Indicate: Why Article Writing is Still a Good Idea for SEO

Article writing. for SEO and better Internet marketing, is one of the major promotional tools for getting your website known to search engines, to the world wide web community and to your target audience. There are a number of reasons why this is the case and we shall be going into some of them, but the key point to take away from this piece is that good article writing is the cost-effective cornerstone of website promotion.

You also should understand that articles need to be relevant, well-written and provide real help and advice for readers if they, and by extension you, are to be taken seriously and for the strategy to work properly, i.e. gaining SEO benefits.

Credibility and the “Expert” Reputation

A major issue in generating sales through the web is credibility; many websites have a credibility issue simply because they are on the web, and this is more acute if they have no real world presence. By writing on your area of expertise and in particular, by providing insight and advice on how to tackle customer problems, you are building a reputation as being a “trusted” source of information. As human beings, we are prone to believe what is written more than what is said – we believe what is typed more than what is handwritten, and most of all, we read what is published either as a newspapers piece or as a book, most of all.

Article writing taps into this human belief very effectively and is powerful persuader, providing your articles are well-written, relevant and actually provide constructive help and advice. Writing articles will quickly give you “expert” status and the credibility which goes with that title.

Improving Backlinks

Articles are an excellent source for generating backlinks to your website or blog. If you write articles which are truly original and relevant, ideally providing some unique insight into an issue or problem which readers are likely to have, then you will find it is rapidly adopted by other web sites and blog commentaries with backlinks to your website.

While you control the quality of the article, you have little control over who reads it – if your article is read by a major web site, such as Twitter, Google or Amazon, then chances are that if they like what you have to say they will publish it on their own site, with a backlink to you – how much is such a link worth to you? Clearly a great deal, but if you simply knocked on their door and asked for a link to begin with, you’re probably going to be ignored!

Effective Keyword Strategy & Control

Keywords and key phrases form the fulcrum around which SEO strategies revolve; by identifying and optimizing on specific sets of keywords, you can improve your search engine rankings and with that comes a flood of traffic. More traffic means more conversions and more sales.

Articles allow you to integrate keywords into a broader campaign to get your site noticed by both human surfers and the search engines. At the same time, you control what is written and where it is distributed to so you can manipulate keywords to best suit your online marketing strategies. By writing a range of articles focusing on different sets of keywords, you get a broader level of penetration into the consciousness of readers and search engines as well as developing more backlinks to your main website.

By submitting articles to established article directories you also increase the level of traffic and awareness of your website which in turn, will further improve your rankings with the search engines.

Summary

Readers want good content – content which is engaging and either intrigues and interests them or provides solid help and advice on issues they may have. “Puff” pieces do not amount to much in SEO terms; you should focus on substance because this will have greater impact, be more widely read and more likely to return your investment to you. Articles are not simply about stuffing keywords into some text in the hope this will fool the search engines, your articles need to be written in a professional style so they make sense to human readers and not simply the search engine spiders.

Stay on topic, write in good English and write with passion and flair – this way you will engage readers and keep them coming back for more.