Before writing an article for a web portal or a blog we must take into account certain details that will help us to make our article or post much more attractive and positioned much better.
As most people do not have access to paid tools that allow us to manage everything more easily, we will explain how we can do it with free tools and taking advantage of the features of the Google search engine itself.
Type of Web for which you are going to write
It should be taken into account that writing for a corporate website is not the same as writing for a digital newspaper or an online store. That is why we must know what we are writing for.
When we are writing for a digital newspaper, we can never speak in the first person, unless it is a blog of that newspaper. If it is a news item, it should always be given in third person. In addition, all the text has to be very careful and with a journalistic style. It depends, to a great extent, on the editorial line of that digital newspaper or magazine. If the article is for a blog, it is important to know whether the blog is personal or belongs to a certain company. Normally, the blog is personal. And therefore, the way of writing is in the first person. If it is a corporate blog, it will also be written in the first person but in the plural.
If, on the other hand, it is for a Corporate Web, everything will be much more corporate and commercial. We will try to explain things that are not obvious, and also do it in 3rd person plural format.
When what we have to write is the content of a product in an online store, it is normal that the product has a short description and a long description. The short description will be a very commercial description, with claims and phrases that help to convince the customer to add the product to the cart. If they are also put in bullet format, all the better. As for the long description, we should not write it as if it were a novel, but we should structure it with tags. If the product is a technological product, which always has technical specifications, a section should be included (although most CMS e-commerce managers already have it) for all these specifications and functionality, since they can help to finalize the purchase and improve the conversion. On the contrary, the absence of technical specifications in a technological product can generate distrust.
Choose the topic on which you want to publish
This is fundamental to make a good article. Before even opening the blank document, we must know what we are going to write about, and above all keep in mind that writing is not the same if the sector for which you are writing is decoration as for one of technology or for the health sector.
Objective of the post
It is the first thing we have to define when we are in front of the computer to write an article. What am I looking for with this article? What do I want it to be useful for? What do I want it to contribute to my Web?
The answers to these questions will undoubtedly help to improve the editorial approach. It is a good idea to write them down on a spreadsheet or whatever we deem appropriate, or even on a piece of paper with a pen or pencil, and next to each question write the answer. If you do not know the answer you cannot continue writing, because the result may not be the most suitable.
There are times when ideas occur to us and we must write them down, so that they are not forgotten, and then we can spin the content as we see fit, but we must always keep in mind that the objective of the article is fundamental.
First steps to start writing
Once we have the objective clear, we are going to do the research work. So we have to put in a table the main keyword and next to it a series of secondary keywords.
How do we choose the main keyword?
Most likely it will be predefined by the objective, in most cases the objective is: “to position in the allergy sector” or “to sell such and such a product“. From there we will get the main keyword.
How do we select the secondary keywords?
At this point we should start using some of the free tools we mentioned.
Suggestions from Google
What better keyword to use than the one suggested to us directly by Google. Therefore we must go to the search engine, put the main keyword and see what it suggests us. It is interesting that this is done with private browsing to not be “vitiated” the results obtained.
Ubber Suggest
This is one of Google’s best suggestion tools. We go to https://ubersuggest.io/ and then enter the keyword, choose whether we want to search on the web, images, shopping … and the language in which we want.
The result will be a list with the first ten direct suggestions and then another ten in alphabetical order. If the Keyword is kitchens, first it simulates if we put kitchens a and shows us all the possible suggestions that begin with a, and so on with the rest of the alphabet.
Suggestions in Google footer
Sometimes we do not realize that the search engine itself is the answer to everything. When we perform a search in the footer, before the pagination, related searches appear:
It is interesting to note each related search to then check how well it can work as a keyword.
Study the competition
The best way to study the competition is to see how they write their content – -Twittea- . To do this we search in Google for the main keyword and click on the first real competitor that appears in the SERP. When I say real competitor is that sometimes we find YouTube videos positioned in the top positions, or Wikipedia articles, or some digital newspaper or web with a lot of authority. So we have to discover the independent results that are positioned first.
To study this there is a tool that we can use that is highly recommended and free:
http://www.seoquake.com/
This is an extension for Firefox or Chrome that performs a detailed study of the content of a particular website, and also shows us keyword densities.
Keyword Planner
All these “tools” have provided us with a good number of secondary keywords, some long tail and others not so long. Not content with this, we must now select the most interesting ones for our article.
To do this we have to create a Google Adwords account and enter the Keyword Planner.
All we have to do is enter the keyword and see the suggestions it makes. Many of them we will have already written down in our spreadsheet. With the Google Adwords keyword tool we can check the monthly search volumes of that keyword, the competition and the CPC (cost per click). In this way we can eliminate keywords that have no search data or some that the competition is very high.
This could be done with the Semrush tool but as it is a paid tool I do not mention it. However with this link you can get one month free.
Final choice of Keywords
Once we have the Excel in this form:
We have to choose the words that we are going to use in our content.
For this it is essential that the logic and the objectives set are paramount. Often we are guided by high search volumes, and yet we do not realize the competition that may exist in the same keywords.
Once the keywords have been chosen, about 10 words or so, it is essential that we identify synonyms for them. Why do we do this? Because Google identifies some synonyms as the same keyword. If you want to do the test just search for Barça and you will see how the positioned results are for the keyword FC Barcelona and also the search engine puts this word in bold.
So when we talk about keyword density it is important to know that for Google two synonyms are the same keyword and it counts them together.
Content writing
We have everything ready. Now it’s time to start writing. To do this we must choose a title in which the main keyword is. We will develop an introduction as a summary and then we will start with the development of the content with different secondary ideas. We will try to put these secondary ideas in H2 and H3 tags.
We should also use bullet points or enumerations, which are very positive for the reading cadence.
The number of images will depend on the number of words. It is normal to use one image for every 300 words. -Twittea – Therefore in a text of 1000 words we should put a minimum of 3 images. The title of the image will be the main keyword with a series of numbers: keyword1, keyword2… The ALT of each image will be the secondary Keyword of the paragraph where the image is located.
Also keep in mind that the image must be provided with a surrounding text that is related to the image. The use of captions can help with this.
Videos are also very interesting to be included in the article. It doesn’t matter if they are from YouTube or from your own hosting, but they have to be well structured. The video can help the user to stay longer on the website.
Keyword Density
Well, by hand we would say a maximum of 2%. While it is true that 2% may be ideal for short texts (2% of 100 words is 2, ie repeat the keyword 2 times in 100 words). The problem is for long texts(2% of 1000 words is 20) using a keyword 20 times in a text of 1000 words seems to me barbaric. So here common sense and logic must prevail without ever exceeding this figure of 2%. We must also begin to understand that Google will gradually begin to identify the quality of the content by the content itself, not by the user’s behavior. Until now there was no other way of knowing. But everything comes, and we do not want a text that is good today to be bad tomorrow.
Conclusions for content development:
We have not included any paid tools, so this is a guide that can be used by anyone. However, everyone has their own way of writing articles. The good writer is the one who, without forcing it, achieves an ideal content, so that when you analyze it, it perfectly complies with everything that has been specified here.
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