SEO Content Writing Tips for Online Media Publishers
When writing content for Search Engines it is important to consider the selection and placement of keywords to ensure that the search engines categorize your web pages correctly and display them prominently for related search queries.
Search Engine Basics:
The relevancy algorithms that determine search engine rankings consider two types of factors in deciding who ranks where; “on page” and “off page” factors. On page factors consider the placement of Keywords within the HTML of your pages including Title Tags, Keywords in Document Text, Meta Keywords, Meta Descriptions, Header tags, etc. The two most heavily weighted “on page” factors include title tags and visible document text. Off page factors are related to quantity and quality of the web pages that link to your site from external sources. For the purpose of this document, we will focus on “on page” factors.
Before You Write Your Article:
Once you’ve determined the subject matter for your article, it may be beneficial to spend some time brainstorming the terms that you feel your readers would be likely to use if they were searching for content related to your article. Create a quick list of terms and visit Wordtracker or Trellian’s Keyword Discovery to determine how many people search for the terms you’ve selected. In addition to providing data regarding the number of searches that took place during the previous month for the selected keyword, the tool also offers suggestions for related terms. Although we do not suggest that you force these terms into the content of your articles, it is crucial to include these terms in your article if you are to rank for the term on the Search Engines.
Title Tags:
The most important and heavily weighted “on page” factor is the title tag. Search Engines use title tags to determine the topic of your page, and weigh this factor heavily in determining the ranking of your page in their search results. The words in the title tag often appear in the clickable link on the search engine results pages.
In HTML code, the title tag specifies the title of your Web page. It is the code which is inserted into the header of your web page that appears in the top bar of your Web browser. Generally, the Meta description and Meta keyword tags follow a title tag although the order in which they appear is not critical.
The HTML code for a title tag looks like this:
Writing Optimized Content for Online Media Publishers
Many Content Management Systems use templates to generate article level pages dynamically. As such, we generally suggest that you use your article titles for your title tags.
Article Content:
Although the title tag is critical to the search engine optimization process, it is not likely that you will create your article title before you write your article. In most cases, you should find all the information you need to write an effective title within the article you’ve just written. Simply choose the most relevant keyword phrases that the copy was based on, and write a compelling title tag accordingly. The optimal approach when writing copy for Search Engines is to think of the main phrases that best reflects your subject matter, and then compose the text around them. When you write your title tag, you simply revisit these same phrases, and compose your keyword-rich title accordingly.
In some cases, it may make sense to incorporate keywords within your title that do not appear within your article. Although the title tag is given a lot of weight in the engines, your changes of ranking will be optimal if the term appears both in the title tag and body content of your article.