One of the many problems with people starting off with writing their articles is SEO. People often run into difficulties when experts or gurus tell them to rank articles effectively with a million SEO tips. So this leaves them stumped and then they buy even more SEO software leads which leads them to further confusion.
No this is not your SEO lesson about on page or off page optimization; nor is it about how you want to follow Alice into the rabbit hole. So let’s identify these tips.
1. Write First Rank Later
Who do you write for? Search engines or humans? The answer is both but your readers are the ones who actually read them. Bots may scour your content for
- Alt text and titles on images
- Keywords in title
- Keywords in URLs
- Keywords in the first and last paragraph
But no one cares if they exist. I know when I read an article on a blog I don’t go for how many times “digital photography tips” appear in the content (known as keyword density in SEO) or where are the keywords in the first paragraph before I deem them as good useful content. I would rather try to understand what the writer is trying to tell me.
Yes the robots operate in that mode but what readers want is to look for good useful information.
The best thing to approach writing a blog post or an article is to write them well while telling them all the useful information they need to know and then rank later by tracking your article stats.
So how do you do that?
- Find out which are the more popular articles and then try to understand why they do so well i.e
- Lots of readers comments,
- lots of retweets and
- lots of Facebook likes/shares
- Use Google Analytics to see which are the more popular articles on your blog.(There is a very high chance that your reader’s response correlates with your Google Analytics stats)
- Top Posts/ Popular Posts Widget on your blog sidebar.
- Check Google to see where your blog is ranked. If its in the Top 40 searches there is a very high chance of making it rank better even up to the FIRST page.
What do you do next?
After identifying your most popular articles:
- Optimize them again for SEO purposes. Identify keywords that are popular for that article and make sure that they are more obvious to the search engines but still reader-friendly.
- Use Google Analytics to help you identify “entry keywords” which has put your article in the rankings.
- Add a little more content at the beginning and the end of the article and re-publish them.
2. Identify Trends Then Write
If you take a look at blogging trends in any niche, you will notice that there are some frequently talked about topics. The trouble with this is that sometimes it can be notoriously difficult to identify trends if you don’t know your market well. Popular trends are a reflection of what people are searching for and if your blog has posts that have these content, then your blog will obviously get more attention than those that doesn’t.
Aaron Wall of SEOBook.com says this:
“You don’t have to track everything to be successful. You only have to compete in your market. If you read a dozen or two blogs in your market, track who is getting linked to, and why people are talking to them, that makes it easier to identify and create ideas and content worthy of being mentioned.”
Even if you have identify popular trends, that also does not mean you should write exactly what people have written. Like Aaron Wall says, it makes it easier to identify and create ideas and content. Create ideas around a topic and blog about it but don’t rewrite what has been written.
Offer a different perspective or your own opinions on that subject matter and write about it. Notice that this has nothing to do with SEO.
Although SEO is important but it’s not THE most important thing to rank well, you will notice that some websites or blog with good SEO don’t rank as well as other not so well SEO-optimized websites or blogs.
Google also looks into popularity and trends. SEO has no weight or influence on popularity and that is why Social Media plays a very important role in identifying what the big discussions are.
Before I leave you to think about this, I would like to recommend another news aggregator website that will help you with identifying trends, PopUrls.
Related articles on SEO
- Relevant Content is still a crucial part of SEO | Last Click News (seome.me)
- Search Engine Strategies That Work (seodesignsolutions.com)
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{ 20 comments… read them below or add one }
Twitter: lavenderuses
October 17, 2010 at 3:59 pm
Hi Bryan
What a great post with lots of useful information for writing quality content on our blog. I write for my readers but I am also aware of keywords and making sure my post is content-rich so that it will cause my readers to come back when I publish my next post. thanks for the tips.
Patricia Perth Australia
Patricia@lavenderuses recently posted..A Dental visit with a difference…where’s the lavender
Twitter: ways2moremoney
October 18, 2010 at 12:51 pm
It is always hard to balance writing for seo and people. Great tips to get people started. thanks.
Hunter recently posted..6 Best WordPress Ad Management Plugins
Hey Hunter, thx for stopping by.
Yeah, exactly it is hard when everyone focuses on SEO in the first place and forget that people are reading your content
Twitter: alexanderthegry
October 19, 2010 at 12:26 am
The best way to write is for your readers while also optimizing for search engines, but not in such a way that your article will be filled with gibberish.
