Article Writing for Search Engines

If you are considering how to provide better website content to your website then article writing is a great way help. Search engines love content, keeping your site fresh will provide better customer retention, better rankings and better traffic to your site.

If you’re writing articles (article marketing) to increase your website marketing efforts then article optimization should be utilized along with it. What’s article optimization? It’s essentially the process where when writing an article the verbiage is optimized specifically for the search engines and your website.

When article optimization is used throughout the process it allows the article to be more search engine friendly. Why is that important to you, because it allows the article to become a very powerful marketing tool.

You get best of both worlds, well actually even more. You add value to your site by giving the reader another reason to come back, something interesting read, and powerful content is added, keeping the site fresh. One of the main things that's not being utilized enough is keeping websites fresh, it will get crawled and indexed more often, helping get better rankings / listings, which the search engines love. And lastly you are adding those all so important incoming links. How’s that you say? Well not only should you add the articles to your site you should distribute them to ezine directories and other industry portals on the web. And if you’ve ever tried to get high quality incoming links before you know how difficult and time consuming that can be!

I’ve been asked fairly often, why this powerful marketing tool isn’t used more often. To name a few, first most people either feel that they don’t know what to write and two, it can be very time consuming. Plus the “how to” part of article optimization is not common knowledge. In other words it’s one thing to write an article about your industry and another to make sure it’s optimized well for the search engines like Google. Google and others look for certain things for ranking purposes, such as the keywords and keyword density to name a few.

The main things to remember are, write about what you know, as you write think about what keywords might be important to the reader and the search engines, as in what people may use to locate your site in search engines. And two don’t revolve your whole article based on keywords or you may not have a “reader friendly” article or a “search engine friendly” article. By thinking too hard about how to plant keywords in your article may back fire and may not be the success you were looking for.

So if decide to write the article and not optimize it, I recommend using an SEO firm for assistance. If you decide to do neither, you could hire a professional copywriter and SEO person or a firm that does both.

Tim Frisch is the owner of SEO Help Desk http://www.seohelpdesk.com/ and has been assisting companies build business online since 1998, and offline for over 25 years. SEO Help Desk is a professional search engine optimization company providing SEO training, SEO coaching, SEO campaigns, SEO consulting and SEO analysis. To see how your website is ranked in the search engines, get a free ranking report at http://www.seohelpdesk.com/free-search-engine-ranking-report/

What is SEO (search engine optimization) and why does it matter to me? SEO (Search Engine Optimization): The term used to describe the Internet marketing technique of preparing a website to enhance its chances of being ranked in the top results of a search engine once a relevant search is undertaken. A number of factors are important when optimizing a website, including the content and structure of the website's copy and page layout, the HTML meta-tags and the submission process.

Actually most search engine optimization campaigns are done backwards, how so? Most SEO campaigns are an after thought. The best, less expensive, more efficient way to do it is to plan it during the time the website is being designed. Why? Because a search engine friendly website is going to bring you a better ROI. Why? Because the search engine optimization process and website development go hand in hand. If the SEO is performed afterwards there are certain things that can’t be done because the site structure itself would need to be modified, a major make-over on a new site, not a good idea.

What’s the alternative? Essentially the completed site is optimized based on the current website design. If the basic SEO components aren’t already built in the site, like selecting the right keywords, meta tags, well written page content (for both the visitors and search engines), incoming links, etc, then they need to be added. Either way the website needs to be analyzed and appropriate action should to be taken.

What kind of action? After the site is analyzed, the basic components are added throughout the website then the appropriate links need to be located and added. Lots of care should to be taken while building links. High quality links are the only links that should be considered, one of many gauges that can be used (regarding links coming from other websites) is the Google page rank, a minimum of 3 should be considered in my opinion, 10 is the highest on the scale.
Another way, that’s probably easier and more realistic to get incoming links are links coming from articles that you’ve written and distributed to ezines and industry related portals or you could trade your information (articles) to other websites and they could provide a link back, again using the Google rank as noted before.

The other part of search engine optimization that’s important, actually most important, content. Content is king, but again another challenge in the SEO process. If you feel you are not sure how to develop the appropriate content, then it might be a good idea to hire a copyright expert to assist with the actual writing and or re-writing and an SEO expert for optimizing the content.
To recap, plan the SEO while designing the website (if possible), make sure the website has all the basic components before launching and submitting, work with a professional SEO and copyrighter and of course while engaging with a professional web designer.

