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Hello, and welcome. My name is Ben Kessler and Iím an editor here at Mediabistro. Today
weíll be discussing how to write for SEO. Weíll give you some practical, simple techniques
that will ensure that your writing will find just the right audience.
Start with the acronym itself: SEO stands for search-engine optimization. Letís face
it: These days, most people who are curious about a certain topic arenít heading to their
local library, at least not at first. Theyíre turning to Google and other search engines
to find information and content on their subject of choice. The term ìSEOî refers to the
process that we humble content creators can use to maximize our Google exposure.
Whether youíre writing a blog post, an article for publication, marketing copy, or even an
ìAbout Meî section for your own website, there are some very cool and subtle ways to
incorporate SEO into your writing. In this tutorial, weíre going to focus on keyword
research and implementation. So letís get started!
First off, what are keywords? In this context, keywords are the terms that people commonly
type into a search engine. A very general and popular keywordólike ìNew York City,î
for exampleówill yield hundreds of millions of results in Google. A more specific keywordólike
ìPark Avenue South, NYCîówill yield a fraction of that amount.
According to a recent report by iCrossing, a digital marketing agency, 95% of search
engine click-throughs come from the first page of results. If youíre on page two, you
donít exist. So all your SEO efforts should be planned with that in mind.
Keyword research is all about choosing the search terms that best suit both your goal
and your content. In general, itís a good idea to choose one primary keyword and two
secondary keywords. Once youíve selected these, youíll want to incorporate them into
your content in strategic and unobtrusive ways. But weíll get to that later.
To demonstrate how keyword research works, letís get concrete. For the purposes of this
exercise, letís say that youíre a food blogger whoís planning a blog post on how to make
a delicious breakfast. Wait, wait, wait. Slow down, Shakespeare. If you want people to read
this thing, itís going to have to appear on the first page of search results for a
relevant and reasonably popular keyword.
How do we measure the popularity and relevance of keywords? Googleís Keyword Tool. Thatís
right, the ruler of search provides a free online tool that you can use to gauge the
strength of any keyword you choose. To find it, Google the phrase ìGoogle keyword tool.î
(And I am the Google Keyword Tool at this point.)
OK, so here we are inside the keyword tool. Hereís where we can get a unique perspective
on how people use Google both in your country and around the world.
To see how it works, letís try typing in a keyword here where it says ìWord or phrase.î
As per the subject of our blog post, letís try typing in ìbreakfast.î
And we see that the keyword ìbreakfastî has been entered millions of times in the
past month. The ìglobal monthly searchesî column shows you the average number of total
monthly searches for that keyword; the ìlocal monthly searchesî column shows you the monthly
average for your country only. As we can see, ìbreakfastî is definitely a popular keyword.
One more thing youíre going to want to look at is this nifty little ìcompetitionî meter.
This shows you how heavy the competition is for prime placement in search results for
this keyword. Whoops, according to the competition meter, there are quite a few people gunning
to be king or queen of ìbreakfastî on Google. Because you want to be on the very first page
of results, not just one of the first 100 or so, you need to fight the fights you can
win. ìBreakfastî might not be the best choice of keywords for you.
So now itís all about building a better keyword. To find one thatís not so competitive, letís
get specific. What if, instead of trying to take on the whole meal, we drilled down to
the individual components of the meal? Instead of breakfast, letís enter ìscrambled eggsî
and see what happens. Now this looks like a much better candidate for your primary keyword:
Itís got a low level of competition as well as a healthy amount of searches each month.
Thereís a lot more to learn about SEO. For the full version of this tutorial, go to Mediabistro
How-To videos.