Writing content nowadays is not as easy as one would expect. Granted, the actual writing part does come from the heart and has everything to do with intuition, talent, perspective, phrasing, uniqueness and all those qualities that make a good writer excellent. The problem is that writing is not enough, you have to possess a keen sense of entrepreneurship, marketing and social media flair in order to ensure that your content actually gets enough coverage to make it possible for internet surfers out there to stumble across your work and actually get a chance to read it.

Furthermore, in order to maximize your chances as a guest author, you must take into consideration a few vital SEO aspects. It is therefore not just about the writing itself, formatting, keyword inclusion, posting, adding pictures, everything also has to be perfect so that a post has the ideal conditions in order to be seen and commented. Because in the end, guest-posting is all about outreach, right? Here are a few tips to ensure that your posts come out with the best of chances:

Keywords

1. Keywords

Using the correct keywords is essential in getting your post to score high in search engine queries. This means that there will be several keywords that will be used more often in your post (try to include them in a natural way, so that you don’t disrupt the natural flow of the narration). There are certain tools that can help you determine which keywords you can use to optimize venture possibilities, such as KeywordSpy and the tools which we have reviewed in this post. As far as the promoted link is concerned, make sure you conceal it well within the content, that it is related to your niche, and that it does not disturb the balance of your article.

Spying on Your Competition is normal

2. Checking out the Competition

Although this may not seem so fair play, seeing how others are managing and what they are doing to get to where they are can be beneficial for your business because we don’t just learn from our own fails or successes, but also from the accomplishments or setbacks of others.

You can visit homepages to get a general feel, cross-referencing keyword is an excellent idea because in spite of your best efforts to sort out keywords with the help of AdWords tools (which has been recently upgraded to a newer version), you can’t get as much done as when you are reading your competitors content.

Apart from keywords, there are several other tools you can use, from Meta Tags (descriptions of around 150 characters which are read differently by search engines), URLs and Permalinks. This ensures an optimal coverage for your content when search engine queries are underway.

As far as your post format is concerned try to make it as Google friendly as possible. Try to have titles of 66 characters or less and use SEO tools to ensure that your page has the best optimization possible. Include keywords in your first paragraph so that Google can easily find your post – and try to have your primary keyword in the first few sentences of your post. This cannot be stressed enough, even though it seems tedious and absolutely in vain, the most important thing when promoting an article is placing the correct keywords in the correct places.

High-Quality Content

4. High-Quality Content

The actual post is also extremely important for a number of reasons. First and foremost, you need to provide a quality product that people recognize and come back to. Subscribers will mean a lot to your site, so try to make a name for yourself by always providing quality content, being well informed and making sure you are unique in what you do. As for length, there are no clear guidelines although a post should regularly have at least 500 words (try going over the 700 word mark whenever possible) according to Google.

It’s as clear as rain that each good post should also be accompanied by excellent images that make readers interested in actually starting to read whatever you wrote there. This society of commodity we live in makes it possible for internet users to gather all important information through pictures, videos and infographics, so reading is slowly becoming obsolete.

Make sure your article (or site) does not fit into these norms and make your users know that they are getting a quality read whenever they revisit your blog. Images should also be keyword optimized and uploaded to the server-using the same name. Since search engines cannot see the images you provide, you will need to supply proper information so that Google can understand exactly what the image represents (a short explanatory text can increase relevancy significantly).

SEO Tips for Bloggers

Last but not least, make sure you have submitted your article to all major search engines (have it indexed). This means creating an XML site map that is available to all search engines you are targeting (there are several tools that can show you whether or not your sitemap is being properly read by search engines – Google Webmaster).

Backlinks should also make your list of to do’s and although it sounds difficult at first, you can achieve this by simply guest posting with sites that have high Domain Authority in the same field that you are writing in, by commenting on other sites that belong to your niche, taking part in forum discussions or posting frequently, because when you make your presence known, you slowly gain the trust of other users out there.