The importance of knowing basic SEO

Photo credit: matt.searles

If you are a freelance writer it is because you love to write. Does that sound difficult? It shouldn't. Unfortunately, it is more complicated than that. If you are writing to make money, then you need to understand the business side of writing. If you want paying gigs, you need to know how to market yourself, but all the marketing in the world won't help you with jobs that involve SEO.

What is SEO?

That's the big question isn't it? You are probably wondering what SEO is and why it is so important. Well, like I said before, if you want clients, you are going to need to know SEO. SEO stands for "Search Engine Optimization," and really, there's no other way to describe it. When an article is SEO'd (Yeah, I know that might not sound right) clients will want it. Clients understand how the web works. What good is an article, no
matter how well written it is, if the search engines can't find it? There are a few things that play into SEO.

Keywords.

One of the main points of SEO is keywords. Keywords are so important that Google makes money off of them with advertisements. Small business owners will run ads on websites with certain keywords, and when people click on the business owner's add the keyword that was used to find the ad is paid for. Website owners can make money with Google ads. They will get a portion of the clicks in return for allowing a business owner to run ads on the website owner's page.

You can run an article through software to find out what dominant keywords are in the article. You can also use free services from Google to see what keywords people are using in their searches. Obviously, the keyword with the most searches are the best keywords to use in an article, but be careful, keyword stuffing is discouraged by search engines. There is a lot of debate on how many keywords it takes to be considered stuffed, but many experts say around a 5 percent keyword density is too much. Aim for 2-3 percent keyword density. There is software to help you determine the keyword density as well.

Keywords are such a large topic that there are books written about the subject. The best thing you can do for yourself is to study how keywords work. The more you know the better off you'll be.

Unique Content.

If your content can be found on hundreds of other sites, it's not unique. Obviously, copy and pasting content from one article to the other is pure plagiarism--unless it's your content, but that is still discouraged. Content that can be found on other sites will be removed from the Great Google's almighty search engine! It is important to keep your article completely unique. Many times, people find information on the web and regurgitate it in their own words. While this is a step-up from plagiarism, it is still not unique content. If what you are writing about has been written a thousand times before, you need to provide a very unique spin on the subject. Make it completely "Your own."

High Quality.

Make sure your article is completely free of spelling and grammar errors, especially since Google updated their SERPS to look for quality. Having quality content will score bonus points with search engines. After the Panda update, many articles farms like E-how, Ezinearticles and daily article got hit hard. Google removed many high ranking posts from these sites off of the search results. Make sure that every article you write is professional; this will keep your clients coming back for more. Believe it or not, there are not many people that have good grammar. Also, people don't have high attention spans for internet articles. They want your article to get right to the point, so take out every single word that is not essential to the sentence. Wordiness is not attractive to readers--unless you are writing a novel where adjectives and adverbs are necessary to paint a picture.

There is a popular saying when it comes to writing,

"Say what you are going to tell them, tell them what you want to tell them, tell them what you just told them."

This is not recommended for online writing. Skip all the fluff, and just tell them what you want to tell them.

I hope this has helped clear some questions you might have had about SEO. There is a whole lot more to it than what I have written, but these are the basics that you should understand. Stop worrying about what Google wants, and instead, start focusing on content that is unique, creative and free of grammatical error.

Every creator painfully experiences the chasm between his inner vision and its ultimate expression.  The chasm is never completely bridged.  We all have the conviction, perhaps illusory, that we have much more to say than appears on the paper.  ~Isaac Bashevis Singer