How to write a good article for SEO and Social Media

It may seem obvious, but it is not, and the first and fundamental thing that we must take into consideration when writing a good article for SEO and that Google considers correct when positioning us, is to have a good topic to cover .

In many environments, it is stipulated that an article must have at least 600 or 800 words, although the reality is that there is no minimum or maximum that is the correct formula. The reason is because Google (and other search engines) seek to provide answers to the user, and this answer can be found in a long text, but also in a short one.

This way, Google will understand that it's a content-rich piece of work and will study it more carefully when it comes to ranking it better . Keyword-stuffing entries are no longer useful for SEO; they're a thing of the past, and the search engine penalizes them heavily.

That's why, with this short guide, we're going to teach you the basics you need to keep in mind when working on and positioning your articles.

Where do I start writing my SEO article?

Once we have a clear idea of what we want to write for the post, we move on to writing it. It's important to keep in mind that the average user views the content in a cross-section before delving deeper into the text. Therefore, the article should be easy to understand , organized, and aesthetically consistent with the website in question.

The bounce rate of users who enter to read a text is increasingly high, finding aggressive and annoying designs that force them to abandon the website. Google currently penalizes sites with a high bounce rate, which is why it's very important to take care of the design and ensure everything is understandable and easy to read for the visitor.

A good way to draw the user's attention to your article for SEO purposes is to bold the most important parts of the text . This way, they're more likely to find those highlighted sections on their first read-through and thus continue reading the entire article.

Title of an article for SEO

This is the initial part of the article for SEO purposes. It should clearly and concisely describe what our text is about and give it the necessary relevance to keep users interested in it.

This should be done in less than 50 characters , since anything longer than this will cause both search engines and users to lose interest in it, considering it excessive.

We should include as much information as possible and the chosen keywords in this text. If possible, these should be placed as close to the beginning as possible, as long as it remains natural.

This will help search engines perform better indexing , and, as recent studies indicate, users read the first two or three words of a title to determine whether the article is interesting or not and whether they can access it.

SEO in Images and Multimedia

The best way to enhance an article's SEO is to add images or multimedia content that matches the article and the website, but that isn't distracting when reading . This will create a more aesthetically pleasing and visually appealing section, while also adding breadth and relevance to the text.

Name these images or media files with the keywords you plan to use in the article's SEO, especially if it's an image in the alt text section, which tells Google what the image shows.

On many occasions, articles are shared by users who find the images even more interesting than the text itself . In this case, if you are the owner or designer of the images, it will be of great help to publicize your work, and user engagement with the post will be very beneficial for positioning it.

Otherwise, if you don't own these images, there are free image banks or those with Creative Commons licenses that will help you find what you're looking for and will give your article much more impact, thus enriching it with better resources for Google SEO.

It's very important that the weight of the images is not excessive , since much of the traffic you will receive will be on the mobile version and a user who sees how long a website takes to load tends to leave after a few seconds.

Article Text for SEO

Justified text formatting used to be one of the most common methods for writing content. All publications, both digital and print, used this format. However, for some time now, and especially with new responsive websites, this type of formatting has been reduced in use , as the spacing of paragraphs to align the two parts of the text often results in large gaps between words, resulting in a very poor quality in terms of aesthetics and readability.

For this reason, we recommend left-aligning and centering an article for SEO purposes, as needed. Another aspect to keep in mind when working on the body of the article is the use of H1, H2, and H3 tags, which indicate the title, subtitle, or different sections of the text. These tags are widely used in CMSs like WordPress and Joomla. This helps search engines identify the most important and enriched sections and provides a scalable format.

We shouldn't overuse these tags , but it's interesting to be able to use them in articles and different sections, both for aesthetic purposes and to highlight important points in the body of the message.

It's essential that the chosen keywords, or similar and synonymous keywords, appear in the first 50 or 100 words of the text, as this is the section that the search engine values most when it comes to ranking, but also throughout the entire text.

That's why, when we begin writing an article , we must conduct a detailed study of the keywords and how we will use them throughout the entire body.

Links for SEO (Anchor text)

Using both internal and external links throughout your article will help with SEO . Internal linking will serve to highlight other interesting content on your website, helping users spend as much time as possible on your page.

External links to sites will show Google, especially if they are sites with high interest, that your SEO article contains rich content and will therefore help it rank.

Google is now penalizing fraudulent links that were once used to boost rankings. Therefore, external links must be genuine and provide accurate information about what we have published to improve rankings.

Social networks

Currently, there are various methods, depending on the CMS or programming used when publishing, that facilitate the way articles are shared on different social networks.

It is essential to adapt to each of them and not share in all of them in the same way, since each one has a different format and a different type of user, therefore, if a Twitter user sees a publication in which the characters exceed the maximum number and are cut off, they will surely not click on the link, just as a LinkedIn user will if they see a publication with hashtags, since this network does not support them and they are not useful.

To solve all this, it's interesting to use sections like those offered by Yoast or Rank Math, where you can visually layout how a user shares your article on different social networks.

It's worth noting that social media is currently one of the best methods for making a text go viral , and working on it in depth can yield significant SEO results.

Custom URLs

Use the chosen keywords in your article's URLs for SEO purposes. This will help search engines index the text you want to rank more quickly. It's very important to avoid long URLs or those with unusual numbers and codes. It's recommended that you use no more than 5-6 words after the domain name itself.

Let's give an example using “SEO” as the keyword.

Good: www.dominio.com/un-buen-articulo-SEO

Bad: www.dominio.com/esto-es-un-buen-articulo-para-el-positionamiento-de-Google-y-otros-buscadores

Even though you have the keyword selected, the length of the URL often causes search engines and even users to reject it . If you have no choice but to generate such a long URL, you can use shorteners like Bit.ly , which will help you create a more attractive URL when sharing on social networks and forums where there are character limits.

Conclusions of the article

We must keep in mind that there is currently no perfect formula for creating an article or even a website, but we do know a series of guidelines and basic principles that search engines, and especially Google, like to consider when it comes to ranking us higher in search results. By following these tips, you'll soon see how your articles, and therefore your website, will receive more visitors and you'll begin to rank higher.

Tell us about your experience, if you have any other tips, and if they've helped you when working on your own SEO.