#How to do SEO in Blog articles?

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is a widely used technique to increase the visibility and traffic of a particular web page. This ultimately results in better ranking and consequently more readers.

To create a good article for SEO, you need good writing skills to produce something interesting for the reader while naturally incorporating keywords — which are the main terms that determine the subject of the page — within the content. If you want to learn how to do this, just read the tips below to know how to write better articles for both users and search engines.

Search engines have been increasingly striving to deliver relevant and informative content to their users. Once they discover that your content is nothing but spam, they won't hesitate to lower your ranking. Moreover, an overly optimized article is tedious to read.

If you don't have a blog or website up yet, the tip is always to envision who you want to write for before starting to put words on the blank Word screen. Now, for those who already have a page properly monitored by Google Analytics, things get a bit easier: just take a look there and see if your text is resonating with whom you expected and what can be changed to attract different visitors.

Oh, and never forget to cross-reference the Analytics information. That's right! Instead of just looking at the main data, such as age, gender, and region, try mixing the reports — are most visitors aged 18 to 24 male or female? Where do most of the male visitors over 35 come from? — to know exactly who is arriving at your web address.

Write the content in a simple manner so that it's easy to read. Start your article clearly, explaining its purpose right away. This way, search engines can easily read the keywords, and readers will quickly understand what the article is about.

Break your content into simple, short paragraphs to explain them more easily. Use subheadings for this, as they make the information easier to find, both for people and for search engines.

And remember: lists make it easier to tailor your content for SEO without making it repetitive, and they also make reading less complicated.

To write with good SEO in mind, knowledge about keywords is indispensable. For this reason, create a list with your keyword and its variations to insert them throughout the article. Use the main keyword as soon as possible and gradually incorporate the others naturally into the text. If your article is about "cute kittens," the first mentions of this word should be in the title and the first paragraph. Save your synonyms for the second or third paragraph.

But don't overload the article. If someone can clearly perceive your keyword even before opening your page, you've probably used it more than you should, or emphasized it too much. When this happens, take a step back, breathe, and remember your mantra: "I'm writing for a person, not for a search engine."

Many people, when starting to produce their first content for the web, decide to bet on several keywords to be used in the same post, thinking that this can rank them better in different Google searches, which is actually a big mistake.

Going back to our previous case, if you want to talk about "cute kittens," for example, don't try to insert other keywords into the subject, such as "funny videos" or "clothes for kittens." Take one step at a time and focus on just one topic per post, OK?

In 2004, journalist Chris Anderson wrote an article for Wired magazine about a theory he affectionately called the Long Tail. And what the heck is that?

Well, Anderson's idea was that while a portion of the market produces a small number of best-selling hits over a period — like The Da Vinci Code, The Avengers, or something similar — another part produces a massive number of lesser-known products that together form immense value for those who can gather them in one place and sell them — like bookstores or music systems like Spotify. And what does this idea have to do with SEO and web content production? A lot!

In addition to pointing out the strength of niche-oriented content on the web — such as blogs focusing on highly specialized topics like "traveling for people over 60" or "learning to play the recorder" — the Long Tail concept also shows how we can invest in less competitive keywords to have a better chance in Google search results. Want to see how this works?

Check this out: if you want to talk about The Lord of the Rings and target that specific keyword, you'll face much stiffer competition in the search tool than if you target something more specific, like The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring. Therefore, sometimes it may be more interesting to create three posts discussing each episode of J.R.R. Tolkien's trilogy than just one article trying to cover everything in one place.

Now, notice how some keywords, like "The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring," can be very specific, directing the topic exactly where you need it? Well, while they serve as good examples of long tails, there are others that are completely the opposite: they are head tails.

Usually consisting of just one word, head tails are those that represent a very generic topic such as cinema, music, mattress, or clothing, and while they may not specify a brand or model, on one hand, they have an incredibly higher search volume than long-tail terms.

Want an example? If in the same case of The Lord of the Rings you chose to adopt the keyword "movies" in your content, you would find a search volume 100 times higher than for The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring — and also incredibly higher competition than the other term.

Another way to make your articles more relevant to search engines is through the use of hyperlinks. You can mark a word or phrase in your article and add a web address related to it. This not only encourages the user to learn more about the subject being discussed but also enhances your site's perceived quality by search engines. However, ensure that all links maintain the same quality standard.

This becomes even more important if your links include keywords. If you have a page about "cute kittens," link your article to this keyword, not to some other bland phrase like "click here" or "learn more."

Since we've talked about links around here, it's good to mention two terms closely related to this subject: on-page SEO and off-page SEO. These are two terms that also have a lot to do with how efficiently your content is found by Google. And what do they mean?

While the first, on-page, concerns the content and formatting of your blog—use of keywords, title, links—the second has to do with optimization that comes from outside your web address, such as the number of references—meaning links—that an article or even the site's homepage has elsewhere, which significantly influences its positioning on Google. So, the greater the number of other (good) sites talking about your material, the better your search results will be.

This last rule isn't just useful for writing for the web; it's useful for life: make sure you've written an article grammatically correct and free from any typing errors. It's no use writing something rich in content if, for example, when marking your keyword, instead of "cute kittens" you write "cut kitys."

These errors make your text look amateurish, and besides people judging you that way, the search engine will too. For this reason, whenever you write something, it's worth giving it a quick check with some automatic corrector, like Word's, for example, to look for those little errors we always overlook.

See how doing SEO on an article for the web isn't complicated at all? These are just a few tips that can help you become a great web writer. So, why not try putting them into practice and let us know the result?