How To Write Effective Articles And Content – Part 1 of 4

by Amanda on March 3, 2009

Search engine optimization (SEO) is something that all webmasters want to incorporate into their websites and this includes their content. As a freelance writer is it vital that you understand the logistics of search engine optimization in order to fulfill the needs of your clients and appeal to new clients too.

If you want to be a successful SEO article writer there are four strategies that you need to incorporate. Each of these will be discussed in detail in the next couple of blog posts.

The four strategies are:

1. Keywords
2. Content
3. Formatting
4. Links

Before we move on to discuss the first of these strategies, Keywords, I want to take a moment to explain exactly what an SEO article is.

An SEO article (search engine optimized article) is something that you will be asked to write on a frequent basis. This is basically a piece of writing that will be developed specifically to include targeted keywords. The purpose of these articles is to allow the chosen keywords to rank highly in the search engines. When these articles are written in large batches they can in fact attract large amounts of traffic from the search engines and this is potentially what your cliens will be looking for.

In even simpler terms, an SEO article is an article that is written around a particular keyword in a particular format to attract high results from search engines. Written correctly, SEO optimized articles can get your clients large quantities of visitors and traffic and that is exactly what clients are looking for.

Keywords:

Keywords are paramount when it comes to writing SEO articles. You will more than likely be given the keywords by your client but in order to fully understand the process of SEO optimized articles I think it is only fair that we discuss the process of keyword selection and why these keywords that you have been given are so important.

Keywords are the building blocks of all search engine optimization efforts. The selection of keywords is the first of the four strategies and finding the right keywords is vital. When it comes to keywords for any niche there will be competition and this is something that you client will have looked at before he/she chooses the keywords that they give you. When clients are selecting keywords they are doing so by understanding the motive that is behind the keyword. When they can understand the motives they can select the keyword and know the type of content that will appeal to those who search for this keyword in the search engines.

A couple of examples of this would be:

Keyword: ____ features – the motive associated with a keyword that includes features is that the person seaching will be looking to acquire more information about the particular product. If your client is trying to sell a product this might not necessarily be a good keyword to focus on.

Keyword: Try ____ – the motive associated with a keyword that includes try is a free trail. People will search for this is they want to try out a product or service. If your client doesn’t offer a trial of their product then they should also avoid this keyword.

Keyword: Buy _____ – the motive behind this keyword is of course buy and anyone who searches for this term will be looking to purchase the product or service. If you client is selling a product this is an excellent keyword and it might also be the keyword that has the most competition so your article will need to be top notch in order to be successful. This is why writers who specialize in SEO writing can demand rates up to $100 per article. Their writing gets results and this is exaclty what clients want and they are willing to pay for this expertise.

Your clients will categorize their keywords and may also organize them by geography, by attributes, by intended usages, and by price. This will help them to determine which keywords are more important.

Keyword weight is another important aspect. The weight of a keyword is determined by the number of people who search for that particular keyword each month. If you are serious about SEO writing then this is something that you should be able to check yourself too. There are lots of free keyword tools that will give you these results. If you are given a keyword that is searched over 100,000 times per month then you can be guaranteed that this keyword will have a lot of competition and your article should be written accordingly. In this case it is vital to make your article stand out from the crowd by including as much information as possible.

The majority of the keywords that you will probably receive from your clients will be targeted towards terms that are not highly competitive and as such don’t be surprised if you get keywords that don’t really make sense. You might get a keyword that is difficult to incorporate into sentences and heading and in this case a good trick to use is to try to split the keyword by using a comma,

I have often found that if you take the time to look at your keyword in all aspects you will find a way to incorporate it into your article.

For example:

Learning French Alphabet – this keyword doesn’t make sense and you may be inclined to slot the word the into it but then this changes the keyword.

I have discoverd a great way to use this keyword and that is to finish a sentence with the word learning and being the next one with French Alphabet or break up the sentence with a comma between learning and french.

Example: To help with your learning, french alphabet pronunciation is vital.

As you can see, I have used the exact keyword. It’s easy when you look at things differently.

By using the keyword exactly as your client gives it to you, you will be able to produce the best results. If someone searches for learning french alphabet then your optimized article will show up.

Watch what you type in the search engines and you will get a better idea of what keywords really are. How many times do you leave out the little words such as “the”. You’ll be surprised at what you type into the search engines when you start paying attention.

That’s it for Part 1 of this 4 part article writing report. Tomorrows post will focus on Content so make sure to check back. If you have any questions about Part 1 be sure to ask them in the comments section and I will answer them.

Until next time,

Keep writing.

[ad#post-ads]

How To Write Effective Articles And Content – Part 1 of 4

Pages

Recent Posts

Categories

Recent Comments

Archives

ghostwriting jobs

writers blogs

Writing Resources