Don’t worry, I know – you’ve probably just opened this piece of advice and are thinking, “What on earth is SEO and why would I want to write an SEO-friendly article?”

It’s alright that you don’t know, because probably up until now you didn’t need to know about it, but we can explain that for you.

SEO-friendly article – what is it?

SEO stands for Search Engine Optimisation and is the name that is given to any activity which improves search engine rankings.

So basically – how high your website, or article, appears in Google search results.

We’re a new website at The Llama so we want to make our website as popular as we can and get as many people looking at our articles as possible.

And to do that, you can help us! Here’s how…

1 – Pick a keyword

You can make your articles friendlier to search engines by choosing a keyword and focusing your article around that.

For example, if you’re writing an article about useful ways to revise for exams, your keyword (or phrase) could be “revision techniques”.

You would want to use the keyword in your headline, first line of the article and preferably a couple of other times in your article text.

2 – Use headlines and subheadings

Throughout the text in your article make sure you split it up using headings and subheadings. This makes your piece easier to read, and therefore rank higher up Google because search engine robots will crawl your website and use the headings to better understand what you’re writing about.

3 – Write a good length article

These days Google recognises good quality, in-depth content, so you’ll want to spend time on writing an article of a good length which is well-researched and detailed.

You should be able to do this in around 500-800 words, which is good for SEO.

4 – Link back to previous articles

If someone at The Llama has written something relevant to what you are writing about before, linking back to their article is a good thing to do for SEO.

This is because part of the way Google ranks content is by how many times it is linked to. Good content tends to get more links.

Also if you link back to older content it can refresh it and push it further forward in Google rankings.

Furthermore, if you use any useful resources in your article you can link to them. Linking to reputable websites increases the validity of your own story and also creates trust with the reader.

5 – Make it shareable

If you’ve written a great article, you’ll want it to be shared far and wide across social media. Include good, colourful images (see our guide to images for more information), ask questions at the end if you’d like a response, and of course, make sure you share your work online wherever possible.