http://youtu.be/lkINq_R1QAo

I recently had a chance to be at a local Dallas meetup on Interactive Marketing & Internet SEO and SEM which turned out to be very informational and useful for my practice into SEO content writing. I like to thank Charles McKeever, co-owner of Open Source Marketer and Steve Kuntz, owner of Poker Home Supplies, for organizing the event.

Mike Newhouse, who presented at the meetup, states that content and SEO go hand in hand and in order to start writing for SEO purposes, we must first put ourselves in the shoes of someone looking for us. Mike listed three questions that we have to think about before we start writing SEO worthy content and searching keywords with the Google Keyword Selector Tool:

1. Is one part of your business more profitable than others?

2. Do you know what to write website copy on?

3. What are you trying to achieve in writing this content?

How to write your content will vary greatly depending on what your overall objective really is, but Mike points out that there are key things that will never change and that we need to always think about:

1. Keyword isn’t always the best. Keyword stuffing as it’s often referred to is difficult to read, the search engines hate it. Your key terms should be scattered throughout your content and be roughly 2-3% of the verbiage on the web page.

2. Write website content, not search engine content. Writing content is critical in every way, shape and form in order to be found by the search engines, but don’t write for them. Write for the reader, give them good information and just keep the search engines in the back of your thoughts while writing your content.

3. Website copy formatting. People have short attention spans, if they instantly see gigantic blocks of text that take up half their screen, you just lost their attention. Format your content in tons of smaller paragraphs, use bullet points and number things so that people can quickly scan your pages to see what’s useful.

4. Remember to add in some pictures, charts, videos, or even little random notes throughout your content to break up the blandness and monotony of your site. Keep people engaged.

Using Youtube for SEO

Mike agrees that Youtube is the best video online service site that makes SEO to your videos easy and searchable but he points out that other videos will be in your way. For example, once a video that’s posted is viewed, Youtube lists similar videos on the bottom, this will definitely draw viewers away to other competitors. Mike suggests that you sign up to a professional video service that will code your videos to still use Youtube’s searchability function but block out similar videos. Some examples are Brightcove, JWPlayer, Flowplayer and Web Video Spot.

 Related article

• Search Engine Marketing NewsWire – August 2010 (fathomseo.com)
• SEO for Start-ups: Build Authority Offsite (searchenginewatch.com)
• Avoiding Shady Practices In SEO And Internet Marketing (ronmedlin.com)
• Onsite SEO Interview with Dave Harry (verticalmeasures.com)
• SEO Made Easy with Scribe (buildabetterblog.com)
• Satisfy Your Craving for Conversions with Online Video Marketing (fathomseo.com)
• Head’s Up: Your Search Marketing Strategies Need To Evolve (searchengineland.com)
• Blog SEO Optimization Best Practices II (ultimatemarketingonline.com)
• Take Your SEO Campaign In The Right Direction Information (ronmedlin.com)
• Revisiting The Basics Of Video SEO (searchengineland.com)