Web Content Best Practices: Our 22-Point Checklist for Publishing High-Performance Articles

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The 80-20 Rule states that 80% of the results come from 20% of the causes. A small number of actions get big results.

Big in content marketing, it’s more like 90-10.

Every glimpse into every Google Analytics account shows this clearly. The top-performing articles drive most of the impact, both on the traffic side and the conversion side.

This is true for traffic.

A small percentage of articles get most of the visibility, especially through SEO…

And this is true for conversions.

A few articles are much better than others at getting visitors to subscribe…

One of the main jobs of the digital marketer is to find these high-performers and then understand them better. How are they different? What makes them special? How could you create more content like these?

But the conclusions are usually the same. There are common traits that the top performers share. And when you put these traits together, you have a set of best practices for website content and content marketing.

These are our web content best practices

They are based on our experience publishing 500+ articles, surveys of 5000+ bloggers, and collaboration with 1000+ clients. We’ve combined them into one, big web content checklist.

So before you push the publish button, go through this list and make sure you’ve included everything. If you leave something off, do it deliberately.

We’ve broken this up into three separate lists, one for SEO, one for human psychology and one for additional media. Of course, there is overlap.

Here’s a printable PDF in case you’d like to check things off a paper list as you write your next post.

Let’s take a closer look at each item…

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) checklist

We’ll start with SEO and traffic. Makes sense. If no one sees it, nothing else matters, right?

The following elements help indicate the relevance of the article. They are key places to use target phrases and increase the likelihood that the content will rank. Just make sure that you’re targeting a keyphrase that you have a fighting chance of ranking for.

Title tag

It’s in the tab above the address bar for every page you’ve ever visited.

Title tags are the single most important element for on-page SEO. Not only are they a powerful indication of relevance, but typically the title is the link on a search results page. The ideal length is 55 characters or the rest will be truncated. Be brief.

Use the target keyphrase once in the title. If possible, use it near the beginning of the title. The prominence of the keyphrase (in other words, how close to the beginning it appears) is important.

It might be tempting to put your business name at the front of the title. Don’t. SEOs have a saying: “brand last.” Start with your keyphrase, end with your business name. Remember, in content marketing your first goal is to help people. Promoting yourself comes second.

<H1> header

The header on the page should be formatted using the <h1> header tag. Use the target keyphrase once, indicating relevance to search engines and stating the general topic to headers. Beyond this, the headline should be written for readers. More on headlines in a minute.

Keyphrase use in the body text

Your target keyphrase should appear in the article. As you write, you’ll find yourself using the phrase naturally at least a few times.

There is no rule for the number of times you should use a phrase (it would be strange if there was) but if you’d like a general guideline, I’d say use the phrase 2-3 times every 1000 words. Something like that.

During editing, make sure it’s used, but not overused.

Warning: If it feels unnatural, don’t force it. Don’t overdo it on the keywords. Do not compromise your writing. If your keyword usage is obvious to a reader, you’re guilty of “keyword stuffing.” Repeating a phrase in unnatural ways is bad for readers and bad for rankings.

Semantically linked words

Here’s where SEO copywriting gets more fun.

Beyond using your target keyphrase, work in the words that are semantically related to that phrase. This is how you can target the topic, not just the keyphrase.

Indicating relevance for the more general topic is great for search rankings. A great page on your topic would certainly include closely related words and phrases, right?

For example, this article is a “website content checklist.” That’s the primary keyphrase and I’m using it, I’m sure (I’m not actually counting how many times). But a great content checklist should really touch on all the adjacent subtopics, relevant questions and related words.

So I’ll take a minute to see what Google shows as related words, topics and questions and incorporate those into this article.

Where do I find those?

• I just start searching for the phrase and see what Google suggests.
• I write those words and phrases down and work those into my article.
• I search for the phrase and look for a “People also ask” box.
• I write those questions down and make sure to answer some of them in my content.

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