The art of writing SEO content has changed in recent years.
In the early years of the internet, content writers could get away with writing nonsensical spammy jibberish and placing it on whatever awful website would accept it. That could be enough to help boost any website's search ranking regardless of its quality.
Google has cottoned on to this practice now though. The website's search algorithm is now much better at differentiating worthless spammy content from articles that are worth reading. It now places different value on links depending on the authority of the domain it is featured on. It has deranked ‘link-farm' websites, making it much harder for readers to stumble across poor content.
What this all means is that web content writers have to place much more focus on the quality of the articles they are writing.
Topics
With this in mind, content writers might as well write something that is going to be useful to readers. Solve a problem. Create a list of useful products. Explain the benefits of a product or a service.
There are various advantages to this. Perhaps most importantly, people are going to search for and read useful topics. They might actually click on links to your company website or at least note down which company it is providing this useful information. They might link to the article themselves so more people read it. Suddenly, this article is boosting your website's reputation amongst consumers as well its SEO value.
Composition
In order to encourage traffic, take the time to give your SEO article a title that people are searching for. The Google Adwords Keyword Tool is a great way to help writers do this. Make sure your title includes a keyword your website is targeting.
When it comes to the use of keywords within the copy, use them sparingly. Overuse of a keyword might induce Google to judge your article as spammy, of little value to readers and therefore not index it as well.
Include subtle hints to why your business is useful to customers without mentioning your company's name or being overly self-promotional. After all, is the ultimate goal of writing SEO content not to boost sales of your product? Bear in mind that an article should be more than 200 words long to be considered high-quality by Google.
Getting it out there
Now you're writing content that's actually worth reading, it might be worth aiming a bit higher when trying to get it published online. Link farm websites which will accept any old tat could do more damage than good. See this article on negative SEO for more information.
Why not approach the authors of popular blogs and ask if you can write a guest blog for them. This is a great way to get your brand name exposed to a brand new audience. It will also give links to your website more authority in the eyes of Google's search algorithm.
Old tactics for publishing SEO content could be compared to a machine gun. Spray small bullets as far and wide as possible. Now it might be better to launch a content grenade reaching loads of people in one shot.
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