How To Write SEO Friendly Articles For Content Marketing: 4 Keyword Essentials

One part of your internet marketing strategy is to brainstorm about web content ideas for articles (reviews, case studies, top-10s, how-tos), blogs, news, press releases, widgets, tools, UGC, web 2.0, linkbait, viral, SMM, podcasts, videos, photos.

How your specific keywords and keyword phrases are integrated into the copy, the headline, the meta tags and description are key to getting good rankings on the search engines for your articles.

As a network marketer, one method of communicating value to your readers is the publishing of keyword rich articles. Written words that educate, inspire, enlighten and otherwise impress the reader with your knowledge and wisdom. Writing SEO friendly articles is just one of several techniques in your marketing tool box.

Before you start writing about your selected topic, follow these key points so that your article is leveraged to the max and will not only be read, but linked to, ranked high on search engines and create a positive impression of who you are as the “expert” author.

Don’t be tempted to simply stuff your website with articles that you have acquired or cranked out in lightning speed. Your articles will overlook the important strategy of being SEO friendly to the search engine spiders.

Take the time to “optimize” your content using keyword phrases that you have researched before diving into the writing the content. Try also to write some of the content around the key words as well rather than just sprinkling them here and there.

These strategies will leverage the contents of the written words in your article for what it is designed to do: drive traffic to your sites and create a personal brand of you as the author.

A well written article and headline will not only catch the eyes and interest of your readers, but the search engines as well. Your headline should be relevant to your content. The headline is, in SEO terms, the title tag or really your main keyword phrase.

Don’t be afraid to have up to 70 characters. If possible, also provide a subheadline that has secondary keywords and leads the reader into the content or the body of text.

So here are the four factors to consider when writing SEO friendly keyword rich articles:

• Keywords and Keyword Phrases.

An article must always be focused on the keywords and keyword phrases. During your keyword analysis, ask yourself what would somebody be typing in the search engine to find information about writing articles for their website?

What problems would they probably have other than the actual task of writing an article? They would probably have to do keyword research so that their articles are picked up by the search engines right ? They would probably type in Search Engine Optimization or perhaps just SEO because they know that is important.

So get into the mind of the searcher as you develop your secondary keywords and use them within the articles as well as the primary keyword phrases.

• Keyword Density

Once you have your keywords and keyword combinations, you must use them as described above, in the headline, the sub headline, the meta tag and description box inside your blog control panel. If writing on a blog, take advantage of the keyword generator to be used as tags which assist the reader in locating other content on your site using similar keywords.

An article must have good keyword density. This is the number of times a keyword or keyword phrase is used on an article relative to the total word count of the article. For a search engine to “trigger” its response to your keywords, the rule of thumb is to have a density of no more than 5% in the body content for search engines to rank a site high in their search results.

Make sure the keyword density is not too high or too low. With too much density or repetition of terms, the essence of the article is lost and may turn off a reader as well as the search engines. The article will read as if you are merely stuffing it with keywords. Conversely, an article with virtually few keywords will be ignored by search engines.

• Article Content With Beef

Again, you cannot just sprinkle a bunch of keywords throughout the article. That’s like flavoring a stew with basil leafs and not bothering to take the leaves out before serving it. The content must be balanced with the keyword phrases and good relevant content.

Articles should keep the reader’s attention, be informative, perhaps entertaining as well, and must deliver on what the headline states. Make sure you give them useful, helpful information that is written well with correct spelling and proper grammar. If you want people to trust you, make your content SEO friendly, good and well thought out.

People respond well to figures, facts and statistics. Try to get great information and as many facts as you can. A good and well written article will boost your reputation as an expert in your chosen field or topic.

At the end of the article, you want them to feel like it was worth the time to read the article, that it was useful to them and make them look for additional articles you have created. this is when you lead them to take action. You now have their trust.

They believe that you have something of value to offer them which is more useful information and hopefully delivered in a witty manner they find compelling.

• Linking Articles

Depending on where you are posting your articles, always include a signature at the end with you’re your name, title, link to your main website, etc. If it’s in a blog, make sure the blog is set to allow comments at the end of the article and have an RSS feed link in case they want to subscribe to your posts.

Also set up the social media links so they can share. Add your Facebook and Twitter links so they can follow you. Cross link with any other websites that are relevant. Another way to include links is to hyperlink certain keywords within your content to outside URLs or other articles within your blog.

Search engines like backlinks as well. If you are in network marketing and the article is not posted on your blog site, just link them back to your blog rather than your direct affiliate corporate sponsor link (unless the article you wrote is directly related to either your opportunity or the product). But this is for another discussion on Attraction Marketing.

Article writing for content marketing when integrated with the other forms of marketing make a great long term tool to help drive traffic to your primary websites to capture leads, make sales and build your downline.