While the field of content article writing can be quite lucrative, it’s wise to consider the underlying reasons and motivations for wanting to begin this specific type of job.

Getting Educated
We will need to get you trained on how to do this program. We will assure you it will be painless. Just keep in mind the reward is worth your time to go through the training we provide. Out of all of our members/colleagues, we have yet to have anyone tell us this was a waste of time. As a matter of fact we get about a 99% positive response for all the members who have gone through this program.

No Experience Required
Many times you see this mentioned by different companies and you usually want to run the other way. Not this program! We designed this for someone who has never written an article in their life, and why we will cover every detail you need to learn to be a successful content writer. We leave no detail out of this program.

We will take you from start to finish, and let’s start by giving you an understanding of where this program originates from.

Training Curriculum:
Module 1 – Is Being a Content Article Writer Right For You?

 

Are You Ready to Be a Content Article Writer?
As exciting as beginning a new job sounds, you need to take the time and make a plan to succeed. Successful businesses or careers don’t just spring into existence overnight. They take plenty of planning, management and active involvement to build them to a point where they might be considered successful.

There is also a shift in mind-set that goes along with being self-employed. Instead of your employer or manager assigning your daily work tasks, this is something you’ll be doing on your own. That might sound like fun at first, but the reality is that many people struggle to be self-motivating.

Some newly self-employed people find that they’re happy to get the fun jobs done, but they’ll procrastinate about the more mundane jobs. Putting off the jobs you don’t necessarily enjoy could be detrimental to your business.

What we are getting at is that you will need to commit to doing this program, and it will grow to any limit.

Who Should Be a Content Article Writer?
If you really feel compelled to run your own business, or be self-employed and aren’t put off by the challenges ahead of you, then you could just be the right type of person to begin a content article writing career.

There are some common attributes that many successful entrepreneurs and self employed people share. These include:

• Vision
• Passion
• Drive
• Ambition
• Motivation
• Dedication
• Determination
• Persistence
• Patience

Don’t panic if you don’t posses all of these attributes. Many of them can appear once you begin your business, such as a sudden increase in the amount of motivation you feel when thinking about work. Others may appear over time, such as patience and persistence. You may also learn a lot of determination as your writing career grows and requires more focus and time.

Of course, there are also examples of extremely successful business people who don’t share all of these attributes. They simply had a strong desire to work for themselves and earn enough money to enjoy a really stunning lifestyle.

The point is, the only person who really knows whether you should start your own content article writing career or not is you.

Why Should You Be a Content Article Writer?
Starting a content article writing career while the industry is still poised to expand and grow can be a wise decision. An increasing number of people are coming to rely on content article professionals in order to improve the rankings of websites/blogs and increase online visibility.

Search engine optimization content article writers is a highly sought after profession, not just for those people wanting to enter the industry as article writers, but by SEO consultants, webmasters, web designers and business owners as well.

Why Content Article Writing Is a Much Sought After Profession

There are multiple reasons why content article writing is a highly sought after profession.

• Freedom
The freedom to work your own hours, from the comfort of your own home and still earn a very healthy income is appealing to many people. This factor alone has contributed to the increase in popularity of content article writing as the profession of choice for many people.

• Growth Industry
With the economy not exactly recovering the way experts predicted it might, there are many businesses struggling to continue any kind of stable operation, let alone plan successfully for growth and expansion. Yet, content article writers are booming all over the world, despite all the doom and gloom surrounding them.

• Highly In Demand
As more people turn to the Internet to source better value for products and services, traditional business people are finally realizing the benefit of establishing a strong online presence for a brick-and-mortar business. Of course, these business owners aren’t capable of doing this alone, which means there are more and more of them seeking out professional content article writers to help them achieve the results they’re seeking.

• Earning Potential
The demand for professional content article writers is often reflected in their rates of pay. Established, content article writers can earn substantial amounts of money, simply because they can bring returns on investment, therefor increasing revenue for big sized businesses.

These are just a few of the major reasons why content article writing is such a highly sought after profession. Regardless of the reasons, it’s obvious that the industry will continue to grow and flourish for a long time to come.

Seizing a Huge Opportunity
The fact remains that the content article writing industry is still in its infancy. While there may be plenty of webmasters and business owners wanting to get their businesses online and visible in those search engines, this is just a drop in the ocean to the sheer number of businesses who haven’t yet made the move.

