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Compared to readers, search engines are easy to please.  When it comes to content, if you can write content that search engines like, so will your readers. So what do search engines like?

Everyone focuses on keywords when they think of search engines, however keywords are just one of many factors that need to be taken into account. In fact, keywords on their own mean little; it is how you use those keywords that is important. The following points will keep the search engines happy and coming back whilst at the same time keeping your readers happy.

Frequency: The more often you write, the more often the search engines will visit. If you can write daily then its a bonus, if not, at least write on a regular basis. The search engines will ‘learn’ your frequency and visit accordingly. So will your readers unless they subscribe.

Titles: Using your keywords in your titles helps the search engines to index your posts. Keywords in titles also help many readers classify the importance of the post.

Headings: Including keywords in heading also helps with the indexing of content. Using H1 or H2 formatting also helps.

Content: Keyword use in content is obvious, however don’t overdo it and do use closely related terms within context. Search engines are now going beyond simple keyword use and are looking at phrases and contextual use. Your readers don’t want to read keyword rich spam, they do want to read engaging content.

Linking: Linking to posts on your own site to external sites can also benefit your search engine rankings, so long as the links are related. Your readers will always welcome the opportunity to get other views or more information related to your content. Internal linking to related articles is always helpful for your readers. It also help the search engine to ‘find’ other posts.

URL Titles: Using the keyword in the URL will help with search engine rankings - they will also help your reader remember the post URL. Keep the post URL as simple as possible.

These are all straight forward steps that any writer can adhere to. Search engines, particularly Google will love the content. If the actual message is engaging then your readers will appreciate the above steps as well. You can write good blog content that satisfies the search engines along with your readers.

This is a how to with a difference. Follow these steps and your article is sure to either get rejected, or sit and not deliver any traffic or links. In other words, how to fail with an article directory submission. The opposite may see your article succeed.

• Publishing content that is of little benefit to readers.
  People read and use articles from article directories for one reason - they are going to receive some sort of benefit. If they want to reprint it on their site, their benefit is the addition to their site of a quality article which their readers will benefit from. If it is a casual reader, they are after information. Submitting an article about what you had for breakfast is not going to cut it - unless of course you can turn it into something useful or highly entertaining.

• Forgetting who your audience is.
  Who is your audience. A publisher or the general reading public? Writing an article for directory submission is not about writing to attract publishers. You are still writing for the general population. Publishers who are going to reprint your article will do so because their audience will appreciate the contents therefore they are looking for articles written with general reading public in mind.

• Keyword cramming and linking.
  If you cram your articles with keywords then readers will switch off. Publishers want articles that have an effective use of keywords, not an oversupply. Some directories  may even reject your article for keyword spamming. The same can be said for linking. Most directories disallow links within articles. Instead they provide a resource box where you can place your links.

Ultimately, writing articles that publishers can use is the most important approach to article writing. If your article is of little value to a publisher then it will sit there and never be used. Write an article that doesn’t comply with the directories guidelines and it will get rejected.

An article I found online:

7 Things I Hate About List Posts!

By Thomas Sinfield

Lists posts are becoming all to common in the blogging circuit. Here are 7 reasons I hate them!

1. They Insult The Intelligence Of My Readers

I mean seriously, are your readers 6 years old? I know people say that list posts are popular because people don’t have enough time to read a full post, but maybe if your posts were unique and entertaining, while being informative your readers wouldn’t get distracted. What list posts say to me, is that you think your readers can only read in 1-2 sentence blogs - please don’t insult their intelligence!

No they don’t. You have to keep in mind that your readers will vary in reading comprehension skill, intelligence, education, cultural background, and a host of other factors that affect their reading ability. Plus, people read lists as time savers. They are busy. If you write long, drawn out posts that take up a lot of time to read then people will pass up your blog and go somewhere else. You may not be insulting their intelligence, but you’ll sure be wasting their time and that’s disrespectful.

