Getting the Most Mileage Out of Your SEO Writing

Users read differently on the web than they do on paper. Web users scan web pages, pull out key information, prefer action oriented text and would rather read in short chunks rather than long drawn-out paragraphs. Search engines know this and reward web pages that provide this type of SEO writing with a higher ranking in their search engine. An effective web page provides quality content, written in the right format and uses SEO techniques.

Content

Effective web writing follows the inverted pyramid style of writing, according to Dot Marketing, Inc. The inverted pyramid style is similar to journalism news writing. Web readers desire to get to the point fast. Therefore, good SEO writing presents the most important information first. Starting with the conclusion, then following up with the details work best for web writing. You also want to answer as many of the "who, what why, where, when and how" questions as you can. Further, start out with a strong opening to catch the readers attention quickly. Use active writing instead of passive writing. Instead of saying: The golf ball was hit by the man" say "The man hit the golf ball." Use action verbs as they assist with concise writing.

Format

Remember that web readers scan copy and prefer to read in short chunks. Keep paragraphs small and writing tight. Short headings that break up text work well for web writing. The heading can be a noun, a question, or a short phrase. The user should be able to quickly scan the headings and know what the page is about.

Other formatting techniques can be used to help the web reader scan your content more quickly. Techniques such as bolding, underlining and italics can help to emphasize an important point. Using bullets is great, but works best when you are presenting steps, options or a list of items. Use these formatting techniques sparingly—about one to two times per paragraph suggests Dot Marketing, Inc.

SEO Techniques

A web page that ranks well in the search engine and draws in visitors employs SEO techniques within the SEO writing. It's critically important to identify keywords that users will search for when looking for the content, services or product that your website provides. There are a number of tools that can help you decide on great keywords. One of these is the Google Adwords tool. Additionally, if your website has an internal search engine, then check the logs to see the common search terms users used to locate information on your site.

The use of metadata is also important to SEO writing and SEO marketing. Although keywords are one type of metadata, there are others. For examples, headings, summaries, tags, author, and ratings are also considered metadata. If photos and videos are included on a web page, then metadata is needed to help the search engine understand the content of the video or photo. Page descriptions are another form of metadata and should include a 15-25 word description of the content of the web page. The web page description is often used in the snippet displayed on the search engine results page so it's important to get to the point fast and grab the intention of web user quickly.

With the social media explosion, it may make good sense for web companies to get on the Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter train to improve their SEO marketing. In a study conducted by SEOmoz Associate Casey Hen, tweets of a product launch and new posts in combination with internal links were indexed faster than by Twitter or internal launch alone.