Keyword Research – Do it First!

Now that you have a better idea about what you would like to write about, next thing is to determine how to write best so the search engines can spot  you and publicize you across the globe.

One of the best ways to do that is to have done some keyword research BEFORE starting on the article. Here are some reasons why.

1. It is best to have the primary keywords and keyword phrases within the domain name, title and subtitle of every page of the website.

By determining the main set of keywords ahead of time, you actually ensure that you maximize this asset and get your readers right from the web address. A lot of times, it is not possible to keep changing your urls. Therefore, the first step in any online work is to get the right kinds of URLs ahead of time.

2. It enables you to write naturally and include the keywords inside the text.

The key to good SEO is not merely the inclusion of proper keywords in strategic locations; it also is to incorporate them NATURALLY into the text and titles of the website. Google might not be human, but it would know if you randomly add a whole lot of keywords in an attempt to gain higher rankings. Also, content that isn’t pleasing to the human eye would result in you losing your visitors quickly. Remember the ultimate aim is to get your readers to come and stay at your site and benefit from your content. Google is just a means to this end and one should always remember that.

I know keyword research can take some time and get taxing, but it truly reaps a lot of benefits in future. So for the long run, go ahead and get that keyword research done first.

So where do you start with keyword research? There are many websites where you could start. One famous one is Google Keyword Tool. More about that on the next post.

For now take a look at this nice book on Keyword Research. Click on the book to find out more and see if this would be a useful resource to have you started on a successful keyword research.

The Importance of Search Engine Optimization

We have seen how important it is to gain visibility on search engine results. This is called optimizing your website (or articles ) for search engines. So let us understand a little about how search engines work before we find out how to make good use of it, the legal way.
Now, before I proceed, please allow me to make a small request/warning. There are many bad SEO practices also known as Black Hat SEO out there. These practices are not only wrong, but would also harm your efforts to gain an online presence as search engines are smarter than people give them credit. That said, it is always advisable to stick to the right SEO practices also called White Hat SEO.
So how do search engines work? You should know by now that search engines are not humans. It is essentially search bots or search engine spiders that crawls through your websites and makes notes of who you are and what your website content is about. These search bots visits your websites from time to time to note for changes and based on the information indexed, they categorize the rankings of your website with respect to the search engine query they the user has entered.
Search engines use many criteria to determine how important your website is and how relevant it is to the search engine query it is attempting to answer. Here are some of them.
1. They check the relevance of the keywords used in the website
2. They check the quality and relevance of incoming and outgoing website links from the website.
Based on their judgment, websites earn a certain ranking on search engines. Now note that this ranking is not permanent. It could improve or get worse.
So let us use the next lot of posts to determine how we can gain the search engine’s love and find targeted traffic to your online works. These tips would also work great for your online business websites too.

The Findability Formula: The Easy, Non-Technical Approach to Search Engine Marketing

You Figured Out What You Want To Write On...Now What?

From my line of posts about nailing the niche, I hope you have an idea about what it is that you intend to write about. So what is next?

When you hear the term "online writing", you must remember that there are 2 aspects to this. While it is vital that your writing adds more value to the reader and is done well, it is also important that it REACHES the reader in the first place. Writing online and having no one visit the website to read it is equivalent to you talking to the walls of an empty room. Your writings could just disappear in this ocean called the Internet.

Thus ensuring that you have achieved a significant amount of online presence is as important as ensuring that you have done a well written article that has something unique to offer to your readers. You must make sure interested people are reading your online works? So how do you do that?

So for a moment, lets think like an online visitor. What is the first thing you do when you are out online searching for a specific topic? If you are anything like me, I would do a quick search engine search to find what I need. You would use the keywords that make the most sense in the hope of getting search engine results that almost exactly match your needs. Normally you would browse through a few entries, mostly within the first page or two, and try find the answers that you are seeking.

Now back to being the writer, so what should you do to reach the readers? Get on those first two pages of search engine results based on keywords relevant to your topic of writing and your target audience. Sounds complicated?

Well I thought so too at first. But experience shows that it is doable. There are a few steps you could take to ensure that you are as high up the search engine ranking as possible.  To give a brief outlook, you need to work on good keywords, gaining great search engine optimization for your article, and marketing it directly to your target market.

Through this next set of posts, I hope to share with you my insights on how this is possible and hopefully get you to see how achievable this goal is.

Write and Be Seen!

Image Credit: All Eyes On Me (as usual) by debbie205

First Lesson To Conquer-Nail The Niche

Alright when I joined Squidoo, these were the two lenses(each article/page in Squidoo is called a lens..so you would see me use this term often) I made

Drive Traffic To Your Website
Tips on Photography- The What and the Why

If you take a look at both these lenses (and feel free to leave a comment or share them with your friends when you do), you would see that within 1 article, I talk about MAny many things.. Which is good, except, that is probably not the best way to get targeted audience into the lens and to let them know your expertise.

The key point to note is, you should NAIL THAT NICHE.

The idea is to go deeper and deeper into the topic at hand and create specific articles that cater to specific sections within the topic.

For instance if you take a look at the Tips on Photography article, these are the topics I cover within that 1 lens
1. Why is photography a good hobby
2. How to make money with photography
3.  How can photography be used to create unique product items
4.  Photography can encourage travel
5. Mountain photography
6. Sunset Photography

Now what if I told you that while this is good, what would make you establish yourself within the niche of photography if you create an article or lens on each of these sections and see how much more you could narrow it. Whilst it may sound overwhelming, it is possible and is certainly a way of destroying any writer's block! Imagine 1 article can now create 6 (and even more) tighter niched articles that would attract readers coming for specific information.

In this accord, I did work on narrowing it down a little
To narrow down to 1 form of photography within an individual lens, I wrote about Waterfall Photography

To touch the topic on photography and travel, I thought it would be nice to write about some travel locations and added some nice pictures. So on that note, these were the lenses I wrote.

Irvine Parks-Great Attractions in Southern California
Heritage Park in Irvine, CA
Irvine Regional Park
Orange County Zoo
 
There was something I wondered at that time... is there such a thing as too tight a niche.... The answer is coming right up on the next post...

So meanwhile, do share what topics you see yourself writing in and how many potential articles  you think you could create out of it. This isn't necessarily just for Squidoo. You can use this technique anywhere online.

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