10 Step Guide: How to write an amazing article with SEO in mind… for people who HATE writing articles!

[Drumming fingers on the desk…. a perplexed look on my face… the smell of burning brain cells as I decide how to start this article… all the while, I have the following quote screaming in my mind]

You have just 15 seconds to grab a user’s interest… make it count!

{Source: Chartbeat 2014 study published in Time Magazine.}

So no pressure then!

Article writing (or copy writing)... two words which can easily put the fear of God into many small business owners.

You know you have to do it as part of your marketing strategy if you want your business to grow (at least, to a stage where you can hire someone else to do it for you!), but the idea of it brings you out in a cold sweat.

Well fear not, you’re not alone and we’re here to help.

In this article we are going to share some fantastic tips to help you:

• Write articles quicker and with less stress
• Research and identify topics to write about
• Learn how to structure your article
• Discover the different types of content you can create
• Understand what type of information to include and why
• What to do to help improve your SEO

Plus you can even download our free blog article creation template to help ensure you don’t forget anything.

Not only that… we’re going to do it together.

So without further ado, let’s get started.

Step 1 - Know & Define your Target Audience

Before you even put pen to paper…. STOP.

Creating an article takes time; time which most small businesses owners can’t afford to waste. Therefore, when planning your article it’s important to think about who is going to be reading your article.

Take this article for example; it’s aimed at helping small business owners.

I’m an SEO Strategist, so it would be all too easy to get sidetracked and fill the article with SEO jargon… however, I know that my target audience are typically:

• Small Business Owners (UK-based)
• Time poor
• Non-technical
• Don’t enjoy writing articles
• Are inexperienced in writing articles (especially with SEO in mind)

Therefore, unlike many (excellent) articles on the topic of copywriting, I am going to intentionally leave out information about some of the (paid) tools we use professionally when researching content. Why? Because it’s unlikely that our target audience will have those tools (or want to pay for them) so NOT talking about them:

• Helps avoid jargon
• Avoids content becoming overwhelming
• Keeps the article short and highly focused

Got it? Great…

That’s step 1 done - see, that wasn’t so painful was it?

Step 2 - Decide what to write about

Sometimes you’ll instantly know what you want to write about. If that’s the case, fantastic! Go to our downloadable free blog article creation template and fill in the section titled:
“What is the 1 key point you want to communicate/focus on via this article?”

But what if you don’t know what to write? One of the hardest things about content creation is identifying what to create in the first place.

This is true regardless of the content or platform. For example, when thinking about social media, should you share a funny post, a behind the scenes post, post a poll, run a competition?

Most articles at this point will recommend you turn to professional keyword and topic tools such as Ahrefs or SEM Rush.

But what if you’re not very technical, or you don’t have any budget? What if you hate data and the last thing you want to have to do is trawl through lots of data you don’t really understand?

Well, you’re in luck as thankfully there are lots of free and easy ways to identify possible content ideas.

Tip:
As we go through this next step, you’ll probably want to make lots of notes so I normally start by jotting everything down on a sheet of paper and then grouping content later on to refine the content I want to focus on for any one specific article.

Your own industry knowledge

Google uses a concept called E-A-T as part if it’s algorithm. E-A-T in SEO stands for Expertise, Authoritativeness and Trustworthiness.

There’s a high chance you already have expert knowledge and experience in your industry. You may also have already established yourself as a trustworthy brand with your existing clients. As a result, don’t be scared to use what you already know about your industry to spare ideas for potential things to talk about.

For example:

• What’s currently happening in your industry
• What are some of the typical pain points experienced by your customers
• What things did you not know when you were starting out, which you do now. I almost guarantee you, the others (especially people new to your industry) will be experiencing the same issues.

It’s worth keeping in mind that your pain points will be different to those of your clients, and so whilst it doesn’t hurt to write about our own pain points you need to focus 90% of the time on the needs of your clients and 10% perhaps on more “behind the scenes” posts or sharing industry news (*Although this will vary from industry to industry)

Communication with your existing and potential customers.

