Optimizing Your SEO Writing Process (Hint – you might be writing your articles backwards)

Written by Annette Elton

Have you ever read an article online that was obviously written for the search engines? An article where the keywords and keyword phrases seem to be inexplicably linked together with awkward sentence structure and clunky abrupt transitions between sentences?

I’m sure you’ve read this type of article and perhaps despite your best efforts you’ve written some of these articles yourself. SEO articles can be difficult to write, particularly when the keyword phrase is a bit unusual or the writing process is out of sync.

Working With Awkward Keywords and Keyword Phrases

Keyword tools and research are great; they help you find those niche keywords your audience is using to find your information. They also tell you how many other sites are using those same keywords to optimize their site. This gives you the valuable information you need to position yourself in the search engine rankings. Yet sometimes those keyword phrases, often the ones with great demand and low supply, just don’t seem to make sense.

For example, the other day I was writing an article for one of my affiliate sites and the keyword phrase to optimize in the article was “rock climbing bouldering.” Bouldering is a type of rock climbing and using the words together just didn’t make sense. It’d be like saying, “running jogging” or something along those lines – awkward phrasing to say the least. I got around this by getting creative with sentence structure.

“If you’re new to rock climbing, bouldering is a great way to learn the sport,” is just one of the ways I combined those problematic keywords into a cohesive, and optimized, sentence.

As you can see, the keywords are together and the sentence makes sense. Keyword phrases can be broken up in any number of ways and still make sense in context. It just takes a bit of patience and creativity.

However, for most troubled SEO articles the problem isn’t the awkward keywords or keyword phrase but rather the writing process.

Optimizing Your SEO Writing Process

I received a phone call the other day from a business owner who had been working on website copy for over a month. She’d revised the copy so much that it no longer made any sense. (She wanted advice on writing transitions between sentences and paragraphs.) What she was proud of, however, were the wonderful keywords she’d used to optimize the page. Great, I thought, so tons of people will find your web page and then they’ll click away because the content just doesn’t read well.

Knowing her problem wasn’t her inability to write transitions, I asked her to talk me through the process she’d used to create the website content. She’d first completed about 24-36 hours worth of keyword research; she’d researched her competition and the words they were using. She’d read content on their sites and she’d used her keyword tools to come up with a list of 100 keywords she wanted to optimize her site for. Good start, right? This is all great information.

Then she sat down and wrote sentences that fit those keywords. Finally, she tried to make those sentences link together to make some sort of sense AND she tried to make them sound like the content she liked on her competitors’ sites.

OOPS!

Can you see where she stumbled? Her writing process is out of sync.

At this point, she’s not only writing for the search engines instead of her audience, she’s also neglecting her brand (her personality). The content isn’t written in her voice and instead is a copy of what she thinks she wants to sound like.

A better approach would have been:

1. Keyword research

2. Target audience research (know who you’re writing to)

3. Write your content using your voice and personality and making sure to communicate with your audience. This is imperative, your content must be valuable to your reader. Readers want to walk away having benefited from reading your content. This means they were entertained, felt a connection to you, and/or learned something new.

4. Position your keywords. Now, go back through your content and work your keywords and keyword phrases in where they fit and seem appropriate. This also makes writing with awkward keyword phrases much easier and results in better quality content.

5. Edit, polish, and publish. Clean up the grammar and spelling and make your content shine.

This process ensures your voice and brand are communicated and it ensures you’re writing for readers first and search engine spiders, second. The search engines count to be sure, however it’s your readers who drive your profits.

If you’re accustomed to writing around your keywords, try this approach the next time you write. I think you’ll find you have a better article without sacrificing search engine optimization.

Comments

4 Responses to “Optimizing Your SEO Writing Process (Hint – you might be writing your articles backwards)”

August 18, 2009 at 12:53 am
Alice Seba says:

Very nicely said, Annette. Write for people first. You can have all the traffic in the world, but if the human beings that visit your site don’t get what you’re saying – what’s the point?

I like the 5-step plan you laid out. That’s in the right order.

Reply
August 18, 2009 at 11:42 am
Twitted by aliceseba says:

[...] This post was Twitted by aliceseba [...]

Reply
August 23, 2009 at 11:30 am
Annette Elton says:

Thank you, Alice. Sometimes it’s easy to get caught up in making sure you have your keywords optimized!

Reply
October 30, 2009 at 11:08 am
Beyond Articles: 10 Creative Ways to Distribute Your Content : Contentrix says:

[...] you’ve got a great article written. You’ve done your keyword research and placed it in strategic but natural places throughout your article. The article is informative [...]

Reply