The best possible way to forestall any level of competition is to seize the opportunity in front of you right now. Get your content article writing career off the ground and running sooner rather than later. This gives you the chance to establish your name and develop a strong client base now.

It also means your career will be considered more favorably as a long-running, successful business by new clients viewing your proposal over a new-comer’s proposal in a few years time.

Full-Time or Part-Time
The transition between a full-time salaried job as an employee over to a full-time self-employed content article writer may require some careful thought.

There are intrinsic advantages to having the time available to work on establishing a business on a full-time basis. However, there are equally as many advantages inherent in operating a career on a part-time basis in the initial stages of development.

Will This Be Full Time Or Just A Hobby?
As each person’s financial situation and time commitments are unique, it’s important to consider the benefits and disadvantages of beginning a new business or career based on an individual perspective.

Having the time available to focus solely on building and sustaining an online business or career full-time can mean establishing that consultancy more quickly. Yet being financially dependent on a fledgling business with fluctuating revenue levels can be challenging.

Conversely, working on a part-time basis around existing time constraints can limit how much time is available to establish a new business or career. Remaining in paid employment throughout the week and only working on content article writing after work or on weekends initially may be useful to keep income levels stable. It also allows you the time to assess whether a content article writing is the right career option before committing too much time.

Is this a Good Time for You to Start an Content Article Writing Career?
The media bombards us with a plethora of negative press regarding the sorry state of business recovery following the Global Financial Crisis of a few years ago. This often leads people to believe that beginning a new business or career in this economic climate will be a bad move.

Yet, despite the consistent levels of negative press, thousands of new businesses have begun and prospered during difficult economic times all over the world. Especially online.

The shift towards online business for many real-world business owners has seen a massive influx of people seeking ways to expand their online operations further.

Essentially, this means right now is the ideal time to begin an content article writing business or career. The opportunity exists right now to develop a strong brand, a solid reputation and a profitable business while the industry is still in a growth phase.

A smart content article writer will use timing to advantage to establish a reliable client base and position the business well to withstand any onslaught of competition that may arise in the future.

Home-Based Business
Operating a small home-based content article writing business or career can mean working in an available space in your house usually on your own for large periods every day. It also means you will be the person responsible for all aspects of the business operation.

While working from home can sound like an attractive option for many people, think for a moment about the tasks you will need to work through each day in order to earn your revenue.

You may find that time management becomes one of your more important skills as you learn to juggle a day’s worth of content article writing work around invoicing, book-keeping, and communicating with publishers or clients.

Starting Small
There are benefits to starting small with your article writing. Working alone to establish clientele and work load can keep business costs to a minimum or at no costs while the business is growing.

Being a solo content article writer during the initial stages of your business growth can also give you perspective on whether this is the right business decision for your personal future career path.

This also offers the opportunity to put working methods and guidelines into place for how you prefer things to be done within your business that can be followed by future employees as you begin to expand.

A smaller business operation can be far more competitive on price for services provided. This could offer an advantage when competing for new business against a much larger company.

As the workload and client base increases for your business, you have the freedom to charge more for your articles, as well as employ a staff to help you if you choose.

Saving on office space and equipment
If you have the space available at home, consider setting up a dedicated home office. A spare room is ideal for this purpose. If you don’t have the room inside the house, consider converting a basement or attic space into a dedicated office.

Obtain Your Federal Tax ID
A Federal Tax ID can be obtained from the Internal Revenue Service and done directly through our EIN tutorial located in our “Resources” section in left side menu.

It is a good idea to have an EIN for this opportunity. It will most importantly protect your personal SSN, and publishers like to see EINs as well as it will make you look more established. Using an EIN is completely optional.

Accepting Payments
As many online businesses are truly global, you may find you have clients ordering work from different parts of the world. You can choose to only accept payment in your own home currency, or you can charge a price that equates to the identical amount of money, but is received in the client’s own base currency.

While some banks will allow you to accept payments in foreign currencies, you may find that the exchange fees charged by banks to accept, exchange, transfer and confirm those funds could be prohibitive.

The solution is that many online businesses choose to use the services of Third Party Merchant Accounts to facilitate easier global payments. The largest and perhaps most well-known of these is PayPal.

Using a third party merchant account such as PayPal can give your clients an easy way to pay you for your articles without giving out their personal banking details. It also allows you to accept payments in currencies other than your own, which is especially handy if you have clients from other parts of the world.

