subject: How to Properly SEO an Article [print this page] How to Properly SEO an Article How to Properly SEO an Article
If you write a quality and informative article for your website or blog, chances are, people who read it will be happy with it and gain something from it. Writing for Internet users and writing articles for the search engines however are two completely different jobs. The difficulty about writing articles that appear online is that the writer has to please both the reader and the search engines.
When writing articles that the search engines will like, proper SEO (search engine optimization) methods and standards must be used. If they are not used, then Internet users will have a hard time finding the article and therefore, very few people will get to see it unless you provide a direct link to every person you know. A well written article using proper SEO will have a better chance of appearing higher up in the search engine results where more people can see it and click on your website link.
Here are a few tips on how you can properly SEO an article while keeping the article reader friendly at the same time:
Use your keywords or key phrase in the article title. Readers need to know what the article is about and the search engines value the title when it comes to keywords in regards to what words it will show up under when a user searches.
Use the keywords or the key phrase in the first paragraph once or twice. Once if the paragraph is short, twice if it's on the longer side. By doing so, you are reinforcing to the reader and to the search engines what the article is about.
Use the keywords or phrase in the article body but do so in the manner where it makes sense. Do not keyword stuff, as it will make the article not read write to the reader and the search engines will pick up on it.
Use tags if you are writing a blog post. When using tags though, make sure that the words you tag actually exist within the article. In other words, use your keywords as tags.
Provide a meta description for the article or blog post. This is what the search engines will use to describe the page where the article is so that Internet users can decide if they want to click on it or not.
Make the article long enough to get across the point or all of the information, but do not drag it on for the sake of taking up website space. A short article that is precise is better than a long article that has a vague or non existent point.
Using this tips will help you properly SEO your website's articles. It is easier to put SEO into place before and during your article writing process. However, if you have articles that have not been optimized, you can of course at any time go back in and optimize them.
