Still More Tips for Writing Articles
Continuation of Lesson 18 from You Can Make
Money Writing
Continuing the lesson we have more great tips for writing
articles that deliver traffic...
Write Like You Speak - Almost
You don't want to actually write like you speak. There is
no reason to say the same thing three times, nor to include mistakes
and poor explanations. But a conversational tone is a good idea,
and you should keep the language simple.
An article on how to raise tomatoes, for example, should be
written as though you were explaining the process to a friend.
In fact, until you develop your style, you might want to have
a friend read your articles to see if he or she understands everything
you are saying in them. Imagine explaining something in the simplest
terms, and then editing your conversation to remove unnecessary
parts or to simplify some points further - that's how you should
write. In other words, write like you speak - but not quite.
Why Just One Keyword?
You may have noticed that I've suggested several times to
"target" just one keyword with each article or page.
It may seem that since you could be getting traffic from searches
for six or seven different search phrases (keywords), you should
try for all of them. But there are several good reasons to stick
to one.
1. The Writing Is Better
It is awkward enough to write with one keyword in mind, let
alone trying to consciously work in several more. The quality
of the writing would likely suffer.
2. Other Keywords Are Included Anyhow
You really don't know all the ways people will search. I wrote
a page about exploring an old mine, and a friend found it, but
by searching for "phantom canyon." That was where the
old mine was, which I mentioned in the story, but never considered
as a keyword. Obviously people can find your article or page
by way of many different search terms that you may not even guess
are "keywords."
The point is that related keywords will always appear in your
writing without any special effort. If you're writing an article
that targets the keyword "treasure hunting," you definitely
have the keyword "treasure" in it, and possibly "metal
detector," "hidden treasure" and related phrases
that people may be searching. If you write an article on "saving
money on groceries," it might have the keywords "coupon"
or "grocery coupons" in it. There's really no need
to try for more than one primary keyword. Others follow automatically.
3. Keywords Are Too Valuable to Waste
Okay, let's suppose that you want to write an article or put
up a page on walking sticks for your website about hiking. A
bit of research shows that there is traffic for "hiking
sticks," "hiking poles," "hiking staffs,"
"walking sticks," and "trekking poles." Now,
you know that all of these searchers are potentially looking
for the same thing, or at least could all be interested in your
article.
There is a problem here. If you write solely about "walking
sticks" you won't get the traffic from those others searches.
Realizing this, you might be tempted to include all these keywords
in the article. This could make the writing very awkward, of
course, as you constantly refer to walking sticks by four other
names - and try to use every one of them three times or more
for proper optimization.
That kind of "keyword stuffing" might also mean
that you don't properly optimize for any one of the five. In
that case it may be that very few searchers find the article
using any of the search phrases. That would be the opposite of
you intention, of course.
Also - and this is important - you would have just one article
for five potentially good keywords. That is what I call "wasting
keywords."
The solution? Write an article for each decent keyword. The
first one might be "Walking Sticks - How They Save Your
Knees." The second could be "Tips For Buying Trekking
Poles." The third; "Carve Your Own Hiking Staff."
You get the idea. Don't waste good keywords - target each one
in its own page or article.
Now we turn to some more advanced tips for writing articles
that deliver traffic...
Continues here... Hypnotic
Writing Techniques
Note: This is part of the book, You Can Make Money
Writing. There are links to all the all the lessons/chapters
on the home page.
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