• By Jimmy Cox
• Published 11/24/2010
• Article Writing

If you want real users to find your products and services online, you should dive straight into SEO article writing. The kind of articles generated through this method are quickly found by search engines and served up as relevant material to searchers. Before you start typing though, there are some tips worth considering. #1- Use keywords appropriately. You need to integrate keywords in some areas of your written material. These words or phrases are what search engines pick up to judge what you’ve written about. Some writers however, easily get tempted to stuff their articles chock full of keywords. These days, this could easily earn you a bad label from search engine robots. Also, if you’re submitting to directories for articles, many of the more reputable ones will reject your work because of the inappropriate use of key phrases. #2- Never sacrifice content for keyword placement. SEO content writing should not be treated any different as any other form of written material creation. In other words, the primary goal of an optimized article should still be to provide good, useful and relevant information to people who need it. Sometimes the placement of grammatically awkward keywords in strategic areas in articles can detract from the objective of providing great information. Resist the temptation to put key phrases above quality. Otherwise, you will turn off your readers. #3- Write with branding too in mind.

Again, the preoccupation with key phrases

can consume writers. Be mindful though that anything you put out with your name on it can potentially add to or subtract from your reputation and image. If you want to market yourself as an authority on a subject, you should use SEO article writing to primarily establish your expertise and skills. Use keywords that closely match your area of concentration #4- Use articles with other tools. Some are misled into believing that online marketing or promotion is really all about the written word. Nothing can be farther from the truth. Although articles are a core part of it, you can also integrate it with other tools and approaches. Video and audio marketing for instance are on the rise. Use what you know about optimizing content so you can write good video or audio descriptions and titles. #5- Some markets and keywords are better than others. Keywords aren’t all made the same. Never choose a key phrase just because everyone else in your niche or market is using it. In fact, the more people use it, the more competitive it is and the more difficult it will be for you to rank on top of search results pages. Choose key phrases to write about that are searched for by a lot of people but don’t have a lot of articles and web pages competing for them.

SEO content writing is not an exact science. Neither is it a very complicated one. The bottom line is that you can optimize articles for keywords so search engines judge your materials to be relevant but you should never optimize too much. In the final analysis, what matters most to both search engines and users is that you provide good information online.