Writing Articles that are Search Engine Optimized

It's true, practically anyone with the right skills can write great articles, but when you're writing them for an online audience you have to do things a little differently. Now you're not only writing for your readers but also for the search engines. If your article doesn't get ranked for your targeted keywords, you won't be able to drive in targeted search engine traffic, something you can't afford to miss. Because you want more than just to have your articles posted online - you want them read too - it's very important to learn the basics of search engine optimization.

Never Keyword Stuff What You Create: One of the main rules in writing SEO articles is to weave keywords through them in a natural manner. You need to work at keeping the keyword density of your articles below five percent because once you get higher than that, your articles approach the "danger zone." Search engines don't like articles that have keywords stuffed because they not only look spammy, but also aren't that reader friendly. Make sure you stay sensible and only insert your keywords when it is necessary to do so. Besides that, when you submit your article to article directories, it will get rejected if the keyword density is too high. Get Extra Mileage from Your Resource Box: Make sure, when using an article directory, that you include the main keywords in your resource box. Keywords are the reason many people know what your articles are about. These don't necessarily have to be the long tail keywords you are using in the article, but could be the base keywords that are your primary target. Since you can include pretty much whatever you want (within reason of course) in your resource box, you are much better served by including something that will not only entice readers to visit your site but to also get the attention of all the search engine spiders.

Human Readers Are the Most Important: While you're all excited about optimizing your articles for the search engines, don't forget that you're writing for human readers first. When your article doesn't help the readers or if it is difficult for them to get through, getting ranked in the search engines is useless, even for your most important keywords, because--after all, it is the people who read the article who are most beneficial to your business efforts. You need to find a way to satisfy the search engine spiders' rules while also providing real value to your readers at the same time.

In conclusion, this article makes us realize that in order to get the most benefit from article marketing, you have to be good at SEO. The more SEO focused your article is, the higher will be the chance of attracting organic search traffic that converts.

But this does not mean that you should write articles that are not any good and only write for the search engines. You should be aware of a strategy that will allow you to focus on both your readers and the search engines.