We do provide a tutorial on how to set up a free PayPal account in the “Resources” section in the left side menu.

You will also have the ability to get paid by mailed check, or direct deposit as primary payment methods.

If you can’t receive money by PayPal, mailed check, or direct bank deposit – Don’t Worry… we have payment solutions for just about every country, and every situation, which we will give you details on in the program. So rest assure you can get paid for your articles.

Module 2 – Understanding the Basics of SEO

Module 2 – Understanding the Basics of SEO

Module 3 – Keyword Research

 

The following have long been considered the foundation and most important aspects of solid SEO.

By far, the most important aspect and the key foundation for any SEO campaign is based upon keyword research. Without proper keyword research and planning, the likelihood of ranking a website or blog high in the search engines is slim. Typically not only are marketing efforts centered around keyword research, but also site design and architecture. Onsite navigation is usually also part of the keyword strategy.

The basic fundamentals of most keyword research strategies focus on keywords or phrases of high volume with minimal competition. Without getting into the various dynamics of this, the sole purpose of implementing such strategies is to firstly ensure sufficient demand, and also position the site in a way that captures this search volume to receive highly targeted relevant visitors.

Most SEO firms and consultants will base their keyword planning upon a multi level keyword topology. Which, in simple terms, means that they target primary, secondary and also long tail keywords as part of their overall campaign. These are explained further below.

The Purpose Behind Keyword Research
The basic purpose of keyword research is quite simple. Proper keyword research provides a foundation, or “blueprint” of which to build the proposed website upon. This maximizes both potential search engine rankings and the traffic drawing potential of the website itself.

Once this is achieved, the website is then in a better position to generate revenue through sales, advertising and other means. At the end of the day, more traffic usually means more money.

Primary Keywords
Primary keywords are generally search terms that receive the largest amount of search volume, and in most cases, contain the highest amount of competition from other competing sites. Whilst primary keywords are usually the most attractive in terms of getting traffic, they are quite often the hardest terms to rank for. This is generally because there are a lot of other site owners trying to rank for the same term. Ranking for primary keywords isn’t impossible, but to do so, may take months of continuous and highly targeted efforts.

Secondary Keywords
Rarely do SEO professionals rank a site based purely on one keyword alone. This is where secondary keywords come into play. Ranking a site for one keyword may be great, but ranking a site for dozens of keywords is a lot better, especially if there is sufficient traffic to support it. Secondary keywords make up part of the overall SEO strategy – that being, ranking the site high for multiple keyphrases and thus, bringing in the most amount of traffic. Secondary keywords are a great way to do this, and may also be easier to rank for, due to a much lower number of competing web pages.

Long-tail Keywords
The term long tail keywords may sound unusual but its common amongst SEO professionals. Long tail keywords are typically made up of a number of words to create a “long phrase”. According to wikipedia, “the long tail in keyword research is basically an expansion of a core, generic, high volume keyword phrase to include numerous combinations and permutations of the keywords and their associated or relevant phrases.”

There are both advantages and disadvantages to targeting long tail keywords. The advantages are that long tail keywords typically have much less competition, making them easier to rank for. The other advantage is that long tail search phrases are usually much more targeted. Meaning that, the end user performing the search is being much more specific about the search term entered. For SEO professionals, this is a fantastic opportunity to attract very relevant and highly targeted search terms which may lead to increased revenue through sales, or affiliate marketing. The disadvantage however of targeting long tail keywords is that, in most cases keywords like this attract much lower search volume and therefor bring in less traffic.

Examples of Keyword Types

Primary keyword
Blue widgets
Secondary keywords
Red widgets
Yellow widgets
Long tail keywords – (Also known as Keyword Phrases)
Download blue widgets online Australia
Purchase blue widgets with red trim
Where to buy blue widgets for cheap

Performing keyword research can be done a number of different ways using a variety of keyword research tools and software. Some of the most common are:

• Google keyword tool
• Market Samurai
• Yahoo/Overture keyword tool
• Google suggest
• SEO Book
• Google trend
• Wordtracker
• MSN keyword forecast
• Hitwise

There are certainly more tools available, but we won’t be going into that in this particular chapter, but we will be going over this because it will help you locate the keywords needed for the article content. The basics of these tools are all very similar, to research search traffic volume based upon specific key phrases for marketing purposes.

