The Internet is awash with words, with content. From blogs, short, stories, poetry and novels, the top five this, the top 10 that, advertisements, facts, opinions, reviews, instructions, misguided SEO, poorly applied SEO, you name it. It’s all out there. Unfortunately much of it is poor quality and not really worth spending any time over. The last thing the Internet needs is even more trash copy. If you haven’t got anything worthwhile saying, then don’t say anything at all. Chances are though, with a little professional input to help tease it out, you have a great deal of interesting content that people would be more than happy to read - new product information, tips or techniques, an opinion or experience of a particular business sector, expertise you’d like to share. Information that can be crafted, formatted and submitted to suitable web resources in the form of articles.

Of the many strategies available to search engine optimisation (SEO) professionals and web site owners when optimising websites for search engines, one of the most effective (if applied correctly) is the deployment of articles. Articles that are targeted to drive traffic to your site through inbound links. Articles generate additional traffic, keyword driven anchors, linking relevance and inbound link PageRank weighting, all contributing positively to authority and Internet profile.

Developing and submitting articles is not a random process. It’s a strategy that deserves careful consideration, planning and execution. You need to consider which sites the article is to be submitted to, where in the site (category relevance) it is submitted, what keywords are used, what anchor text is used and where it links to in your webpage. These are all ‘off-page’ SEO considerations that need to tightly integrate with your overall optimisation campaign, and can dramatically impact on the ranking efficiency of the article.

First of all though, articles need to be created and they need to be created extremely well. When it comes to SEO, content is king and its reign extends as far as ‘off-page’ articles. Poorly written work or page content that’s unimaginative, unhelpful and of little value is a huge turn off to time-poor web users and will portray your company in an unfavourable light, not just with users but with the search engines as well.

It’s the quality of the content that will inspire other websites to include your articles, your links and encourage visitors to click through to your site. Nothing less than quality counts. It’s only quality that will generate the inbound links that you need to evolve trust and authority in your website amongst both human and automated visitors.

With this in mind perhaps the best approach to developing articles of worth might be to focus on investing time in your writing and creating the very best, expert articles in your niche. When Internet guru Jakob Nielsen talks SEO, SEO experts tend to listen and he is firmly of the opinion that in-depth, detailed articles developed over a period of time are of far greater value than short shallow blog type posts.

Whilst some short blogs (though quickly written) are expertly done and there are longer, more time consuming articles that carry little value, his point is clear. The search engines rank according to how they interpret relevance and until a site has acquired authority (largely through the quality of its content), it won’t figure at the top end of search returns. Each article created by SEO Consult is unique and usually consists of anything between 250-1000 words, depending on the nature of the project.

There are numerous approaches we at SEO Consult employ to develop suitable quality articles for our clients. Here are a few:

• Fieldwork - By visiting forums, blogs, and communities it’s possible to note the burning issues, the FAQs and areas of interest. We read the industry and look for unique angles and differentiation.
• Work with the best - Collaborative efforts with industry experts or prominent figures, even in the form of a few short quotes, can be extremely link and visitor worthy.
• Make your information a resource - Go into detail, work in-depth and offer a professional level of information or insight. Don’t underestimate or patronize your reader. Put yourself in their shoes and really deliver the goods, don’t give the shop away but also don’t be shy in sharing expert knowledge. The more useful your information, the more often they’ll return and the more likely you are to cultivate additional backlinks.
• Be a one-off - Include unique information that can’t be found anywhere else. It’s originality and the unique elements you offer that will get you noticed and recommended.
• Don’t sell - Web users these days are particularly attuned to the sales pitches. Users will consciously and sub-consciously link to and recommend resources that don't appear too self-serving and salesy. Be subtle and be smart. A great expression used on line is be as ‘pseudo impartial’ as possible.
• 'Own’ traffic - Invest a significant amount of time and energy writing a few articles/resources of truly exceptional quality, that become ‘industry standard’ and are repeatedly referred to as the ‘source’ for further articles. Truly great articles ‘own’ web traffic.

As with directory submissions, we thoroughly research article websites, targeting the article submission websites that have the strongest profiles and best reputations in the SEO industry. We’ll source and evaluate niche options as well as submitting to popular article sites like Ezine, Go Articles, Now Public, Buzzle, etc. to help you to obtain some deep links. Working closely with a number of the leading pages, our experience with article submission makes us clearly aware as to which article submission sites are beneficial and increase ranking, and by the same token, those which are worth avoiding. We submit articles and releases for paid inclusion on major web portals such as Yahoo!, AltaVista and AlltheWeb. All submissions are manual. We do NOT use any automated software.

For any more information on article creation, optimally structured articles, article submission and effectively incorporating articles into your SEO campaign to encourage readers to follow links to your website, contact SEO Consult now.