SEO article writing tips to boost exposure

By Michael Swart Last updated Sep 3, 2023

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SEO Article Writing Tips To Boost Exposure

Google’s unending quest to become a ‘humanized’ search engine has been quite evident since the time it started to tweak search algorithms. Along with the crackdown on low quality links, the search engine giant has been pointing for a while against using poor quality content. So much so that fresh, good quality, original content is now considered to be one of the top three ranking factors that can affect the performance of your website on search result pages.

If you are still relying on spun content or $1 content written by a college student, then it is time to reconsider your strategy. There are two ways to do it. You either hire someone who can spin a decent yarn or you write the content yourself.

Contrary to popular notion, it is not impossible to write good quality SEO articles, no matter how inexperienced you may be. If writing gives you jitters, then here’s a small guide from us to help you get started on your SEO Article Writing crusade.

Use competitor sites to generate ideas

This is where most people looking to write content get stuck. Coming up with fresh and relevant article topics for your website is more difficult than you think. Add keyword optimization into it and suddenly, the task seems more difficult than what you had bargained for.

A simple and effective technique is to use your competitor’s sites to generate ideas. Use any competitor analysis tool, scrape their blog articles to find the articles that they are ranking for and source the idea to create your own SEO article. If your competitor is already ranking for some keywords, then you won’t even need to do keyword research.

But now that you have an idea, what’s the next step? Do you copy the same article topic? No, you don’t.

Rehash the Title

You will need to brainstorm a bit and rework the title that your competitor is using while trying to retain the user intent and the keywords. Seems difficult? It is not. Let’s take a simple example. If your competitor’s article title is ‘How to get instant cash advance loans’ and he is ranking for the keyword ‘cash advance loans’, you can create an article that says ‘Secret tip to get instant cash advance loans in 24 hours’.

Along with the same user intent and the keyword, you create an excitement in the reader that there’s a secret tip in the article that’s going to help them get the loan in just 24 hours.

The content may well be the same as what your competitor has. But your prospects of getting a click through are significantly higher with this title.

Use numbers

People fall for numbers. Five tips, seven ways, ten things, using numbers improves the chances of the article being read and shared. In the above example, adding a number makes the title much more enticing. ‘Seven secret tips to get instant cash advance loans in 24 hours’. Take a look at the articles in authority websites like Moz, Forbes and Mashable and you will find one thing in common. They all use numbers in their article headlines.

Rework on the lost content

When there is a serious dearth of quality content ideas, you can always draw inspiration from your old content that lies lost in the archives of your website. For example, if there was an article that you wrote years ago about digital marketing or selling t-shirts online, then you can update it with some fresh information incorporating the latest changes in the business. You can even use the second and third tip here to come up with a new article topic entirely. With renewed content that is already indexed on Google, you have a significant chance of getting instant traffic.

Using keywords

Targeting a keyword? Your article title is the first place to use it. This is a simple rule that works so effectively that it needs no tinkering. Use it in the article title while trying to create an interesting and exciting one. Keyword usage in the article is a matter of debate among the SEO community. Different people believe in different rules. For example, using the keyword in the first paragraph or having a keyword density of 5 % or using the keywords in the sub-headings. The fact is that nothing’s written in stone. As long as you are not keyword stuffing and are writing relevant content, your article has a good chance of getting ranked. You can tailor the article around the main keyword and then spread out long tail keywords throughout the article.

Linking out

It is a good idea to link out to relevant websites or internal links in the article. This gives Google a good idea about the relevance of your website to the niche that you are promoting and helps improve the credibility of your website. Linking internally has its own benefits too. If your article goes viral and gets tons of shares, you can pass on some of the authority to other articles and web pages on your website.

However, ensure that while linking to other domains, you only choose authority domains in your niche or link to pages that already have considerable exposure.

Connect to your readers

Last but not the least; we come to the crux of the matter, the actual body of the article. This is where you must connect to the audience of your site. If your site has always had a tone, conversational, engaging, then maintain the tone. Your readers will be acquainted with it by now and it does not make sense to change it. If you are starting fresh, then you must decide what kind of image you want to portray for your site and then create content accordingly.

It goes without saying that any SEO article that you write must be 100% original and plagiarism free. If you find it to difficult, then you can always outsource it to a quality article writing service.