Every time someone contacts you, there’s often an opportunity even if it’s not immediately obvious.

For example, let’s say you sell shoes. Someone emails you and says they’ve spilt red wine on their brand new, brown suede shoes and are wondering if there’s anything they can do to save them. You could create an article on how to take care of suede shoes and what to do in case of shoe-related disasters! What happens if you get salt water on them? What about wet paint?

Similarly, the treatment of leather shoes may require a completely different care regime. Therefore (assuming there’s enough different content between the two) you could create a separate article that specifically focuses on leather shoes.

From that one question, you might have enough inspiration to create an entire “cluster” of content! (A “cluster” in SEO terms is a group of articles around a shared theme, which are at the same time, uniquely focused towards a certain issue or sub-section of that theme)

Use Google’s auto-suggest feature

Google’s primary goal is to help users find the best information … fast; and as you can imagine, over the years Google has acquired a vast amount of content. And when we say vast, we mean it. There are over 3 billion searches performed on Google every… single… day; and 20% of those searches use keyword combinations which haven’t been used before.

To help them achieve their goal, Google combine both of these aspects in the form of their “autocomplete” feature and you can use this to your advantage when looking for possible content ideas.

As you type, Google tries to predict what you’re searching for based on historic volumes of searches from other users, and it displays some of the most likely options, with the most popular terms often displayed first.

You can see this in action above; “how to care for leather shoes” is higher than “how to care for velvet shoes”.

So not only do we have an idea of various things we can write about, we also have an idea of which might receive the most searches.

Interestingly, as I was typing “how to care for shoes” the following appeared just before I typed the final “s”:

“How to care for shoe blisters”.... That’s an entirely new type of content with an entirely different user “intent” (we’ll talk more about “intent” later in this article), but one which is highly relevant to the audience of any shoe-shop or shoe-manufacturer!

Make a note of it.

Checkout the “Answer the Public” website

AnswerThePublic listens into autocomplete data from search engines like Google then quickly cranks out every useful phrase and question people are asking around your keyword.

It typically groups content around question phrases starting with “how”, “who”, “which”, “why”, etc.

The tool can be a little hit and miss depending on what you’re searching for, but it all helps you to build up a picture of what your users might be searching for. For example, in the image above we can see:

• “How to care for shoes properly” - whilst this is related to “how to care for shoes”, the word “properly” implies that the user’s “intent” is to do it well. They see value in their shoes and want to look after them as opposed to just thinking about the occasional wipe with a wet rag.
  Whilst you would NOT create a separate article for this, you definitely want to be providing the very best information you can so it appears to this subset of users.
  In addition, this tells you there may be potential upselling opportunities, so make a note to include a link to any relevant shoe-care products you sell which are highly relevant to the article!

• “How to care for leather bags and shoes” - depending on the nature of what you do, this may or may not be relevant, but if the care needs of leather bags is significantly different to shoes, then that might provide you with an alternative cluster of content opportunities.

• “How to care for Johnston and Murphy shoes” - this is brand specific search. You probably wouldn’t want to create a specific page for this unless they have some very specific needs. However, let's imagine for a minute that the reason this comes up is because they’re famously hard to care for shoes, then it might spark an article on “The Top 10 self-cleaning shoes” (assuming such a thing exists!).
  Alternatively you might want to create an article which compares that brand with another similar competing brand. For example, “Nike Air Max vs Adidas Ultra boost”.

Note:
There’s a fine-line sometimes between writing an article because you can, vs writing an article which has enough traffic and interest to make the time worthwhile. This is where the professional tools come in handy as you can see typical search volumes, but even then there is no guarantee that anyone will see it, so in the absence of any data, you’ll have to use your knowledge of the market to determine if you feel there will be enough interest.

Google Trends:

Google trends is best used with high volume terms such as “tokyo olympics” but it can still be insightful in other areas. What’s unique about Google Trends is that, as the name implies, it shows you trends over time so you can understand if the needs of users is increasing, decreasing, or potentially even seasonal.

