Writing a high-quality article on WordPress and successfully optimizing your content for SEO are essential steps to improving the visibility of your blog/website. Not sure where to start? Follow our tips WordPress SEO agency to create a WordPress article that is both useful for internet users and optimized for search engines.
How to write an article on WordPress?
WordPress is currently the easiest tool to use for creating a website or blog – in fact, the platform hosts more than one in four websites worldwide. This free content management system (CMS) allows anyone to write articles online (relatively) easily without needing any programming knowledge. But you still need to follow a few basic rules!
Add a new article
Creating a WordPress post is done in the back office (dashboard) of your WordPress blog/website, which you access using your username and password. Once logged in:
- Locate the "Articles" and "All Articles" tabs in the menu on the left side of the screen.
- Click on the "Add an article" tab located under the "All articles" tab
You are now on the page for creating your new article.
How to write an article optimized for SEO?
Do you want your article to attract prospects and generate traffic? Several techniques will help you to write an SEO-optimized WordPress article.
1 – Find relevant keywords
The keywords used in your article have a direct impact on its search engine ranking. To be relevant and promote good content positioning, they must correspond to search queries regularly performed by internet users on the topic discussed in the text.
Each WordPress article should also have at least one primary keyword and several secondary keywords to have a good chance of ranking well. Secondary keywords are less competitive variations of the primary keyword; they constitute what is commonly known as the long tail.
- Example: An article about luxury watches will have as its main keyword "luxury watch" and as secondary keywords "buying luxury watches", "selling luxury watches", "making luxury watches" etc…(depending on the activity of the website offering the article).
Several tools can help you define your keywords and check their relevance. You can use:
- the Google search bar by looking at the different results obtained when you type the keyword;
- the Google Adwords tool;
- WordPress plugin SeoPress.
This extension (plugin) is ideal for analyzing the relevance of your pages and keywords, but also for benefiting from several other optimization options.
2. Give your article a title
The title should summarize the topic of your article and include your main keyword. Don't panic if you can't find a final title before you start writing your article; use a working title (that summarizes the main idea developed in the content): you'll probably find it easier to come up with the final title after you've written the article.
3 – Create a writing plan
The structure of your article should, of course, depend on its length – for example, it's not necessarily required to write an introduction for a 300-word article. In any case, creating an outline (by breaking down each section and adding heading levels) can help you synthesize your ideas and prevent you from going off on tangents while writing.
4 – Provide relevant information to readers
Search engines like Google prioritize above all high value-added itemsWhen we talk about value-added texts, we are referring to content that contains relevant information for the reader on the topic being researched.
It is therefore important to always keep in mind that the subject of the article (the content) must always take precedence over the form. It cannot be stressed enough: Google and other search engines favor "intelligent" and understandable content. Their priority is to rank the most relevant content on a given topic. A poorly written piece of content, even if well-structured from an SEO perspective, will not necessarily rank highly in search engines.
Therefore, you should prioritize a "natural" writing style and provide useful information to the reader. Keyword integration should be as unforced as possible. Otherwise, your article will not rank well in search engines – some practices can even be penalized to the point of causing you to plummet in their rankings.
To provide quality web content, also consider:
- favor short sentences;
- grouping information: the most important information should be addressed at the beginning and end of the article;
- Don't hesitate to use bulleted lists;
- Break up the content: one paragraph = one idea.
Like in a classic word processing program, WordPress offers several features to format your content and make it more pleasant to read: bold, italics, alignment, centering…
How to better optimize your WordPress article?
Have you written your article? Several other "techniques" will now allow you to improve its positioning.
Place keywords judiciously within the content
Your main keyword should appear in the first paragraph. It should then be naturally integrated once or twice (depending on the article's length) in the body of the text, and again at the end. Secondary keywords should also appear at the beginning and end of the content and be expanded upon in the body of the text.
It is also advisable to bold (using the "Bold" function) the main keyword at least twice (usually at the beginning and end) and some long-tail phrases.
Your main keyword should appear in the first paragraph. It should then be naturally integrated once or twice (depending on the article's length) in the body of the text, and again at the end. Secondary keywords should also appear at the beginning and end of the content and be expanded upon in the body of the text.
It is also advisable to bold (using the "Bold" function) the main keyword at least twice (usually at the beginning and end) and some long-tail phrases.
Structure the content with appropriate heading tags
HTML tags are analyzed by search engines to determine the relevance of your content (relevance which, as we've seen, has a direct impact on SEO). Therefore, it's important to follow a heading hierarchy to improve your article's ranking:
- H1
This tag corresponds to the article title. It must include the main keyword. A page (or article) should contain only one h1 tag.
- H2
These heading levels allow you to expand on the keyword and include variations. It is possible to create multiple h2 tags.
- H3
This tag can be considered a subheading located below the h2 (or a level 2 subheading). Multiple h3 tags can be created per piece of content.
The h4, h5 or h6 headings are of little use for the SEO of an article.
Note that most WordPress themes automatically define your article title as an h1. Therefore, start writing the text directly with an h2, using the WordPress dropdown menu (Heading 2) or the h2 tag like this:
- How to write a WordPress article optimized for SEO?
Regardless of the title tag, do not exceed 65 characters so that the title can be fully analyzed by search engines.
Redefine permalinks
WordPress creates default permalinks that include the date and post name in the URL. It's recommended to create new ones, as search engines favor permalinks that contain the post's main keyword. The simplest way is to use the post title as the permalink. To do this:
- Go to the "Settings" menu in the WordPress dashboard;
- Select "Publication Title";
- Click "Save Changes".
Warning, however! If you change the permalink structure after publication, you risk breaking all previous links.
Embed media in the article
Adding images or multimedia content to your article is highly recommended to improve its ranking. To add an image, you can use the "Add Media" tab, located above the text in your WordPress builder page, or use the `<image>` tag. .
Also consider adding alternative text for each image or embedded media to enhance SEO optimization: you will find this function in "Image settings".
Create internal and external links
Internal links direct your article to other articles on your blog/website. They are essential both for facilitating user navigation on your site and for SEO. To add an internal link:
- Select the passage where you want to insert a link by highlighting it;
- click on the "insert/edit link" tab located above the text on the WordPress creation page;
- Insert the URL of the page to which you want to redirect the link.
External links, on the other hand, point to competitor or partner websites other than your own. Prioritize external links to sites with strong authority in your field. This improves your reader's experience and increases the relevance of your content.
Write the meta description
Writing a meta description is essential to ensure a good click-through rate (CTR). This short sentence, which appears in the SERP (search engine results page), will encourage users to click on your article. And the higher your CTR, the more relevant search engines consider your content.
You now have several keys to successfully writing a SEO-optimized WordPress article.
Don't hesitate to contact our experts for maintenance or SEO for your WordPress blog/site, whatever your industry!
