The Purpose and Practice of Writing Successful SEO Articles

I was so excited to read his post! Google-icon Matt Cutts was blogging on August 21st and hit the nail on the head (as he does quite frequently). The title of the post was, "SEO Advice: Writing useful articles that readers will love." That, in and of itself, says it all. Why is this such a thrilling post? Because it reinforces what I've been saying for years. Whether you're writing content for a website, an article or any type of SEO copy, you must think of the reader first.

There is such a barrage of worthless articles floating around the 'Net these days. Keyword stuffed, useless ramble that was obviously written with the sole intent of attempting to rank high. Striving for top rankings is not a bad thing, but the purpose of writing SEO articles is threefold not onefold: provide information, rank high when used on your site and increase link popularity. That means the practice must follow the purpose. Why Write an Article?

Let's start at the beginning. Why write articles to begin with? While having SEO content on your site is a good thing, your first concern should be with offering useful information to your readers. Cutts agrees with this practice and makes a point to discuss why providing relevant, helpful information is vital.

If the information isn't helpful, those who visit your site will have little interest in reading it. Yes, if the page ranks highly, it might bring in a bit of traffic. But if visitors take one look at your article then click away, what good have the high rankings done you?

Likewise, if you choose to distribute your article throughout the Internet, it is highly unlikely that others will elect to run your article on their sites. If your work doesn't provide solid information and is poorly written, it will not be considered link-worthy.

Optimizing for the Engines
Tip! To become a successful SEO writer you need to master and hone your copywriting skills, because high-quality and unique content is the real king. It should be clear, crispy, attention grabbing and unique that is free from duplication and plagiarism.

Once you've decided what information you want to provide, you can turn your focus to SEO. Copywriting for the engines requires balance. You never want to sacrifice the reader's experience for the sake of rankings. Stuffing keywords into text is a method that will almost always backfire. Practically no one wants to read an article (or website page) that constantly repeats the same exact terms to the point of extremes.

Cutts also addressed this issue in his blog post, stating that he included keyphrases within his own article and also used similar terms. Cutts made a point of suggesting that we pay more attention to keyphrase use (and the use of variations of those keyphrases) than focusing on keyword density.

The Two Most Important Keys

The two "meta-issues" Cutts highlighted in his article were both related to user experience, not to the practice of SEO copywriting. First, pay attention to the content you offer. Always impart useful, concrete knowledge to your reader. Second, study your niche (a.k.a. know your target audience!) and write specifically for the purpose of helping them.

There is other great information included in Cutts' post, and I encourage you to read it plus the comments that follow. You can find it here: http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/seo-advice-writing-useful-articles-that-readers-will-love.
Tip! c) A Failure To Closely And Constantly Monitor Keyword Popularity There is no way of avoiding the appropriate keyword phrases for your site in any successful SEO campaign. The big mistake many webmasters or blog owners make is to do their keyword research once and then forget all about it.

These are things I (and other SEO pros) have been preaching for years. User first, search engines second. When you get the priority straight, the rest will fall into line without much hassle.

© 2006

Copy not getting results? Learn to write SEO and online copywriting that impresses the engines and your visitors with Karon's Copywriting Course. Be sure to also check out Karon's report "How To Increase Keyword Saturation (Without Destroying the Flow of Your Copy)" at http://www.copywritingcourse.com/keyword.

SEO = Search Engine Optimization, tips on successful page ranking

One of the key things to remember when developing your web-site presence is to always evaluate your competition. See what's working for them; how they market their products and services, and even evaluate their KEYWORD and DISCRIPTION tags.

The key points of using these two Meta Tags, is optimization!

Evaluate your Keywords: look at your web-site and evaluate it services and products, be sure to do a search in www.Google.com to help you pick the keywords that your potential clients may be looking for.

The next thing is to evaluate your site content to see just how often you're using these keywords, the biggest mistake that web-masters make is creating their Meta Tag Description and Keywords and not including them in their content pages.

To get the best results, is to ensure that you use as many of your keywords and discretion tags throughout your entire site.

The next thing is your products or images, be sure to include some of those keywords in your <*IMG ALT=*"" Tag, this to will help you optimize your site, and increase more frequent visits from spider bots. Google, Yahoo, and Msn all use the following tags:

<META NAME="ROBOTS" CONTENT="INDEX, FOLLOW"> <META NAME="REVISIT-AFTER" CONTENT="1 DAYS">

Be sure to include these in your Meta Tag, as it tells spider bots to search links to other pages on your site, increasing your chance of getting better indexed in the search engines.

The next key point is to also ensure you have created page titles for each section of your site, this is another mistake most make and they usually brand each page with their site name, the mistake is that, when your potential client types in to Google for a specific item or product you lesson your chances on being pulled up.

Name each section of your site using the Keywords you developed for your web-site, this ensuring higher page ranking in Google, and you not being found within the first returned results but ending up on page 15 etc.

Google looks also for inbound links, these being partner web-sites that have agreed to become a link partner or affiliate of your site.
Tip! To become a successful SEO writer you need to master and hone your copywriting skills, because high-quality and unique content is the real king. It should be clear, crispy, attention grabbing and unique that is free from duplication and plagiarism.

Also update your content regularly, Google loves content, content, content, the more rich content you provide using your keywords the better you page rankings will be. The best method we found is to update your pages 2 to 3 times a week, for example Monday, Wednesday and again Sunday.

Thus ensuring the Google spider-bot will return regularly as so will your potential clients, as visitors are most likely to visit a web-site that is updated with new and interesting topics or items.

Now use Google, and do a search for your competition, within the first page results returned looked for potential link partners, which offer the same resources or products as you.

Contact the administrator or web-master simply asking them to link exchange with you. Most sites already offer a link exchange program or an affiliate program. These are perfect ways to create inbound links to your site that have already established Google page rank.

List your site in Link Directories that offer a specific category for your services, these are also excellent ways to create inbound links as the more inbound links you have generated to your web-site the higher the page rank in Google.
Tip! SEO Copywriting is a combination of art (the words) and science (the math) resulting in website copy which produces actual, not perceived results. Knowing the 'math' and 'structure' preferred by the search engines is the first component to successful SEO copywriting.

The key points to getting your site noticed is to optimize the keywords and use them threw out your site. Get quality link partners that have the same services or products you offer. The reason for this is if you link to a Tupper ware site and you offer fine wine, it isn't going to do you much good as there is no common denominator. List your sites in Link Directories that offer a specific category that best fits your site content and services.

About the Author: Shawn DesRochers is the CEO and Founder of Invision-Graphics Design Firm, They offer articles and tips on Search engine Optimization and support forums, were they help many members and visitors increase their page rankings in many of the popular search engines.

For more advice and free articles be sure to visit http://www.invision-graphics.com