Importance of texts in SEO
DG WEB FACTORY is a website and web development company and we are faced with daily questions from clients about how to write a good article for Google. So I decided to write “How to write a good article for SEO” and hope it will help you reach the top positions. This article is about writing a good article only from a technical point of view, not from a journalistic or literary point of view.
If you are here now, you may have heard that the content of your website affects the position of your website or online store in Google and other search engine results. In this article, I will mention the most important things to consider when writing an SEO friendly article. If you regularly update the content of your web site, Google will see that your web site is active.
How much and what content and articles you have on your website have a huge impact on the position of your website or online store on Google search results. Of course, this is just one of many but important points for your success in SEO.
Meta title and meta description
Each article on your website or online store must have a Meta title and a meta description. The meta title and meta description is the title and description that appears in the google search engine next to your page.
There are several ways you can add a meta title and description to your article, depending on your knowledge and the type of website or e-commerce site you have.
If you have a WordPress web site or Woocommerce site and you are unfamiliar with HTML, you can use a plugin. There are many different SEO plugins, both free and paid. One of the most popular and best plugins for SEO for WordPress is the Yoast SEO plugin.
This plugin will allow you to enter a meta title and meta description for each article and also for each page on your website. The Meta title in the Yoast SEO plugin is the SEO title and the meta description is also a Meta description. Enter the required headline and the plugin will tell you in advance whether the headline and description are the required lengths and whether it contains the keyword you entered.
If you have a custom made page without a content management system and you are familiar with Html then you can place the meta title and description in the code, in the head section of the website, by adding a title and meta tags.
If you have an online store on another platform, such as Opencart, Prestashop, then these platforms have built-in input fields where you can add a meta title and description to each article and product and to your homepage.
Article titles and subtitles
Websites headlines fall into 6 levels, from h1 to h6, where h1 is the most important headline on your website. For h1, you should only mark the article title. The following should be a subtitle (h2) containing a brief additional explanation of what the article is about. Paragraphs also must be separated by second-level headings h2. Google takes into account the generally first and second level titles. With headlines, you structure your article, especially if it is huge.
URLs structure
Each article must have its own page with its own unique link (ur).
This link should contain the search phrase or keyword for which you want to optimize the particular article. Of course, the article should be about and around the topic represented by the keyword or search phrase. Depending on how your website is designed, links are created when you add a new blog article. If you have a content management system, the link is created automatically as you create the article. In popular CMS systems like WordPress, Prestashop, Opencart, Magento, as well as on some custom made websites, you can specify who will be on the link. For example, in WordPress it is possible to fix “Permalink”, in Yoast SEO plugin options the link is labeled “slug”, in the Opencart e-shop engine link is marked as “URL” and the user can also add links through the content management system content. If the user does not add it, the link is created automatically depending on the website settings.
Language versions
If you target more than one country, add blog posts in multiple languages. It is only important that the website is designed so that each language has unique links.
Ways to Add Multiple Languages to a Website:
- Each language has its own subfolder with the language name, for example, / fr /. Then the French version of the article will read mysite.com/fr/blogpost-about-dogs. But for the English version of mysite.com/en/blogpost-about-dogs.
- Each language has its own subdomain, such as fr.mysite.com, en.mysite.com
- Each language has its own page: mysite.com (which will include the English version). Mysite.fr (which will only contain French-language version
It is important to separate content in different languages with one of the following types. Otherwise, if you combine content from one language into multiple languages, the google bots might consider it a duplicate. Which is another factor to consider when creating content for a website. Because pages can’t have duplicate content anywhere because google bots don’t like it.
Keywords
For each article, you must add a search phrase after which you would like your article to be found. For example, in WordPress, the same Yoast SEO plugin offers the following option to enter a keyword (Focus keyphrase).
Similarly, other popular platforms offer you the opportunity to enter a keyword. If you do not have this option on your website, you can contact the web developer to add it to your website.
The length of the keyword is preferably 2-4 words. Use unique keywords for each article. The keywords should be in the article itself, but not too many or too few. The preferred percentage for keywords in the text is between 0.5% -3%. For example, if you have 100 words long and have a keyword repeated 3 times, your keyword share is 3%.
Pictures
Add pictures to your blog posts, ideally if the pictures are specially made for you and not anywhere else on the Internet. Never copy images from other pages. Because this way you will break the law, and Google will treat it as plagiarism. Google may exclude your article or page from google search results altogether. Or you can order the pictures for you by a professional designer. For example, illustrations or isometric illustrations that are especially popular in 2019 for web design.
Images will make your article more readable to the reader. Also, Google bots will evaluate whether articles contain images. Adding charts, tables, visually displayed statistics will be very good. Of course, only these must be originals, not copies.
Each image placed on a web page must have an ALT attribute, title, and description (similar to articles), as this is also taken into account by Google.
Alt texts also help read a text about what is in the image for programs that read information from websites. For example, people who can’t see or read for other reasons. Therefore, when adding a description or alt text, think about how you would describe this image to someone who does not see it.
For example, in WordPress, you can add an ALT text, title, and description to each image:
If your website does not have this functionality, you can contact us for help. The experts at DG WEB FACTORY will provide you with advice and help you implement this functionality on your website as well!
Length of text and length of paragraphs
There are many different views on the length of the text. From experience and browsing through the various articles that rank high on Google, you can see that articles that are very long and have a lot of views are better positioned lately. For example, you have an online store that sells TVs. You have 300 words written about TVs. But your competitors have 5 articles with detailed information and lots of views and articles longer than 1000 words. How do you think which content Google will consider providing more information to the customer? Because Google evaluates pages for the quality and value they add to their visitors.
Therefore, I suggest you look into the competitors’ pages and see what their activities are. How much, how long and what your competitors write about. What meta descriptions and images competitors are using. And then write more and in better quality.
Paragraphs are recommended to be not more than 150 words long.
Links
Another important factor is inbound, outbound and internal links in the article. Your article should have links from other websites that already have high positions in google search. You should have links to other pages in your blog. Also, the article should link to other sections of your website. For example, to another article.
Video
Put the video in your articles, this can extend the time your users stay on your page. Because one thing you do with blogging is that visitors in your site stays longer. This also results in a lower bounce rate on your site. Which also positively influences your position in google search.
Video is also easier to perceive than text and most internet users don’t want to read. It is easier to attract visitors to your site with videos or images than with text.
Length of sentences
It is advisable that not more than 25% of sentences be more than 20 words long. Long sentences are harder for the user to read and understand. Also, start with sentences with different names. Avoid situations where multiple sentences beginning with the same word are repeated in the text.
Conclusion
To write a good SEO article from a technical point of view, you have to patience and invest in each of the above. But most importantly, when writing articles write for people, not for bots. Because no matter how technically correct your article is, if it does not contain the information that users are looking for and what they need, you will not be able to reach and stay in high positions. Also, remember to write articles regularly all the time. Good luck to you in blogging and business!