Formula for article writing?

[Michael Forey]

I have completed my keyword research and seo completion analysis on Market Samurai and am now ready to write my article / post.

I understand that keyword density is not as important as it used to be so I was wondering if there were any guidelines that I should follow when writing my article? I understand I need the keyword or long tail keyword in the title and any heads, but what about the article body? Such as does the keyword need to be in the first sentence, paragraph, etc.

Thanks
Michael

[Joshua.E1]

The keyword in the title need not be in the first few words, of course it really helps if its in the first 5 words though.

But in a way, some keywords was not even in the first few words, yet it still get lots of traffic, because of the engaging or interesting title.

[wisecrone333]

I had heard that keywords in the title, first sentence of the article and at least in the last paragraph of the article was supposed to be enough, but that was from people who noted that Google was clamping down on people that wrote those really clumsy articles with a larger keyword density - I think if you write naturally and have something interesting to say you will still get the traffic from that regardless of the keyword density score - or am I totally off the wall with that remark?

Lisa

[HCLee]

The most important part to any article is your headline which connects with your reader. Use your creativity but include one main keyword of your content and spend some time to write one that grabs the attention of your reader and draws them into your content.

[Allen Graves]

Michael,

I would suggest this...

If possible, use a meta title different from your article title but use the keyword phrase in both. Then use the keyword phrase once, anywhere in the article.

Write the rest of the article naturally. If the keyword phrase appears again in the article, fine. If it doesn't, that's fine too. Just write - and don't think aout the phrase.

You will probably rank somewhere for that keyword phrase, but you will also find that the article ranks for many other long-tail phrases as well.

For instance, an article written for "how to build a wood shed" is ranking for:

how to build a wood shed
build a wood shed
building a wood shed
build a woodshed
building wood sheds
best wood sheds

This is a real live example and shows that targeting a specific phrase can sometimes result in ranking better for a completely different phrase.

Stay on top of your stats and analyze what people are searching for to get to your articles. Test, tweak and repeat.

Allen

[Josh Spaulding]

Search Engines are smart these days and they are all about the user. Write "naturally" not worrying about keywords (other than in the title) and you won't go wrong.

[apple87jane]

Follow the AIDA formula to write articles.
A-Attention
I-Interet
D-Desire
A-Action
Get people attention by the tittle and sub tittle. Let them feel interesting about your article and make them feel desire with the product you writing on, convince them to take action to buy your product. Should be effectiveness.

[melanied]

I agree with everyone here that said the title's the most important thing. Otherwise, how would so many videos with keyword targetted titles have their pages ranking in the search engines?

[Zeus66]

There's good advice here. I'll just add that one extra step I always take before I write the article is to compile a short list of related and root words. This is part of what is known as LSI (Latent Semantic Indexing). It's part of what Google uses to help narrow down what a piece of content is really about.

EX: If the keyword is 'dog training,' I'll make a list that includes: dogs, puppy, puppies, canine, canines, k9, train, trainer, trains. Then as I write the article, I'll refer to this list of related words to work them in wherever I can. But do it naturally! Don't force it and don't shoot for a specific number of times per word.

I also have reason to believe from some of my own testing that proximity matters. In other words, if I can work two related words into my text close together, that seems to matter more than if they're spread farther apart. This can also help get that article ranked for the odd keyword phrase that you weren't even trying to target. BONUS! But this is just from some limited testing I've done. Don't take it as gospel.

John

[Jillian Slack]

For instance, an article written for "how to build a wood shed" is ranking for:

how to build a wood shed
build a wood shed
building a wood shed
build a woodshed
building wood sheds
best wood sheds

Don't forget to use synonyms.

Someone might be looking for information on a shed, while someone else is looking for:

barn
backyard barn
storage building


So throw those in there at least once.