How to Publish an Article Online for SEO

How to Publish an Article Online for SEO: A Step-by-Step Guide

The internet is a pretty tough, competitive place, and it’s easy to get drowned in all that chaos unless you have something that acts like a lighthouse guiding people to your website.

What could that be? Anything from paid ads to email marketing.

Yet, if we talk about organic traffic, it’s hard to beat SEO.

But search engine optimization is a jungle of its own. And it’s quite easy to get lost in all the tactics.

Still, if you want to nail SEO, you have to master the process of publishing articles online.

Why? It gives you backlinks that are crucial for rankings, gets you referral traffic, and improves your overall visibility. Not bad, ha?

But here’s where the problem lies. It is surprisingly hard to find reputable sites with good organic traffic to publish your article. And then, good luck with scaling that.

In fact, there are far more spammy sites willing to post your content for a fee than there are quality websites ready to do the same for free.

So, in this post, we will look at how you should approach your next SEO articles, including hints on the best place to publish articles online.

How Does Your SEO Benefit from Publishing an Article Online?

Source: @janetmachuka on X

It’s pretty hard to think of doing SEO without having to publish articles online.

For starters, content is at the heart of all search engine optimization strategies, and it is how you position your brand to show up in search results.

This approach comes with so many perks:

• You get to enjoy increased targeted traffic. Brands that publish articles online on a regular basis get to see 55% more traffic.
• The number of organic clicks, leads, and conversions is increasing. 76% of marketers say that content marketing (which also involves publishing online articles) generates leads.
• Your web pages appear higher up in search result pages for your target keywords.
• Your brand becomes even more visible, which gives you an added air of legitimacy (aka more credibility).
• Your content is indexed more frequently, which means your website DA looks more and more authoritative and attractive.
• Other sites reference your content and link to you. People spend a ton of money to make this happen, but publishing an article online regularly can get you there faster and cheaper.

Do you really get all these just from posting a couple of articles each month? Yes!

But there is more to the process than just churning out any post. It requires a nuanced approach, which is what the next section is about.

How to Write and Publish Articles Online: 6 Easy Steps

Getting your articles posted on reputable sites can do wonders for your profile and brand credibility. Still, it’s not an easy task for a beginner.

So, here are some tactics you can try to make the experience a breeze (well, almost) for you:

#1 Learn the Audience’s Pain Points

Source: Ahrefs

Do you know why 96.55% of online articles end up lost in the deep, dark bottom of the internet where there’s no traffic and only 3.45% make it to get noticed?

That’s what happens when someone writes without taking time to actually learn about those they are talking to.

The only way to publish an article online that people will want to read, share, and talk about is to make it about THEM. Not you or your brand.

Find out what their lives are like, their struggles, motivations, pain points, and so on.

How do you do this?

• Keyword research
• Surveys
• Online communities like Reddit and Quora
• Social media
• Interviews and even reviews, etc.

Now what? Representation matters, and that’s not just in movies but in all media forms. So, use your findings to build up the topics your target audience wants to see.

This research will bring you benefits that go far beyond just SEO.

For example, let’s say you want to increase sales (who doesn’t want it, anyway?). This means you now better understand what roles your product/service can play, what motivates your clients to buy from you, and how to better serve them.

#2 Decide on the Keywords, Search Intent, and Content Outline (Your Map)

Remember that keyword research is a big deal for any article? It is how you uncover the exact phrases, keywords, and questions people type online to find articles like yours.

It also includes how frequently they want to see topics like that, the cost of your top keywords, and how easy it will be for you to rank for the same search queries.

Besides mapping to figure out what your audience is looking for online, you also need to understand the why behind their searches. This is what search intent is all about. It could be:

• Informational. To learn more about your service or product.
• Navigational. To find your website or physical store.
• Commercial. To discover more about your brand service or product just before the purchase.
• Transactional.To start looking at specific models of your product with clear intentions of buying.

Now, you can use the insights you have gathered to choose the right topic for your article and draw up an outline, i.e., a plan of what your article will look like.

#3 Do Thorough Research and Prepare High-Quality Content

Source: @NathanHirsch99 on X

Yes, we are beginning to sound like a broken record at this point with all the hammering on research, but walk with us.

