All Writers Can Benefit with a Bit of SEO

I’m the first to admit that I’m not an expert in SEO, however I know enough about the subject from a high-level perspective to talk about it intelligently with clients and the occasional SEO consultant who seems to be in constant need of new material for clients. If you think SEO is just jamming keywords into articles, at least you have a (very small) foundation in the topic, but dig a bit deeper to see what SEO can do for you and your business.

Optimize Your Own Site
If you have a site or blog project of your own, why not learn a bit of SEO to work your site into a higher spot in the search engine rankings? Granted, there are some pretty big sites out there for the main writing keywords, but if you specialize in a particular area or do some writing work offline, you can likely rank for your location easily with some attention on content, keyword placement and inbound links.

Work with SEO Consultants
If you’re going to partner with an online worker in a professional sense, I’d opt for an SEO consultant. Companies spend thousands of dollars with their consultants as they work to build a brand and increase their own rankings online. As part of that, the SEO consultants are almost always looking for optimized and quality site content, press releases, distribution work, ghost written materials to place for links and any number of special projects. Because the bigger names in SEO are paid so dearly by clients and know the value of certain forms of written materials, they don’t balk at engaging the services of a writer who knows what she is doing in the area of SEO.

Start Reading
You don’t have to buy any books to learn about SEO. The online resources are endless. Subscribe to feeds and newsletters from firms and individuals who know what they are doing and start reading threads in the forums other than just those you find in the content or copywriting section. There is a wealth of knowledge shared publically on the subject and the more you know, the better you can apply SEO in your own business – and that doesn’t mean writing penny-word gibberish articles, although there seems to be an inexhaustible need for those if that’s what rocks your world.