What Does SEO Stand For?

SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization. Basically, SEO is the use of certain techniques that writers use to get their sites ranked higher by search engines. Higher ranking with the search engines drives in more traffic. So, as a beginning freelancer, what should SEO mean to you?

SEO can be quite complex for many webmasters as the algorithms used by search engines change frequently. However, for the beginning freelancer SEO can be as simple as using the right keywords frequently. If you are starting out submitting articles to ad revenue sharing sites, most of the more complex SEO work has been done for you.

Ad revenue sites such as Helium and Associated Content already have a decent page ranking with search engines. For this reason, these sites allow beginning freelancers to develop their SEO skills in the content they write without worrying about improving the page rank of the site itself. This eliminates some of the more complex and time consuming aspects of SEO.

To put it simply, keywords are the key to SEO when writing for ad revenue sharing sites. Content needs to be rich in keywords. Starting with the title of your article and all the way to the end, keywords should be used to reflect the topic of the article. This makes your content search engine friendly.

What are keywords and what keywords should you use? Key words are a set of words and phrases that an individual may search for when seeking information. If you are writing an article about making your own easter basket, some key words may be "easter basket", "easter baskets for boys", "cheap easter basket ideas", "make your own easter basket", or "where to buy easter baskets". When deciding which key words to use, think about what words someone would use if they wanted to read your article.

Establishing which keywords to use before you begin writing may be useful, or use a more natural approach:

1. Write the article.
2. Copy and paste the article into a text analysis tool such as Textalyzer.
3. Edit the article for keywords based on the text analysis.

Textalyzer is a free SEO tool that is useful for anyone who writes web content and it is simple to use. Simply cut and paste any content onto the textalyzer website and hit analyze. Textalyzer provides a lot of useful information about the analyzed text. It gives you a word count, tells the frequency of keywords and phrases, and many other info that will prove useful when developing your SEO skills.

As a beginning freelancer, this tool is particularly useful in developing your writing skills for the web. Often times, we repetitively use certain words in our articles that are not relevant and will hurt the search engine ranking of our articles. We may also find that we don't use keywords enough in our content.

Let's say that you have written your article about "Easter Basket Ideas for Boys". You cut and paste the article into the SEO Textalyzer tool. After the text of the article has been analyzed, you see that the words "easter basket" have been used only .5% while the words "spring time" have been used 6%. Someone searching for "easter baskets" may never see your article while someone searching for "spring time activities" may come acrossed it.

The frequency of words in your article is called keyword density. Getting the most out of your keywords is an important SEO strategy, even for the beginning freelancer. The keyword density in the article is used by search engines to index the article against all of the other articles on the web.

Going back through the article and editing the text will give the article better exposure in the search engines to the audience you are trying to reach. Make good and frequent use of keywords and related keywords. Whatever your topic, use keywords that are related to your topic. Make less use of words that are not as relevant to your topic.

SEO is important even for the beginning freelancer. The frequency of keywords is one of the easier techniques that any freelancer should master if they wish to have their content read. Articles on ad revenue sharing sites earn money based on how many times they are viewed. The better the article is placed by the search engines, the more exposure the content has and the more money the article will earn. Developing SEO skills can take time and a lot of effort but it is definitely worth the investment.