How to create an effective page on a website and get more clicks and a low bounce rate? How to attract visitors to your website and improve conversion rate? How to write better a blog article? What should the keyword strategy be? How should you write your SEO tags for the article?
If you want to make search engines display your article on the first page, you have to apply basic rules of writing and structuring your content. From the title to the call to action button at the bottom of the page, you have to apply a quality-oriented approach.
Writing content on a website might seem easy. But not really when you study this in depth. Copywriting requires many skills and deep knowledge of the topic. Writing is not enough, you have to make the web page attractive, dynamic and interesting, both for readers and for the search engines. Follow our tips and improve your SEO rankings and the conversion rate of your landing pages.
1. Start the article with a catchy title
The title is crucial when writing a blog article. When the title is catchy, the article gets more clicks. Your title should contain the main keywords, that users type while searching for things on Google. The more your title matches the expectations of users, the more Google will find the article relevant and will display it higher.
If you want users to click on your title, it must be clear and attractive. Reading the title, people must be able to understand what the article is about. It has to introduce the subject, but not tell everything.
The title must respect some technical rules. It has to be coded in <h1> HTML tag. In most CMS, you just have to fill in the title field at the top of the page and it will be automatically coded in the h1 tag. Be careful, you cannot use more that one h1 title on the page.
2. Pitch the first paragraph
The first paragraph, which comes at the top of the page just after the title, is crucial for your article success. It must make users want to read the rest of the page.
The first paragraph must, therefore, summarize the content of the article. Its main purpose is to explain what it’s about and how it is beneficial to the reader. If you have something really important to say, do it in the first paragraph. Do not wait until the end.
Try to use keywords different from the one in the title. Find synonyms and verbs from the same semantic field as your target keyword in the title. To make it more reader-friendly and more attractive, you may display it in larger fonts.
3. Use subtitles through your article
Google loves a healthy page structure. And it means that it has to be divided into small paragraphs and to include subtitles of different levels. This structure is SEO-friendly. It will make your pages more readable by search engine crawlers.
In the subtitles use your secondary keyword phrases and synonyms. Those which are less used in queries on search engines, but have a good SEO potential.
In an SEO optimized article structure, the subheadings must be encoded progressively from H2 to H6. After the title H1, the first subtitle must be an H2. The next one, which is less important for the content, has to be an H3 tag. Between two H2, you can insert two H3, but not one H3 and not one H5 for example. Progressively you go to H6.
4. Produce long-form SEO content
To please Google and other search engines, your page content must be long enough. The page texts on many websites are often too short. A minimum for Google’s quality algorithm is about 300 words per page or the equivalent of 1,500 characters (spaces included).
But if you want to rank high in Google and boost your website SEO, your article should contain more than 1,000 words. Such a web page is more likely to be shown up on the first page of Google.
The search engine will find that long content is more interesting than a short one on the same subject. The readers usually have the same opinion. So the more words you write, the better it is for your SEO!
However, don’t forget that you write not for Google robots, but for humans. Your content should be justified. Tell a story, find interesting details and carefully divide it into different sections with clear and informative subtitles.
5. Build a reverse pyramid structure
We advise applying the so-called “reverse pyramid” text structure. It consists of placing the most important and most general information at the very beginning of the article and to add more specific details in the end.
This structure is logical because not all users scroll to the bottom of the web page. The more we go down the page, the more it is difficult to keep the readers on the web page. The hottest zones are located at the top of the page, the coldest zones remain at the bottom of the page.
6. Effective formatting of the text
Formatting your content is very important not only to the readers but also to get higher rankings on Google. Search engines like lists and bullet points. The readers do as well. It offers a better presentation of your article. Another tip is to use pictures and graphics. It makes the web page more attractive and creates more space.
7. Enrich your text with quality pictures
If you want to make your web page more compelling, add some good-quality pictures that enhance your story. The images you use must be beautiful, of good quality to attract users. And, of course, they should be relevant for your article topic.
