Thanks for a good site, Deb. I’ve been freelancing successfully for more than 10 years, but I always learn something here.

Eve

It’s a common misconception among freelance writers that SEO necessarily equals poor, awkward writing. Well, while people waste their time nurturing this silly belief, I win more writing jobs and make more money.

When I started out, I wrote a lot of SEO articles. They were brutal. How do you fit “buy cheap refrigerator” into an article? 99% of the time, the client doesn’t want you to alter the key-phrase at all, so the options “buy cheap refrigerators” or “buy a cheap refrigerator” are right out.

Explaining SEO to clients has become infinitely more difficult due to all of the “SEO experts” out there. SEO is a lot simpler than it has been made out to be, especially for those using platforms such as WordPress, where 80% (or more) is done for you automatically.

I have seen more incorrect information published about the “nofollow” attribute than correct, for example. The way “nofollow” works changed over a year ago, and yet I still see “experts” recommending its use incorrectly.

A well written, relevant article is already well prepared for search engine ranking, and should not require a lot of editing for SEO. Not only will the article be more likely to rank well, you will gain more inbound links and social media buzz if the article is more than Google fodder.

Ok, so the quality of your content matters as well, but here’s the thing: the best product doesn’t just naturally win out. The product with the best business behind it does.

You are correct, the product with the best business behind it (or rather, best practices) will win out over another product with poor marketing (and in this case, SEO). However, I think it is important to illustrate that you need a good product before you ever consider marketing one.

The single most important aspect of gaining and maintaining healthy traffic flow is good content that people actually care to read. You can pump your blog with SEO best practices, promote it like your life depended on it, but none of it will matter much if the content isn’t well written and full of what people expect to find from their Google search.

The absolute first thing anyone needs before they even think about SEO, is something actually worth ranking.

You’re on page three of Google for “Find Cheap Refrigerator” Good job with the SEO for that topic

Seriously though, I am a writer first and an “SEO enthusiast” second. I firmly believe that if you are writing content that will be published online (versus print) you need to lean the basics of SEO and how to incorporate good SEO practices into your work. Here is an example of why:

Freelance Writer A: Great writing talent. On average 1/2 of your client’s readers click through and read your post.
Freelance Writer B: Great writing talent, on par with Writer A. On average 1/2 of the site’s audience reads your post. This writer knows how to effectively utilize SEO best practices. As a result the post stays in the top 3 Google results on multiple keyword phrases for several months. This equates to thousands or even tens-of-thousands (or more) new readers/customers/ad views for your client.

If this client has the budget for one freelance writer, who do you think will get the future work? It will be the writer who provides excellent articles and can also drive new traffic to the client’s Web site.

Don’t let common misconceptions fool you. SEO and good writing is not an either/or endeavor. SEO slides into articles and blog posts just as easily as quotation marks and correct punctuation. SEO requires additional effort from the writer as good SEO practices is a lot more than just peppering a few keywords here and there while you write.

At the start of k-12 Learning, I tried to give my writers as much freedom as possible to write the best teaching content out there. But , looking back, I have to say it was slightly naive. You need the keywords, it’s a fact of life. But it shouldn’t dominate your piece.
What I prefer nowadays is for my writers to think of an article they want to write about but I make sure they have a good keyword phrase and meta description out there too. And the better articles have both seo and well written content.
But some do get lost in the fray if you don’t nurture them. Spiders have to find you, and unlike normal publishing content there has to be some sort of road sign to help you out. This is entirely different from just using cheap traffic tactics to get views. That’s not how k-12 learning got to almost 400k a month. It got there because of the quality content. But SEO does help, and we shouldn’t see it as our enemy.
Just some food for thought.

Maryam

I doubt I do SEO well, probably because I was trained to write for newspapers.

But it’s hilarious to see how people find me. I’ve written about the searches that ended at The Green Room a couple of times. I get frequent hits from people searching for “butterfly poop” and an alarming number of people looking for information about sociopaths.

I don’t think they’re related.

I think SEO is like a headline. It may attract your attention, but ultimately the rest of the copy has to actually sell the product.
A sign that said “SHOES” might get you to look more closely, but if the shoes had ripped soles, were ugly, or cost $5000 a pair, you’d probably move on. Guys reading this may substitute “video games” for shoes.

Robots and spiders may bring attention, but ultimately people have to read the words and people will make the decision to buy (or not). The robots won’t.

Besides, when Google recently wanted to sign people up for Adwords accounts, they used…. postcards! (I know because I got one).

It isn’t uncommon to see two different “experts” recommend exactly the opposite thing, such as using the “nofollow” attribute in one’s links. Google changed how nofollow works about a year ago, and most people still have absolutely no idea.

Personally, I haven’t done much with SEO on my personal blog. I do try to optimize my professional sites as best I can, and will probably work over my own blog when I get the time.

I do believe, however, the most important part of gaining good traffic and search engine rankings is to write good content that people actually care to read.

However, I’ve done a bit of digging around, and I’ve been on (and off) the web since 1994.

Here’s what I’m confident about:
1. Short term results: SEO matters, alot.
2. Long term results: SEO almost doesn’t matter at all.

By long term I mean a couple of years.

If the market is “hot,” SEO matters a lot more. You will have a lot of competitors who are very good writers… and very good at SEO/SEM as well.

Quick tips:
1. Make sure your element is accurate and descriptive.
2. Make sure your article title is attractive to readers and enclosed in

Just getting these done right seems to be about 50% (I have qualitative results).

Two more, which are as much SEM as SEO:
3. Write an effective subtitle. Oct 10 2009 article on this on WIAW.
4. Write your meta description for readers, not for search engines.

P.S. I wrote for About as well (Guide to Weblogs, back in the day.)

Aww thanks, Laura. It’s been a week of self doubt and this made my day!

Keyword writing is another reason there’s such crappy content flooding the web too. Because the pay for a lot bulk keyword work is low, there are a lot of poor writers, or writers without a good command of the language who are writing. It adds insult to injury.

A well-written and well-executed article, giving people what they want to know, giving people something of value, will attract links. And in some cases the amount of links will outweigh the “keyword-heavy text”.

For example, article A is a quick-hitter about subject X and uses the keyword “subject X” 8-10 times in the article. It’s an okay article, but it’s just an overview and doesn’t get much attention.

Article B gives an in-depth analysis of subject X, but somehow only uses the keyword once. However, because it’s so informative and well-written it garners a ton of links from people recommending it on their blogs or even a nice juicy link on an .edu site.

Clearly article B is the better of the two despite the lack of keyword usage. Quality over quantity. However this is an example and not the rule.

The truth of the matter is to write for the user/reader and write well. Write well enough so people want to read your work and link to your work and tell others about your work. And if you can work in a keyword or two without making it overbearing, so much the better.

Keep your readers first in your writing and then incorporate SEO if possible. I have seen many websites get great rankings using the low end of the keyword density level.

Just my .02 cents