What Is SEO.

The topic of Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is far too broad to be covered in any single post. But, the simple definition of SEO is the practice of building a webpage in a way that makes it more likely to appear in search engine query results. Many different elements go into optimizing your website for search engines, but the written content – the words on the website – is probably the most significant.

A big part of any SEO strategy should be identifying major keywords that customers in your market sector are likely to enter into search engines and writing content with an emphasis on those keywords. This is something that AI tools like Article Forge are specifically designed to do.

Write compelling meta titles

Meta titles are super important not just for SEO – but also for the user. Descriptive and enticing titles can be the difference between users clicking on your article – or your competitors’ posts.

Pro tip: Increase your chances of ranking higher and encouraging CTR by following the tips below:

Keep your title under 60 characters. Google displays the first 60 characters in the search results, and if you go beyond this limit, you’re at risk of your title being truncated in Google SERPs.

Use your target keyword at the beginning of your title.

Make sure to describe the post’s content as concisely as possible.

Make sure to preview it. As mentioned before, you can use free SEO tools to help you with this.

Optimise your meta description

Meta descriptions are a summary of your content that Google uses to show beneath your title in search results. This should include your target keywords, catchy copy to drive up your CTR. Meta lengths are recommended at 155-160 characters.

Unfortunately, there’s no real way of telling that Google will use the original meta description you’ve so carefully crafted. In many cases, Google will write their own version.

Headings tags

Use your header tags with hierarchy in mind. The title of a blog post should contain only one h1 tag on the page and include a target keyword. The main sections should contain an h2 tag, and subsections should be h3.

Make sure your header tags are different. Using similar tags can mislead users and search engines that you’re presenting the same information twice. If you find a crossover, it may be worth consolidating that section into one.

Tips on writing SEO URLs

URLs play a big role in terms of ranking factors. The more relevant the URL is the better. This is because it provides a better user experience, especially when it comes to sharing links.

Include your target keyword in your URL. This will help search engines categorise your URL in SERPs.

Keep your URLs short and concise by removing unnecessary words. The average URL should be around 60 characters or three to five words.

Use small paragraphs

It’s always best to keep your paragraphs short. From a user perspective, it makes your content easier to digest with each paragraph having its own idea (aim for 2-3 sentences). You can use different formatting options, such as bullet points, highlighted text and changing your font. This will make it easier for mobile readability and makes your content more visually interesting.

Optimise images

Search engines use alt text as information to understand the subject matter of an image better. Google can’t read the actual text in the images themselves, but they can interpret the content of images to define images’ relevance in the search results. So, you’ll need to name alt text and descriptive titles, captions and filenames.

The alt text is not visible to website visitors unless the image doesn’t load, then it’ll display for the users’ benefit.

Here is the example of an alt text for an image in HTML:

”thisisnovos

External linking to sources that make sense to the user

Whenever you write a new blog post, it’s important to point to external resources. Using a descriptive anchor text is important as people can better understand what the link is about. Links can help your readers explore a topic in more depth while staying focused on the main point.

You can use external links to help search engines further understand what your article is about. When internally linking, you can use this to a similar advantage depending on the content you have available on your website.

Pro tip: Remember to link out to useful external resources like Wikipedia, as it will build trust and improve user experience.

Optimal content length

Quality over quantity is key here. First and foremost, you need to provide the most relevant content for your readers that satisfies their search intent. You can check optimal length for your given topic by checking out your competitors who are ranking on page one.

Typically, the minimum length for blog posts is about 300 to 500 words.This is because Google likes longer content as it tends to get more likes and mentions on social media. Thus, the longer the content, the better chances you have of ranking better in search results.

The optimal content length is around 2000 words. But it shouldn’t be your number one goal to write 2000 words every time as it all depends on the above factors.

Optimise your content for mobile

Optimising your blog/website for mobile devices is a must for search engines in 2021, as Google is now ranking mobile-friendly websites higher as a rule of thumb.

Mobile Internet usage is currently at 55.4% (July 2021 stats) which is a striking amount of the market share. Failing to make your website/page mobile is a sure way to severe your chances of ranking.

With Google’s core web vitals update in June 2021 already rolled out, it’s never been more important to check your pages are functioning at optimal speed. You can check this by typing your URL into Google’s page speed insights where it’ll give you a list of improvements to make. This isn’t exactly a straightforward optimisation, so you may need technical help from webdev.

Update your content regularly

Let’s say your blog post does really well, you’re ranking 1st in SERPs, people are engaging, converting and you’ve had your fair share of social shares too. Unfortunately, the hard work doesn’t stop there. Google is always on the hunt for the next best thing in terms of resources, and you’ll always have your competitors trying to write something more valuable to overtake you.

Publishing regularly sends signals to Google that your blog is a good resource and it’s kept up to date which can help remedy this. Remember you can update blog posts by date, or even add extra bits of new information that have come to light.

Include schema markup

Schema markup sits in your website’s code to help search engines analyse your content. To give you an example: Schema markup can tell SERPs to display a schedule of upcoming hotel events. That, for the user, is incredibly helpful!

You can use Google’s Structured Data Markup Helper to add markup to your blog posts relatively easily. Also, don’t forget to test it with Google’s structured data test tool.