Article Writing For SEO - Search Engine Friendly Articles

Everyone knows that writing articles and submiting these to article directories is a good way to increase your site's rankings in Search Engines and as well increase your Page Rank (PR). However, it is not simply write, submit and forget. If you do that, you will very likely not see any improvement in your rankings at all. Article writers also use this method to advertise and promote their site by offering small sniplets of information to their readers, hoping that these readers will visit their site for more information. Thus with so many article writers publishing thousands and thousands of articles everyday, the competition out there is tough indeed.

I will try to provide some tips for your article writing so that you can maximize the use of article writing for Search Engine Optimization (SEO).

• 1. Get a list of important keywords. Include your main keywords and other less important (secondary) keywords. These must of course be related to your article and to your site's topic. Duh! There isn't much benefit in terms of rankings if your article is about cars and your site is all about selling flowers. And make sure you understand (at the very least!) what you are writing about in the first place!
• 2. Write the article as natural as possible. Do not, and I repeat, do not think of where to put in your keywords just yet. This way, your article will look as natural and smooth as possible. Write normally and you will be fine. Althought there is usually no limit to the number of words you can write in your article, you should limit it to 1500 words or less. If your article is too long, seperate them into different parts for easy digestion. Think of different parts as different articles, so why not get 2 for the price of 1? And another benefit for a 2 or 3 part article is that you can concentrate a few keywords on one part, and other keywords in the others.
• 3. After writing the article, make sure you proof-read it. Make sure there are no spelling or grammar mistakes. Nobody likes to read articles by "professionals" or "experts" that sound like a 5 year old's school essay.
• 4. Now, after proof-reading it, read your article once again, and see whether you can add keywords here or there into your sentences. Make sure you add in your main keywords, but if you can, add in the secondary keywords as well. If your article is long enough, you should be able to squeeze it quite a few keywords. Do not overdo it and make sure your article does not sound like a broken tape recorder. From my experience, it should be pretty easy for you to add in your secondary keywords without making it to obvious. If you need to do some editing, by all means go ahead. And if done right, the article should still remain perfectly readable and understandable to your human readers.
• 5. Your article title. Another very important "step" to improve your rankings. Usually the title of your article will also be the title of the page where your article directory is hosting your article. Ensure you have good keywords in your title.
• 6. Your next step will be bolding your major keywords. A lot of article directories allow their publishers to use basic html tags in their articles, so you should take the opportunity to bold your important keywords. If the article directory supports other tags, you can also use other tags like emphasis and strong to help your readers and Search Engines understand what your article is about.
• 7. Now, see whether you can add in 1 or 2 links with proper keyworded anchor text to your site in your article. It will greatly help improve your rankings. Remember, deeplink instead of only linking to your main page. You should link to your products or services page or some other page. Don't waste it on your main page. You do not get a lot of opportunity to do deeplinking, you know.
• 8. After you have finished writing your article, it is time for you to submit to article depositories? No, not yet. Make a copy of your article first. Then go back to your article, and start summarizing it! Cut of some less important parts and see whether you can reduce the words needed for explanations or descriptions. You may be surprised why do you need to do summarizing? The summarized form will be the article you will be submiting the article despositories. The actual uncut article should be on your own site. I am sure you have heard the phrase "Content is King" right? So content on your site is good for your rankings. But if you submit your "content" to article directories, the "content" now is on the directories. Not on your site. If you have the exact same article on your site, Search Engines' duplicate content filters may ignore your site's article. So the idea here is to create 2 sets of different "content", one for the article depositories (the summary) and the other for your own site. Having the longer and thus more keywords rich article on your own site is good for SEO. All you have to do is to add the link to your full and uncut article on the set submited to the article depositories. This way, you will always have an "unique" copy of your article on your site and readers of the article directory will still be able to follow your link to your site.
• 9. Most article depository allows their publishers to have an authour's bio. You can usually add a few links in this bio. Remember to link back to your site and please use the proper anchor text. Again, deeplinks would work better here.

So, you have it. Some basic SEO tips for article writing. Hopefully, I have writen it in such a way that it is easy to understand and follow.