Writing Tips From Your Favorite Michigan SEO Expert

A common 'proverb' in the SEO community is: ‘Content is king’

However, all content is not equal, a better proverb would be: "unique, informative, helpful content is king". Many webmasters have only one thing on their mind, SEO. The problem with that kind of thinking is when you go down this road you tend to forget about the person consuming the content. We do our best to kill two birds with one stone (SEO and great information) but sometimes you can't optimize content for search engines and people at the same time.

Additionally, not all content is beneficial to your site, posting articles that are already on many other sites won't help your SEO rankings, it can actually hurt them. Don't get me wrong, search engines love well written content! However, it’s only the unique content that gets indexed well in the search engines. SEO will help to increase the web traffic to a website by creating high rankings in search engine results, an important part of this optimization depends on content. Be sure to use catchy titles, meta-descriptions and laser specific targeted keywords.

"Put your important keywords in the title tag, the h1 tag and any subsequent h tags. Doing this help a search engine robot figure out what your content is about very easily."TIP THAT WORKS: Put your important keywords in the title tag, the h1 tag and any subsequent h tags. Doing this help a search engine robot figure out what your content is about very easily. Additionally, think 'copywriting' when you create your meta-description tags! Use a catchy line that will encourage users to click on your site when they come across your listing in the organic search results.

Using keywords and other optimization is a great way to improve your ranking however, on-page optimization is a very low measure of how well your site will perform in the search engines. Most of your ranking ability comes from having one way links linking to your content. For example, you create a well written page on 'blue widgets', all of the on-page optimization is done right yet you still might not rank well for this phrase. You should then take the time to get other sites linking to yours using the anchor text 'blue widgets'. If you do well on this step you will see results but keep in mind that results don't come quickly!

If you are new to the internet and website building, there are a bunch of keyword tools that can help you drill down into your market and find the most popular and well trafficked terms. One good tool that I use often is the Google Adwords Keyword Tool, you can use this to find a plethora of terms related to your product or service but be sure to keep your keyword grouping very tight, sometimes it will return results that are completely unrelated to your market.

Additionally, there are commercially available tools such as Wordtracker and Keyword Elite that make the job much easier.

Don't overdo keyword density in your articles!

"Write for people and not computers (ie. search engine robots) a well written article will get people linking to you organically." Write for people and not computers (ie. search engine robots) a well written article will get people linking to you organically.

Here are some additional pointers that you can use when writing articles for your website:

• Stay within your website theme, for example yout site about 'plasma tv's' should not have articles related to 'gardening' on them, they have nothing in common and this could cause you problems when trying to optimize well.
• Your content should provide a good description of the product or service that you offer.
• Another great trick is to put some information related to the city that you are trying to optimize in. For example: "In Detroit, dry cleaning is our number one passion!" In this example I would be targeting the term 'Detroit dry cleaning'. The comma between the 'Detroit' and 'dry cleaning' won't matter, it's still counted as 'Detroit dry cleaning'.

It's All About Me!

One of the hard lessons that I learned what people want to hear how you can benefit them, not how great I am (even though I think I'm pretty cool)! Make your content focus around the customer and their needs, their problems and how you can help them! Keep in mind that the customer is just one click away from your competitor's website!

Before you write about your business ask yourself a few simple questions:

1. Are there benefits to using your product? Write about them...
2. Why does my product or service stand out from the crowd of competitors?
3. What is the best sales presentation?

Some of the best feedback (and passionate responses) that I get from clients is usually when I as them "Why should I choose your product or service over your competitors?"

Give people a passionate response to the benefits of your service! Do you believe in your products? Convey that message to them like you were talking to a friend who is honestly stuck between purchasing your product or one of your competitors.

It's possible to write effectively for your customers AND search engines. Keep in mind the tips that I mentioned above and you will be well on your way to excellent results!