Tim Frisch is the owner of SEO Help Desk http://www.seohelpdesk.com/ and has been assisting companies build business online since 1998, and offline for over 25 years. SEO Help Desk is a professional search engine optimization company providing SEO training, SEO coaching, SEO campaigns, SEO consulting and SEO analysis. To see how your website is ranked in the search engines, get a free ranking report at http://www.seohelpdesk.com/free-search-engine-ranking-report/

How to Get Local Targeted Web Traffic

Getting local targeted web traffic to your website, can require a few different adjustments for your keywords and website content. First let’s discuss how to increase your odds regarding your keywords, since this the foundation of SEO or (search engine optimization). Which keywords you decide on will depend on how specific of a geographic area you want to focus on is. For instance if you sell exercise equipment in Orlando, Florida and you have a brick and mortar store also, and want to drive visitors physically to the store. You might want to use the key phrase “exercise equipment orlando florida”, as apposed to “exercise equipment” or “exercise equipment florida” (by the way you shouldn’t have to worry about case sensitive words). This will give you a much greater ability to be found in the search engines, because your web site will be ranked higher and more visible.

One of the places to find the best keywords for this purpose is in Overture and Google. You will be able to tune and fine tune each keyword for your subject matter and geographic area. You will be able to get a feel as to how many searches have been done and how popular the words are. Plus you will get an idea how to use pay per click (non organic Internet marketing), maybe this is a type of marketing you may want to consider.

Of course all areas within the web site will need to be optimized with the same keyword criteria, such as your meta tags, body content, etc. An additional area to consider is locating the best places to link with. For example, a few places highly recommended are local business portals, national directories that would be exercise related and Chambers of Commerce.
Since this Internet marketing strategy is more locally targeted as apposed to most, which are marketed globally, the whole mentality should be geared toward local marketing only. Using printed collateral is an excellent way to drive people to your site, since you’re local, cards or mailers or flyers are good.

Google, Yahoo, MSN and other search engines have search capabilities to help with local marketing. Plus when these are utilized your site will be picked by additional search engines and directories which will give you some what of a snowball effect. So to recap, when planning your local Internet marketing strategy, always keep in mind local methods to promote and be specific to your geographic area.

Our website: http://www.seohelpdesk.com . For questions: http://www.seohelpdesk.com/contact/mailus.cfm . To see where you rank in the top search engines: http://www.seohelpdesk.com/free-search-engine-ranking-report/

If I'm not a website designer or an SEO expert, how can I keep my site fresh and get high quality links? Write about what you know best, your business. Add those articles to your site and distribute them to top article directories. By adding articles to your website you've helped keep your web content fresh and by adding the articles to directories you've added high quality incoming links. Just a word of caution, you don't want 100% of your links coming in from these kinds of methods. You want links coming from related websites and top directories, like Yahoo and DMOZ. For more information or questions answered go to http://www.seohelpdesk.com/contact/mailus.cfm or visit our website at www.SEOHelpDesk.com.

Are meta tags important to my search rankings? There are several components that effect search engine rankings. But to answer the question, yes they are important and should be used in each page of your site (if you want it listed in the search engines). You should include title, description and keyword tags. For more answers about SEO (search engine optimization) ask us at: http://www.seohelpdesk.com/contact/mailus.cfm or visit our site at www.SEOHelpDesk.com.

Following up on web leads properly can make you more sales, plus you will be building business relationships. Business relationships are more important than a sale.

So you’re getting high search engine rankings, well that’s great! You’re getting lots of qualified traffic, wonderful! You’re getting a high conversion rate, what else is there?. Overall you’re having a good measure of success, that’s great right? When you make your reply back, make a sale or what ever the goal is for your website, what do you do next? Do you toss the contact or sale to the side and wait for the next one? Are you trying to grow your business or not? If you’re not following up on every contact multiple times, for every sale, every form filled out from the customer or potential customer, your competitor will be!

Let’s talk a little bit about leaving sales 101 and graduating to real-world bite you in butt relationship building. It’s not an option whether you should or not, it’s when are you going to make it a very serious part of your web marketing strategy (if you’re not ready)? You can be building a referral based business today and grow your business faster, stronger and easier. How many emails do you send out and don’t get a response back? How many times have you tried to close a deal and couldn’t get the person to return your phone calls and or emails, probably a lot, right? It sounds like you’re trying to get a sale and NOT build a relationship. If you focus on building relationships instead of making sales you will be building a “referral based” business. How much easier would it be to have people contacting you to “buy” as apposed to you “selling” to them?

