Online Writing: Unlock Search Engines with Key Words

If you are dreaming of become a writer, Yahoo is working to help you achieve your goal. Having developed the Yahoo Style Guide, a big step has been taken to give online writers the help needed to become effective and successful. One of the big areas that many writers struggle to master is producing content that is Search Engine Optimized (SEO).

A quick review of the "SEO Basics" should be extremely helpful.

This section of the style guide covers everything from the need for key words to how frequently they should appear in the text. The "SEO Basics" can be found at: http://styleguide.yahoo.com/resources/optimize-search-engines/seo-basics

You have to overcome some of your proper training in writing.

Writers who have been drilled to avoid repetition of words and phrases may have a struggle with Search Engine Optimization. Webmasters want SEO early and often. Some web sites even prefer to have keywords repeated at 15 to 20 percent of the text. For the best search engine optimization, the keywords and phrases need to appear a lot.

However, the text has to make sense and be readable to keep visitors returning to a web site.

Just being able to find a given article or review is one thing. It must also have some value to the reader by providing information. For many writers keeping up the SEO and a plausible text can be extremely difficult.

The problem is that the same sites that ask for search engine optimization want even more.

Adding keywords and phrases goes a long way toward the job. After having the text be readable, these sites also want articles and reviews that are dynamic and sometimes humorous. This can be roughly the equivalent of asking Detroit to build a hybrid car that reads minds.

Try to find ways to vary the key words so that the text does not become boring.

Finding a way to keep search engine optimized text interesting and humorous takes a lot of thought and effort. The reality is that any good writing requires these same ingredients. In normal writing, instead of repeating keywords, a writer has to maintain the sense of theme, tone, and plot while keeping up an interesting story line.

The key to making this work is to keep these phrases and words handy.

Refer to them often as you write. Sometimes, this will require you to go over the same material in a new direction or with fresh terminology to give the opportunity for SEO. Do your best to keep it from becoming boring or stale.

You will want to read the text and let it sit for a while.

Read it again with a critical eye. Add in text where there are obvious gaps in the information. Some web sites will accept almost any article that has enough keywords. Most sites that buy reviews and articles for publication on the web expect to provide a decent amount of information to their readers. They are either trying to build traffic to earn money from ads like Adsense, or they are trying to sell a product. In some cases, these clients want both.

Yahoo suggests that key words need to be used enough to season but not to overwhelm.

Real search engine optimization means that you have material that does not make the reader hate the keywords before the end of the article. If your plan is to provide text with SEO for customers, work on your technique, learn everything that you can about their product and site, and write to meet their need.