For example, the following graph shows UK search trends for “Tokyo Olympics” in the last 90 days:

As you can see, there’s been a significant increase in interest since 22nd July 2021.

At this point it’s important to note, the scale on the left of 0 to 100 is not a directly attributable number (i.e. it’s not representative of the number of searches) but rather it’s a relevative score so that you can compare peaks & troughs over time.

I could explain it in more detail, but remembering our target audience of being potentially non-technical, time poor business owners, all I’ll say is… ignore the numbers for the time being and just check to see if trends are heading up or down.

You can also use it to identify seasonal trends. Here’s a great example showing trends involving the term “christmas”:

As you can see in the graph above, interest levels increase very mildly in July/August each year. However, it’s in September when interest begins to gain a more noticeable interest level with interest really starting to grow exponentially in the 1st week of November each year.

Google Trends also provides some useful ideas. For example, the “related queries” section shows people are wanting to learn more about when the Tokyo Olympics is taking place, and what’s happening when.

Tip:
As people are using the term “schedule”, then so should you, so add that keyword to your list of highly relevant keywords.

Related topics can sometimes give you useful related information, but more often than not it can be a useful way to identify a different “cluster” to create content around.
By now you should have a fantastic list of very similarly grouped content ideas which either:

• Will form the basis of your core article, including ideas for potential sub-headings & sub-sections of your article, and/or,
• Provide inspiration for future additional articles to save you time going forwards

Step 3 - how to determine what content format to use

Source: Orbit Media

Good news - This should be a nice, quick task.

It’s no surprise that “how to” and “list” articles are the most popular. People turn to Google when they:

• have a problem that needs solving (How to clean white shoes)
• are researching a new item to purchase (Top 10 trainer styles for 2021), or
• are trying to avoid a problem in the immediate future (How to avoid putting your foot in it in a best man's speech)

Sometimes however, they may be looking for more passive information, such as catching up with industry news.

Your topic research will often influence which format you use, but it’s also worth noting that the terms you searched for can also bias your results. For example, I searched for “how to care for shoes” and so I’ve already defined “how to” in the term I used which will therefore bias my research.

Personally, I’d recommend trying to mix it up a little. For most site owners, you don’t want every article to cover the exact same format as that could get boring, so you might want to create “how to article” one month, and “list” (i.e. Top 10) article another, and perhaps create a kick-ass infographic another.

So; by now you should have a pretty good idea of:

• what people are searching for
• a topic that has sparked your interest and you want your article to focus on
• what format you want it to take,
• what’s “in-scope” and
• what perhaps may be “out of scope” (i.e. things which it would be worth writing about via another article in its own right) and
• ultimately, what you want users to get out of reading the article.

Step 4 - Create a rough outline / brief to keep you on track, and give your article structure

Sometimes it’s good to know and acknowledge our weaknesses as that gives us opportunities to grow and develop. For me personally, when it comes to writing:

• I LOVE to share information
• In my desire to share knowledge, I can end up going off-topic, or down deep rabbit-holes of information
• I can be very verbose* when writing (*I can waffle)

As a result, I find it invaluable to create a rough outline of what I want to talk about.

In the world of SEO, we also often need to create “clusters” of content; articles which are closely related to each other, but without duplicating content that already exists within another article on the site.

Without a brief outline, it would be all too easy for me to go off-topic for one article and stray too far into the territory of another article, and run the risk of creating duplicate content. Not only that, but users would wonder why I was talking about a topic they weren’t expecting.

A great way to create a structure is to think about your topic, and try to define possible headings. For example, we recently created an article for a client about “screen printing”.

Common related questions someone might ask are:

• What is screen printing?
• How does screen printing work?
• What are the advantages of screen printing?
• What are the disadvantages of screen printing?
• Examples of where you might use screen printing

And so on. All of these questions are closely related.

