We’re super excited this curated list in a convenient form: The comprehensive Checklist for the perfect SEO Article. It’s not always easy to remember all of the on-page SEO factors that go into Google deciding what to show towards the top of search results, but this tool allows you to quickly confirm you do. Bookmark the page, link to it, share it on social – we’ve built this as a resource for anybody who wants to write an SEO friendly article.
Start the Title Tag with your Keyword
Add modifiers like “Best” “2016” or “Guide” to the end of your post to get longer tail search traffic.
The post doesn’t just provide unique content – it provides unique value (*with unique takeaways and usefulness found no-where else on the web.)
Include the keyword phrase toward the beginning of the article
Include Keyword phrase in the meta-title, and a variation in the meta-description
Use the Keyword Phrase or synonyms in sub-headings
Bold and Italicize the keyword phrase and/or synonyms
Use the keyword phrase towards the end of the article as well
Its URL is 5 words or less and includes the keyword phrase right away: Example – this post’s URL https://snapagency.com/blog/checklist-perfect-seo-article. You don’t need to include and, for, but, to etc.
Make sure that the title of the post is wrapped in an H1 Tag
Include an image or images right away that are either super high-quality, entertaining, funny, or stylish to catch people’s attention and keep them reading.
Link to websites other than the one the post or article is on.
Use synonyms of your keyword phrase – Google now uses these as criteria for ranking.
Save your images to the site with filenames that separate words and use the keywords – Example checklist-for-the-perfect-seo-article.jpg
Add Alt text or Alternative text for each image, being as descriptive as you can about what is in the image as possible – using your keywords and synonyms when appropriate.
Have prominent social share buttons at beginning or end of your content – floating alongside the content or in the sidebar.
Post long content – Content longer than 1,500 – 1,800 words does very well in search engines.
Try to get people to stay as long as you possibly can on the site with bulleted lists, clear headlines with valuable information, and images. “Dwell time” or time on page means someone didn’t go right back to the search results after landing on your site – which would mean it wasn’t valuable and would suggest to Google’s algorithm that it should serve your site lower in the list. Avoid this by making engaging content that fulfills expectations.
This list of the “Checklist for the perfect SEO Article” was derived from two key sources:
On-Page SEO: Anatomy of a Perfectly Optimized Page (2016 Update) by Brian Dean of Backlinko
And the Visual Guide to Keyword Targeting / On-page optimization by Moz:
You may notice this article doesn’t have the suggested 1,800 words we might suggest for the perfect SEO friendly article. The reason for that is that more time and thought was put into the checklist itself, it’s highly targeted for people in our industry or others that would be interested in our service. I don’t want to artificially push out more words – when the value is high on the ‘Checklist for the perfect SEO Article‘ above – and you should always focus more on the value provided than just mindlessly creating super high word count posts.
A lot of longer posts are really well-thought out and have deeper research – but you can also make things like this checklist, an infographic, a map, or some other resource or tool that are highly linkable as well and achieve that same kind of value that happens with a really long and deeply researched post.