And now that you mentioned seo gurus, some just proclaim themselves as experts then try to sell all kinds of software regardless if is useful or not.
Axel@Jocuri recently posted..Masini din carton
Yeah axel, agree with you. I have enough of “gurus”. I think that is the most commonly misused word on the internet
Thx for commenting
Twitter: richescorner
October 19, 2010 at 11:48 pm
Hi Bryan,
Actually, some of my most popular posts aren’t really SEO optimized at all. I think the posts that are written for people attract the most comments. Getting people to stay around is really the biggest goal.
When I write, I generally will just write out the post completely first without any SEO in mind and then if I feel the need will go back and do some optimizing. The other thing to do is to occasionally check to see what search terms are bringing people to your blog and just creating a post around that search term. That way, the post starts out pretty much optimized and you can write naturally and get a good ranking.
Richard recently posted..Who Cares About Bounce Rate
Hi Richard,
that’s true I generally don’t follow too much of the SEO rules but I don’t forget some important things like deep linking and putting keywords in the front. I still like to maintain a natural flow of reading that does not sound too mechanical. Yeah after publishing it and getting some useful stats, I go back to it and see what else could be done.
Thx for stopping by
Twitter: stevescott1
October 20, 2010 at 3:05 am
Bryan,
You make some great points! Articles do need to have considerations for both human and machine. I usually do human first, and then, similar to what you are saying I go back eventually and try to tweak to be a little more machine compliant.
It seems like a pretty good methods of doing it!
Steve@Lifestyle Design recently posted..How to Improve Your Writing Skills
hey steve,
thx for stopping by! yeah that’s what i usually do. i think we must bear in mind that readers come first and search engines second.
Cheers!
Great article and helpful tips. It’s nice to see that people still take the time to teach others by offering free advice and information. That’s what keeps ‘em coming back!
hey thx for the comment. yeah I always try to provide value to my readers and I love to hear feedback from them
thx for stopping by
Hi Bryan. This is my first time here! I came here after the comment you left in one of my guests posts in another blog. Congratulations, you have a fantastic site!
Many people confuse offline article marketing methods with online marketing methods. Ok, let me just give you an example: If I was writing an article for a local newspaper I will want the Headline to be very catchy so that it can attract more readers. However, in the online article marketing business I will have to write a Headline based on the keywords that people will use if they want to find the information I provide in my article. It is really an art how we SEO a title of an article, it is simple, but most people don’t SEO headlines. I just don’t know why…
Thank you again for reminding us these tips! Alex Papa
Hey Alex
Thx for stopping by
Yeah I remember commenting on your post. I think a lot of ppl talk about SEO but are not really implementing it. I think only a small fraction really use it and I agree with you it’s an art. I do talk a bit about SEO here on this blog, but I’m not hardcore. I tend to be more practical with the reader in mind and of course a good headline
Thx for commenting!
Twitter: dogcancercure
October 29, 2010 at 12:08 am
Great article! I’ve been trying my luck and at one point in time have used spun articles. But upon realizing that they aren’t helping, I immediately stopped. God knows it’s pain to write especially if you have to do it everyday but in the end, it really pays.
Hey Barbara,
Thx for stopping by here
Yeah I used to spin articles but now I spend time writing my own one. It does take a lot of time, but it certainly pay off. To add on, Google will sooner or later crack down on spun articles. I’m sure of that. Only a matter of time.
Article writing is a very useful one on internet marketing. Once you know the strategies you can make the most out of it. There are many tips all over the net to develop article writing to be able to catch up. And this one is best.
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article is one of the best way to generate traffic to ones site,if you want to drive massive traffic to your site create quality articles.
That’s right David. Article marketing is a good way to generate traffic but it isn’t as good as before. I think the benefit apart from generating traffic from writing quality articles is to get backlinks.
the best way to drive traffic to your site is to write quality articles, and it will also help you gain a higher page rank.
I like it when you emphasized the “Write first rank later”. I agree with you on that case. Because, SEO is actually easy after you have created a draft article. You’ll just insert everything there. No biggie. The hard part is actually the keyword search and the off page SEO. Thanks for sharing! ^.^
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