2. My Writing Skills Have Little Impact On The Posts Popularity

Ok. I have an ego problem - who doesn’t? I want to think that the reason my blog and it’s individual posts are popular and successful are a direct result of how entertaining I am or because I wowed my readers with my out of this world wisdom. But I can’t do that with lists.

People don’t care about your writing skills. They care about one thing and one thing only: What’s in it for me? Don’t give them what they want and they’ll go somewhere else to find it.

3. It’s Just Compiling - Only Skill I Need Is Googling!

Following on about my ego. This point really bugs me. Lists are just a compilation of things that a blogger has found by searching on the internet while thinking ‘Reckon people would Digg this?’ or ‘I wonder whether this will get people stumbling me?’ The only skill you need is to be able to google.

Wrong. Coming up with a list that is helpful requires creativity and critical thinking. Sure, you might use Google to help you in your research, but if all you do is type a keyword into the search box and re-use someone else’s list then you deserve to lose readers. Come up with something useful and make a list that is a good source or reference and you’ll get a lot of link bait. The skills you need to make a truly useful list are creativity and critical thinking - those are rare skills.

4. Everyone Is Doing Them

I like to think I’m on the forefront with my blogging, doing the things that no one else has thought of. Hitting the thoughts that no one has dreamed of. But I can’t do that by writing lists. Everyone is doing them. They are the norm. Not me, I’m different. I don’t have to follow the crowd!

Perhaps there is a reason everyone is doing them. They work! Why re-invent the wheel when the wheel is perfect for doing what it does? It’s good to be different, but if being different drives your readers away and instead of drawing them to you then you might as well be doing what everyone else is doing.

5. Everyone Was Doing Them Before Me

I didn’t think of doing them, so it mustn’t be a good idea. Right? I mean everyone is just followers, they see one or two big name bloggers doing them and suddenly it’s all the rave. I think the fact that everyone started doing them before me is a sure sign that there is no value in them, so why is everyone still doing them? It’s got nothing to do with me being stubborn.

So what? Everyone will likely be doing them even when you stop. All professional football players wear helmets and shoulder pads. There’s a reason for them. You don’t see Brett Favre running out onto the field without his helmet and shoulder pads, do you? Then why shun convention just because other people are doing it? Don’t be contrarian just because. Be contrarian with a purpose. You’ll get a lot more respect and business that way.

6. Everyone Loves Them

And whats the go? It seems like whenever everyone talks about the best way to write a blog post, that the first answer is alway, ‘Do list posts! Everyone loves them!’ I mean seriously, does everyone really love them or is it just an easy way out of putting actual effort into your posts?

Umm, read the response to No. 5. Honestly, the worst list posts in the world are the ones that repeat themselves. That means you have nothing worth saying. In that case, why say it?

7. The Fact That Even Though I Hate Them I Can’t Help Being Drawn To Them!

And when all is said and done the thing I hate most about list posts is the fact that even though I have listed 6 reason why I hate them, I can’t help but be drawn to them. I see how successful they are - if done right. And if I look back at my complaints I can see if I look at the thoughts they could also be taken as positives.

Tom Sinfield is a blogger that is committed to teaching and inspiring other bloggers to step up and become standout bloggers. Visit his blog at: http://www.standoutblogger.com

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Thomas_Sinfield

This article had so much potential to be a good one. The writer failed to set me up properly for the conclusion. By the time I got to his seventh point, I was ready to tear him a new one. A little humor and making fun of blogging and lists in the previous six points would have set me up. Instead of getting my ire up, he could have made me laugh and I wouldn’t have been ready to shoot him down. So by the time I got to his last point, the irony was ineffective. Don’t make the same mistake. Even if you don’t use lists.

Writing articles or posts is not that difficult particularly if you follow some of the advice we have provided in previous posts. This post continues this advice with a list of blog content no-no’s - tactics often used that really do turn readers off from reading.

Paragraphs Too Long: While there is no hard and fast rule, paragraphs are best limited to less than 100 words. Any more and the reader is likely to switch off before getting the point. A paragraph should have a single train of thought and make a point or set a scene, then move on.