Whilst we could talk about pad printing, that in itself has a similar set of questions so it’s best to separate that into another article as the users for that have a different search “intent”.

Search “intent” relates to what a user is trying to achieve. For example, going back to our shoe examples, someone searching for “How to get red wine out of suede shoes” has a very different “intent” to someone searching for “How to care for shoe blisters”.

Both have very specific need; or “intent”.

Look through all of your research and group together the content if you haven’t already. Now try to identify a logical, methodical sequence you can put them into to create a rough article structure.

For example, for this article I used:

• How do you write an article? (This sums up the user’s overall intent could be what you decide to use as your main article title)
• How long does it take? (We’ll be coming to this shortly)
• How many words should I use?
• Where can I find content ideas?

Step 5 - Use the inverted pyramid content model

For anyone not familiar with this, the concept is to sum up your most important information within the first paragraph or two of your article. That means that the user can quickly and easily identify what the article is about, and whether it’s likely to answer the question they’re trying to address.

Realistically, it might take a couple more, but ultimately you have just a few seconds to explain to users:

• What the article is about
• What’s in it for them and
• Why they should stick around

As the article progresses, you get more into the nitty gritty.

Just look at this article for example (if you got this far, then hopefully it shows it’s worked!).

• I started with a problem which hopefully you can relate to
• I included an interesting statistic where hopefully you learnt something - thus indicating you’ll learn things by continuing to read on, and
• I provided a bullet list of what we’d be covering.

That information allows users to quickly identify if it’s the right article for them; or more accurately, perhaps I should say… one they’re prepared to commit a few more seconds to. That’s because readers constantly re-evaluate if they’re still getting value from an article.

In fact, on average:

• Only 20% of readers will read an article in its entirety. Some studies even put it as low as 10%
• The majority of readers only read the first 25% of an article (So kudos & thanks to you if you’re still reading this and are one of the 20%)

Therefore it’s important to get your key information across quickly.

In addition, you can also use an inverted pyramid model within an inverted pyramid model. For example, some chunkier sections within an article can benefit from this approach.

Question: How long should it take me to write an article?

Good question. The short answer is, as long as it takes to create something of the desired quality…. And the focus should always be on QUALITY. With billions of pages in their indexes, why would search engines want to point users to something of low quality?

In fact, in 2011 Google released a specific update to their algorithm called the “Panda” update which specifically aims to filter out low quality “thin” content such as weak “me too” style articles and blog posts which don’t add anything new.

But back to the question in hand, according to a survey by Orbit Media, the average time it takes to write a blog article is 3.5 hours (It’s not clear from the survey if that is just writing time, or whether it also includes other related tasks such as research time, sourcing/creating image, etc)

Source: Orbit Media

However, more importantly, the same report also showed that bloggers who spend 6 hours or more on carefully crafting their articles, saw better results.

Source: Orbit Media

That last part is really important and totally makes sense. The longer you spend on an article, the better it’s likely to be; and as we’ve already seen, Google wants high quality content.

If you spend 3 hours on a “so-so” article, then sure you may gain a few clicks, but:

• It may not rank particularly well so the benefits will be short lived
• It won’t WOW people enough to make them want to link to it
• It could potentially be brand damaging if the content is regularly of a poor quality
• It could count against your E-A-T score
• It may even fall foul of the Panda update if you’re regularly posting weak, thin content

That’s not to say you HAVE to spend 6 hours on an article either. It’s possible to create a great article in 3 hours… but the important point I’m trying to make is that you need to focus on creating the very best content you can… and you can’t always put a time on that.

Step 6 - Includes quotes and useful stats

99% of stats are made up

Adding highly relevant stats to your article is a great way to add value to users, and also increase engagement rates.

They can also be a great way to demonstrate to Google you’re an expert in your field (Remember E-A-T?). For example, if everyone is quoting the same statistic from 2014, and you’ve managed to identify a newer statistic for 2021, then Google is going to like the fact you’re providing more up-to-date information.

