5 Things to Know About Writing For SEO

Mar 08, 2010 Comments

Writing for SEO – It’s all about search engine optimization these days – writers are explicitly asked to use certain keywords in the title of their articles (to be used on web pages) and also sprinkle them liberally in the body so that search engines will pick up them when they trawl the web and display them on the front page of the results. In short, everyone who writes content for the web wants their pages to earn a high rank. But before you start to shove words into your article and assume that’s what SEO is all about, read these essential tips you need to know about optimizing your writing for search engines:

• You must attract audiences: The first thing to do is to get people to visit your website. You do this by focusing on the placement of your keywords and choosing your website’s content based on your niche and what people want from that niche subject. You must also come up with catchy titles that make people want to click on your link and take a look at what’s inside – remember though, that the title should not be misleading and should stay true to the kind of content people associate with your website.
• You need to get people to come back: Now this is the really tricky part – most writers find that they can get people to visit once, but when it comes to getting them back, they fall short of expectations. This is because their articles flatter to deceive more often than not – the titles are great and the site is displayed on the first page of the search engine results, but the content is just pure rubbish or bordering on it. If you want to get people to come back, write articles of good quality, articles that do not repeat the same things over and over again and which use SEO keywords intelligently (it’s not obvious that they’re keywords) to rather than randomly.
• You need to get your facts right: Just because you’re on the web, it’s not right that you don’t pay attention to quality. You often see writers churning out articles that adhere to word limits and SEO rules but which are sadly lacking in accuracy or quality. When this happens once too often, you end up losing your audience.
• You need to be grammatically correct: No one likes to read bad writing; so even if your ideas are good and you have the facts down correctly, even if you’ve achieved top SEO status, when your writing is grammatically incorrect, it makes for a discomfiting and uneasy ready experience. If grammar is not your forte, then get a qualified editor to clean up your work before you publish it.
• You must provide content that’s needed: And finally, although it may be your website and your prerogative to decide what to put on it, unless you cater to the needs of your audience, you’re going to be left with no readers at all. So write content that you know people want to read, and watch your popularity soar.

Keep your SEO goals in mind while creating your content writing strategy

Jan 28, 2010 Comments

It doesn’t help if you already have lots of content and then you realize that you are not targeting the right keywords. Although no situation is hopeless you can save yourself lots of time, and money, if you define your SEO goals properly. Make a list of keywords and keyword phrases you’d like to incorporate and then start generating your content around them.

There is also a business benefit of clearly defining your SEO goals — it keeps you focused. You know what sort of content you require for your website and blog and what you should avoid; yes, misplaced content is bad for SEO.

How do you keep your content SEO-focused?

• Create titles with your keywords. Your page titles are very important. They appear in the search engine result pages as hyperlinks when people search for the relevant terms. People click more on the links that carry the search terms they’ve just used. Even when people promote your content on social networking websites or link your your pages and blog posts they normally copy/paste your title — this associates these keywords with your brand.
• Use your keywords and key phrases when communicating your ideas. This tells the search engines that you have lots of content associated with the search term being currently used. If you provide content writing services then you should be talking about this subject a lot on your blog or website. But do it naturally; there is no need to use your relevant keywords excessively — this gets you penalized by almost all search engines.
• Link to your other pages not just the home page. Your different pages contain different bits of information and whenever you feel a particular phrase can be linked to a page giving more information about that phrase, create a link. It makes it easier for the search engine crawlers to reach other pages and it also creases the relevancy of your less prominent pages.

The basic idea of creating SEO-focused content strategy is keeping you focused and help you focus on the right search terms.

SEO guidelines for content writers

Dec 18, 2009 Comments

Online content writers often have to write “seo content” that can help their clients achieve higher search engine rankings. Is there really some difference between regular content and SEO content? It depends on how you want to define your writing, and what you need to attain as a professional online copywriter or content writer. Almost every (almost every seems contradictory though) website owner wants higher search engine rankings to increase their visibility and get more targeted search engine traffic and they know their content can help them achieve that. So when they approach a content writer they want to know whether they can get SEO content that can help them improve their search engine rankings. You can write “normal” content and you can write seo content based on the kind of competition the website faces on search engines. If there isn’t much competition even regular content can bring your website to the first page of major search engines (I may quickly add that merely adding SEO content doesn’t get you lots of traffic — it depends on many external factors too). More competition means you really have to highlight your message. This is where SEO content writing guidelines become important. Here are a few.

