In the days of old, magazine editors had one primary responsibility: writing great content. Getting people to subscribe to, buy, and read that content was someone else’s job. In the online world, things are much different. If editors want their content to be found and read online, they must learn to partner with Google. That means being aware of the words people type in when searching for content or producing content geared specifically to those search terms. It’s not easy, but it is necessary for online success. Here is a seven-point checklist to consider when writing content:

1. Put primary keywords in the title. If your keyword is “organic gardening,” then your article title should be something like “10 Organic Gardening Tips” or “How Organic Gardening Helped Me Lose 10 Pounds.”

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2. Don’t leave your meta title blank. In your blogging system, there should be a field for a meta title. This is the title that everyone sees when they find you on a search engine results page. This is also the field that tells the search engine what your primary keywords are.

3. Use your subhead as your meta description. Your meta description (also found in your blogging software) can easily be the same as your subhead. Since you’ve already optimized your subhead, this makes posting a meta description easy. Your meta description should ideally be optimized for under 70 characters (including spaces). You can make it longer, but in case it gets truncated, make sure your keywords appear at the beginning.

4. Include keywords in your URL. Both dashes and underscores are acceptable to Google now, so use either, but make sure you are using your keyword in your URL. This should be easy if you’ve already used it in your article title. If your keyword is organic gardening, for example, your URL might be http://www.site.com/10-organic-gardening-tips.com.

5. Optimize your tags and meta keywords. Most search engines use up to 18 of your meta keywords, so choose up to 18 meta keywords that you want to use for your article. Your meta keywords and tags should include your primary, secondary, and any other keywords you included in your article.

6. Only use keywords 10 percent of the time. A keyword density of 10 percent is a good density to be in. Still, 8 percent to 15 percent is a good range, but 10 percent may be the easiest to calculate on the go. The more content you have, the more times you can use your keyword. Just don’t overuse it. The quality of your content is always the top priority.

7. Use titles or keywords in every hyperlink. If you are linking to another article, you should link to either the name of the article or your keywords. By omitting the words “click here,” you are telling search engines that the link you are posting is related to the words you are linking. By saying “click here,” you are telling search engines nothing about the link. By saying “good gardening” and linking to an article on gardening, you are telling search engines that your article has something to do with “good gardening.”

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