The web is littered with articles that are not worth the word processor they were written on. After a second glance, you will notice that they are horribly composed and stuffed with keywords, immediately recognizing that they were written for the sole purpose of trying to boost the ranking of a particular web page. This is not a bad thing, just the wrong approach. When incorporating articles into your SEO campaign, there are three things you need to focus on:
1. Providing valuable information.
2. Increasing link popularity.
3. Increasing search engine rankings.
All of this is difficult accomplish when your articles are badly written and stuffed with keywords.
The Power of Articles
So why would you want to consider articles for enhancing your SEO efforts? Well, although having optimized content on your site is very effective in the eyes of the search engine, you must also make sure that content serves a purpose for your visitors as well. Many of the successful search engine marketing gurus agree with this and stress the importance of delivering useful information. If the content on your website is not helpful or useful in any way, visitors will have little motivation in reading it to learn more about what you have to offer. Sure, you may be able to get a higher ranking in Google and possibly even bring in considerably more traffic. Unfortunately, if visitors simply take one look at your articles and then leave, those high rankings you achieved in the search engines would mean noting at all.
Articles also make a great way to establish link popularity. However, if you plan to distribute them across the web and have not taken the time to make sure they have an acceptable level of quality, it is very unlikely that someone else will want to publish your article on their site. Point blank – if your articles are poorly written and do not give useful information to the reader, they will be very ineffective at helping your build good links.
Writing Articles for Search Engines
Once you have a handle on writing good content that makes sense and delivers solid information, you can then embark on producing articles for SEO. Keep in mind that writing for the search engines calls for a good balance so there are a few things you want to avoid.
– Never sacrifice the reader experience just to achieve higher rankings.
– Never repeat the same words and phrases to the point of extreme.
– Never overstuff keywords into text because it is more likely to backfire.
The Keys to Success
You will have a much better chance of succeeding with SEO article writing by establishing some discipline within yourself. This can be as simple as studying your niche and coming to understand your target audience. Once you have done this, keep your articles specifically focused on their needs or interest. Also pay attention to your content and make sure it contains concrete knowledge that is useful to the reader. If you can accept that your audience should come before the search engines, you will be become a better article writer and everything else will fall in place from there.
