By
allen on February 11th, 2008
Posted in Article Writing | No Comments »
Anything you can do to make your articles more readable is a must. Including lists.
There are two types of lists and both are valuable for use in articles. An ordered list consists of a list made up of numbers while an unordered list is a list of bullet points. Which type of list you use depends a lot on personal preference and style, but they both provide excellent benefits, including:
- Your content is easily scannable by your readers
- A good list breaks up the gray
- You can make your points stand out better
- Lists allow your readers to get a quick overview before committing to your full article
The above unordered list illustrates that people will read a list before they read a full article. They really want to scan and see if there is anything interesting that attracts their attention. When they do see something they like then they will stop and read. That’s why lists are so powerful.
But list also help the search engines find your content more easily as well. Robots do pay attention to lists. You won’t rank better if you include lists in your articles, but robots do slow down for the lists because the code that creates the list tells them that this is special information. If you include your keyword in a list once or twice then the search engine robots will be sure to seize upon that.
Remember, your articles are for marketing purposes. You are writing in hopes that e-zine and newsletter publishers in your industry will like your articles well enough to publish them. If a publisher can get your lists and enjoy your articles then their readers will too. You’ll increase your articles’ chances of getting published.
By
allen on February 9th, 2008
Posted in Article Writing | 1 Comment »
Christopher Knight at EzineArticles wrote a blog post recently that discusses why his article directory rejected a large number of articles due to “keyword and keyphrase abuse.” This is becoming a huge issue across the web in general and at article directories in particular because all of the article directories have a problem with spam. A lot of the spam is from people who are not trying to abuse the system. They just don’t understand how to write articles properly.
Knight’s blog post was written to explain to article marketers why their articles were rejected and to apologize to some writers of legitimate articles for false positives that led to their good articles being rejected. He also offers suggestions for improving article content to prevent keyword and keyphrase abuse. Among them are:
- Don’t make repetitive key phrases and keywords bold or italics.
- Don’t use software to assist yourself to meet keyword and key phrase density metrics.
-
Don’t repeat key phrases more than once per sentence.
Which Of These Keyword Points Is Not Like The Others?
I’ve never been a big fan of software assistance in writing articles. Software cannot think intelligibly, which is a necessary skill for article writing. Someone, a real live person, needs to read every article to critically analyze information, word order, grammar and syntax, and intent of message. Computers are not adept enough yet at that task to make using them effective.
That last point is one that I find surprising to find necessary in saying. Though I do believe it is necessary because many new writers do not understand what is meant by “keyword density” nor do they understand that there is no optimal keyword density. Even worse, they do not understand that too much density is worse than no density at all. You cannot optimize an article with excessive keywords. If you don’t talk that way naturally, don’t write that way.
Knight’s first point is problematic for me for one reason: He has taken the extreme approach of rejecting all articles with any bold text in them.
Making your target keywords or key phrases in BOLD or ITALICS makes your article look like keyword spamming.
Even if what you read is true (I really don’t know if it is true), we’re not going to allow that on articles that we accept.
Bolding keywords and keyphrases for SEO only reasons is a huge mistake and destroys your credibility.
It adds no value to the user and it’s deceptive because the reader thinks you’re trying to call their attention to something important and when they find out you’re just trying to get some SEO love, they know you never cared about them in the first place.
The above comment is taken from a response to a comment by a reader of Knight’s blog, who pointed out, correctly, that search engines seize upon bold words as more important than non-bold words and ranks them higher. In my experience, this is true. But I do agree with Knight that bolding words and phrases only for SEO reasons is a bad practice. It is somewhat deceptive, but worse, it looks spammy. Why someone would engage in a practice that makes them look like a spammer even if they are not trying to spam is beyond me. But people do it. Which is why EzineArticles is changing its policy - I just think they are going too far.
Why Bold Text Is Good
There are legitimate reasons for bolding text in an article and it all doesn’t boil down to SEO. But, if I were to bold any text for those legitimate reasons then I’d want it to be text that includes my keyword or keyword phrase because the search engines will ascribe additional SEO points to those. That’s not why I do it, however. The best reason, and in my mind the only real legitimate reason, to bold text in an article is to draw human attention to that text for the purpose of making a point that you want your reader to walk away from without missing. The same is true of italics - do it when it makes sense to draw your human reader’s attention to specific text for the purpose of pointing out something you don’t want them to miss. I use this tactic most often in lists. For instance:
- When I have a list of items followed by commentary - I want my reader to see the larger point and I want to distinguish the bullet point from the explanation of it because it makes the text more readable.
- This is doubly true for long lists - If you have long lists, or lists that include a lot of commentary then this is even more true because a long list or explanation could blend in with the rest of the article and you don’t want that to happen.
- Even on short lists, the bullet points are easier to see - If the initial clauses of these bullet points were not bolded then they would not attract your eye as well as they do now. That’s all I really need to say.
- Not every bullet point in your articles need to have your keyword in them - When you write your bullet points, think of your reader. What do they want to know. People scan first then read what they find interesting. Bolding your bullet points makes it easier for them to scan. When they see something they want more information on, they will stop and read that part. This makes bold text all the more valuable to your reader.
I hope that little exercise illustrates how bold text can be used legitimately in articles as well as blog posts to keep your reader interested. If I write articles that I know will appear in an e-zine and link back to my website then I want those articles to appear in the e-zine exactly as I’d want them to appear in my own. Therefore, bold text is sometimes legitimate even if it does include some SEO benefit that I wouldn’t get without bolding the text.
Hat’s Off To Chris Knight
Chris Knight does include some great information in his blog. Most of it, in fact, I would agree with. I really like that he pointed out that article titles should have one instance of the keyword in them and no more. I also like that he pointed out that good article titles include 40% keyword text and 60% natural language. The same could be said of article subheads. To me, every article should be strong on natural language and lightly peppered with keyword phrases for the best results.
