Your Copywriter Must See This: 5 Rules for WordPress Blog Optimization

Copywriters are not the "H1 and ALT-tags" people.They are “cute puppies, trends, inspiration and a simple copy-paste from Google Docs to the WordPress” kind of folks.

At the same time, they do want to have their texts found and read. To help them bring their content close to the readers through search optimization, our SEO gurus created a simple guide on how to optimize your articles in WordPress.

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#1 Follow these rules when creating your content pieces

1. The maximum sentence length is 14 words. The minimum - 4 words.
2. Pay special attention to the first sentence:
   1. the length of the sentence should be at least 12 words, but not more than 200 characters;
   2. try to start with a definition (in Wikipedia style, checklist or short response to a query). It helps you to appear at Google Answer Box;
3. Check it for grammar and style. Poor content and grammatical errors grate on the nerves of both search engines and readers. According to Matt Cutts, the former Google's Head of search spam, the correct spelling correlates with the PageRank. So, the business website reputation and the search rankings do depend on your grammar.
4. Improve text uniqueness to 95% and higher (for the content with formulas or scripts this % can be lower).
5. Pay attention to the structure, use lists, and tables in the article. This approach also can help with getting to the Google Answer Box feature snippet.

Your faithful helpers here:

1. SE Ranking or other SEO tools to find relevant keywords.
2. Grammarly - service for grammar, vocabulary, and style checking.
3. Plagiarism Checker to evaluate your content uniqueness.

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#2 Tips for titles and headlines

1. Start H1 (the main title) with the keyword. Don't forget to create the attractive title for the readers. For example, headings like "TOP 10 ...", "List of the best ..." always work well.
2. Use 1 title for 500-1500 characters.
3. Mark the headings with H2 and H3 tags (further - it makes no sense). Usually, you can do this from WordPress drop-down menu "Paragraph" - just select the right option "Heading 1", "Heading 2" and so on. Or you can choose the nerdy way and manually add H2 and H3 tags in the "Text" tab.

They will become readable for users and search engines.

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#3 Links are our everything - pay close attention to them

1. Use anchor links to your other blog articles and landing pages.
2. Use these types of links (by priority):
   1. navigational;
   2. links between blog posts;
   3. website categories you want to promote;
   4. to the source of an information.
3. Don't use the link to the same page in one article twice.
4. Minimize the number of links to external sources. You're risking to become a spammy website for Google.
5. Don't include links to other sites at the article's beginning. The first link should be to your own page. The first link transfers the maximum "juice" to the page it leads to, improving its rankings.
6. It is forbidden to put links in headings (those that are marked with the tag).
7. It's unacceptable to put the anchor link in the first sentence. For a new article, it will complicate the ranking.
8. Don't use links to sites with dubious content. But if there are no options — mark the "nofollow" checkbox and search engines (SE) will not analyze them.

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#4 A few words about image optimization

• Use 1 image per paragraph or 1000 characters (it’s not a strict SEO rule, just a good advice).
• Reduce pictures’ weight to 29KB for JPG and 16KB for PNG. These suggested numbers are taken from the study of 100 popular HTTP archive sites. The heavy illustrations significantly affect the website speed and, eventually, rankings and conversion (look at the infographics).

• Use low-frequency keywords for image Title and Alt. You can also include phrases that can't be used in the main text — like shapes, colors, slang etc. No more than 10 words.

• If the images are used only for illustrative purposes and don't transmit any value in terms of adding credibility or content to the article, ALT can be omitted.
• If the images are used only for illustrative purposes and don't transmit any value in terms of adding credibility or content to the article, ALT can be omitted.
• If the images are used only for illustrative purposes and don't transmit any value in terms of adding credibility or content to the article, ALT can be omitted.
• If the images are used only for illustrative purposes and don't transmit any value in terms of adding credibility or content to the article, ALT can be omitted.
• Make sure that the surrounding text correlates with the image. Google analyzes it to evaluate the illustration relevance.
• Upload an image from your computer/server/site, not through the link from another resource. It will have the more positive effect on the ranking. In addition, this ensures the placement of the images as it won't disappear one day since it is stored in your own database.
• Pay special attention to the main image. Most of the images that rank high in Image Search are the main.

Your faithful helpers here:

1. Template Monster blog templates — main media files (pictures, videos) are unique and included in a price imageoptim.com or TinyPNG to reduce your pics weight.
2. Tineye to find the same picture you have but in better resolution. Or to find its original source.
3. Canva — awesome service for graphic creation.

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#5 Tags and the rest

• The URL should correspond with the Title and doesn't exceed 120 characters. Make it short and readable.

• Title can duplicate H1 or slightly differ.e. If you want to make your SEO guy happy - add your brand name in the Title. For example, “Template Monster blog”.
• The description should contain a short and interesting note about the article to attract the readers.
• Mark "noindex" if the text isn't unique. For example, you publish someone else's content. After this, the SE (search engines) won't analyze the content and ban the site for a "copy-paste".
• If you are creating text in Google Docs, copy it to the "Text" tab and then format it in "Visual". It helps to eliminate the unnecessary code from Google docs, which prevents robots to scan your text quickly.

Your faithful helpers here:

1. Chrome extension "WordPress.com for Google Docs" for painless transfer of a text and pictures from Google service.
2. WordPress plugins like Yoast SEO or All in One SEO Pack, which help to edit your headings and meta tags like Descriptions and Keywords. It also helps to configure your custom headlines, descriptions and pictures for Facebook, Twitter, and G+.

Read More:

50 Shades of SEO for Copywriters

Good Web Hosting Is Essential for Stronger SEO and Better Ranks

SEO Tactics that will See Your SME Dominate Search Engines In 2017

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