Links: Limit the number of links within a paragraph. Too many links act as a distraction to the reader. If you think about a link, it’s aim is to point elsewhere. Do you want you reader to finish your article, or to head of elsewhere during the first paragraph. Use links only where necessary.

Content Ads: A big turnoff in this day and age. Advertising companies have become a little too clever to the point they annoy readers. Many reader use the mouse to follow text as they read. In content ads often have attached pop-ups which pop up as soon as the mouse touches the link. One or two links maybe acceptable. Any more and its a nuisance - goodbye reader.

Overuse of Formatting: Use format tools such as bold or italics for affect. Overuse takes away the importance of the affect and becomes meaningless. If you feel that a word or sentence needs highlighting then use one of these tools. If a second block of text also needs enhancing, reword your paragraph so that the second block can be placed into its own paragraph, or consider listing the points.

Yelling: A term that is often used in emails and relates to the overuse of capitals. This can be particularly irksome if also mixed with bold formatting. Generally speaking, a writer should follow the basic rules of English which limit the use of capitals. The occasional yell for effect is acceptable; filling paragraphs with yells will not be.

I am sure you can think of other turnoffs. As you visit other sites, make a note of what you find distracting and a turnoff. Look at your own blog content and ensure that you haven’t included any of those item. The reality is, if you find it distracting or a turn off on another site, readers will find it the same on your site. Blog content is not difficult to produce - it is just finding the content for your content that requires some thinking.

Only a small percentage of people actually read. Now I know you will all say that you read, but I am talking about the difference between ’seeing’ and ‘reading’. True readers read everything; and they will often read from the top of the page to the bottom, fine print included, whether or not the subject matter really interests them. For the vast majority, we skim read; often called ’scanning’; and we look for shortcuts. The heading, words in bold, bullet points; anything to cut our ‘reading’ time.

User focused therefore has two meanings; one, to provide content in a form that is quickly digested; and two, provide content that requires eating (you cannot digest what you haven’t eaten).

To provide user focused content for eating is not all that difficult; it falls into basically three components. Language, Message, and Clarity.

Language

Whilst the English language is one of the primary languages used on the net, in this case I am talking more about the use of the language. User focused content steers clear of technical, jargon or ‘in house’ languages. Keeping your message simple and straight forward means that anyone from any education background can understand you. The more technical you get, the more readers you will lose.

Message

Having a message that the reader will find valuable. This may a problem solving message, or a list valuable of information, or for some, an account of the daily activities. What is important is that your reader needs something. Help; entertainment; to be a part of a debate. There are many different styles of message.

Clarity

Clarity is providing your message in a straightforward language in bite size pieces. Keeping the paragraphs short certainly helps. Using bold to highlight important components also helps. My first word processing teacher many, many years ago, suggested that in a short message, simply reading down the bolded words should summarize that message. It is an interesting concept and would certainly provide your reader with a quick fix.

The term user focused boils down to - wait for it - focusing on your user. Providing them with content that satisfies a need; even if that need is entertainment; and providing that content in a clear and concise way. if you can provide that content on a regular basis you find yourself developing a loyal group of readers.

It is my responsibility at Blog Content Provider to ensure that bloggers are trained properly on blog optimization techniques and helping our customers achieve the results they are looking for from their blogs. One of my newest bloggers asked me recently what keyword density I want to see in my blog posts. It’s a question that one will see frequently in forums, though I admit I don’t get it as much any more. But some new bloggers still wonder about keyword density. My response is always the same.

In my view, keyword density is a poor measure of SEO success. It doesn’t really get you anywhere and the reason is because all of the search engines have a multitude of factors that they take in and consider when it comes to ranking websites for keyword positioning. You can’t rely on one factor alone and keyword density relies too heavily upon the use of keywords within your blog posts. An overly aggressive tendency to focus on keywords could lead to spammy behavior and, well, that won’t help you any - particularly when the search engines now use semantic technology to determine whether content is useful or not.

