SEO for Writers; Search Engine Optimization for Hub Page Writers

If you’re a writer, you’re going to be following a different set of rules for search engine optimization than those who do SEO for websites. The reason for that is that writers fundamentally write about a different topic every time they write, while those that own websites are promoting only one topic, product, or line of products. For instance, Nike will always promote sports shoes. It’s not suddenly going to start writing about wedding dresses. A writer, however, will write about a multitude of different topics and that is why SEO for writers is different than the SEO used for websites.

SEO for Writers: Purpose of SEO
For writers starting out, let me put this to you very simply. There is only one place on the web that matters for your writing, and that is page one of the search engine, be it Google, Yahoo, or Bing. Generally people focus on Google because it has the greatest market share. However, there are times when it could be a better idea to aim for a search engine that doesn’t have as much traffic, but where you could get more hits. Remember that as a writer, your aim is always to be on page one of the search engine. Something like 99% of the traffic goes to page one. If you’re on page two, give it up. You’re wasting your time. The purpose of Search Engine Optimization is to get your article to page one. So SEO for writers is something you need to learn about.

SEO for Writers: There are Only Three Things that Matter to a Writer – Topic, Topic, and Topic.
The biggest single factor that will get the writer to the top of the search engine is a topic that very few people have written about, and that quite a few people want to know about. If you select the right topic, you don’t have to do much to get it to the top. It will happen automatically. Unfortunately, most writers want to write about topics that are written about by 335,000 other writers, all of whom got there ahead of him/her. As there is only place for ten of those writers (ten places on page one of any search engine), the other 325,000 writers are wasting their time. I'm going to say it again. The specifics of SEO for writers is something that every writer needs to learn.

The really difficult part of writing on the web is finding the topic that nobody else is writing about that isn’t so obscure that nobody is looking for it. The way around this is to focus on detail. Many people might have written about French poodles. But how many people have written about dying a French poodle pink? The person to learn from is fellow hubber IzzyM. Just watch the way she writes about the most amazing topics!

SEO for Writers: The Right Number of Keywords
Decide before you write on what your keywords are going to be. Don’t’ go with one word because unless it’s a very rare word, it’s not going to push your article to page one. Try for two or three words that make a phrase. To continue with our above example, we might try ‘dye poodle pink’ or ‘pink French poodle.’ That would be quite rare so it would be a good keyword to use (of course, we’re assuming that quite a few people want to dye their French poodle pink.

If you’re going to write a 500 word article, then you would use whichever long tail keyword you used between 15 and 20 times. That works out to between 3% and 4% of the number of words of your article. If you wrote an 800 word article, then you would use the long tail keyword between 24 and 32 times. You would also make sure that you put the long tail keyword in the tag section.

Incidentally, don't forget to put your keyword phrase into your title. This is the only technical aspect of SEO for writers that you need to know.

SEO for Writers: Time on Your Article
You want people to spend as much time on your article as possible. So you need to provide enough information to keep them there for at least two minutes. Aim for more. The way you do this is write at least 800 words of intense information. Do not waffle. Remember that you’re in competition with millions of other writers – and I am NOT exaggerating. The one thing that you have to provide that they don’t is a lot of very good information, and you need to write it in such a way that it is both easy and interesting to read. If they don’t find it either easy or interesting, they will not stay.

In addition to writing good, strong copy, you can provide two or three videos that are relevant and two or three links of good quality information. All of this will keep readers on your page.

The reason you want to keep people on your page for as long as possible? Search Engine Optimization is a popularity contest. Google puts the most popular sites first. The longer people stay on a site, the more Google assumes that the site must be good. So if you can get people to stay on your site for ten or fifteen minutes (which is what videos do), then you’re well on your way to improving your ranking.

The technical term for this is called ‘stickiness.’

One of the ways facebook, yahoo, Google plus, Bing, etc. get people to stay on their sites is to provide games.

SEO for Writers: Why Backlinking is Ridiculous for a Writer
Another way that Google determines the quality of a site is the number of links that people have towards it. They believe that if people keep referring other people to a website, then it must be good. So what SEO professionals do for clients who have ONE website is they enter the clients’ websites into directories, social networking sites, blogs, etc. As this is a once off exercise that has a little bit of maintenance each month, it doesn’t matter if they spend a month backlinking a thousand times. However, if a writer has to backlink a thousand times to one article, they’ll be writing twelve articles per year. Of course, there are affiliate marketers who write articles to market their products and for them, it’s worth it because they’re directing traffic to a particular article because the content is selling a product. They make their money out of selling the product. A writer earns money from the ads (if you’re writing for a content farm).

One other thing about backlinking. The link is only as good as the person who referred it. If Mr. Smith in his backroom in the Rocky Mountains emailed your link to Mr. Jones in the front room, and yahoo published your link on their first page, which link do you think Google is going to pay attention to? The bottom line is that if you have the clout to get your link onto Yahoo’s first page, you don’t need to be writing for a content farm, and if the only link you can get has the same value as Mr. Smith’s, don’t waste your time. Google isn’t paying any attention to it.

SEO for Writers
So now you know the difference between SEO for writers and SEO for people who have websites. If you’re a writer, you have the advantage of being able to choose the topic you’re going to be writing about. As I said earlier, the most important thing for writers when considering SEO is topic, topic, and topic.