Having said all that, of course we know how important it is to keep in contact with customers, but sometimes it’s just another thing we have to manage. Using email and phone calls can be unsuccessful methods to build those relationships. Have you ever received a hand written greeting card from someone, of course you have. But how about from some you bought something from? Maybe? How’d it make you feel? How about just getting a card in the mail and NOT opening it up? We always open them up, right? But what if it had been an email or phone call? The email could have went in to their spam folder and never had been opened at all, our phone call may have went to their voice mail and disregarded.

Try the card follow-up system it works great! You’ll wonder why you didn’t do it sooner.


Written by Tim Frisch, owner of SEO Help Desk , he has been assisting companies build business online since 1998, and offline for over 25 years. SEO Help Desk is good resource for most aspects of SEO. Including building business business relationships online and securing more sales through your website. Find out where your website is ranked in the search engines, get a free ranking report at http://www.seohelpdesk.com/free-search-engine-ranking-report/ . Find out more about building a referral based business at Get The Sale .

Get High Rankings and Better Traffic When You Have the Right Keywords

A question I get a lot is, “If my keywords are ranking great in the top search engines, why is my traffic so low?” A major problem could be that you’re either using keywords that have a low traffic value or that are not being evaluated often enough. If the keywords have low traffic they may never be the right ones to use and or they have may lost their value and need to be modified and or replaced.

Keywords are the foundation of an SEO campaign, if your website is not optimized with the right keywords, don’t start your SEO campaign. This is one of the most challenging parts of search engine optimization – SEO. Knowing which keywords to initially optimize your site with, and consistent website analysis is Critical! Keeping your website fresh is not only keeping fresh page content, it’s also equally important to modify your meta tags.

The meta tags in each page along with page content should reflect the new corresponding keywords. But always remember when a website is modified you could be “fixing” things that should not be “fixed”. In other words, you change the very fabric that equates to the current search engine rankings. So use kid gloves when making content and meta tag changes.

As mentioned before Overture and Google provide a few keyword assess tools that can give you a good idea as to which ones could be good performers. And of course your stats will tell you where the rubber meets the road. Here you’ll find out which individual keywords are driving the traffic.
The best way I’ve found to pick keywords is to make a “wish list” of the words that people might use to find the website. Next check your competitor sites out to see what they are using, then use the Overture and or Google tools to get a “bigger and better” second opinion list, then finalize your list. After you have made your final list, break down list into small groups that would apply or would be relevant to each page in website. Each page should have relevant keywords from list, populated in meta tags and page content.

Once the website has been re-optimized with new keywords, it’s a waiting game until the website is crawled on by the search engines and re-indexed. The stats will have to be rechecked along with a new ranking report.

To recap, locate the best keywords, optimize each individual page including meta tags and page content, track your results on a regular basis.

Written by Tim Frisch, owner of SEO Help Desk http://www.seohelpdesk.com/ , he has been assisting companies build business online since 1998, and offline for over 25 years. SEO Help Desk is good resource for most aspects of SEO. Including linking campaigns, SEO training, SEO coaching, SEO campaigns, SEO consulting and SEO analysis. To see how your website is ranked in the search engines, get a free ranking report at http://www.seohelpdesk.com/free-search-engine-ranking-report/

Link Strategies - Website linking strategies are one of the most important parts, if not the most important part of an Internet marketing campaign. Website linking is organic just like the rest of the SEO process. So it should be treated as part of the ongoing web promotion campaign. This is not a quick and easy process, but can have a stronghold in getting and keeping qualified traffic to your website. Having a lot of visitors coming to your website is nice, but if they aren’t the right type of visitors you’re wasting your time, energy and investment dollars. Do it right and step by step, the results will come.

If you didn’t know already, having the right link campaign in place for your website could make the difference between having a “door stop” or a “door opener.” Links can come in many forms, they can come from websites, search engines, search directories, articles, press releases and many other places. Some of these other places could in “bad neighborhoods”, also sometimes referred to as link farms, and could get your website rankings penalized. You could view this kind of linking as “bad association”. Some directories are solely there to cheat not only the system but you too. I have found that working within the system, although it changes frequently, is best working within their guide lines.

Some people have asked me, if they need reciprocal linking in place to get optimum search engine rankings. The short answer is yes you need a link strategy in place. In reality you need high quality links linking to you site. But most people of course will want a link going back to their website, hence the name reciprocal linking. But how might it effect your website if a link is coming in and not going out. If you are planning a reciprocal link strategy, you need to plan on giving a link back to the giver. You will gain better link popularity if you have links coming to your website. The links going out do not effect your link popularity. So what is link popularity and why do I care? It is one of the main determining factors or algorithms search engines use to determine your rankings.