Not only that, but other website owners are more likely to link to your article and/or cite you as the source when they quote you in their own articles (assuming you’re the original author/source of that new data)

79% of users scan-read articles. This makes stats perfect for articles as they’re easy to digest and communicate information quickly and clearly.

Not only that, but as most articles are just a sea of alphabetical characters, the sudden appearance of numbers and % symbols, etc. can really grab the user's attention. Style quotes and stats in a prominent way as we’ve done above, and they can stand out even more.

As such, strategic use of stats & quotes can really help advance the user’s attention from one section of your article to the next.

Whenever you include stats, try to link to the original source. This gives credit to the original author, improves the credibility of the data, and it allows the reader to find out more if they wish.

A word of warning:
Just because you see the same statistic popping up time and time again, it doesn’t mean it’s true. Sadly stats sometimes get unintentionally twisted, distorted or used out of context, and over time, factually inaccurate stats become the norm, either due to lack of research and/or lazy research.

I nearly fell foul of it myself with this very article (except I did do my research which is why I know there’s a potentially false stat in this article). To provide the point, I’ve actually kept the stat in place to highlight how easy it would be to do. See if you can spot it.

Step 7 - Include high-quality, engaging images

OK, so you know what I’m going to say next and I know it’s very cliche... but that’s because it’s 100% true.

A picture is worth a thousand words

(Sorry!)

The fact of the matter is this:

• The human brain processes images 60,000 times faster than text *
• 80% of people remember what they see, compared to 10% what they hear, and 20% of what they read *

* Did you spot it? Well done if you did. Did you spot them both? Yes, “both”…. apparently, the source of each fact is either unknown or disputed and therefore it begs the question whether the stats themselves are entirely accurate, taken out of context, or potentially even made up!

So we don’t go off-topic, check out this article on PolicyVis if you’re interested in learning more.

The key point I want you to remember? Using stats is fantastic, but try to ensure you find the original source and check the context to ensure it remains true.

Anyway… back to images….

Regardless, even if the actual figures are in question, the general concepts remain true. As humans:

• we do prefer images over text
• we do remember visual data better, an
• we do process information in images faster

Without high quality, relevant, and engaging images, an article or blog post can really feel quite dull.

Images not only help to convey context and meaning, they can also help visually break up a sea of text into more manageable chunks. Subconsciously, they often help indicate to users that they’re approaching a new section, or a new interesting piece of information, and that’s because the two often go hand-in-hand.

Where possible, try to use your own images. Search Engines love unique content and that isn’t restricted to just text-based information.

Image search is becoming increasingly advanced. You can now perform a search for an object, simply by taking a photo of it with your phone. You don’t need to type a single letter.

Not only that, but with Bing Image search or Google Lens, you can also search for an object within an image.

Optimise images - physical dimensions:

I’m not going to get too into image optimisation in this article as it’s a topic all of its own, but the fact of the matter is, images and videos are the two biggest causes of slow load times, and that’s not a good thing. As a result, you always want to be mindful of image size.

As a general rule, images should be no bigger than the largest size it could ever be displayed at (There are exceptions, but remember “Step 1 - Know your target audience”? Therefore, I’ll save you all from the techie details).

Digital cameras allow for fantastic image resolutions, but these equally result in images with physical dimensions which are excessive for use on the web. For example, there’s no point uploading an image at 7952px × 5304px if the largest it could ever be in the design of your site is 600px x 400px. The browser has to download and then scale down all of that information. That not only takes time, but it can eat up mobile data plans making you very unpopular!

As a result, think about each image. Is it at the maximum size it’s ever going to need to be? If not, use an image editing tool to resize it.

Tip:
I love to create two folders for my images. One is where I store the “original”, and the other is where I store all of my optimised variations. That way, if the design ever changes, I can go back to the un-touched originals and create a new set of images.

Optimise images - file size:

Another important thing is to optimise the “file size” of an image. This is the size in terms of bytes, kilobytes, megabytes, etc.

