From what I see, many bloggers aren’t using hyperlinks when they publish blog posts. Worse, in some cases, they aren’t teaching writers about this in online writing courses. I just attended a week-long writer’s conference in San Miguel. and although there were a few workshops on blogging and online creative non-fiction writing, not one word about keywords or linking!
I could be wrong, of course, because I didn’t sit through the only two courses on social media and blogging basics. But everywhere I attended (there were three courses per day over four days), even opening paragraphs ignored this online basic fact of life: When publishing online, your content must be optimized for search engine indexing.
Granted, this was a course for fiction and non-fiction publications and writers. But if the experts aren’t teaching search engine basics to writers, where will they learn it? For sure, most journals are all published online.
Here’s the thing: when you follow the basic common sense rules for getting your article found online, it’s also good structure for making sense to the readers. Here’s why, reviewing three basics of search engine optimization and how it applies for both getting found and getting read:
- Opening paragraph needs to alert the search engines about the topic being discussed. What’s this article about? You use your keywords upfront and hyperlink them if you can. Although you want to be compelling so readers want to read your article, you want to be clear about the subject matter through obvious use of keywords and hyperlinking.
- Your title needs to place keywords prominently so the search engines and the readers know what the subject is, and are curious to read more.
- You need to repeat the keywords throughout your piece, so readers don’t get off track and can take away some key learning about your topic. You probably need to remind them of your point in your concluding paragraph to do this. (I don’t mean you should go over board and use the keyword ad nauseum).
I am clearly not a search engine expert, my expertise lies in writing quality content that helps you get found, get known and get clients. But no one can afford to ignore the online rules. Unless, of course, you don’t want anybody to read your piece.
I use ScribeSEO Tool, and it checks my content before I publish and tells me what I need to do to score well with the search engines. I don’t want to write for an audience of one.
The point I want to emphasize is that everyone, journalists, bloggers, and even fiction writers can apply the SEO basics and become a better writer. It’s not good writing to be so mysterious you readers aren’t sure what the piece is about. And it’s not good for search indexing either.
(Image: Stuart Miles at FreeDigitalPhotos.net)
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