Monday, January 23, 2012

5 SEO Trends Writers Should Target in 2012

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pFreelance writers need to deal with web content all the time, as more and more of publishing goes online./p
pAlthough the basic principles of good writing don?t change in the online realm, there are certain differences that writers should be aware of. One of the most important aspects of online content is that it should be easily searchable by search engines, especially Google. /p
pThis is what ultimately gives power to online content, because people are able to search and get to the content they are looking for. /p
pIrrespective of what kind of online content you write, it always helps to know about search engine optimization, or SEO. If you are new to SEO, you should look at our a href="http://freelanceswitch.com/industry-tips/freelancers-seo-guide/"SEO guide/a for deeper information on the subject. /p
pIt helps to know that SEO is not about keyword spamming or including some peculiar grammatically incorrect keyword into your writing as many times as possible. This is, in fact, the worst thing you can do from an SEO point of view. /p
pSEO trends change all the time as search engines evolve. It should be noted that the ultimate goal of search engines is to deliver the best quality information on top. The means to this end differ all the time and thus the changing SEO trends. Here are some of the things you need to be aware of in 2012 with respect to what is good SEO and what is not.span id="more-23206"/span/p
h3Title Tag and Headings/h3
pTitle tags are still very important. This means you should be able to define a topic in a crisp manner, which also excites and induces the reader to read (click) the article that you have written. /p
blockquote class="pullquote"pAs for the heading tags, search engines still give a good deal of importance to these./p/blockquote
pThis is similar to coming up with catchy headings for essays or stories in magazines. As an online writer, however, you want to strike a balance between what seems like a great heading for readers to see and what search engines look for. Search engines, for example, would still like the main keyword that you are targeting in the keyword./p
pAs for the heading tags, search engines still give a good deal of importance to these. It also makes logical sense for an article to be split up into different parts. However, do be aware that a lot of dishonest webmasters have been abusing the heading tags, spamming their keywords into these. You will be severely penalized with poor rankings or worse if you attempt to do this. Headings should never be overdone. Use them when they make sense. /p
h3Article Marketing/h3
pA lot of webmasters still employ article marketing to promote their websites online. However, after the (in)famous a href="http://freelanceswitch.com/freelance-writing/latest-google-update/"Panda Update/a by Google, article marketing has lost its value a great deal and doesn?t retain the power that it used to. /p
pIn 2012, you can only expect this to get worse. Even highly trusted article marketing sites like Ezinearticles, Squidoo, Hubpages, etc. have been severely impacted by the Panda update./p
pYou might still want to use article marketing, especially for new sites to be indexed quicker by Google and to build some backlinks, but do be aware that they are not going to do the magic for your rankings that they were capable of a year ago. /p
h3Leveraging Social Media/h3
pGoogle announced that it is going to include links from social media into its rankings with its a href="http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2011/02/update-to-google-social-search.html"announcement on social search/a. This is a big change for traditional SEO that seldom cared for social media. Now, writers need to be aware of this angle. /p
blockquote class="pullquote"pSocial media is only going to trend up in the coming months and years, so every writer should be aware of its importance in SEO and rankings./p/blockquote
pThe way you can leverage social media is by creating viral content that naturally gets shared across social media. This could include lists, guides, how-to?s, personal experiences, etc. Before you write an article, think about this #8211; if you accidentally came across this article online, would you share it on your Facebook or Twitter? /p
pSocial media is only going to trend up in the coming months and years, so every writer should be aware of its importance in SEO and rankings. You should also be aware of the different strategies used to share and promote content utilizing social media. /p
h3Fresh Content When Applicable/h3
pThat?s right, Google is now also looking at fresh results whenever applicable, as rolled out in a href="http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2011/11/giving-you-fresher-more-recent-search.html"Google?s Freshness Algorithm/a. This change reflects the way searchers use Google. As explained in the official Google blog post, if say you are searching for the latest score of the Mets game, chances are you are not interested in the historical scores of the team. Fresher content is thus welcome. /p
pThink of Wikipedia. If something changes in the world, it is immediately reflected in Wikipedia. Are you surprised that Wikipedia ranks so high in Google for most relevant keywords? /p
pIf you have content that needs to be updated with fresh information, by all means do so with the help of an update or edit. This will only make your content look newer and potentially more relevant to Google. /p
pThis is probably not the first thing that writers think of when they want to write an article. Now, you might need to revisit your work and make it more relevant, reflective of the changing times. This can be a significant deviation from what freelance writers are used to #8211; write and forget. /p
h3Long Detailed Posts Win/h3
pGoogle has always appreciated longer, more detailed posts whenever it makes sense. For example, if you are writing a guide, chances are, you have a lot of information to share. Making the guide more comprehensive would be good for you, instead of breaking it up into many smaller chunks. /p
pLong posts have an added advantage of lateral search indexing which helps Google classify the content more accurately. It also usually provides a higher level of authority. They get linked to more often as well, all of which are good for SEO. So whenever possible, even in the world of 140 characters and status updates, longer and comprehensive content win in the end. /p
pemPhoto credit: a title="Attribution License" href="http://photodune.net/wiki/support/legal-terms/licensing-terms/"Some rights reserved/a by a href="http://photodune.net/item/seo-target/935399"alexskopje/a/em./p
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