No one knows for sure what the most important ranking factors are, but through trial and error, many SEOs have discovered that some things are better than others. As a general rule, the following factors are some of the ranking factors that search engines consider when deciding where you should rank for your keywords:

• Keyword usage in your blog post title
• Keyword position within your blog post title
• Subheads with h1, h2, or h3 tags in conjunction with keyword usage
• Keyword anchor text usage
• Overall keyword usage within your blog post content
• Title attributes within your links
• Photo optimization practices like alt tags and surrounding text
• Relevant inbound links
• Quality of inbound links to your blog’s index page as well as each individual blog post
• Outbound links in your sidebar
• Dofollow vs. nofollow tags and destination pages of your blog post links, sidebar links, and comment links

In all, the search engines analyze over 200, or close to 300, ranking factors. Too much emphasis on any one or handful of these could lead to a reputation as a spammer or ineffective SEO. That’s why I try to teach my bloggers to think for themselves and to understand how their content is being read by and analyzed by the search engines for ranking purposes. Blog marketing is a long-term strategy that can result in your blog achieving high rankings for you keywords over time, but it isn’t an overnight success mission. Don’t treat it that way. Consistency, persistence, and flexibility are key characteristics to develop if you want to be a successful blogger.

Learn more about blog optimization from the blog optimization experts.

You have probably read a thousand different versions of a post like this, however everyone has different spin on what makes a killer article title. This is probably one of the easiest traffic magnets when it comes to article writing, yet it is often not given the thought it deserves. Here are couple of suggestions when it comes to article titles.

First, place yourself in your readers shoes. Sometimes we are a little close to the action and cannot see past our own experiences. If you work in the shoe shine business, a title like ‘5 top shoe shine tips’ would probably have you going ho-hum, seen it before - and that is often a writers biggest mistake. They forget the reader who may not have seen it before.

This can be very true when you ask someone else to write an article for you. They are often writing from a completely different perspective to yourself and upon seeing the article, your first impression is no, not good enough. I suggest you re-look at the document and then try and see it from a novices perspective. The same can be said for titles.

Killer article titles are ‘killers’ because they compel the reader to read the first couple of paragraphs of the article. If they like what they see they will contunue reading.  The traditional ‘killer’ titles still work because human nature is attracted to what they offer.

If you see a title that opens with:

• 5 golden rules
• 5 top tips
• 5 best
• 5 number one

You are going to read the article, if the words that follow match your interests.  The opening words draw your eyes, the tail of the sentence seals the deal. If I wrote and article on the ‘5 best WordPress plugins’ and you used WordPress, you will most likely check out what I had to say. Humans being humans, this may have been the tenth article with this headline today, you will still go and check it out - human nature.

The content of course has to be worthy of reading. We will often read the first paragraph or two. If you don’t win your reader with those lines, your finished. the reader will move on.

Killer titles are just that. They don’t make or break and article, they help find your readers and without those titles, you will struggle to find readers. The most important issue is write your title with the assumption the reader doesn’t have a wealth on knoweledge in the subject matter - in fact this is why the want to read your article - to get that knowledge.

There is a sense in which personal details included in your business blog can make you seem more human, and it’s quite possible that this could lead to additional business. The thinking is that people like to get to know who you are. And that’s true. But they’re also there to get information about your particular niche, business services, or products. Give them what they want.

What people really DON’T want is a marketing brochure. People online don’t like to be marketed to. The Internet has become a huge library of information and typically people go online to browse for information without being hit in the face with a blatant marketing message. They get enough of that on TV and radio and in their newspapers and magazines. They don’t want to see it online too. That’s why only about 20% of Internet browsers click on the pay per click ads.

So the question is, how do you take that information - the fact that people aren’t looking for blatant marketing messages - and turn that to your advantage. Well, you talk to them. That’s it. Conversationally, you strike up a good discussion and do two things: Listen. Talk.