Cover focused topics

Don’t try to cover everything under the sun on a single page. Search engines prefer focused pages, especially talking about a particular topic or phrase. So if you are creating a page on “social media services” then stick to the topic and let it be known to the search engines that you’re really talking on this subject. Similarly, if you are talking about SEO copywriting then deal with only this subject. It also satisfies people crazy about keyword density. When you talk about a topic you use its associated phrases and terms on your own without making an extra effort.

Page title, yes, again

One of the most important parts of your page is the title, the main heading. It must present to the search engines the most compelling reason to crawl and index that page (or blog post). Preferably, use the entire phrase you are targeting, in the title. You don’t have to use the words in the same order, but try to use them. No need to sound esoteric, no need to use puns. Take for example the title of this blog post. It says: SEO guidelines for content writers. It can also be written as “how to improve your search engine writing” or something else, but I want to talk to content writers who are looking for SEO guidelines.

Organize your content using the right tags

The search engines specifically look for the right words at particular locations. They check for you keywords in heading, sub-heading, bullet-ed lists and anchor texts (text that exists as a hyper link). This is because many people simply go through the headings and bullets to get a gist of your page. Keywords in hypertext are a good accessibility policy.

Of course this is not an SEO tips blog post so I’m not going to talk about the changes in the source code; my main focus here is the text — how you can organize the text in order to SEOmize it.

And what about the keyword density?

There is no magical formula actually. Use the keywords wherever they seem appropriate, and wherever their appearance seems unnatural, don’t use them. If you are really hung up on using some sort of percentage, just use your phrase in the first paragraph, in one or two headings, in the bullet list at least once, and if you can manage, as a hyper text. Then use it in the last sentence but it’s not necessary.

Does the language you use on your website or blog affect your search engine rankings?

May 07, 2009 Comments

By language here I don’t mean English or Portuguese or French; by language I mean the words and phrases that you use in order to create content for your website or blog.

Creating search engine optimized content is all about conveying the right message for the appropriate search terms. Whenever you are writing for your website you have to keep in mind – if it is important – for what search expressions your website should draw traffic from various search engines. For instance, my website is about offering content writing and online copywriting services. So any mixture of these expressions must get me higher rankings if I want to keep doing business through search engines.

There are many webmasters and Internet marketing experts that suggest that one shouldn’t solely depend on search engine traffic and this is true. Nonetheless the majority of your traffic comes from search engines if you don’t have thousands of incoming links from other web sites and blogs and you haven’t got tons of money to invest in online advertising. Traffic from search engines can be an invaluable, low-cost opportunity that you must leverage, and this can be done by using language that conveys the most appropriate message to the search engine algorithms so that they can rank your website or individual web pages accordingly.

Language definitely affects your search engine rankings at least in the current context. People talk about semantic optimization, and even natural language processing, but right now it doesn’t seem to be happening. The actual words still matter. If I am promoting content writing I’m not getting search engine traffic if people are searching for a creative writer, even if I wish I did and suggested subtly somewhere on my website – I get found if people are looking for a content writer because I talk so much about content writing.

This I learnt the hard way. Before deciding to become a content writer I used to design and develop websites. Due to some vague reason I ended up optimizing my website for the term “Web designing” rather than “Web designer”. I featured on the first page of Google for Web designing for a good two years and I didn’t generate much business (blogging hadn’t arrived at that time otherwise I would have converted the website into a blog). I should have actually optimized my website for web designer (of course the good side is I became a content writer). These are the small things that can have long-lasting repercussions if you’re not careful about the language you use on your website.

Image source: brandis78

Writing for traffic or for the right audience?

Mar 21, 2009 Comments

You many often come across blogs and articles telling you how to get spikes of traffic by writing content that pulls people towards your website or blog. They advise you to use “highly compelling” titles and submitting your link to social networking and social bookmarking websites such as FaceBook, Twitter, Digg and Delicious. I wonder how much this sort of traffic helps your business. Mind you I’m not questioning the process and I’m not even suggesting you not to indulge in such activities, I’m just thinking about it.

For instance I provide online writing services, so I would, ideally, like to draw traffic that can fetch me more business. This doesn’t mean I don’t want other people to visit my website. After all I share my thoughts on various subjects on this blog for instance, and I’d love it if people from all over the world access my blog and participate in various conversations. I feel good when all of a sudden 200 extra visitors come to my website and 5 among them subscribe to my RSS feeds or my e-mail updates. Even if they never do business with me, it is exhilarating to see the number rising day bay day. The good doesn’t always come from prospective clients.