Module 4 – Website Content

 

Before we continue, let’s define what falls within the realm of Website content —at least as far as SEO is concerned:

• Onsite navigation and website structure
• Articles, videos, blogs and images etc
• Headings, titles and descriptions

As a content writer your primary concern will deal with the articles, titles, and descriptions. The webmaster (website/blog owner or website/blog admin) will deal with all the other content mentioned above.

When will Websites Need Content?
A website will set in their meta tags how often they want the search engines to visit their site in most cases. So the more often the search engines visit, the more benefit the website or blog has to rank higher on the search engines.

The usual setting for the search engines a website or blog will have is:

• Never
• Monthly
• Yearly
• Always

If a website has their setting to “Always” then this site is in need of consistent content updates. If the website is getting visits daily and the search engines don’t see a change in content this can actually cause the website or blog to be indexed farther from the top pages.

Most websites and blogs are set to “Always,” so this tells you that the need for content is off the charts.

Content is something that websites or blogs most likely are going to need a lot of. Content is typically something that webmasters begin organizing immediately after the completion of keyword research. Content may be time consuming to websites and blogs, so its best to have this outsourced to free the webmasters to focus on their business. You will be the person they will outsource these tasks.

How Many Words is Enough?
Content may likely vary between campaigns, however a general rule of thumb that seems to be consistent amongst most consultants is article word count. Typically articles containing between 300-500 words seem to be most effective for SEO purposes. This is due to a variety of reasons. Not only can articles of this length capture selected keywords but they also cater for longer tail keywords, which is great for additional organic search.

Its always best for websites or blogs to vary their word count also, so the articles are of different lengths. This way they appear less “fabricated” and more natural in the eyes of the search engines. So because of this you will see article needs as low as 100 to 300 words, and as high as 1000 to 1500 words. Of course the longer articles will pay you more money.

Content Development
There’s a saying, ‘content is king’ in the online world, and nothing could be more truthful, especially from an SEO perspective. Content is the main asset of any website, and its this content that gets visitors, and hopefully keeps them coming back. The principle of gaining traffic through content is simple – focusing, and writing about subjects that people are actually searching for. This is where the leverage of keyword research comes into play. Keyword research determines the content to be published, and in turn, the expected traffic as a result.

However, this doesn’t necessarily mean doing some keyword research and publishing content onsite. When it comes to submitting content, there are certain rules that must be followed. That is of course to maximize your SEO content writing efforts. Failing to do so, could result in de-indexing of websites, and of course the publishers and websites don’t want to see that.

Here are a few considerations one must make when publishing content. These are :

• High quality content
• Keyword density
• Keyword integration

We will go over these three important considerations in more detail:

High Quality Content
High quality content is an absolute must for websites, or blogs to rank well within a particular niche. There’s absolutely no point in publishing rubbish content. Poor quality content will make it harder for websites, and blogs to gain natural inbound links and most likely increase bounce rates and less visitor frequency – all of which reduce your traffic.

By publishing high quality content articles, visitors will stay onsite longer, view more pages, and be more likely to share page links with others via various sharing means. Webmasters may also link back to websites or blogs if they feel their visitors may find your content articles useful.

Keyword Density
What is keyword density?

Keyword density is the percentage of times a keyword or phrase appears on a web page, (within content) compared to the total number of words on the page. Personally, our colleagues always aim for figures between 3 and 5% density. Certainly no higher than 5%. Anything higher than 5% we feel is ‘unnatural’ and begins to read more for search engines rather than actual readers. As search engines become smarter, they can detect what’s known as ‘keyword stuffing’ which I will cover soon, and this may result in penalties or lower rankings.

To ensure maximum SEO efforts are rewarded, it is important to have content written naturally, including a number of variations of the set keyword – and of course, avoid keyword stuffing at all costs.

We will explain more about the importance of keyword density when it comes time to start writing your articles.

Keyword Integration
Keyword integration is how your content incorporates and reflects your keyword research efforts. For example, lets say that you are wanting to target the following keyword “blue widgets las vegas”. An example of a title to reflect this particular keyword would be “Where to find blue widgets in Las Vegas”. Even though its not exact, the search engines will still give it credit, and at the same time, it looks far more natural to human readers.

