SEO writing for beginners

What is SEO writing? SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization, but SEO writing really means keyword writing and is some what akin to news reporting.

To write SEO articles, the author should know SEO basics in relation to search engines: keywords are how a search engine finds websites relevant to search terms by way of spiders – spiders or web spiders – are software robots that crawl across the web cataloging keywords from websites. Spiders build lists of keywords and index them so search engines can return results that match keywords to search terms; the more often search engines return results from the same website, the higher its ranking becomes on the search engine or SERPs (search engine results pages).

Google was the first to send out multiple spiders, indexing hundreds of sites simultaneously (in fact, the name Google is a variant of the mathematical term "googol", which denotes the number 1 followed by 100 zeros or 10^100). And because Google is the leading search engine on the internet, websites are constantly trying to up their rank on its search results – that’s where SEO writing fundamentals come in, making a website visible by intertwining content with keywords that improve search engine ranking.

For instance, if a website is promoting internet marketing, the SEO writing topic is obviously “internet marketing services”. With hundreds of sites competing to promote their marketing services, they need to differentiate themselves by increasing their rank. For an SEO writer, this means writing articles with keywords pertinent to what someone might enter into a search engine (2-word phrases are most often used, followed by three-word phrases); while they probably will search for “internet marketing”, they might search with for the same service with like phrases such as “search engine ranking”, “SEO writing”, “website promotion”, or “SEO content”.

Now onto the SEO writing essentials; keywords an article cannot alone make, there must be content as well as context. SEO articles aren’t merely a string of tags/keywords, they must have an ebb and flow for readability; while the SEO tags/keywords will capture a search engine’s index they won’t be informative to visitors (this is where the akin to news reporting comes in). Journalists address five “W’s”: who, what, where, when, and why – these “W’s” give the reader context. In SEO article writing, the same applies, keywords/tags have to be surrounded by context so visitors that choose to click on a link will be directed to a site with content that not only addresses what they’ve searched for, but gives them a reason to stay on the site.

Other things to keep in mind when writing SEO articles are keeping the language accessible and concise: the most effective SEO articles are those that are between 300 and 500 words. Lastly, remember to proofread and spell check, while search engines don’t care about grammar and spelling, visitors will.