By sticking to a basic article writing formula you have a much better chance of ranking high with the search engines.
Of course nothing replaces quality content and that is the main article focus. However, there are a few extra steps one can take to optimize your article and get your article discovered.
Title
Make sure that the article’s important keywords are in the article title and that the title is in bold. So if your article is about cooking fish don’t have: ‘Guess what we’ll be cooking today?’ as a title! Use the keyword in the article title and make it sound interesting as well. It is important that your article appears in the search results but you still want the searcher to click on your article link. ‘Top 10 Fish Recipes From Around The World!’ would make me click!
Headers
These article sub-headers should also contain your article key words and again should be in bold. They should offer a taste of your article and could well show up in the search results, especially if use bold font and include those article keywords.
Body
Of course having keywords within the body of your article is vital but you must make it flow naturally. Don’t stuff the article body with too many keywords; always remember that you are firstly writing your article for the reader not the search engine. Read it back and see if it sounds natural. Again do not be too concerned with keyword density; nobody knows the actual percentage and different search engines works differently. My more visited articles seem to be those articles that I have written naturally without checking density at all. The only article tool I use is Google’s keywords tool. Copying and pasting the body of the article into the tool reveals the keywords gleaned from the article. This shows me if the article is on track or not.
Images
Placing a relevant image into your article can help search engines discover the article itself. Make sure that the name of the article image is a keyword as well as the “alt” tags or the description of the image.
These basic steps will ensure that you have a naturally flowing, optimised article that will benefit both reader and writer alike. Again, make sure that you have article content that will benefit the reader and that will enhance their research.
Let’s repeat the golden rule:
Your article is for the reader not for the search engine.
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