• Get your keyword research on. If you’re going to post content on your site anyway, you might as well take the time to make sure Google takes notice of your effort.
  Find out which keywords and phrases people are searching for (as well as what you can be competitive in), and make yourself a keyword spreadsheet. Keep track of how many times you work the keywords into your content, and use the right tools to track where you rank for the keywords you target.

• Put the keywords to work. While it’s still a good idea to include your target keyword throughout your article, peppering your copy with forced keywords won’t really move the dial much (and often, it’ll hurt it).As is the case with any bit of SEO strategy, you’ve got to be tactical.

Include your keyword in the title, in the first 300 words, and in the first H1 or H2 (though, it should be noted that it isn’t necessary to hit both — just make sure you have it in one of them). After that, you should be trying to use variations of your keyword.

Remember, the people using search engines are searching for that particular phrase because they want to know more about it/buy it, so it makes sense to give them what they’re looking for. You’ll get more clicks if you do — it’s one of the tricks of the trade for professional SEO article writers.

• Write about something people care about. Article writers often just pump out content for no real reason, with no real strategy behind it. They forget that actual humans need to want to read this stuff — you’re not really writing for Google’s algorithms, you’re writing for people! When you’re writing, you should always seek to offer some sort of value to your readers. What can you tell them that no one else can? What service can you provide that’s unique? What knowledge can you share that can’t be found anywhere else?

• Make it long enough to count. Sure, 100 words of fresh content is better than no new content at all — but how much value can you really deliver in a Tweet? Search engines tend to give preference to longer blogs and articles, and for good reason. Try to shoot for at least 600 words, but if you can get to 1,000 or more, go for it. There has been a lot of research that shows that search engines tend to favour “in-depth” content of at least 2,000 words — we’ve seen this work for ourselves and our clients, and many of TCF’s most popular blog posts are at least 1,500 words.

The longer your content, the more value you’re going to give your readers, and the better chance you’ll have at lower your bounce rate.

• Watch your analytics. You should be regularly monitoring your content using Google Analytics. According to data gathered by the folks at SEMrush, time on site, bounce rate, and pages per session are all as important (if not more important) than keyword density. When you think about it, that’s not that surprising. If your site has a high bounce rate, that means that visitors to your site aren’t staying for long, likely because your page isn’t providing them with the information they’re looking for. If your bounce rate is high, there’s a good chance your page isn’t optimized for the appropriate keywords.

You should be warned that there are plenty of non-content related things that can cause your bounce rate to skyrocket. Aggressive pop-ups, slow loading times, obnoxious ads or images, and any other ugly design element can push visitors away. Writing good SEO-based content isn’t just about the words on your screen — it’s also about how your visitor sees them. If they are obscured by bad design, no one is going to stick around to read them.

Optimize the optimization of your web content writing. If you use WordPress as your blogging platform, there are lots of free online PR tools (in the form of plugins) you can take advantage of.