Clued in on SEO Keywords
Learn how and where to use the best SEO keywords to increase page rank and views.
If you've read the article, "Make Money Writing Online: A Beginner's Guide", I will assume you have already joined one or more writing sites. If not, click on the article title to open it in a new window, and join one or more of the writing sites. I suggest more than one, and we'll discuss that in a later article.
In the beginner's guide, we briefly touched on keywords, so you probably have somewhat of an idea of how they work. Now we'll talk about how and where to use them.
Most online writers will make mistakes when they first start. Yes, I am speaking from experience. Rather than taking the poke and hope approach that I used, you are actually taking the time to learn how to be a successful online writer. That puts you ten giant leaps ahead of where I was as a newbie. I wrote whatever came to mind, clicked that publish button, sat back and waited for the cash to roll in. Which, of course, it didn't.
People want specific information within a certain topic. They want easy to read, easy to understand, accurate information. The trick is, know what they want to know. I use several free, online tools to select the best search engine optimized (SEO) keywords for each article I write. I begin with identifying search trends related to my topic using Google Insights for Search. The results show me the trends for a specific search word or phrase for a specified time period, and a specified geographic area. It also gives the top 10 related searches, and identifies rising trends.
Once I have selected some basic keywords, I move on to Google Adwords Keyword Tool, and refine my search even further. Finally, I check out the competition to determine which of the best keywords have the least amount of SEO competition. For more detailed information, and the links to these tools, see "How to Choose and Use the Best SEO Keywords Free".
As a writer, you think like a writer. The successful, online writer thinks like an advertiser. What will get the best results? Whether the sites you choose to write on use an ad click method or page views to generate revenue doesn't matter. The advertiser wants people who may be interested in what they're selling to see their ad, as much as you want people to read your article. Selecting appropriate keywords will help people interested in your information find your content.
Once you've written your article, using at least one keyword in your title, and using the top few in the first 250 characters, and 3% of the total content, you will enter them into the tags, or keyword list for the article. Don't discard them yet, you will be using them repeatedly. I would suggest saving them in a file. Publish your article, and then bookmark it on the social bookmarking sites. Most of these have a place for you to enter tags as well as a comment or brief description. Use you keywords here. Enter the keywords as tags, and then either write a comment using them, or simply copy and paste the first two or three sentences of your article into the text box.
By doing this, you are creating anchored backlinks to your article. More simply put, you are voting for your page. The more votes you get, the higher your page ranking in the search engines, and the more views you will get. There are other ways of getting those anchored backlinks, which I will cover in a future article. If you would like to read a little more on the subject, read "Best Ways to Get Anchored Backlinks to Your Hubs Without Social Bookmarking".
If you've done your job with the keywords, your article should start making money. Maybe not much at first, but that is the beauty of online writing. Your articles will continue to earn money long after the publication date. There is your passive, or residual, income
One more thing, don't send those keywords to the recycle bin yet. You'll be learning more ways to put them to work for you in the next article, Make Money Writing Online: Blogging.
www.woodstreetsjournal.blogspot.com, will have a listing of all the articles in this series, as well as links to other, related articles. So, if you miss one, stop by and catch up.