In technical terms, the image must be at least 800 pixels wide. So, it looks big and attractive when people share the article on social networks. Facebook recommends even to integrate pictures of 1200 pixels wide. The image has to be optimized and as light as possible. Ideally, less than 100 KB, so that it is displayed quickly and does not slow down your page speed. This is an important factor for SEO.
As Google does not “see” read images, it “understands” what the image represents thanks to the alternative text. And that is an important reason to fill in the ALT tag. It is indexed by search engines crawlers. The ALT tag is a hidden SEO opportunity, as you can use keywords in it. But they have to be relevant. Don’t overuse and misuse keywords in the alternative text attribute.
The ALT text improves your SEO, and also shows users what the picture is about when it can’t be loaded. So take an efficient approach: simply describe the image in the alternative text tag, without stuffing keywords.
Another SEO tip is to name an image file in a correct way before you upload it to the website. Once you’ve uploaded the image to your site, your CMS assigns a unique URL based on the file name so you will not be able to change the file name unless you reload the image. ALT tag with keywords and a correct filename will boost your website pictures visibility in search engines.
8. Write effective SEO title and meta-description tags
The title tag and meta-description tag allow you to control where your page appears in Google’s search results. This is the first information that the user gets about your page while looking for things on Google, before landing on your website. Therefore these tags are crucial, as they help you to rank for the keyphrases the users are searching for. And they invite the users to click. Meta tags quality influences your click rate in Google Search Console.
If you have not written these tags, the search engine will display an excerpt from the page located around the keyword used by the user in the query. But an automatic text is worse than properly written tags, page by page.
Their content must be unique, each page must have a different title and meta description tags. Do not copy-paste the same text into your tags on all your pages! It’s a bad practice that can be punished by Google. Another SEO tip is you need to achieve consistency between your meta tags and the page content.
The title tag defines the name of the page. This is the first line that appears in the search results on Google. It contains about 60 characters maximum. It is highly recommended to write a title tag differently than the H1 tag of the page.
The meta description tag is the few words that appear just below the title tag in search results. This text should contain around 130 characters (Google will not display more and will cut it to that number). This description should summarize the content of the web page to make users want to click.
You can summarize the content either manually or by utilizing an online summarizer tool. Taking assistance from the online summarizing tool saves your time and generates a precise summary of the webpage content in less time.
Write meta description tag text as if you were writing a Google Ads text. Follow the same rules of good writing because your natural link might appear just below the sponsored links in Google.
9. Create internal links
Creating internal links is about adding links in your article to other pages on your website. For example, you can link to another article in your blog, to a page, or to a product, or the contact page. You should propose to users other options to continue browsing than just by clicking on the main menu.
The purpose of this internal linking is to encourage users to click on these links and therefore retain them longer, make them discover other content on your website. By offering users additional interesting content on your website, you will decrease the bounce rate, and increase the session time. At the same time, you get a higher number of page views, which is an important ranking factor as well. In other words, in this simple way, you can improve your main Google Analytics indicators.
The second goal of internal linking is to show search engine crawlers the structure of your website and its most useful content. The most linked pages of your website, the cornerstone articles, will be then crawled by Google more frequently.
Remember that Google gives more weight to anchor links. the links placed inside a text. Ideally, a text containing keywords, which explains the content of the page you are linking to. This practice will also improve your website SEO.
10. Integrate call-to-action buttons
Use “call-to-action” buttons to boost your conversion rate. Always encourage users to perform an action on your website, for example, to buy the product, fill in a form or explore a service. If you want your page to be converted, you have to tell people clearly what you expect them to do!
These call-to-action buttons are usually located at the top of the page in the hot zone and repeated at the bottom of the page, so you catch the attention of those users who scrolled to the bottom of the page as well. As text inside the button, you can use Buy, Request a quote, Subscribe, Share on social media, Explore, Get a tip, Get more information.
SEO tips and services
Did you find these SEO writing tips useful or interesting? Do you want to know more about SEO tools and techniques? Check our guide on SEO optimization. You might also be interested in our Digital marketing tips and trends.
Web page optimization and meta tags writing is interesting but what if you don’t have enough technical background or enough time? Don’t worry, our SEO experts can do these tasks for you. Don’t hesitate to contact us and tell us more about your project.
