Learn the Basics of Writing for the Internet Audience—Part One Keywords

Learn the basics of writing for the Internet audience and you'll never lack for writing assignments.

Pretty strong statement, but in this day and time it's one you can count on. Look at an anonymous business owner with me and I think you'll see what I mean. We'll call him Joe and he's a plumber.

He's a smart business owner and named his business, ABC Plumbing. He chose carefully because with that name, he had a good chance of being the first listing in the directory under plumbers. That was ten years ago and that ad in the telephone directory kept him supplied with customers while it made him visible around the community. But as time went by, fewer people looked at the Yellow Pages when they needed a plumber. Instead they looked online.

Well Joe is a with-it sort of guy, and he had a website built. It wasn't fancy, but it did the job, just like the old ad in the directory. Actually the two looked a lot alike. But Joe began to see his traffic and customer base diminish. This was due to the fact that when someone searched on the Internet for a plumber in his area, his website didn't come up first. In fact, it didn't come up until page three of the search.

He did some research and found that he needed to add some things to his site to come up higher in the search engine. He came face-to-face with the new acronym SEO. Search Engine Optimization became his key to getting the name out about his business. So he started a blog and began tweaking the information on his site. But all this began to eat into the time he spent running a business.

At this point, the light bulb came on. Joe realized he was a plumber, not a writer. And this is where we come in. We can provide valuable services to businesses small and large. We can do what we do best—write—while allowing them to get on with business.

On with the Basics
The first term you need to become familiar with is Keywords.
A keyword is like a label. It's a short way—although almost always more than one word in length—to state the purpose of your article. Articles can have several keyword groups or only one. I only have one main keyword group for this article and it's Writing for the Internet. You'll see this keyword in the labels following this post. You'll also see some related keywords, Internet, Internet Audience, Learn the Basics of Writing for the Internet, How to use Keywords Effectively. 

I use groups of words because the point of the keywords is to direct the searcher to your website. You want your keywords to match, as closely as possible, what someone types into a search engine search box. People rarely type just one word because it gives too many options.

Here are the guidelines for using keywords effectively:

• Always use the keywords in the title.
• Repeat the keywords at least once in the first 50 words of your article.
• Spread the use of the keywords naturally and evenly throughout the rest of the article. (In a 400 word article that would mean using the keywords a minimum of three more times)

Learning how to use keywords effectively can make you invaluable to business owners, and for your own website. Over the next few weeks, every Tuesday, I'll continue this series on Writing for the Internet Audience.

I'd love to hear some of the aspects of this topic you'd like to see covered. Post your questions in the comments section and I'll make sure I cover them.

And...
Don't forget to join the conversation!
Blessings
Edie

You can jump to Part Two of Learn the Basics of Writing for the Internet here.