Okay, so I stole this from my mom who used to bellow it out whenever one of us kids was making more noise than necessary to get a point across. It works for today’s column too. Let’s take a moment to discuss SEO writing.
Search engine optimization (SEO), in a nutshell, is all about internet traffic. It is the process of improving the visibility of a website or a web page in search engines by placing words that help seekers find your stuff. In general, the earlier (or higher ranked on the search results page), and more frequently a site appears in the search results list, the more visitors it will receive from the search engine’s users. Sound complicated? It’s not….at least not for us writers.
A lot of the time folks over think the whole SEO concept when it comes down to something quite simple…using your words. I have a bit of a pet peeve when I see an article written that is “SEO saturated” (just the phrase screams, “you are doing it all wrong”) Those pieces tend to be so repetitive in what the writer is trying to say that it is no longer an article but instead a list of SEO desired words. This is so NOT necessary. Write your article just as you normally would…the search engine will pick it up. Writing a phrase or a word into an article 900 times will not make it more searchable…in fact, today’s search engines are being designed to see overly repetitive articles as spam. All that hard work making your article suck for nothing….
I know, I know…I have heard all those people out there in internet-land touting the importance of using SEO saturation in articles that go on the web…it’s all hooey. It’s just another way for so called “professionals” to get your money for showing you how to do what you already know…write. So when you are creating those blog pieces, or writing for that website…don’t sacrifice quality for SEO sats….repetitive words are going to bring people to your work…good writing will.
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