There are conflicting theories about the positioning of certain keywords, how often they should be inserted into the page and how many variations of that particular keyword as well. Typically I try to avoid getting too caught up in the technical aspects and conspiracy theories surrounding this topic. So long as my content covers the subject well, contains my chosen keywords (and also some long tail keywords) whilst looking natural then I feel that this should be sufficient.

As said, it’s important to integrate search terms into your content in a natural fashion so that the terms make sense in context and complement the overall message of the page content. Do not indiscriminately load your content with terms that do not make sense in context, as doing so will leave a negative impression on visitors once they arrive at your page, and could be considered spam.

Before finishing up on the subject of content, we would like to touch on two other aspects of online publishing. These are two topics that I feel must be mentioned as they can really hurt you in terms of achieving decent rankings. These are :

• Duplicate content
• Keyword stuffing

We will touch on these two subjects:

Duplicate Content
What is duplicate content?

Duplicate content is content that has been published on the internet in more than one location, or URL. This becomes problematic because it’s difficult for search engines to decide which version is more relevant and the best quality to a given search query. To provide the best search experience, search engines will rarely show multiple, duplicate pieces of content and thus, are forced to choose which version is most likely to be the original and de-index any potential copies.

Therefor submitting duplicate content is not the best practice and most certainly something to avoid. If you’re going to publish to the web, make sure its always high quality, original content.

Keyword Stuffing
Keyword stuffing is the practice of purposely adding a certain keyword or phrase continuously within a page. From an SEO perspective this is highly considered to be unethical. Keyword stuffing is usually done in an effort to rank highly for that keyword, however doing so, usually has the opposite effect.

Keyword stuffing had been used in the past to obtain maximum search engine ranking and visibility for particular phrases. This method is completely outdated and adds no value to rankings today. In particular, Google no longer gives good rankings to pages employing this technique.

Content Uniqueness
Unique content, in its simplest form, is material on a website or blog that is completely different from content anywhere else on the internet. It is unique. The term usually refers to written words on the page, but can apply to other areas, such as charts or graphics, as well.

As they have changed, search engines are growing much more concerned with unique content. Although nobody knows the exact algorithm for the major search engines, it has become very clear that unique content is rewarded by increased page rank, and duplicate content is punished – sometimes quite severely. Duplicate content is content that is identical to material found on another website.

You will see in this program as well in our article writing tricks and tips we keep this in mind. So when you do your articles with this program you will be providing unique content.

SEO Content Articles

Did you know that almost 75% of people perform online research before making a purchasing decision. This is an increase from 49% from back in 2010. This is showing a trend that is growing that people are relying on search engines to provide them with what they need to make a purchase.

The bottom line is with these figures it is more important than ever that online businesses have their products or services sitting front of these people.

To get their products in front of people, online retailers have to dispense more information online, and to do this more content needs to be produces. This means more work for SEO content article providers (You).

With SEO everything starts with content. The way search engines find relevant information the searcher is looking for is by the keywords in the content.

What freelance writers need to be concerned with is keywords. What are keywords? Keywords are the words and phrases that web surfers type in when they search for things online.

For example, let’s say you were interested in starting a foreclosure cleanup business. You may not know anything about it other than foreclosures are hot in the news right now and you are interested in starting this kind of company.

So, you log onto your favorite search engine, (eg, Google, Yahoo! Bing, etc.) and type in the keywords “foreclosure cleaning business” or “foreclosure cleaning” or “foreclosure cleanup” or some other relevant keyword phrase.

Note: When you type words into a search engine to find something on the internet, the words you type in are called a keyword (one word) or a keyword phrase (two or more words with commas in between).

Example: Let’s say you run a website about wedding accessories that was getting very little traffic. One of the best ways to drive traffic to this site is to have keyword rich articles (ie content) about wedding accessories. To find out which keywords web surfers use the most often when searching for wedding accessories is to use keyword analyzer tool (aka keyword research tool)

Module 5 – Keyword Research Tools

 

Think of a keyword research tool as “electronic synonym generator.” What do we mean? Basically it creates alternate words/phrases.

This is what a keyword research tools are. They will even go a step further. They tell you for example, how popular a word/phrase is by showing you things like Search Volume and Advertiser Competition.

Search Volume, as described by Google’s research tool is:

“Statics showing the relative number of users searching for that keyword on Google. The low number represents a general low-to-high quantitative guide to help you determine how competitive ad placement is for a particular keyword.”

