I spent quite a bit of time lately reviewing articles at EzineArticles.com and I’m really surprised to see how little article authors are implementing simple SEO strategies. It made me stop to wonder, what is the purpose of writing an informative and useful article without even doing simple optimization for the search engines?

I came across several articles that didn’t even utilize effective anchor text in the links within the resource boxes. Many resource boxes simply contained links to the actual url without any anchor text at all. When you’re viewing an article at EZA, if you view the page source you can see what keywords they assigned to the article. This is a terrific way to find additional keywords for your niche and you would be surprised at how often people are not researching properly for sensible keywords.

I agree that whatever you are writing should be geared towards your audience – you should always write in such a way that compels your readers and provides useful and relevant information. But that doesn’t mean you have to forego optimizing for the search engines! With a few simple steps you can write keyword rich articles while still maintaining your writing style and create a stunning article:

Don’t neglect keyword research

A popular approach is to find long tail keywords which are phrases that contain 3 or more words. While these phrases may get searched on a lot less that generic 1-2 word phrases, they are often much more targeted and less competitive. There are many keyword tools available both free and paid, but I suggest you use a combination of tools to get a solid understanding within your niche. Different tools aggregate their data from different sources, so don’t isolate yourself within just one tool. (more…)