Writing SEO Articles – A Few Simple Tips

You’d think that as long as you are literate, can string a sentence or two together and have a few basic writing skills that article writing would be a fairly simple exercise, right?

Wrong – at least when it comes to writing articles for SEO.

What is SEO?

SEO stands for Search Engine Optimisation, and is the term which refers to anything which is designed to improve the search page ranking of a website naturally (i.e. without paying for featured positions).

How does it apply to writing?

Many companies use articles as a supplement to their SEO efforts. The idea is that by keeping a regular blog, article directory or page with plenty of relevant content, search engines will recognise this and send traffic their way.

In order to wave the little flag for a search engine however, keywords must be included – meaning that throughout the content, certain words or phrases commonly searched for are placed to set the articles position among Google’s ranks.

Ways to improve your SEO article writing

Don’t ‘stuff’. Keyword stuffing is one of the worst mistakes an SEO article writer can make. If you think your best shot at SEO writing is by ramming as many keywords in as possible, well it’s not. Think about which sentence sounds better:”Article writing is a good thing to do because when article writing you are making sure your article writing is the best article writing around”. Alright, now try this “Want to learn the best ways to improve your article writing? Try using relevant alternatives for describing words from a thesaurus, so that your article writing efforts hold more variety and are more interesting to read”. Which one is better? The second of course – even though it contains the keyword/keyphrase “article writing” half the amount as the first, it makes more sense. And with search algorithms improving constantly, search engines are finding new ways of spotting relevant content instead of just the amount of keywords. So if you keyword stuff, you’re not on to a winner.

Research thoroughly. If there’s one trap you don’t want to fall into, it’s submitting content to a client, article directory or blog which is full of content that is unreliable. Site your sources where possible, and provide proof of your findings – questionable content will not be trusted and most likely removed, rejected or not paid for.