Notice the order. First, you listen, then you respond to what the marketplace is saying. The way you listen is to read other blogs and visit a few forums. What questions are people asking? Those are the questions you should answer on your blog. If you do it right, people will come to your blog because you have the answers to the questions that they are asking. They will then begin to ask you their questions and you can respond to those.

By striking up a conversation, people will see you as approachable. In that way, you can be personal - and personable - which can lead to new business. You don’t have to tell them all about your deepest, darkest secrets. Save that for your diary.

Do you write articles and submit them to article directories. What does your resource box look like? There are two issues that often strike me as being a waste of the resource box.

The first of these is the “who are you” aspect. I have read your article, liked it and now I want to know about you. Your resource box is the perfect place to tell me about you. With a little more knowledge about you, I may decide yo check out other articles that you havr written.

Issue number two.  The links in your resource box send me to your affiliate page or to a page where the article I have just read is located. Why? I want to read more of what you to have to offer, not see your affiliates and why send me back to the article I have just read.

Your resource box is the perfect place to tell me why I should read more of what you have written. If I have just read an article on grooming cats, tell me about your history with cats. If you have been a cat breeder for 20 years - tell me. If you have a cat site or blog - tell me. That is what the resource box is all about.

When it comes to links. Send me to a page that has something worth reading. If you have affiliates you want to promote, by all means put the banners in the side bar or within the content. The page you send me to should be a related article, after cat grooming, perhaps clipping their nails. Either that or to a page that has a summary of the articles you have written so I can pick and choose where I want to go.

The resource box is the perfect place to complete the ’sale’ to your reader to get them to your website. You just need to provide the right information to ‘close’ that sale. On many article directories, the resource box can also act to feed link juice back to your pages so by choosing your link page carefully yo can help to increase the rankings of that page.

Your resource box is single biggest asset you have outside the article itself. Maximize to your benefit and you will be surprised with the results. Use it poorly and you might just as well not bothered to submit the article in the first place.

Thanks to Lance Winslow for asking the question. What about those people who steal the content created by others, put them on a blog and earn AdSense money from them?

In the old days, people did that with articles. They still do. But there is another form of this type of content theft that people are using along with WordPress, which is the blogging platform that we at Blog Content Provider recommend. It’s called scraping.

Here’s what they do: They subscribe to your RSS feed and use a software program to search for specific keywords in your content. When they find the keywords they are looking for they scrape that content and add it to their blog, a process that takes just a few seconds because it is done automatically by the software program. The slap an AdSense ad next to the content they just stole from you and “trackback” to your blog, which creates a link to you, but also a link from you to their blog - that is, if you approve their comment.

Now, wait a minute, Allen. Haven’t you encouraged people in the past to trackback to other blogs for traffic? What’s wrong with that?

Yes, I have encouraged trackbacks and I still do. But what’s wrong with scraping is a little bit more nuanced than merely marketing original content. The proper way to trackback to another person’s blog is to write original content on your blog that references the content on the other. Then you can tell WordPress to trackback, which effectively makes you and the other blogger partners in an ongoing conversation. Using content created by someone else without adding your own flavor of original content alongside it is unethical. It is a form of stealing.

What these scrapers are banking on is that you will approve their comment and your website visitors will click through the link in that comment to their blog and click on the ad so that they’ll earn revenue from your content. They know that their blog will not rank for any keywords. It’s duplicate content so the search engines will ignore it. They likely aren’t doing any article marketing to promote that blog either because that takes time. These scrapers are lazy and want the easy way out. That’s why are stealing your content and offering a “trackback” in an attempt to appear legitimate. They are taking a legitimate practice and mirroring it so as to appear legitimate themselves. Crafty, isn’t it?

Well, all you have to do to stop them in their tracks is not approve their comments. When you notice a comment in WordPress, follow the link to the owner’s blog and read what they’ve written. If it looks like someone wrote the post and linked back to you then approve the comment. If it looks like a part of a post that you wrote with a link back that says something like “Read the rest of the article here” then don’t approve it. They won’t gain access to your blog’s readers and they won’t make a dime off of your content.