How to Write SEO-friendly Articles

If you have these questions, I’m here to help you.

In this article, I’m going to share the step-by-step guide on how to write SEO-friendly articles.

Here is the preview;

Fyi, I’ve been working for digital marketing and SEO for about 6 years and I also run my blog for my side business, which get more than 50,000PV/month and earns $1000/month from affiliate income.

I hope I can provide you with good information.

Let’s dive in.

What are the SEO-friendly articles like?

Articles which could solve user’s problems

The good articles are the ones who are solving problems/answering questions for the users.

Generally, people type their keywords on google and look for information because they have some problems or questions.

Which is why Google wants to show articles with good answers on their top result.

If your article provides good answers towards the target keyword, it could rank up higher as a result.

Show the best answer among your competitors

If your target keyword is really competitive, the situation is like this;

The customer can choose any answers from a lot of advisors.

How can you stand out from others?

Here are some tips;

The reason for that is to pitch much better content to the users.

Create a 10 times better article (it’s called 10X content) to outrank your competitors.

How to write SEO-friendly article (Step by Step)

Here is the process of how I write an SEO-friendly article.

STEP 1: Set target keyword

First, think about your persona and customer journey for your products.

If there is Google search on the customer journey, imagine what keywords the customer would type.

For example, if you are selling “hair removal service”, and your persona is a female who’s interested in hair removal service.

Then, the customer journey would be ① Heard about hair removal review from their friends ②Search the info on Google ③Go to the store for counseling.

There is a Google search on phase 2 and the keywords they type would be “hair removal price“, “hair removal pain“, “hair removal review“, “hair removal effect” etc.

Those are the target keywords.

STEP 2: Check on the search result pages and see the top 5 articles

Generally, the articles who are ranking on top 5 would have the most popular and demanding content towards the keyword.

It is important to know what type of content the users are looking for.

Let’s check on the search result of “hair removal pain”.

• No.1 – The topic is about the list of the body part and the pain level according to the expert
• No.2 – The topic is about the experience of hair removal from the writer
• No.3 – The topic is about the experience of hair removal from the writer
• No.4 – The topic is about the advice from an expert
• No.5 – The topic is about the advice from an expert

STEP 3: Choose the topic you can write

As you can see in the top 5 above, there are 3 types of article ranking.

If you have the experience, write about your experience.

If you don’t have the experience, ask an expert and get some comments.

STEP 4: Blush up the content using tools

How can you write the quality of articles??

There are a lot of creative ways but here are the common tactics;

1. Apply on-page SEO
2. List up more problems and questions behind the keyword, and answer them all.

For On-page SEO, this article explains well.

Ref On-Page SEO: Anatomy of a Perfectly Optimized Page (2019 Update) | Backlinko

For 2, there are a variety of ways to look for the problems behind the keyword;

• See Google Suggest, related keywords and find “Problem/question” keywords
• See any forum websites (for example, Reddit, etc) and find “Problem/question” keywords
• Use headline checker(SEO tool) and find “Problem/question” keywords
• Use Ahref(SEO tool) competitor analytics and find “Problem/question” keywords

List up all the problems/questions from your persona, and provide the solutions.

Other SEO techniques

Use template for the lead sentence

The lead sentence is an opening sentence in the article.

It is important to show the users what you are writing about and what is the benefit to reading the article.

Here is the template.

〇〇〇〇〇〇（question）
〇〇〇〇〇〇（question）
〇〇〇〇〇〇（question）

If you have these questions, I’m here to help you.
Today, I’m show you the following tecniques for

〇〇〇〇 〇〇〇〇〇〇（solution）
〇〇〇〇〇〇（solution）
〇〇〇〇〇〇（solution）

Fyi, I have experience in 〇〇〇〇 for 〇years and hope to provide useful information.

This method is called APP(A= agreement, P= promise, P= preview).

Keyword stuffing in title

Some may argue but I feel that it works really well based on my experience.

For example, if your target keyword is “Bali Hotel”, I would make the title like “The most recommend resort hotels in Bali”.

In this way, it could rank for the 3 keywords such as “Bali Resort Hotel”, “Recommend Hotel Bali” first, and it could lead ranking for the 2 keywords such as “Bali Hotel” next.

Add modifiers to the title

Adding the word like 2019 in the title can increase the ranking and click-through rate because it makes it stands out from the other articles.

There are some other modifiers such as “best”, “guide” “fast” etc.

Use outbound links

Among the on-page SEO tactics, I feel like the outbound links work really well when I look at my top-ranking articles.

The tip to use it is that ①link to authorized websites ②links to a variety of websites.

Conclusion

This method is just one way to create an article but works the best for now.

I hope you learned something today.