When more people, let’s say 2000 in a day, visit your website and read your blog post or article, all of a sudden so many people are made aware of your existence and what you do. If you somehow keep on generating such spikes this number keeps on increasing. Get 4-5 traffic spikes every month and you can easily become a known person.

Does becoming known get you more business? It certainly does. As they say, success begets success. Similarly, traffic begets traffic, popularity begets popularity and trustworthiness begets trustworthiness, and all this is needed to generate more business.

When people know you, they eagerly link to you. I’ve seen even dumbest posts by popular bloggers getting popular. They bookmark you, they forward your links, they follow you on Twitter (want to follow me? It’s @amrithallan) and they add you as a friend in FaceBook. All of a sudden, heavy traffic becomes a regular affair because even the search engines begin sending you 1000s of visitors every day. All this helps you build your brand.

Having said that, slow and steady wins the race. You don’t have to prove anything as long as you meeting your business goals. Just be regular and share your experiences sincerely. The traffic will magically pick up.

How to write SEO text

Mar 19, 2009 Comments

You want to know how to write SEO text to improve your search engine rankings, most probably. When you are writing for the web, it’s not just the human readers who are going to read, evaluate and then act upon whatever you have published, even the various search engines are going to evaluate your text and rank it accordingly. Although the search engine companies like Google are constantly trying to mimic the human psyche as closely as possible there subtle differences in the ways that humans and the search engine algorithms make sense of your text. If you want to learn how to write SEO text you should also spend some time understanding how the search engine crawlers access your individual pages and how those pages are ranked according to keywords and other, longer expressions present on your webpage.

Although there are many SEO experts who say that words don’t matter but they really do. Ever since we started using language to communicate words have been an integral, inseparable part of language. So in order to convey something you have to be careful about your words. For instance if you want to tell somebody, I love you, you don’t say I have the extremely opposite feeling of hatred for you. The search engines are going to think that you’re talking about hatred and not love. So if you want to learn how to write SEO you must also learn to use the right words to say something. Aside from that here are a few pointers that can lead you towards writing effective SEO text.

Make a list of the keywords that you’re going to use in the SEO text of the current page

The keywords of course must be context specific. Before preparing the text you should prepare a list of keywords and expressions that you would like to highlight on the page. Try to use these keywords while forming your sentences. Writing SEO text doesn’t meaning filling up your webpage with nonsensical repetitions. Don’t overdo it and stick to relevance. Recently I read that you should use your keyword in the first sentence of the first paragraph, in the last sentence of the first paragraph, once in every paragraph, and then once in the last sentence of the last paragraph. I don’t think all this is necessary, just use your keywords whenever you think they should appear justifiably. Use them in your headings and subheadings, bulleted lists and in anchor text. The moot point is that you have to convince the search engine algorithms that you are seriously talking about the keyword on your page.

Put your keywords in the title of your page

The title of your page is very important because it tells the search engines what your page contains. Although there is no harm in creating esoteric titles it helps a lot if your title contains the expression for which you want to be ranked higher on the search engine results pages. Various studies have revealed that search engine users have a greater tendency to click on the hyperlinks that contain the expressions they have just used to conduct the search. The title of your webpage appears as a hyperlink on the search engine results page.

Talk about the topic in the very beginning

The search engine crawlers have millions of pages to crawl and they are constantly economizing the time they spend on individual pages. Talk about the main thing in the very beginning of your webpage so that even if they don’t go through the entire page they can make out the basic theme of the page and analyze it accordingly for the appropriate keywords.

Organize your text with headings, subheadings and bullets

Headings, subheadings and bullets often present the whole picture. Many visitors just go through the headings, subheadings and bulleted points and skip the finer print. You can use your headings to kindle their interest and encourage them to read the rest of the text also. Anyway, since headings, subheadings and bullets often contain the main highlights, if they are present on the page the search engine crawlers first go through them.

Basically, there is no set formula for writing SEO text because every keyword has its own peculiar way of performing, and you shouldn’t worry much about it. Just make sure the text is properly laid out, you use the keywords enough times, and you make the text reader-friendly. And don’t try to cram many keywords into one page, 2-3 keywords should be focused upon, and in fact, you should have separate dedicated pages for all your important keywords.

Creating a page not found 404 error page if you are managing your website with WordPress

Mar 12, 2009 Comments

About a couple of months ago I put my entire website into WordPress…now every page on this website is actually a WordPress blog post. This makes it very easy to add new content and modify existing content, and it is also good for SEO (it is already manifest in my stats). Besides, whenever I want to change the layout/design, I simply have to create a new WordPress theme, and then activate it using the WordPress control panel/admin area.

