How to Get Better Search Engine Rankings

Writing for online publication requires building skills in creating search engine friendly text. What may be a spectacular piece of writing in the world of print, may fail miserably in search engine rankings. The reason is quite simple. Search engines can not read your work and they really don't care about quality. They have a formula to follow that automatically ranks your writing by sorting it according to relevance. It is how that relevance is measured that provides the key to increasing your chances of ranking high with search engines.

Things You'll Need

• Patience
• Practice

Instructions

1. Realize that whether or not your work ranks high in search engines and is, therefore, noticed by readers, is not a reflection of your writing ability. It may reflect your ability to create search engine optimization (SEO) but it also reflects the ranking of the particular site you are writing for. Unless you have your own web site, this is one area that you have little control over. You do, of course, have choices as to where you publish your work.

2. Use keywords and key word phrases that accurately reflect the content of your writing. Keywords should be the words that would appear naturally in any piece of writing about your topic. For example, when writing about search engines, one would expect the words "search engine" to appear in the writing. You could artificially insert any choice of keywords, but if they are not relevant to the topic, not only will you alienate readers, you may get booted by search engines. A good percentage of keywords to aim for is 3 -5 %. More than this may be considered keyword stuffing and may be ignored by search engines.

3. Choose titles that reflect your content. Cute titles that don't give a clear picture of what the article is about don't usually rank well. Forget about the catchy titles you read in print and go for practical titles that are clear and concise. Make every word count and be sure that your keywords appear in the title.

4. Create a solid introductory paragraph. When search engines "read" content, the first paragraph is scanned for relevant information. If you have begun with a fluffy paragraph that you hope will get attention, you are probably wrong. Those wonderfully creative hooks your English teacher insisted you use, will probably not be helpful in maintaining SEO. Save your creative fanfare for print publishing.

5. Sprinkle the body of your work with keywords, but do not add them just to increase your ratings. If these words appear too often your work will not sound natural. If you have difficulty fitting keywords in without sounding natural, try adding your keywords in a area designated for summary, hints or tips.

6. Write a strong conclusion that ties your writing together and use your main keywords to do it. Search engines check near the end of your work to make sure it is still on topic.

Tips & Warnings

• Try using italics or bold to highlight your keywords in the introductory paragraph. If you can do both within the first few sentences, even better.

• Think like the reader and include keywords that they are likely to type into a search engine.