Free Writing Center

Written on November 24, 2009 – 7:01 am | by Ryan |

Through the years, I’ve learned through trial and error and by working for so many different clients, and seeing so many different results - what works and what doesn’t when it comes to search engine optimization. Like so many topics computer related, everyone is an expert. The truth is that when push comes to shove, the proof is in the pudding. How well can that person achieve long-term and consistent traffic?

The following are the top 3 tried and true methods that I’ve learned over the years that will consistently and effectively increase your search engine traffic significantly every month. These are not techniques that will instantly multiply your traffic numbers overnight, but over time and used consistently with every post you write, they will lay a very solid and powerful foundation for your website or blog.

Tip #1 - Choose the Right Topic

Probably the most important aspect of SEO is selecting a title that you can cover with experience and knowledge, that a lot of people are searching the Internet for, and that very few websites provide information about. Identifying such “niche” topics is the very heart of truly effective SEO. Trellian’s Keyword Discovery tool is one of the most effective free tools at your disposal to “discover” what topics are in demand right now.

The Keyword Discovery tool shows you how many searches for a particular term take place every single day. For basic blog postings and online writing, this information is good enough. However, if you you are looking to extract competition information (how many websites are already covering the keywords), then you’ll have to pay for the premium version of the tool.

Tip #2 - Focus on a Niche, Don’t Write About Everything

One of the mistakes that many online writers make is that they want to capture all of the keywords they find that have tremendous traffic. Hot keywords are only one aspect of attracting repeat visitors - you also want to dedicate time and energy into those topics that your visitors are coming to you for. If you’re running a website about Cars, then focus on a niche within that general topic - don’t try to cover car insurance, car repair, car racing, car tuning and every other imaginable topic with one website. All you’ll do is overwhelm your first-time visitors and drive them away screaming.

The website above is a perfect example of a website that’s simply trying to do too much in a very limited space. Keep your website straightforward and simple, and your visitors will appreciate it. Give them what they came for - don’t try to be everything for everybody.

Tip #3 - Effectively Distribute Your Keywords

The area that most online writers fail miserably at is effectively distributing the keywords that they’re trying to target. Unscrupulous SEO “experts” will take a clients money and then spam keywords throughout the client’s website. Initial traffic will be significant, but once Google catches on (and the SEO expert already took your money and ran), you’ll discover that you’re blacklisted and without any traffic at all. The key to effective keyword SEO is in discretely and very carefully placing a limited number of keywords throughout your article, in a way that the reader doesn’t even notice.

The example above is from a recent article here at FreeWritingCenter titled “Free Writing Classes.” As you can see, I carefully inserted the phrase into the article, and in one case included it as a bolded header for a section. Finally, I included the keyword text as “alt-text” in the various images throughout my article. The real science to distributing is knowing how many times to distribute the phrase based on the number of words in your article - and this is where the true value of a real SEO expert becomes apparent.