After a few days I noticed that my 404 page was not working. Wondering what’s a 404 page? 404 is the error number that is generated when a visitor comes to your website using a link that does not exist on your website. For instance, on my website, if you click on a link http://amrithallan.com/doesntexist/ you will be redirected to http://amrithallan.com/404-page/ because "doesntexist" doesn’t exist on my website.

On normal websites you can add the following line in your .htaccess file:

ErrorDocument 404 http://amrithallan.com/404-page/

You need to store your .htaccess file in the root folder I guess. But this doesn’t work if you are managing your website with WordPress; somehow it doesn’t redirect the page using .htaccess file.   After some research I found that WordPress uses its own 404.php file to display the "page not found" page and you have to store this file in the folder where you’ve stored all your theme files, like /blog-url/wp-content/themes/your-theme-folder/404.php.

But what if you want to display a page or blog post that you’ve already created, if someone comes on a non-existent page? It’s very simple. Delete whatever you have in your 404.php file and instead, have this php line inserted:

<?php header("Location: /404-page/"); ?>

Please remember that /404-page/ is something what I’ve created for my website; you may have something else.

Are SEO and content related?

Dec 05, 2008 Comments

SEO and content are definitely related because the search engines rank your website or individual pages according to the content they contain. Your website is known to the search engines, and also to the human visitors, by the worth of its content.

Does merely having content help you in SEO?

It depends on your competition. It’s not just any content that helps you in SEO. Having hundreds of pages and blog posts on kite flying is not going to help you appear higher for model planes related searches.  The content on your website must be relevant to the primary theme of your website. What message are you trying to convey through your website and does that message address the query being used by the search engine user? You have to convince the search engine crawlers that you have got the information their users are looking for.

How can one improve SEO through content?

Generate content that is relevant, useful, and exactly talks about the topic under discussion. Take for instance, the title of this webpage; it asks “Are SEO and content related?” If somebody searches for this question and if the search engine algorithms think that this blog post contains the most appropriate answer to this question they are going to rank this blog post higher compared to other pages and blog posts. How do we do that?

Obviously the question must appear on this page at least once, prominently, in this case it appears in the title of the blog post. It is also repeated, contextually, within the blog post, this means this particular expression appears on this blog post. It doesn’t have to be repeated needlessly; use it exactly where it needs to be used.

You can also use the expression within the bold typeface (preferably just once, don’t repeated wherever your expression appears), as anchor text, in bullets, and in headings and subheadings. The basic idea is to highlight the expression and convince the search engine algorithms that this particular expression is central to what you are trying to discuss on the page.

Another way how your content can help you in SEO is creating dedicated pages for individual expressions. Again, take the question in the title of this blog post. The title asks the question and the body elaborates upon it. I’m not sure whether it is going to happen or not (with the search engines you can never be too sure) but this blog post stands a great chance of appearing higher on various search engines.

My thoughts on SEO Content Writing

Oct 18, 2008 Comments

Recently a client approached me with a requirement of hundred articles for his various products and he needed me to write a small sample to help him make up his mind. Generally I don’t send samples because there are enough samples on my website but sometimes the requirement is unique enough to warrant a sample and in such cases I don’t mind providing it. He liked the sample a lot and then asked me whether I could provide him SEO content. I told him that the sample article that I had sent him was in fact an optimized article and he should get some good traffic for the chosen keyword. He was quite amused and happy that I had sent him an “SEO article” even when he hadn’t asked for one.

Although elsewhere I have explained the difference between normal content and SEO content if you ask me, frankly every well-written article is a search engine optimized article. Still, there is some difference when the relevant keywords come in focus. Clients often ask for a percentage density for the keywords of their choice. For instance many clients want the density of the keywords to be around 3% to 4%; this means of the total number of words existing on a page the keyword should take up 3% to 4% of the total number. Does it matter?

Nobody is sure. What matters is the relevance. Using the right words you need to explain the right thing. For instance if I want to talk about SEO content and if I want people to find my page that talks about SEO content then I should use this phrase at least a few times on that page. This has to be done till the semantics used in search engine ranking algorithms become highly intelligent. They have already improved a lot but you still have to use the exact keywords. Here I would quickly like to add that sometimes when you are looking for a writer Google also shows the results that contain the word “writing”.

So how do you create SEO content?

