How to Add SEO-Friendly Articles

Gather research in Topic Research and the Keyword Magic Tool

An idea is just a new combination of two or more existing elements, so if you want new ideas, you can start by researching what’s already out there.

Topic Research will show all of the existing headlines and questions people ask Google related to your topic of interest so you can get a feel for what’s already out there and find new ideas. Just enter a word or phrase in the search bar and Semrush will generate your topic cards. 

You can sort and filter through these cards to find questions, trending topics, topics from on a specific competitor’s website, and more.

Type of content: Keyword Search Intent

Generate an SEO Content Template and outline your content

The SEO Content Template, even though it doesn’t have “magic” in its name, is another magical tool on Semrush. All you have to do with this tool is enter the keywords you want to target and Semrush will return a thorough template for your content that includes recommendations on:

• Target word count/article length
• Semantically related words (more words to consider for your outline/writing)
• Target readability score
• Target domains to build backlinks from
• Page title
• Meta description
• Use of target keywords in H1s and text

Once you have these recommendations, combine these suggestions with your research from Topic Research and Keyword Magic Tool to finalize your outline, estimate the text length and start writing!

Structure your posts

The contents of your post may be great but can be easily lost in an unorganized, inefficient format. Breaking your content up into smaller paragraphs with headlines makes for an easy read that will keep your readers engaged. For the search engines, back-end organization is key too. Using proper tag hierarchy when tagging headlines (H1 for titles, H2 for subtitles) is important to maintain a well-structured article.

Incorporate imagery

Make your posts pop with images! People are visual. Adding an image along with your blog post can make a big impression. Have a Pinterest account? In addition to promoting your blogs across your other social media channels, posts with images can also be pinned, adding another avenue for traffic to your website.
Add alt text to images.

With any image you add to your post – featured or body images – you'll want to add alt text.

Alt text describes what's happening in the photo and it helps Google (as well as those who are visually impaired) understand why the photo is in your post.

The alt text should read something like, "Business man attending a virtual event sits at a desk while holding a pen."

This sentence is descriptive and includes the main keyword "virtual event." So, even if the reality is that this is a stock image, you can create a narrative that aligns with your blog post.

Interlink and Anchor Text

Link building is crucial to your search ranking.

Why? Think of search results like a competition where the winners get the most votes. Each webpage that links back to you is considered a vote for your website, which makes your content more trustworthy in the eyes of Google. In turn, this will make you rise further up in ranking.

When writing a new post, it’s always a good idea to link back to old blog posts so that readers will stick around your site for longer and also so that search engines can re-crawl these old posts.

This helps in better navigability of your site which reduces the bounce rate- another important SEO factor.

When you interlink, you should use the anchor text technique.

Simply put, when you link to a blog post, you see an option to add a link and a title.

Make sure to fill out the post title with the main keywords for the post that you are linking to.

Aim for scannable, longer posts.

In an age of short attention spans, you would think shorter blog posts are the way to go. But in fact, search engines like Google actually prefer longer, in-depth blog posts.

Think about it: the more content on the page, the more clues search engines have to figure out what your blog is about. At HubSpot, we’ve found that the ideal length is between 2,100 and 2,400 words.

The downside to longer blogs is that they may overwhelm your readers. One way to combat that is by breaking down your content into bite-size, scannable chunks.

Turn a long-winded sentence into two and keep your paragraphs to three sentences or less.

Don’t forget about bullet points – they’re great attention grabbers and easily digestible, especially on mobile devices.