One of the things I like to remind anyone who would like to become an article writer is that they need to remember writing articles for the web is vastly different from writing articles for print. If you remember this, you can be a successful article writer.
One of the major mistakes I see with new article writers is that the article writer often will use a pronoun or a word substitute when they should be using a keyword phrase. The following example will demonstrate this mistake:
Using a moisturizer every day is an effective way to treat dry skin. It should always be used after cleansing and toning the skin. To use it, apply a few drops of it to the palms of the hands and spread over the face and neck. When used every day, the skin is hydrated, soft, and supple.
In this case, as a reader, I know that the article is talking about a moisturizer the whole time, but if I were a search engine, I would have no clue. This type of article writing is exactly what gets article writers wondering why they aren’t making any money. They only used their keyword, “moisturizer” once! Let’s rewrite this article to reflect the better way to communicate the message, while also using strong keyword phrases:
Using a moisturizer every day is an effective way to treat dry skin. Moisturizers should always be applied after cleansing and toning the skin. To use a facial moisturizer, apply a few drops of the moisturizer to the palms of the hands. Gently apply the moisturizer to the face and the neck. For smooth, supple skin, use the moisturizer every day, moisturizing in the morning and the night.
In this example, we used the word “moisturizer” seven times. That’s a big difference. And, we didn’t just use keyword phrases, we used other terms that coincide with moisturizers. When search engines see other words that are related to the topic of the article, they know that there is valuable content on the page, and it isn’t just a site for spam.
Article writers who pay attention to using keyword phrases in their articles will see that their ads will more closely align themselves with the content of the article. Naturally, when the content written by the article writer matches the ads, the readers are more likely to take notice of the ads. This, in turn, results in more money for the article writer.
Jeremy, I agree and you are exactly right. One of the systems I talk about in my eBook is how to write well enough so that you are not boring your reader with obvious use of keyword after keyword. The search engines look out for their users and they want their users to find quality over quantity, and it will do you no good to produce bad content. Readers will disappear and never come back.
However, what I am referring to in this post is something I see a lot of new article writers do: they use their keyword once in sentence and then don’t use it again until the last paragraph of an article, maybe only using it two or three times in an 400-word piece. And then they wonder why they aren’t getting top results from search engines and why the money isn’t coming in.
It may be true that using pronouns instead of the word repeatedly isn’t great for SEO, but it’s bad writing to constantly repeat the word. There is no excuse for bad writing. Don’t you want an article to flow? Event trying to make money with your writing, we need to have some artistic respect.