Advertiser Competition as it relates to Google’s keyword research tool is Statistics showing the relative amount of advertisers bidding on that keyword.

Now that you’re educated on the terms used, we will explain the important factor which is the “Search Volume.”

To locate search volume you can use special keyword research tools such as we will explain here with “Trellian’s Keyword Research Tool”

Try Trellian’s Keyword Research Tool – CLICK HERE

After you open the Trellian’s Keyword Research tool, you will see the following page:

Captcha Code: You will need to enter the provided Captcha code to get the keyword suggestions by Trellian.

Enter Keyword/Search: For training, enter “wedding accessories” in the “Enter Keyword” box.

After you have entered “wedding accessories” as the keyphrase, click “Search”

This is what the Trellian keyword research tool will give you:

 

As you will see Trellian will give you the relative keywords and keyword phrases related to “wedding accessories.”

It will show you first the data for the keyword or keyphrase you selected. It then will give you suggestions for related keywords for you to view.

Take a look at the “wedding accessories” keyphrase and suggested keywords/keyphrases.

Total: The total column will give you the estimated amount of times the keyword is being searched on average in a month. The higher the number the keyword has, the more searches it will get a month. Trellian uses what is called a search index rating. The easiest way to calculate the search amount is to add “000” to the end of the search index rating.

For example, in the list of keywords for wedding accessories, the keyphrase “wedding hair accessories” received a “29.” Simply add three zeros (000) to the end of that number and you can get the amount of searches a month, in the case of “wedding hair accessories” the search total would be 29,000 searches per month.

Local Monthly Searches: If you are writing an article for a local business then you would simply add a location to the keyword or keyphrase to get suggestions and search volume. For example, if you were to put “wedding accessories in Dallas Texas” as the keyphrase, then you would see local search keyword or keyphrase suggestions specific to that location.

Keep in mind what we have mentioned in regards to the local, because we will explain later how you can create articles for local websites which can bring endless amounts of work.

Google Keyword Research Tool
We will suggest another good keyword research tool provided by Google. This tool they provide is a little more detailed.

It is free to sign up and you can use it as a more detailed research tool if you choose.

If you want to sign up and use Google’s Keyword Research tool you can do so by CLICKING HERE

* In order to sign up/sign in to Google’s Keyword Research tool you will need to do so through your Google/GMail account.

Training Update: You are Half Way Done With Training!

So far we have taken you through what SEO is, how SEO works with the search engines to rank websites and blogs. The importance of using content, creating content, and using keywords to provide the needed content and we have shown you how to use keyword research tools. Your head may be spinning a little which is normal, and it will all start coming together as we move on in the training.

Module 6 – Getting Started – Understanding SEO Content Articles

 

Receiving Assignments
More than likely you will be receiving a list of keywords or keyword phrases from the client. Your client may be a publishing company, website or blog directly.

This is usually a simple process once you get your list of keywords/phrases from the client. You will just need to clarify the request. For example you may get an assignment that says:

“We would like you to create an article with the keywords – “wedding accessories,” cheap wedding accessories,” and “wedding supplies.”

Now as a SEO content article writer you would want to clarify whether the client wants all these keyword phrases in ONE article? or do they want three separate articles?

You would also confirm how many words they want the article, or articles.

Many times the client will ask your opinion, whether to do one article, or three articles. Your response to this is simple, to do three articles. Not just because you will make more money creating three articles, but it will produce three separate article content for the publisher, website or blog. You can explain from your knowledge of SEO that the search engines will better rank the website because of three separate articles with the keyword phrases separated for easier indexing.

If the client does want you to do one article with three keywords/keyword phrases that is fine. Using our article writing tricks and tools can do those types of articles with simplicity. We will be explaining more on that in a little bit.

Confirm Pricing With Client
We will be going over what you will be charging for articles a little later in the training. We will point out in this section that it is important to have a complete agreement of what you will be getting paid, before doing an article for a client.

Many times a client will have a price in mind based on their budget. When you first deal with a new client try to do the article for the amount the client has in mind. This will build a relationship and allow you to show off your article writing talent. Once the client sees your work it will inspire them to come back to you and send you more work.

Once you do a few more articles with a particular client you then have the option to start charging more, and usually the client will pay more if it is reasonable.

Placing Keyword/Keyword Phrases in Articles
A content article is very simple to write if the keywords or keyword phrases are simple. However, some clients may provide you with a phrase that is not conventional and can be a little tricky to create an article with the provided keyword phrase.