Very generally speaking, a large, full-width image for a site might be in the region of 150kb, and smaller product shot image might be nearer 30-50kb. If your image is weighing in at 1mb, you know you have a problem.

Thankfully, image optimisation is quick & easy thanks to free tools such as TinyPNG

These tools basically optimise images by removing unnecessary or less important aspects of an image without having a noticeable effect on the overall image quality.

I’d recommend resizing your image’s physical size first, and then running it through TinyPNG. The overall savings combined can be substantial!

Adding “alt”

Alt text is an “alternative description” of an image. It’s used by screen readers to help visually-impaired users understand what an image is about.

Don’t have any visually-impaired users? Wrong. Search engines are effectively visually impaired users. Whilst their ability to understand images from visual cues is improving, they still rely on the information provided in an alt attribute to help them understand what an image is about.

Don’t use this as an opportunity to stuff in keywords. Instead, close your eyes and try to describe the scene in under 20 words. That will help you stay clear of keyword stuffing and actually use “natural language” which could actually help your SEO efforts.

Step 8 - Don’t forget to include a Call to Action (CTA)

Don’t forget to tell users what you would like them to do next!

That might be:

• Contact you
• Read another article
• Learn more (and potentially purchase) a product related to your article

Step 9 - Optimise your metadata

Metadata is information which is traditionally used by search engines to understand what your article is primarily about, and is also used in search engine results.

Not only that, but they’re often used in SERPs (Search Engine Results Pages) as follows:

Ideally you want to create short, descriptive, and engaging titles and descriptions which encourage a user to click on your link.

There are also recommended maximum character limits. However, rather than bore you with those, here’s a better solution. Head over to https://metatags.io/

This is a great tool which allows you to enter and preview what your metadata should look like in Google, Facebook and Twitter. Take a look at our example below:

Side note:

Search engines are now so intelligent they can often auto-create meta descriptions so don’t worry if yours isn’t being used in SERPs. It may just mean that the search engine felt it found something more useful in the article.

Step 10 - Review, edit and publish

Finally, before you put the article live, don’t forget to review and edit it. Sometimes it can be good to leave it a day or two. There’s nothing worse than reading an article and having someone point out an embarrassing typo!

Better still, get a friend or colleague to read it. When we review our own work, our brain knows what’s coming so often (subconsciously) skips ahead and “fills in the blanks”. That can make it harder for us to spot our own errors.

Having someone else review the article is also a great way to discover if everything makes sense.

Step 11 - (Because who doesn’t love a little bonus) Don’t forget to share your article!

Congratulations you’ve finished your article. All that time, effort and hard work. It would be a shame to waste it so don’t forget to share your article with your audience!

Some quick wins can be sharing it via:

• Social media such as Facebook, Twitter and Linked In (Always consider if it’s relevant to each, as it may not always be!)
• Here at BYB, we also include links to our latest blog article within the signature section of our emails
• Your newsletter

As a bonus, one article has just provided you with content for multiple platforms. Well done you!

Just as a little insight before we go:

So I’ve been saying throughout this article that as it’s aimed at small businesses owners I’d stay clear of going into detail of the technical tools we use as SEO professionals.

However, for those of you who are curious (or want to know) what we do all day and have a peak behind the curtain, here’s a sneak peek as to the difference in search volumes between two very similar key terms: “How to write an write an article” vs “How to write a blog post”

As you can see:

• How to write an article’ has a ‘keyword difficulty score’ of 39, and an estimated global search traffic of 26k searches per month.
• In contrast, ‘How to write a blog post’ has nearly double the ‘keyword difficulty score’ at 73, and yet at the same time, has far less estimated global searches at just 6,600 per month*
  
  * We’re often more interested in “Volume” but I'll spare you the nitty gritty as to why.

As a result, you’ll see why I’ve focused more on the keyword “article” than “blog post” throughout this article.

In the words of Hannibal from The A-Team... I love it when a plan comes together!