If you want to publish online articles and you hope they will be a hit with both humans and search engines, you’ve got to be dedicated.

You want to keep Google’s E-E-A-T in mind so that your article must tick the box for experience, expertise, authoritativeness, and trustworthiness.

How do you make this happen? Easily. Just ensure that you:

• Double-check every fact, stats, quote, and other data. Be sure to quote your sources and attribute them properly.
• Explore your topic from different points of view and try to really capture the nuances and get the big picture.
• Interview real industry experts and people with firsthand experience.
• Use only verifiable sources, and they must also be authoritative sources like academic journals, etc.
• Don’t be too stiff. A little humor, where appropriate, will make your writing more digestible.

The goal is to create a quality SEO article that will generate leads and be able to stand up to any type of scrutiny.

Of course, you also get to appear as an expert in the field the article is about.

#4 Optimize But Not Too Much

Source: @craig0412 on X

No post about getting articles published online is complete without tackling the important aspect of optimizing your content so all the hard work won’t go to waste.

You must feel those little things that can spoil the reading experience for anyone who decides to click on your article. Be ready to fix them. So, here’s what to do:

• Make sure your headline is catchy and less than 60 characters. Throw in a keyword that matches search intent, an action word or two, and some powerful data in there to make it rank. What else? Check out the top sites in your niche for topic/headline inspiration, or even turn to old magazines.
• Keep your introduction brief, suspenseful, and appealing.
• Mind the word count as it matters. If your article is too lengthy or on the contrary, brief, it can mean fewer engagements.
• Use keywords throughout the writing, but don’t overdo it: keyword stuffing can spoil quality and your work may feel like a spammy piece.
• Forget about complicated and smart terms. Keep the content language easy to understand.
• Want to show up in featured snippets? Use bullets, lists, short paragraphs, etc.

#5 Chase Suitable Online Article Publishing Sites

Whether you want to publish medical, legal, or marketing articles online or your goal is to increase your brand awareness with a post on some big sites, chances are that this is one of the most stressful parts for you.

To find free online article publishing sites, you can try using any of these:

• Do a Google search with “Write for us” + “keywords.” This will turn up sites that are open to collaborating with guest authors in your niche. You can then find contact information, reach out to them, and ask them to write an article for their site.
• Use freelance platforms like Fiverr and Upwork. There you can find writers, editors, bloggers, and outreachers. The biggest issue with these freelance platforms, though, is that it’s hard to find true experts. So, make sure you do your research.
• LinksManagement (LM) provides one of the biggest collections of websites with a multitude of filters for finding the best option for you. Plus, you have several outreachers who can get you a link placement from the same pages. That’s why you can choose the one with the most suitable price tag, deadlines, and reviews.

Besides, LinksManagement offers two options for getting backlinks:

• Contextual links. These are basically links insertions where you can select an already existing blog and prepare the URL, anchor, and surrounding text. Then, an outreacher will get that link published for you.
• Article links. This option is essentially what you call guest posting/blogging. So, you will have to write an article from scratch or order it from LM’s elite copywriters.

#6 Know How to Get an Article Published Online (and Ensure the Odds Favor You)

Look, it is going to be hard sometimes in this day and age to convince lots of sites to publish an article online for free.

But does this mean that it cannot be done at all? Of course, not.

Here’s what you can do to increase your chances and make this mission very possible:

• Found a site you really like? Good. Now, reach out to their webmasters. Don’t only use the email. Try to find editors and webmasters on social media. This should be your go-to move when looking to publish your own articles online without any paid help.
• Offer a cool pitch with topics that actually fit that web page. And don’t forget to showcase your other articles published on reputable sites.
• Keep in mind that using the homepage or a sales landing page as the acceptor is usually a bad idea.
• Stay away from using spammy anchors and diversify your anchor as much as you can.
• Refrain from getting shady links, too, as articles with links to sites from gray or black niches will hardly make it to publication.

Conclusion

Need a recap on how to publish an article online? Here you go.

First, focus on your audience and think over what you are going to offer them.

Next, do your research and select appropriate keywords based on your audience’s pain points and search intent.

Create outstanding content that is actually valuable. And find a way to publish your article (whether you do it yourself or outsource it).

This is how you write the best articles, build up your rep as a writer, and craft a solid network with other bloggers.