Then There’s SEO Writing

Getting ready to write a blog post? Think about search engines while doing it for more traffic.

Good SEO writers are well-versed not only in adding keywords, but in adding them eloquently and with proper branding in mind. We’ve all seen pages where it looks like keywords were just haphazardly added to existing text. If your keywords stick out like a sore thumb, experiment with reducing the density or adjusting the writing. Google is now penalizing people for over-optimization, so choose and use specific keywords in your content but don’t overdo it.

Breaking out new pages for key topics in an existing page is a great way to add more content with less severe repetition of keywords. If there is one sure way to get yourself noticed in the wrong way, it is to deliberately “keyword stuff” your pages with too many keywords. As long as you can create a quality new page for a given extra topic, go for it. Just don’t add pages merely to increase your page count. Pages that don’t create engagement may be ignored by Google. Some experts say that pages with a high bounce rate should be deleted, as they will drag down the rest of your SEO. So while larger sites are an ideal, don’t make your site big by adding “fluffy” pages just for sheer mass.

Quality is Key for SEO Blogging

Quality is key and Google is getting better and better at tracking quality. Google can track if users hit the “back” button and return to their search results, so be careful not to drive that hard-earned traffic to pages that deliver a limp user experience.

Google’s Panda and Penguin Algorithm Updates

What impact do Google’s recent updates to its search algorithm have on your content creation efforts? Plenty.

The Google Panda search algorithm update that was first released in early 2011 is designed to penalize sites with weak content while rewarding sites with quality content. As long as you are producing good, quality content, your website should not suffer any negative effects from Panda. If you don’t add unique value to the web or if your site has duplicate content, you’re toast. Not to mention your users will think you are lame. So the days of weak content are coming to a close and the era of high quality is upon us.

The Google Penguin update penalizes black hat link-building techniques that rely on heavily sculpted “exact match” anchor text (sites where 60% of anchor text was for “money” keywords) and comment spam, among other tactics, to artificially inflate search rankings. Part of this update is about devaluing links from crummy sites that no one visits. In a way, this update is also about quality.