Writing Articles for the Search Engines

This is precisely what I am doing here today (and every other day in my life)! I am writing to share my experience and hopefully, my knowledge and information can help some others who are in need of such information and advice. Writing is a very powerful way to connect with people and we can use it to not only share information but promote ourselves.

When you're writing an article or some form of web content, you have to bear the following things in mind:-

a. The purpose of writing
What I do is this?.before I start an article, I leave the title of the article empty and start typing out the purpose of the article. What kind of feeling do I want to leave with the reader? Then I move on to the keywords that I want to use consistently throughout the article (for search engine optimization purposes). Right after that, I write down (in point form) the content of the article.

Then and only then, I start beefing up the article.

The reason why the purpose, keywords and the skeleton of the article is written before anything else is to keep you focused and reminded of the reason why you're writing the article. As any professional and experienced writer can tell you, it's way too easy to get derailed half way. I have a bunch of articles that are completely wwwaaayyyyy off mark because I lost direction halfway through the article!!

b. Title and keywords of your article
The title should contain one of the keywords that you're trying to use in your article. For instance, you want to optimize the article for business card, so, you should include the word 'business card' in your article title and also in the first paragraph of your article!

If you can't think of anything mind-blowing?.force it in! I am being really honest with you here if you want to make sure your article is ranked highly in search engines for the keyword 'business card'.

c. Don't make them hit the back button
If you're writing content for the Internet, yes, keywords are important because the search engines use keywords to rank their web pages. But you don't have to compromise readers with search engines when you're writing! No, not at all! You can write in an engaging way and yet use your preferred keywords in the article itself, you just have to practice a lot!

d. Don't sell
Sales letters sell, not articles! You'll be surprised at the number of people who actually think that selling through articles work?.well, here's news for you?.THEY DON'T! Your articles are not supposed to do the selling for you, they are supposed to your 'customer relations manager' of sorts. Maybe they're like 'GROs' too, if you want to put it that way. The moment the reader think that you're trying to sell them something, they'll hit the back button or click that 'godforsaken' x on the top right corner of the browser.

e. Too long, too short
Some people think that the longer your article is, the more fact it contains. Well, yes and no. If you want to write long articles, make sure the article is ACTUALLY packed with facts. If not, cut to the chase and just get to the point. Short articles have its benefits too. Write articles that are about 400 - 500 words.

But even industry experts cannot agree what the best length of articles on the web but generally speaking, if you are into search engine optimization, don't write more than 800 and no less than 400.

Marsha Maung is a freelance graphic designer and copy writer who works from home. She designs apparel and premium items at http://www.creativejooz.com and is the author of "Raising little magicians", and the popular "The Lance in freelancing". More information can be found at http://www.marshamaung.com