• Use the keywords: If you want to be found for a particular keyword then you have to use the keyword on the webpage but you shouldn’t overdo it because that proves counter-productive. Instead organize your content in such a manner that your important keywords get highlighted naturally.
• Organize your content logically and highlight important portions: This is very important especially when you are writing for web pages. The reading on your webpage should be as seamless as possible. Highlight the most important portions of your content using headings, subheadings and bullets. Use your keywords in headings, subheadings and bullets. Repeat your important key phrases and keywords at least once or twice in the first paragraph and definitely include your keywords in the title of your page.
• Stay away from creating abstract text: Being a writer I love literary experiments but not at the cost of my clients. When you are writing copy, SEO content, use precise phrases and use the exact words. Straightaway say what you mean to say and never leave scope for confusion. Why is it necessary to stay away from abstract style of writing? Straight writing is friendlier towards both your human readers and search engine crawlers; they can easily make out what you’re trying to sell and what you’re trying to promote.
• Research your keywords: It is very important to know for what keywords you want a particular webpage or the entire website to be found on the search engines. For instance if I want my website to be found for the term online copywriter then I must optimize my content for this particular phrase. But then I need to be sure whether people looking for me use this expression or not; maybe they are using something totally different that I am not aware of. So I have to find the keywords and key phrases that are actually being used and shouldn’t optimize my content for the keywords that I think people must be using. In fact researching your keywords should be the first step you should take before starting to generate optimized content for your website or blog.

SEO tips you should know as an online copywriter

Oct 16, 2008 Comments

As an online copywriter you not only have to write well you also have to write search engine friendly content because the search engine crawlers are as important as human visitors for every website and blog. You have to make sure that your content is easily accessible to the search engine crawlers and most of your pages are index and ranked for the right keywords.

This can be really difficult if you have no clue about what sort of search terms users are using to find the website or blog you are writing for. You can use your common sense, advice from your visitors and friends and keyword analysis tools like WordTracker and AdWords to find out all keyword combinations and phrases that you may prefer to optimize your content for.

Once you have made a list of relevant keywords and key phrases you start building your content around them and this is where SEO tips can come handy for you as an online copywriter. Here are a few things you can take care of while generating content for your website or blog:

Create highly relevant content

It is a misconception that if you use your keywords in your copy again and again it will fetch you higher search engine rankings. Of course the keywords and key phrases must be present on the page in order to get some ranking for that page but they don’t have to occur needlessly. As an online copywriter you should know how to creatively use keywords and key phrases to come up with compelling and interesting copy. Stick to the topic, don’t write less and don’t write more than required and stick to the subject; this is very important for SEO. Nothing compares to relevance.

Use keywords and key phrases in the title

The title is a unique identity for your webpage; it tells both your human visitors and the search engines what sort of information that page gives. By merely looking at the title people should be able to make out whether they want to read your webpage or not. The title of your webpage also appears wherever its link appears; for instance, if somebody sees your link on the search engine result page he or she will see that link with your page title as the hyperlink. And they are more prone to clicking the link if they see the expression they have just used do conduct the search.

Even if some other blogger or website publisher links to that page there is a great possibility that he or she will use your title as the hyperlink. So you can easily make out how important it is to have a unique page title for every page on your website.

Use headings, subheadings and bullets to organize your content

Headings, subheadings and bullets help you organize your content logically and it is easier to quickly go through your webpage both for human visitors and search engine crawlers. When a particular webpage is being crawled your headings, subheadings and bullets are closely considered and checked for relevant keywords and key phrases. They basically sum up the entire message of your webpage and in fact a person should be able to make out 50% of your message by simply going through your headings, subheadings and bullets.

Focus on the main points in the beginning itself

People are in a great hurry on the Internet. They don’t want to read the entire page in order to make out what you intend to say. They would rather read the first headline or the first paragraph and if they cannot make out what the page represents they quickly leave to explore other websites. Hence it is extremely important that you come to the main point as early as possible and most preferably in the first paragraph. This also gives you a chance to use your important keywords and key phrases in the beginning of the webpage without sounding spammy. Webpage crawlers generally don’t go through the entire page; they read the first 250-300 words and then move on to the next page. So the expression "save the best for last" doesn’t hold good for an online copywriter who intends to write SEO content.

Do lots of interlinking

This doesn’t come under the realm of copywriting but wherever possible link to other pages under the same domain because it helps the search engine crawlers find other pages easily. A network of interlinking makes every page under your website or blog indexable.

SEO is not merely an online copywriter’ job because it also involves tweaking the source code and including the necessary meta tags. But as an aware online copywriter with little study and learning you can provide complete SEO services to your clients besides writing content for them.

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