Skip to main content

The Purpose and Practice of Writing Successful SEO Articles

[ad_1]

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

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.

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


[ad_2]

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

SEO Vs Google Ads - Which One Is Better?

[ad_1] Companies and shops that have created a website to showcase their products/services would certainly like as many potential customers to find it. However, they should find a way for their website to land on top of search results. When viewers are able to search their products/services on Google, their webpage is displayed in either organic search results or Google paid ads. Organic Search Results and Search Engine Optimization (SEO) People can find organic search results just below paid ads. If businesses like to rank among the top in organic search results, they have to optimize their site. Google's first and foremost objective is to direct users to the most relevant, high quality content related to the topic they are searching. Advantage SEO lets their webpage appear in search results with no costs. Their efforts will produce results that will last for so long. Disadvantage SEO is a very long, continuous activity and certainly, competition is working hard as well. More ofte...

What Exactly Is SEO and Why Does My Website Need It?

[ad_1] Some people are not familiar with the term SEO. Others may have heard about Search Engine Optimisation (SEO), but may not be aware of its meaning and significance. There are actually a number of things that are critical to a website more than ranking high in search engines, though, when different people are asked, they have different ways of achieving this. To get a more comprehensive and accurate answer, people can look closely at Google's guidelines found on the Webmaster Tools site, and search under SEO's hood. In the past, SEO has earned a bad reputation due to a number of individuals who made use of unallowed techniques to benefit from search engines, rather than work with them. The wrong choice of SEO professionals has negatively affected the reputation of many websites, making them invisible in search engine rankings when Google updated their algorithms. On the other hand, deciding to choose quality SEO professionals can give several advantages to a website, inclu...

The Easy Way To Create An Affiliate Marketing Blog

[ad_1] When it comes to setting up an affiliate marketing website, you have a few options. You can choose to create a static website using HTML. This requires you to know the specific programming language. You will also need to have an HTML editor handy to create your pages. An alternative to this is setting up a blog using WordPress, which is a free platform that many people are using to build their affiliate sites these days. Why WordPress? There are many benefits to using WordPress for your affiliate marketing efforts. For one, it can be easily installed from your web host's cPanel. You can use Fantastico to install WordPress in less than one minute. Once it's up and running, your site is live with a fully functional blog for you to use to promote your affiliate products. Another reason many affiliate marketers prefer WordPress is because of the easy to use admin panel. When you log into your WordPress installation, you will have access to the different sections of the admin...