its “alt (alternate text) attributes”. This way, when people search for an image at Google Image Search, they will land on an image in one of our blog posts.
If you choose to not use such a plugin, you can always manually add alt attributes when you upload an image.
I have seen positive results when using keywords in image anchor text (when naming an image), so you should at least use keywords in your image alt text.
4. Interlink and Anchor Text
When writing a new post, it’s always a good idea to link back to old blog posts so that readers will stick around your site for longer and also so that search engines can re-crawl these old posts.
This helps in better navigability of your site which reduces the bounce rate- another important SEO factor.
When you interlink, you should use the anchor text technique.
Simply put, when you link to a blog post, you see an option to add a link and a title.
Make sure to fill out the post title with the main keywords for the post that you are linking to.
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