4 Things You Must Do If You Want To Write Effective Articles For
The Web
Copyright 2006 B Hopkins
If you want a website that brings in the search engines AND
keeps visitors on your website, you need to have information
that is relevant, informative and well written. However, when
using methods that are designed to attract search engines, the
content still needs to be keyword-rich. How can you keep content
keyword rich and still be of value to the visitor?
1. Write articles that are helpful, but not too long
The more words you can say something on the better. Keep
articles short (400-800 words) or the search engines may not
'read' all the way through. Creating many articles and
optimizing the content in the article will allow you to target
more keywords than if you try to cram them all onto one article.
Content such an artice, is useful for creating traffic, pleasing
the search engines and offering valuable information to your
visitors.
2. Write articles that are relevant to your business or website
Keeping to a theme when writing your articles, will help your
website both with the search engines and visitors. Keyword-rich
articles will likely be relevant or you wouldn't choose them. If
you are allowing others to post your articles on their sites,
the tighter the focus of the subject of your articles, the
better your site will rank in the search engines for specific
keywords.
3. Write articles that are informative
Getting traffic is not valuable to you if people leave your site
right away. Providing informative content will keep visitors on
your site longer, and is also important to 'smarter' search
engines which also pick up on the content.
If your articles are made up of keywords and phrases strung
together, the search engine may discount it. There are
grammatical rules that some search engines may use as a basis
for weeding out optimized sites from the truly informative sites.
Obviously the search engines won't really know if the content is
of any value to your visitors - only you can know that - but if
you are taking the time to sit and write editorial for your
website, you'd do well to make it of value to the reader.
4. Make your articles unique
The algorithms are constantly changing, but currently it has
been stated that the search engines don't like duplicate
content. That is why many affiliate businesses that set up new
websites for each member are often unable to make a top showing
in the search engine results becasue of too many of the same
website.
Writing your own articles or hiring a ghost writer to write them
for you will work better. Using 'free to reprint' articles may
work, depending on the amount of times that work has been
reprinted. In every case, do not duplicate the webpage of
another site - both for ethical reasons and the fact that it
will not bode well for your search engine status.
If you are using a template site you will need to change a
significant amount of the information in order to create a site
that the search engines will consider as unique. You can do this
by changing your web page title, meta tags, introducing
paragraph and by inserting links or editorial blocks within the
article body.
Unique content is also important to visitors who may be viewing
other related websites and are looking for fresh information on
the topic. By providing unique content you will stand out from
the crowd.
When you have these 4 things in place, you are well on your way
to writing successful articles that will draw responsive traffic
to your website and will begin to create a reputation for you of
being an expert in your field.