I have about 20 websites that I am constantly building. I am always adding content to these sites, but for this many articles I often need a little help. That’s why I love outsourcing this as much as I can. But there is a problem with some of the writers I have found on Elance.com: They all seem to be experts in “SEO article writing”.
You should have seen an article that one of my writers write the other day. Let’s say my keyword phrase was “buy tube socks online”. The article was something like this:
“You can buy tube socks online if you know where to look. There are some great websites that offer a wide variety of ways to buy tube socks online…. So do some research and buy tube socks online the smart way…”
So THIS is SEO article writing at it’s finest, hah? The writer made sure to make the keywords bold too, so that the search engines knew what keywords I wanted to rank for. How nice of them.
When I was starting out in internet marketing I thought it was great to have an article written with just the right keyword density, and I made sure that I would repeat my keyword phrase just the right number of times.
But worrying about keyword density is the wrong way to write a blog post or article. Google is smart and uses technology called LSI (Latent Semantic Indexing) that allows them to understand what a web page is about by looking at synonyms and the context of the article. If you think that an article written by an SEO expert involves repeating the same phrase over and over again, then you are forgetting how far search engines have come. Back in the 1990′s you could just repeat any old phrase in the background of your web site and “automagically” show up on page 1 for that term. Since then internet marketers have tried to find the “sweet spot” for keyword density and only repeat their key phrase a certain # of times per hundred words of content.
So what % for your keyword density should you use?
My answer: don’t worry about it. Why? The more you worry about it the more you will write articles like a robot, just like the example I gave above. Yes, most SEO guys recommend about a 5% keyphrase density, but this is a terrible way to write articles.
The better way:
Write articles that YOU would want to read. I know the old adage about writing content for humans just goes in one ear and out the other, but it’s advice any blog owner should listen to. If you write for search engines then it really doesn’t matter if you DO rank #1. As soon as someone gets there they are just going to bounce because your article, which is a fine example of SEO writing, is not easy to read. And this bounce rate may hurt your site’s rankings anyway.
Here is some advice in writing for real people instead of robots:
- Use synonyms of your same keywords. You can always get some help from Thesaurus.com.
- Make the interesting points bold and not just those precious keywords.
- Put some pizazz in there. Don’t be afraid to let your personality show through.
- Type like you talk. It’s a blog. It’s OK to use some slang and be informal now and then. It’s much easier to read. Remember, you don’t have to win any awards with your writing, but you do want to win a loyal fan.
- Use bullet points. Don’t you just love these things? I do too.
- Write answers. Think of any questions your readers may ask about your given topic and try to answer them just like you are giving advice to a friend.
- Leave the fluff in the jar. There is too much info online. Don’t waste your reader’s time with a post that offers no value.
- Use many paragraphs. It’s hard to read a post when it is one long paragraph. Break it up and save the humans some frustration.
- Ask yourself, “Would I take the time to read this if it were on someone else’s site?”
So, I hope we all got it. Let’s forget keyword density and stop writing articles for SEO. Not only are humans too smart for that, Google is getting there too.
Anything to add? Please, let me know in a comment below. Comments are like birthday gifts to me. =)
I so agree, I don’t like articles too concerned for SEO. It’s so boring