How can I most effectively provide a reciprocal link campaign? The rule of thumb is locate non-competitor, relative type websites. For example if your business provides installation of vinyl siding you might want to share links with a website that installs hardwood flooring. Then contact those websites telling them you want to share links.
Since it’s established that incoming links are more important than links going out to other websites, let’s discuss additional ways to achieve this. There are industry portals or directories, search engine directories like DMOZ and other very important “one way linking” strategies, that should be considered in the overall linking strategy.

Another very effective way in getting those all so important links to your site is by distributing your own expert articles and press releases to specific directories that specialize and accommodate them. You could also distribute them to other non-competitor, relative type websites. This adds value to their webpage content and brings highly effective links back to your website.

What if I have a website with no links coming back? Your website rankings can be penalized. You definitely want to have this part figured out in the SEO planning process. In fact your SEO planning should be completed before you design and build your website (if at all possible), don’t worry most do it after the fact.


So is it OK to get as many links as possible, as fast as possible? Through my experience, I would say NO. You want to grow this area slow and strong, search engines tend view that as a trick or a way to try and beat the system. Quality is key here just as the rest of your search engine optimization (SEO) efforts should be.

What about the “bad neighborhood” linking directories? How can I identify them? Usually they are some type of directory with just lists of any category with no real purpose in mind

So overall the best approach in getting a good solid link campaign started is to first, ask your vendors or industry contacts to share links, people you are already familiar with. Second, write “expert articles” about your business and or industry distribute them to directories, ask to trade a link with industry websites. Third, write and distribute your press releases to PR type directories. Fourth, go ahead and contact those “good fitting” websites to share links with. Fifth and last, stay away from “bad neighborhoods” or link farm type directories.


Written by Tim Frisch, owner of SEO Help Desk http://www.seohelpdesk.com/ , he has been assisting companies build business online since 1998, and offline for over 25 years. SEO Help Desk is good resource for most aspects of SEO. Including linking campaigns, SEO training, SEO coaching, SEO campaigns, SEO consulting and SEO analysis. To see how your website is ranked in the search engines, get a free ranking report at http://www.seohelpdesk.com/free-search-engine-ranking-report/

Learn SEO Basics - Most websites are not built with search engines in mind. Preparing your website prior to submitting to search engines or directories, is vital. By having a solid foundation you will save a lot of time and aggravation. Planning a web promotion strategy is as important as planning your overall business strategy. You don't know have to know everything to get started, but please get the basics down, such as researching the right key terms and optimizing your page content.

Are you wondering where or how to start optimizing your website to get more visitors or even how to get it ready for the search engines before submitting? The foundation to proper SEO or search engine optimization is first developing the most relevant keywords. One way to do this is by using the keyword tools at Google or Overture. Another way is to check what your competition is doing. After that is done, build relevant Meta tags for each page in the web site. Scan through each page and make sure you are using those same keywords throughout each page of the website, where they would apply, by relevency.

Next, build a site map giving the visitors direction to each important area within the site. Then a solid reciprocal link campaign should be put in place with the idea that it’s going to be an ongoing process (as in the rest of the search engine optimization process). It’s more realistic thinking to get links crossing in both directions (reciprocal), if you’re working within a traditional linking campaign. Most people you contact will want a link coming back. The purpose is to have good resources to link both ways, from your web site to relevant non-competitor websites and those websites linking back. I need to warn you here, getting companies to link back is very time consuming and some will never contact you back. Another way to get the right links from other websites is getting listed in industry directories, this can be free to very expensive.

A couple of additional methods is by writing and submitting press leases and expert articles. These are great because they both have relative content and can be placed on your website, providing good additional content. When submitted to a directory they link back giving you a solid link structure which helps ranking. And by adding them to your website you add value to your website, giving your readers something new to consider and it keeps your website fresh. Keeping it fresh is a very important component in the ranking process.

And last but not least, you'll need to have a good method to track your results, including search engine ranking, visitor traffic and other metrics, such as what key terms are driving the most business and which ones are not.


Written by Tim Frisch, owner of SEO Help Desk http://www.seohelpdesk.com/ , he has been assisting companies build business online since 1998, and offline for over 25 years. SEO Help Desk is good resource for most aspects of SEO. Including linking campaigns, SEO training, SEO coaching, SEO campaigns, SEO consulting and SEO analysis. To see how your website is ranked in the search engines, get a free ranking report at http://www.seohelpdesk.com/free-search-engine-ranking-report/