When you receive a keyword/keyword phase list from a client, the phrases may be awkward and your first thought is going to be “It’s not grammatically correct to put these words together in a sentence.”

For example, you may have to write a 500-word article with the keyword phrase “Mortgages Texas.” Not exactly a grammatically correct phrase.

This is where SEO writing can get a little tricky if you don’t know some rules of the game.

What a client may be trying to do is to optimize a web page for that phrase. Why? because that’s what the keyword research tool they use has shown them is the most popular phrase used when surfers look for info on “mortgages in Texas.”

And this is why not everyone can write quality SEO articles. You have to throw the conventional writing wisdom out the window, but still make it readable enough that it’s not just gibberish.

The following is how you might write a 500-word article that is optimized for the phrase “Mortgages Texas.”

Tip: FYI, you can put prepositions in between phrases without changing the keyword density, eg, “mortgages in Texas,” or “mortgages of Texas.” Or, separate them with a punctuation, eg. I don’t understand mortgages. Texas mortgages are…

The period between the mortgages and Texas doesn’t count in a search, so it’s still a valid keyword representing “Mortgages Texas”.

Also prepositions don’t count in a search. So the keyword “mortgages of Texas” is the same as “Mortgages Texas,” because the “of” is not recognized by the search engines.

Here is an example of a SEO article written about “Mortgages Texas” taking in to account what we just mentioned:

A few things to observe from the article above:

Use Subtitles: Notice how we used the keyword phrase in subtitles – example: “Mortgages in Texas Down Payment Tip:” or “Mortgages in Texas Loan Tip 3:” etc. This is a good way to get the keyword or phrases you are targeting more recognition. Also if you make the subtitles bold they stand out even more.

Linking Text: You will see in the article above (highlighted in yellow) we used linking text and made a note to the publisher to add their links as they desire in the yellow highlighted section. This is not required but will make you look like a professional SEO writer if you can do this. Sometimes it takes a few minutes of research and you can add value to an article like linking text.

Keyword Density: The above article is optimized for the keyword phrase “Mortgages Texas” As you see in the article that the term “Mortgages Texas” was used in about 3% of the article.

Which brings us to the next section we will need to discuss – Keyword Density.

Keyword Density
We covered keyword density in module 4, however we didn’t give you all the details you need to know about keyword density and your articles.

Keyword density is a % (percent) of times a particular keyword or phrase is presented in your articles.

Most SEO publishers or websites will want a keyword density of between 3 to 5% per 500-word article. This may be different from publisher to publisher, but the general rule is between 3 to 5%.

So if you are doing an SEO content article make sure you clarify the keyword density amount with publisher or website. Most publishers know that anything over 5% is a bad thing and the search engines will actually punish a site if a keyword is mentioned too much.

How to Check Keyword Density in the Articles You Write
There are a few ways you can check the keyword density in your articles. One way is to figure for every 100 words written, that the keyword or phrase targeted is mentioned 3 to 5 times. So a 500-word article the targeted keyword or phrase would be mentioned 15 times for a 3% density and 25 times for a 5% density.

We also will show you a online tool that will do not only the keyword density, the the article word count as well.

You will go to this site – http://www.textalyser.net

First Step: Copy and paste your article in the “Enter your text to analyze here” box as shown above.

Second Step: Remove any prepositions you may have used for keyword phrase. For example as in the article above we used “in” for the keyword phrase “Mortgages Texas” to make it more readable.

Third Step: Click the “Analyze the text” button and you will get a word count and list of words as shown here:

This tool will give you a total word count of your article (be sure to figure in the prepositions you removed to the total), and it will give you the word density % (frequency) of every word in your article.

Search down only your keyword or keyword phrase you are targeting in your article to get the % (percent). It should be at the 3 – 5% range, or what ever your target keyword density may be.

Use the above tool to check your articles word count and keyword density. After you have done a few articles you more than likely will not need to use the online tool as it will come second nature to know your article word count and keyword density.

A Few Tips To Remember
As mentioned there are a few rules and tips to remember when writing articles with keywords:

Search engines will ignore punctuation between keywords like colons, periods, etc. So for example, you can put a period between your keyword phrase.

Search engines will ignore prepositions such as and, by, the, in, etc. So you can put these between keyword phrases and still accomplish your targeted keyword.

