There are times when you think that you’ve written a really great article but even after a few months it may have not managed to attract much attention. In some cases even search engines may have ignored your articles. That said instead of trying to write something new why not fix existing articles and add an ‘Updated’ label to them. Interestingly this technique is not used by many professional SEO services despite it being fool proof and easy. The other good thing about this is that you will not have to do fresh research unless the information in the article has gone stale. Below we look at a few import tips to help you re-optimize your existing articles so that they fair better the second time around.
Run a grammar and spelling check on the article
Major search engines like Google have spiders that no longer just measure keyword density and check for all the keywords used. The latest spiders can also check written content for grammar and spelling errors. Google has said countless times that their search engine will crawl and then rank content based on its relevance as well as quality. So, obviously high quality content gets ranked higher than poor or medium quality content. There are many free and paid online grammar and spell checking services that can be used.
You also need to be very careful especially with region specific spelling. For instance, if you’re writing for an American audience you cannot have ‘color’ also spelt ‘colour’ in the same article. Google will mark this as an error and your content’s ranking may suffer.
Check and fix keyword density
Once you’re done with checking spelling and grammar, you’ll want to make sure that the keyword density is suited for what today’s search engines want i.e. a keyword density of no more than 2% is something that some of the best SEO agencies agree on is sufficient. If you see that your keyword density is higher and then reduces it by using variations. For instance, if you’ve written an article targeting the keyword ‘real estate for sale’, you can use variations like ‘selling real estate’, ‘land sales’, ‘home sales’ etc. These variations will also help you rank well for each variation you use and not just one specific keyword.
Shorten sentences
Even though search engines do not really care how long each sentence is but today you need to write keeping the reader in mind. People find long sentences boring and since the average attention span has dropped considerably short sentences will help you retain a reader’s attention. Ideally, you’ll want to shorten any sentence which is more than 15 – 20 words long. Also, shorten sentences further if possible and beak different ideas up into sub headings. Your sub headings can contain any secondary keywords you may be targeting.
Redo the Meta data
Take a look at your Meta data to determine if it creates interest. This is why many SEO services make sure that the Meta description grabs a person’s attention when they are browsing through search engine results and motivate them to click. Ideally, you’ll want your Meta description to be no more than 10 words long. It should also include one of your primary keywords. An easy way to draft an effective Meta description is to first put your keyword, then think about how this keyword can be backed with an interesting line. For instance, if you are targeting ‘Real Estate Sales’, you can write something like “Learn how I managed to improve real estate sales by 25% in one week” or “discover how top real estate sellers are making it big today.” Notice, that the second example contains a variation of the main keyword which is fine as long as it does not sound strange and arcane.
Add pictures
Leading SEO services suggest that people add pictures to their articles. Most readers will decide if they want to read your article if the picture looks interesting. Your article needs to have at least one picture. This picture needs to be labelled as “labeled for reuse”, use Google’s picture search and advanced settings to just search for pictures that are labelled “labeled for reuse”. However the picture should be relevant to your article. For instance, building on the previous example if it was an article about real estate sales, the caption below a picture of an awful looking home can be “I sold this for $500,000’. This will help to create interest.
Mark has been a content writer and blogger for over a decade. He also has a number of tutorials and how-to eBooks to his credit. In addition to writing SEO content, he is also an SEO consultant and heads one of the leading SEO services in Australia. His years of experience enable him to deliver unsurpassed results for an array of businesses.
Citations: SEO Tips for Landing Page Optimization
Featured images: image source
