No Job For Mom

Why Freelance Internet Writers Should Learn About SEO - II

April 2nd, 2008

Filed under: Earning Money, SEO, Search Engines

As an internet freelance writer, you want to make your writing as easy as possible for these hungry little spiders to access. You want them to be able to find your green shoe article, enjoy your article and send the information back to home base (to be stored in the green shoe information bank) waiting to be called upon by a web surfer. More than just sending the information to the search engine, you want the spider to think highly of your article so that it will get top ranking. After all, do you click on the first, second or third link on page 3,254,321?

Each search engine uses their own algorithm so it’s tough to write an article to satisfy the requirements of one search engine. Therefore, its best for an internet freelance writer to follow some basic SEO rules as follows:

Original Content. Spiders like original content much more than they like copied content. Stay away from the P word (plagiarism).

Keyword repetition. There is a fine line between repeating a particular phrase several times naturally and repeating it several times unnaturally. Proper keyword repetition is the difference between a nicely written piece that satisfies a hungry spider versus a piece of spam. Search engines frown upon for spam and may penalize the article accordingly. You don’t want to be the first link on page 3, 254,321.

Article presentation. Unlike a printed piece of work, internet writing is a little different. I’m not quite sure if this constitutes as search engine optimization or just a piece of advice, but keep in mind that a freelance writer’s primary audience is a human being. Humans who read on the internet usually skim through articles to decide if catches their interest. If not, they’ll click away and go to the next article.

Freelance writers need to understand this and format their articles accordingly. Try to get into the habit of either bulleting/numbering or placing sub headings throughout your piece. It gives the reader a chance to quickly find the main topics without having to read the entire article (Imagine that, you’re writing an article so that your reader won’t have to read the whole thing. What an odd thing this internet writing is).

Article length. Generally, articles should be anywhere between 250 and 600 words. When I write for my sites I like to keep it below 600 words. If it’s longer than that, I make it several pages (like this article). When I’m hired to write, I follow their style and word count guidelines.Writing short articles means that as a freelance writer, you’ve got to write tight articles. You don’t have the luxury of bouncing all over the place in your article because you have to get your introduction, your main point and your conclusion done in 500 or so words. You want it to flow naturally without sounding rushed.

Concise keyword niching articles. Closely related to article length is writing concise keyword targeting articles, which I like to call niching Here’s an example.

Even though green shoes became popular in 1802, they where made from dyed yak hide. Now a days, green shoes are made from all natural materials and are worn by the biggest stars in Hollywood. The price of the green shoe, however, has never changed. You can buy green shoes now for the same price as they were in 1802.

A very simple and silly example, but such an article can be written as a four part series as follows:

The birth of the green shoe
Making Green Shoes - Then and Now
Green Shoes Go Hollywood
Inflation or Recession, the Price of Green Shoes Remain the Same

Sounds silly, but that’s the way the web works and if you’re going to be a successful well-paid internet freelance writer, you’ve got to play by the SEO rules.

For more information on SEO check out these sites:

Search Engine Optimization Guide
Pandia Search Engine Marketing 101
Search Engine Optimization Tutorial

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