One other thing I like about Knight’s blog post is that he mentions that keywords should not appear but once every 100 words. That’s not a hard and fast rule. It’s simply a good rule of thumb. I like to tell people once per paragraph on average. That’s based on the idea that good article writing relies on variation of paragraph length - some are short and some are long. If I have a 750 word article with 3 50 word paragraphs, 4 100 word paragraphs, and 1 200 word paragraph then that article will have 8 keywords in it, about the same number of keywords that Chris Knight suggests.
Bottom line: When you write articles, they should not be focused on keywords. Your articles should be mindful of keywords, but focused on providing useful information to your human readers. If you do that then you should be able to get your articles approved at any article directory.
By
allen on February 9th, 2008
Posted in Article Writing | No Comments »
Are you making the most of your keywords? Articles based on single keyword phrases are great marketing tools. But how many articles can get from a single keyword phrase? If you stretch your mind I’m sure you can come up with a good dozen or so. I’ve written more than 50 articles from one single keyword phrase, and I’m not just talking about a generic phrase either. I’m talking about long tail keyword phrases. To do it properly, you’ve got to brainstorm your article titles and try to think of unique angles that have not been overdone or will create duplicate content issues.
To illustrate how you can come up with several titles related to a single keyword phrase, I’ll take the keyword phrase “contemporary haiku poetry.” The following titles are titles that can be written based on this one single long tail keyword phrase:
- How To Write Contemporary Haiku Poetry (an obvious one)
- Contemporary Haiku Poetry Writers You Should Know
- Principles Of Contemporary Haiku Poetry
- Contemporary Haiku Poetry Techniques For The Beginner
- Advanced Contemporary Haiku Poetry Techniques
- Contemporary Haiku Poetry Techniques Revised
- Simple Contemporary Haiku Poetry Exercises
- Contemporary Haiku Poetry Exercises For The Novice
- Contemporary Haiku Poetry Exercises For The Expert Poet
- Teaching Contemporary Haiku Poetry To Children
- Teaching Contemporary Haiku Poetry To Adults
- Teaching Contemporary Haiku Poetry To Teenagers
- Female Contemporary Haiku Poetry Masters
- Contemporary African-American Haiku Poetry Publishers
- Contemporary Hispanic Haiku Poetry Publishers
Coming up with titles in this fashion could go on and on. The trick is to take a simple title and change it slightly so that you are targeting a slightly different audience. You can squeeze a good half a dozen (or more) articles out of one single targeted title just by changing one word to specify a different audience (example: “Teaching Contemporary Haiku Poetry To _________”). There is no limit to the number of titles that you can make these kinds of subtle changes to and you can feasibly write a hundred or more titles centered on one long tail keyword phrase.
By
allen on February 6th, 2008
Posted in Newsletters | 2 Comments »
Blog Content Provider has spent the last couple of days discussing the benefits of a blog promotion newsletter. Actually, a newsletter can do more than promote your blog. It can promote your entire business.
In addition to pointing your newsletter readers to your daily blog posts, you can also share with them your insights into your niche with articles that enlighten them on the benefits of your business. You can send them to your website with carefully targeted links from your newsletter, designed to increase traffic to specific pages of your website that you want your newsletter readers to pay attention to. Articles can go a long way to make that happen.
Your newsletter articles do not all have to be written by you. They can be written by guest authors, picked up from article directories, even borrowed from blog posts of related websites (as long as you have permission and give proper attribution). One thing is certain, however. Newsletters are not dead. They are a viable way to promote your business, your website, your blog, and your expert articles.
Find out how a newsletter can help your business grow:
Call 786-317-8774.
By
allen on February 4th, 2008
Posted in Article Marketing | No Comments »
Articles are information. Website content is sales. Many webmasters aren’t quite sure about this distinction. I often here new webmasters refer to website content as articles. But articles and website content serve different functions. There is one exception to this, however. If your website is an information publishing website and you rely on AdSense ads and other display advertising as your sole or primary revenue source then you can view your website content as articles. Otherwise, there’s a world of difference.
Most service companies have websites that sell their services. Companies that have products for sell use a website to sell product. You can have articles on your website, sure, but be sure to make a distinction between your articles, which are meant to convey useful information to your target audience, and your website content, which is meant to close sales. Is your website closing sales? Maybe it’s because you need to stop thinking about your content as articles.
By
allen on February 1st, 2008
Posted in Article Writing | 3 Comments »
One way to increase your influence and expand your reach is to offer to be a guest writer on another person’s blog or in a forum related to your topic. This is a very powerful way to reach people in your target market, especially if you guest write for a non-competitor in your industry.
What you do is evaluate the website you want to guest write for for a few weeks to get a feel for the website’s style and influence within your market niche. Then, send an e-mail request to the website owner, blogger, forum moderator, or whoever the decision maker is. Be polite. Be brief and not long winded. Be sure to also be specific about what you are requesting. If you want to exchange guest writing opportunities then say so. If you want to offer a benefit in exchange for the opportunity to be a guest writer then say explicitly what you are offering. Then wait.
DO NOT pester the person you are reqesting. If you don’t hear back after awhile don’t just keep sending requests. They may be on vacation or considering your request and you could ruin it for yourself if you are too aggressive. After sending your request, find something else to occupy your time. If you haven’t heard back in a reasonable amount of time, say a month or so, then send a polite, short request asking if they got your request and offer to resend it if they didn’t. This could prompt the person to respond with an answer.
Being a guest writer can do a lot to make you more credible within your market. I strongly encourage you pursue these opportunities. And if you need a ghostwriter then by all means ….
