Need Guidance on Writing Articles

[davemorris]

Hi,

I am looking for some guidance on how to best create articles that work. I have recently had two articles accepted on Ezinearticles however I am not sure whether I have written the article so that the search engines will find the keywords they were optimized for.

Before I write more articles I would be grateful if somebody could explain the general rules that should be followed when optimizing an article for the search engines?

Thanks

[Alex Taylor]

Here's a simple formula you can follow. May not be absolutely perfect, but it's plenty good enough:

Put your keyword phrase as the very first words. Then have a dash, followed by something that clarrifies what your article is about. (example: Make Money Online - 3 Tips You Absolutely Need To Know).

Then put your keyword phrase in the first sentence of your article. Then put it somewhere around the middle of your article. And finally put it in the last sentence of your article.

Just in case, I also bold my keyword phrase the first time it appears.

[davemorris]

Alex,

Thanks for the tip. Is it really that simple?

What about related keywords? Is there a rule for their use?

Dave

[joe.marsh]

We have an article writing service and here is what we do.

For a 500 word article we run a 1-1.5% density, 5-7 times. Keyword always goes in the title, if first that is better. Beginning of the first sentence. End of the last sentence. And then sprinkled throughout.

For secondary keywords, use them whenever and wherever it comes naturally.

This is an easy to follow system.

Joe

[cashcow]

It really is as simple as Alex says. Also it will help immensely if you get a couple of links back to the article using your keywords as the anchor text.

Lee

[Evelyn B.]

Dave,

If your articles were accepted by EZA, then you're on the right path. My advice is to focus more on making the article is written well and is readable and makes sense to the humans who will be reading it.

- Read the article out loud so that you can make sure it flows well

- Proofread it carefully

- Don't use your keyword any more than once per 100 words

Peace,

Evelyn

[Michael Oksa]

Good points being made here.

My first thought was "write for people, not search engines", but if EZA is accepting them , then it's a good start.

When I send out keyword lists to my members, I include a list of LSI keywords. These are the words that can be "sprinkled" throughout.

I also like that nobody suggested 5-10% use of keywords (this happened in another thread recently, but can't remember which one). That would amount to using the same word/phrase five to ten times for every 100 words, and there is no way to make that sound natural.

The best part is that you are a published author at EZA. Congrats! But, don't get stuck be over-analysis. Keep submitting articles and track your results. Do that and you will get a good idea of what works best for you in no time.

All the best,
Michael

[davemorris]

Thanks to everybody for your advice.

I guess the message is not to over-analyse and keep posting decent content.

All the best

Dave

[Karen Newton]

Also EZA only allows a keyword to show up once per 100 words so you can use that as a guideline. But I wouldn't get that technical about it. An important point others have made is to include the keyword in the article title preferably in the front.

Karen

[Pam M]

I use my keyword in the first 25 words, the last 25 words, and every 100 words or so. This seems to work pretty well for me.

Pam

[mikemcmillan]

I've had a few articles sent back from EZA because of high keyword densities. Like Karen said above, they have a 1% KWD limit, but often you can sneak in a few more. It depends on your keywords too. If you are targeting "small dog training" they may get you for using that phrase above the 1% limit. However, if you sprinkle in "smaller dogs" separate from the word "training" it may get through.

Listen Dave, Lady Google will whisper her secrets in your ear. She speaks softly though! Here's what I mean. I don't know what your niche is, but let's say it is "German shepherd training".

Go to Google and type in "German shepherd training". Scroll through the results until you come to the first ezinearticle shown for that search term. Click on the article. Copy the article and paste it into the keyword density tool at Live Keyword Analysis

Now type in the word "german" into the first keyword box and the word "shepherd" into the second keyword box and the word "training" into the third box. See what kind of KWD that article has. Google is giving you a clue as to what she wants.

I just did this. Here are the actual keyword densities for the first ezine article that came up (it was #14 for the phrase 'german shepherd training'. The article had 405 words and the keyword phrase was in the title of the article.

german: 2.1
shepherd:1.8
training:2.7

Now, if you would have used the term "German shepherd training" seven times in the article, EZA would have slapped you for keyword stuffing. But get this: The phrase "german shepherd training" was never used, not even one time in the article.

The individual words "german", "shepherd", and "training" were sprinkled through the article but never together. This is why the article made it through the EZA editors. That's a key point.

One other thing. Most keyword density checkers will count shepherd, shepherds, and shepherd's as three distinct words. Google almost certainly truncates the suffixes of words to make its algorithm run more efficiently. See my point? I hope so, it is important. Knowing this you can get articles through with a higher KWD than the article directories want--but that Google loves.

