How To Write Effective Articles And Content – Part 2 of 4

In part 1 of this series we looked at keywords and their importance to your clients. In part 2 we are going to look at content itself and the importance of having unique content.

The Qualities Of A Good SEO Article

There are 6 key qualities that you should keep in mind when writing SEO articles for your clients.  The first of these:

1. Avoid Duplicate Content

This is probably the most important rule that you have to remember although as a writer this probably won’t apply to you if you are professional and serious about your career. There are however, some people out there who market themselves as writers who do actually just copy and paste content for their articles so I have to include this.  What you need to realise, is that when search engines comes across duplicate content on the internet they need to decide which website contains the original content. Once this has been determined the other websites will not be given any credit, so for a client, this is a waste of their money. The articles you write NEED to be unique if you want to sustain your career and gain valuable clients.

2. Keyword Density and Length

When writing SEO content for clients you need to include their chosen keywords. This needs to be done correctly too though if your articles are to be successful. The standard keyword ratio is between 3% and 5% which means for every 100 words you write the keyword should be included at least 3 to 5 times. This is not always possible especially if you have a difficult keyword and in such circumstances you should at least try to include the keyword in your title, first paragraph, and last paragraph. You should also explain this to your client and inform them that if you try to insert the keyword the article will not read correctly. Most clients will be fine with this as many are interested in having valuable content first, and keyword placement second.  The lenght of your articles will also be taken into account and a good SEO article will always be between 250 and 500 words with 500 being the more suitable.

3. Quality

When concentrating on SEO articles many clients can often loose sight of the fact that whils these articles may please the search engines, it is in fact humans and not robots that will be reading the content. More and more clients are beginning to realise this which is a blessing for us writers. With the influx of foreign writers who do not have English as a first language and the extremely low rates they have been charging, quality content is again starting to win.  If you take a look at the past 2 years, more and more writers from India and such places have come on stream. Webmasters were so focused on SEO that article quality was not so much an issue as price. The result as I’m sure many have seen on various websites have bene articles that were poorly written with very poor english and grammar. Now I’m not saying that all foreign writers are the same, in fact there are many excellent writers who do not have english as their first language, but there are a large number who have also come on stream looking to make a fast buck and have tarnished their reputations with their poor work.

Webmasters who have used these writers are now seeing the results and these keyword stuffed, poorly written articles are backfiring. Website visitor numbers decline, and that of course means that their sales have plumetted too. These webmasters are realising that they really do get what they paid for. This is great news for the professional freelance writers who have been feeling the brunt of these ridiculously low bids. Things are starting to change.

4. Link Worthiness

Another way to make your writing standout and win repeat clients is to ensure that your articles are link worthy. If your articles are strong, people who read them will tell others and link back to them. This is exactly what your clients are looking for as this will bring them more traffic and more sales. Great content is always rewarded by other webmasters and bloggers and if you can write quality content you will reap the benefits too. Links are paramount to webmaster as they increase their search engine ranking and boost their website traffic.

5. Conversion Focused

When writing SEO articles you also need to be aware of the conversion factor. More and more webmasters place conversion events such as newsletter opt-ins on the page that your article will feature. In cases like this they need you article to be informative so that it encourages the reader to subscribe.

6. Addressing The Motives Of The Readers

Readers will always want something, be it information, a solution to a problem, whatever, and as a writer it is your obligation to give it to them in an easy to understand format. If this is not done correctly anyone that reads the article will not be satisfied and leave your clients website. In order to get this aspect of your SEO writing correct you should ask your client what the purpose of his/her article is.

That’s it for this part 2 of SEO conent writing for your clients. The next section will focus on formatting articles and what additional extras you can include to improve the quality of your service and allow you to increase your rates.

Until next time,

Keep writing.

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Tagged as: freelance SEO writing, Keyword, Keyword density, Search engine optimization, SEO content writers, Web search engine, Webmaster, Writer