Articles are one of the best ways to drive targeted traffic to your website and to get you valuable inbound links from other websites. They should play a big part of your SEO (search engine optimization) efforts.
When writing articles look for information that people would currently have trouble finding within your specialty area.
Start by doing your keyword research. Always remember to find out what your target market is interested in first… then focus on SEO.
Try using a tool like Wordtracker. All you need to do is enter "how to" + "your area of interest" (e.g., how to, cat) in the query box . This will bring up questions people are asking in that area, including lots you probably haven’t thought of.
You can also message boards and Yahoo Answers to think of more ideas and see how your target audience would put a question together. Then back it up with research to make sure others are in the same thought pattern (searching for it). Target the long-tail keywords (not just the word "cat" but "how do I make cat food".)
Once you’ve got some good questions with long-tail keywords in them, see what information is already out there. Don’t waste time writing an article when thousands of other people already beat you to it. That’s not going to help your SEO one bit.
If you are not a writer you can go to a service like http://www.elance.com or http://www.guru.com to hire one. There are a lot of freelance writers who specialize in writing SEO articles and it’s relatively inexpensive.
To get the best results make sure to write a very detailed description of what you’re looking for and how you want your article optimized. Your first goal of creating articles for SEO is to have a helpful sincere approach. No one wants to read paragraphs and paragraphs stuffed full of the same keyword phrase.
Have the writer use the keyword phrase in the article title and a few times in the body - you can also use variations of the phrase. Don’t forget the importance of this article being useful to your target customer. Only focussing on the SEO importance of it will result in a poor quality article that only a search engine may love. If your visitor doesn’t read it what’s the point?
For SEO purposes I do strongly suggest doing two different versions of the article: one for your website and one for the article directories.
There are hundreds if not thousands of article directories out there. Focus on the article directories that are directly related to your target/niche market and the top directories.The idea is to get your article out there, and have readers click through to your site… you’ll also get those great inbound links that raise the relevance of you site.
These are our favorite top article directories to help get you started:
http://ezinearticles.com
http://www.goarticles.com
http://www.buzzle.com
http://www.isnare.com
http://www.articlealley.com
http://www.articlecity.com
http://www.ideamarketers.com
http://www.articledepot.co.uk
