BI Revolution

Marty's 5 SEO Writing Tips

I've written about how to write for humans and spiders extensively at http://scenttrail.blogspot.com/2009/03/seo-writing-2.html , but here are 5 "quick SEO Writing tips" to add to this excellent infographic:

5 More SEO Writing Tips
* Write out "Stop words" (words like I, and, but, we, them, they spiders can't understand).
* Be specific - one way to write out "stop words" is to be specific.

* Short Sentences - helps eliminate connections (and, but, thus, so).

* Short paragraphs - helps humans read online.

* Use subheads (H2s) - Only ONE H1, but you can have multiple H2s.

You may not know about "stop words". I was taught to gauge quality score by putting total words on the top and stop words on the bottom. If you have 10 words with 5 stop words you would have a "quality" score of 2.

I don't have to do the math anymore. Now I WRITE long and edit out as many stop words as I can before copy sounds spamming. Seeing words like "it", "they" or "them" I rewrite by being specific about those things. Sometimes I have to use alternative words since to use the main word to replace a non-specific word like "it" may mean the copy is too keyword dense.

Any word with MEANING is better than a stop word. Write "natural" and train your editing eye to see and replace stop words, long sentences and dense paragraphs. Web writing is more Hemingway than Faulkner, so punch those words out :).