A single visitor from the social networks can make the difference between the success and failure of content. It is the style of writing which makes a difference between two similar quality articles. In this article, I am talking about writing a cornerstone article. The cornerstone articles are the most important articles on your site. These are the URLs you want to rank higher in the search engines. As this website is intended for the makers and developers, the cornerstone articles are some important guides.
Many peoples opt for a copyediting service (sometimes a writer). Remember that, the digital marketing industry is a fast-growing $192 billion industry and the $1 per 100 words writing services are neither good nor bad. It is not that spending millions behind the content is crucial. But, today you do need certain paid services.
Some businesses require to produce content that gets read carefully. They have a strict word limit because the human attention span is short.
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Choose a Keyword
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The first step is to choose a keyword. You are targeting a topic and not just a single keyword. For this example, we’re going to choose “best smartphone for medical students”. How I discovered the topic? I have seen people asking the question on Quora. Q&A sites are one of the tools which can give an idea of what peoples search for. There is a website named Answer the public which is extremely helpful for the content creators.
The topic here is a smartphone for medical students. Next, you need to identify the user intent. You need to match what Google thinks the user wants. In this case, Google will tend to know about a particular model. I know this does not sound great to many, but this is how Google search works. From various answers on the web, Google has “learned” that Oneplus 3T and Samsung J7 Max are good for the students. Likely, they will not love “seeing” an odd model as best (it is risky to claim too).
Check Competition/Volume
You may use ahrefs for this purpose. Sometimes, a low volume keyword (50-100) gives us a lot of longtails in the group, so if you target the group. Around 400 searches a month is a good search volume for the main keyword. Look at the top 10 in ahrefs to gather an idea of the competition.
List the top 5 performers in SERP, analyze their DA, PA, social sharing profile, graphics, content length, HTML structure and backlinks. You can check DA, PA of 3 websites at once by using the free service of websiteseochecker.com. Their DA ranges from 87 to 50, domain age is more than a decade and they belong to the SEO niche.
Gather the Main Keywords
For our example, the group of keyphrases will be like this :
- best smartphones for medical students
- smartphones for medical students
- best smartphone for medical school
- smartphone for medical school
- top smartphones for medical students
Gather Questions to Get covered by Your Article
In this case, the question which will arise are like this :
- minimum requirements
- maximize productivity
- durability
- weight/battery/display/cpu/ram/storage/performance/portability/design
- exams/note taking
- online courses
These people love to get the pieces of stuff spoon-fed. You should not think from your perspective.
Word Count
Look at the word count in the top 10 of competitive searches, the weaker sites tend to produce content with a word count between 3500 to 5000. Recall that, at the beginning of this article, I have informed you that usual humans have a short attention span. So, there is a limitation of word count.
Keyword Density
We have not repeated the title of this article “Full Example of How to Write an SEO Friendly Content” many times within the content. But the related terminologies and lists make it obvious to the modern search engines that the article is about writing an SEO optimized article.
Table of Content, Links, Lists and Graphics
The structure of a cornerstone article should roughly match what we have described in our article on How to Get a Featured Snippet on Google Search Result. In short, write some paragraphs in this manner :
- Table of Content : Can be hand generated or generated by some WordPress plugin
- Links : There should be few internal links to help the readers to navigate and pass the link juice. Also, the article may have outgoing links towards the authority sites.
- Lists : The article ideally should contain a list like this example.
- Graphics : A graphics explaining some matter of the topic.
If you want to get into a featured snippet, then avoid photos of girls with exposed skins. Create your graphics on Adobe Photoshop. Use handwritten font and pen input device. These are some of the things which work on Pinterest. If you have multiple images in an article, then set their alt tag correctly. They should compete with each other.
Plan Content From Your Reader’s Perspective
You should invest time in studying your niche’s consumer psychology. Understanding their psychology needs plenty of research on your audience from already published content. Also, you can perform a web search to find some reports, case studies by reliable institutions. Always remember, that your audience’s life can have massive changes from your content.
The free plan of BuzzSumo will help you to run 10 searches per month. You can easily mark the top 10-20 blogs in your niche and create content on the topics they have received a good response. This way is cheating to stop wasting time on topics and content which will not make a great impact.
Find Copyeditors Who Would Pour Magic into Your Content
When you’re producing content on a topic you lack a passion for, it can read not that smooth. Most writers fail miserably to pull off such projects. Most of the writers can’t write up to the mark when the topic is not from the heart.
I know writers who can write exactly like me on topics I do not like a lot! I get astonished by their skill. Sadly, finding and affording competent writers can not be easy for you. But, you can search for writers who have the practical knowledge on a certain topic. Such experienced writers have the experience to make the content a piece of art, and the readers happily click the links they share. Do not suffer from ego. If your content lacks personality, it won’t convert so well in long run.
Run Slow Paid Promotion on the Social Networks
Can a 500-word article rank well for a competitive search term? Because ultimately the quality of a backlink, paid promotions and quality of the article and graphics determines its success. Do not forget to upgrade your article.
Conclusion
There is no “luck factor” in SERP. Ranking is based on mathematical calculation and maintaining the parameters definitely will help you to gain and retain a steady number of visitors. We have written this article to help your natural writing. Avoid creating content for the search engines.