Google speaks to me in my dreams. She tells me that she loves KWDs of about 3.2%. You will never get that high of a KWD through EZA, but based on what I said above, you can get a KWD of above 1% though.

Back to what Michael Oksa said above: Sprinkle in a little SLI stuff to tickle Google a bit. You might do this. I want to tell you, the guy who write this article is good. I can see why his article is the top ranked EZA for "German shepherd training". In addition to his keyword phrase, he has, just like Michael said above, sprinkled in some latent semantic word forms through his article. Here are a few: best dog, puppy, dog, dogs, dog's, breed, breeds, owners, breed, canine, pets.

Here's the deal. There are so many voodoo, black hat, spam blogging pieces of software out there that can give you whatever keyword density you want mixed in with some bull sh*t content, that Google has to go beyond keywords. She looks at other words that top ranked sites have in addition to the keywords under question.

So, Google checks the top ranked sites for the keyword phrase and looks what other words are often used in those sites. This is where the author of this article hits hits his stride. But putting in words such as best dog, puppy, dog, dogs, dog's, breed, breeds, owners, breed, canine, pets--he is scratching Lady Google right where she's got an itch. Michael is absolutely correct, in addition to your keywords, you must provide Google with similar words she expects to find in high rankings sites for the keyword phrase.

Do those things and you can get your article to the first couple pages of Google for whatever keyword phrase you choose!

Good luck Dave!

[nicholasb]

seek out shannon herrod on the warrior forum, he is the man when it comes to article marketing, he posted a video on the forum one time that was just amazing

[MaverickWil]

Apart from the keyword implementation itself, I've found that writing in a conversational tone works very well for me. Write as if you're speaking to your reader and you'll be able to more easily build an emotional connection that way (emotional connection=sales). Hope that small nugget helps

[Zeus66]

If your major concern is search engine recognition, the best advice beyond the solid stuff others have written here is getting some links pointing to your article. Use the keyword you wrote the article about as the anchor text in those links. Anchor text is just words you use in the link that people click on to activate it and visit your site (in case you didn't already know that).

Something I didn't notice mentioned in the replies above is which keywords you target. If you know what "longtail" keywords are, those are your best bet to score high rankings with EZA articles. Example: "dog training" is really tough to rank for. It's not a longtail. "how to train a dog" is much easier to rank for... and it is a longtail keyword. The downside is longtails usually get a lot fewer searches than shorter, more generic keyword phrases.

However, if you're smart about your research and use good tools, you can find those hidden gems that are longtail, get a high number of searches, and do not have a ton of competition. I don't claim to be a pro at finding them, so take this with a grain of salt, but for example's sake it took me about 3 hours the other day to find just two longtail keywords that were hidden gems. I can get Page 1 rankings for them in about 2 weeks with some good backlinking and an article at EZA. It was worth the 3 hours I invested because of all the time I'll save on the back end trying to get them ranked. It'll be much easier than if I'd gone after the tougher generic terms. Those can take months or even years to crack the first page at Google.

Good luck!
John

[xlfutur1]

Originally Posted by Michael Oksa

Good points being made here.

My first thought was "write for people, not search engines", but if EZA is accepting them , then it's a good start.

When I send out keyword lists to my members, I include a list of LSI keywords. These are the words that can be "sprinkled" throughout.

I also like that nobody suggested 5-10% use of keywords (this happened in another thread recently, but can't remember which one). That would amount to using the same word/phrase five to ten times for every 100 words, and there is no way to make that sound natural.

The best part is that you are a published author at EZA. Congrats! But, don't get stuck be over-analysis. Keep submitting articles and track your results. Do that and you will get a good idea of what works best for you in no time.

All the best,
Michael

Ezinearticles will not let your article go through if you have the keyword more than once ever 100 words. I checked Google analytics for one of my sites just for just yesterday and there were over 300 keywords used to find the site. There is no way you can write one article cover them all. Just get ranked for a few main keywords and google will rank you well for the hundreds or thousands of related things people put in the search box.

[reynald2790]

Well, optimizing your articles in search engine is very easy and simple. First, you must make your keywords or tags related to your topic or title about your article. And it should be more search able by the visitors or the readers itself.

[Evasan]

"write for people, not search engines",

The most important part of writing the articles is to use the keyword in such a way that it would be grammatically correct and would look natural.

[Kaye Dennan]

Hi Dave
I write for the internet everyday for myself (6 sites) and for clients. Simple rules for SEO are to have it in the heading, then at least once, preferably twice in the first paragraph, about 3 times through the articles and once or twice in the last paragraph.

I also submit regularly to EzineArticles and if I get knocked back it is because I have got so enthusiastic and written in caps to stress a point. They DON'T LIKE THAT. They have always accepted my use of keywords in the format I mentioned above.

Hope this helps.