This SEO copyriting best practice is all about Getting traffic from Google and other search engines. Writing for search engines is not that difficult as long as you follow some simple ranking rules about:

1. Writing appropriate original content that people are looking for.

2. Make sure you use keywords and synonyms in writing so that Google know what your content is all about.

3. Linking to and from relevant content via hyperlinks, images and video.

4. Giving images alt (alternative) attributes.

Keyword research

It is a good idea to do some basic keyword research before writing any content in order to know what people are searching for. You can easily do this by:

• Searching in Google and seeing what other relevant content is suggested as being popular.
• Gauge the keyword commercial values by seeing the number of advertisers appearing in the PPC section. But note not all newsworthy material has commercial value and some future events may have no PPC interest at present.

There are also free keyword research tools like the following:

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2)      [endif]

AdWords Keyword Planner

You now need to create an Adwords account to use the Google keywords tool. It shows how popular a particular keyword may be based on the number of people searching for it. There are several filtering methods including country, language, include/exclude words etc.

 

Although this information should be taken with a pinch of salt, you can gauge the popularity by simply looking at the following factors:

•           How often a Search phrase is used Monthly

•           How Competitive the Term is in Google

Ubersuggest

Another excellent keyword research tool is ubersuggest.org. This tool simply scrapes Google suggest list of keywords to show what is popular in searches related to your keyword. This is quote useful because Google suggest influences searchers behaviour in some cases. You can take suggested keywords and use them in Adwords keyword planner to see how many people are actually searching with that keyword.

Below is by no means a full list of best practice but inclusion of some of these factors will help to get your article/blog ranked well and thereby able to get good traffic from the search engines. When writing content we should try to follow some of these simple guidelines:

• Keyword research: This forms the basis of how you will structure your article based on what people are searching for. Use at least one or two variations of a term and potentially splitting up keyword phrases

• Keywords Spread: Good practice is to include the phrase towards the top of the document and then a few times through the document and again towards the end of the document with possible hyperlinks of where to go for more information. Aim for no more than 1-3 keywords and synonyms per article blog post.

• Keyword Repetition: Repeat keywords two to three times every 100 words- i.e. keyword density 2%-3% and try to make use of.

• • You can use this link for keyword density analysis: [endif] .

• Write original content: Use content that is not found elsewhere online. It is thought that Google ignores duplicate content when ranking. If you are basing article on content from elsewhere then make sure to change phrases and paragraphs (or use quotation and refer to source).

• Keyword rich URL: Include keywords in urls where possible. Further reading [if gte mso 9]

• Page Title: Use the exact target keyword phrase in the document’s title. The most important of on-page keyword elements, the page title should preferably employ the keyword term/phrase as the first word(s). Further reading [endif].

• Document Length: Try to write 350-500 words on a single ranking subject (keyword).

• Bold Highlight: You can highlight some (bold) important words in a paragraph.

• Page Headers: Break long articles into headers (H1, H2, and H3) with section keywords if possible.

• Link to relevant content: Use keywords to link to main site and other relevant articles in order to pass link value and call to action.

• Link out to Authority sites: Link some important words to [if gte mso 9]/pages when appropriate but not the main keywords and not competing sites. E.g. if you are writing about sports you can link to uefa.com, fifa.com, icc-cricket.com where relevant.

• Link Internally: Try to link internally within blog with related topics in order to boost value of blog by linking to other blog story about similar subject. Also link to main site for passing SEO value and a call to action.

• Image alt tags: Use a keyword rich alt tag that describes the image. Google uses this as further evidence of what the page is about.

Don’t let these guidelines procrastinate you!

Finally, do not let any SEO copyriting best practice guidelines hold you back from creating content as any content is better than none. Also ensure the guideline are not going against the tone of voice of the organisation communication.