Add subtitles with targeted keywords or phrases to your articles and make the subtitles bold.

Add linking text to the end of articles if possible.

Search Engines Could Careless About Grammar
One of the hardest things you will find about being a content article writer is abandoning perfection. You don’t have to have the best grammar when writing content articles because the search engines don’t care about subject/verb compatibility.

Now, there is never an excuse for bad grammar, and a poorly written article will reflect badly on you if the spelling is wrong and the grammar is terrible. That is not what we are getting at here.

A good SEO content article writer will be able to do is still write a cohesive, interesting content – even if the keyword phrase is awkward and you have to strain to get the density. So the point is that if you abandon perfection, you can still write a perfect article that may not be absolutely grammatically correct.

Module 7- How to Write SEO Content Articles

 

We are going to show you the steps to writing SEO content articles from start to finish.

After you receive an assignment do the following steps:

Step 1 Use the Internet to Conduct Effective Research:

The first thing you will want to do is after you receive the keyword list from client is hit the Internet. Go to your favorite search engine and type the exact keywords phrases on the list and see what comes up.

It is important to see what is available on the subject. This is even more important if you know nothing about the subject.

You may get results on the exact subject or get something close to related subject.

You will be able to find just about anything on any subject by doing this.

Step 2: Copy and Paste Useful Content:

Open a Wordpad or Notepad. You will want to go to any sites that may have useful textual content for you to use in your article.

Copy and paste any useful information on the subject of your targeted keyword phrases. Visit several websites and copy at least a few sentences from each site that contain the keyword or phrases you are targeting.

One thing to stay away from is quotes. Don’t copy any quotes as this usually is more personalized to a site.

This will allow you the ability to really expand your articles with the content you research.

Practically no content under the sun is new. What’s new is how it is written.

Step 3: Outline:

After you’ve done your short research, compose a brief outline of the article you want to write. The topics you’ve clicked on during your research and the content you’ve cut and pasted should give you some good starting points.

Important: Make sure that you do change the sentences you copied enough so they are not plagiarized. Usually just moving a few words around will do fine. Many publishers will run your articles through Copyscape to check for plagiarism. This is to protect them so they don’t get in trouble for copyright issues.

To give you an example of what we are talking about changing the sentence, take a look at this copied sentence from an article site on ceiling fans:

“In the rooms with the most traffic, if you want to circulate air, use ceiling fans.”

Here is what it looks like after we move around the sentence:

“If you want to circulate air in rooms with the most traffic, use ceiling fans.”

Not all sentences need to be moved around. With the millions of articles, and billions of sentences written there is bound to be some duplicate content on common sentences. Just use your own judgement if you think you need to move around a sentence.

Opening Paragraph: Try using 50 words for your opening paragraph. Use the keyword or phrase two times in the opening paragraph.

Subtitles x 4: Then add four subtitles in your article with the keywords or phrase in each subtitle and bold the subtitle.

After each subtitle write your article to total 100 words (including the subtitle word count).

After each subtitle use the keyword phrase twice in the subtitle article.

Closing Paragraph: Try using 50 words for your closing paragraph. Use the keyword or phrase once in your closing paragraph.

After you have done this you will have a 500 word article, with your keyword or phrase 15 times. This is a total of 3% keyword density.

Now you can read through the article and make any changes as needed. You can add or remove words to make the article sound better, just make sure to try to keep the same word count and keyword density.

Step 4: Spell/Grammar Check:

Run your article through a spell check and check for grammatical errors. We provide a writing tool in our Writing and Suggestion Tool which you will be able to use for both spell check and grammar check.

Final Step: Deliver the article to client: After you have completed your article it is a good idea to tag the article. What you will do is at the very top of article put something like: “Mortgages Texas” 502 Words.” This will allow your client to identify this assignment and making easier for billing purposes.

Delivery method to clients are as simple as adding the article as an attachment to the email, and send. Really short articles can be posted directly in the body of email.

Time to Complete Articles
The above method to create articles is considered the conventional way to create article. Using the above method will take you about 30 minutes the first time through. As you do more articles that time will be reduced to about 15 to 20 minutes.

If you look through the “Resources” side menu, we do have methods in our Article Writing Tips section that can create 300 to 500 word articles in ten minutes or less.

Module 8 – What to Charge for Your Articles and Getting Paid