Almost everyone doing business online knows that writing good and useful articles and submitting to article directories is a good way to increase your site's rankings in Search Engines and as well your site's exposure on the Internet. However, sadly it is not just write and submit anymore. If you do that, you will very likely not see any improvement in your rankings at all, just a little increase in Page Rank. A lot of article writers also use this method to advertise and promote their site by offering small pockets of information to their readers, hoping that these readers will in turn visit their site for additional information. Thus with so many article writers publishing thousands and thousands of articles everyday, the competition very stiff indeed.

I will try to provide you with some tips on composing articles so that you can maximize the use of article writing for Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and hopefully improve your rankings.

1. Get a list of important keywords you would like to optimize for. They should include your main keywords and secondary keywords. These must of course be related to your article and to your site's topic. There isn't much point in terms of rankings if your article is about food and your site is all about selling toys. And make sure you understand (at the very least!) the topic which you are writing about!

2. Write the article and try to make it as natural as possible. Do not, and I repeat, do not think of where to add in your keywords just yet. Thus your article will look as natural and understandable to your readers. Write normally and you will be fine. Although there is usually no limit to the number of words you can write in your article, you should restrict to 1500 words or less. If your article is too lengthy, separate them into different parts to make it easier for your readers and for Search Engines. Think of different parts as different articles, so why not get two for the price of one? Something like the "Kill Bill" Series. And another benefit for a two or three part article is that you can concentrate a few main keywords on one part, and other keywords in the other parts.

3. After writing the article, make sure you proof-read it. Make sure there are no spelling or grammar errors. Would you really trust articles by "professionals" or "experts" that look like it has been written by a 5-year old? Poor spelling and grammar will tarnish your image. We won't want that.

4. Now, after proof-reading it, read your article once again, and only now, see whether you can add keywords here or there into your sentences. Make sure you add in your main keywords, but if you can, add in the secondary keywords as well. If your article is long enough, you should be able to squeeze it quite a few keywords. Do not overdo it and make sure your article does not sound like a broken record player. From my experience, it should be pretty easy for you to add in your secondary keywords without making it too obvious. If you need to do some editing, please do. I am sure if you do it properly, the article should still remain perfectly readable and understandable to your human readers.

5. Your article title. Another very important part to improve your rankings. As an added bonus, the title of your article will usually be the title of the page where your article directory is hosting your article. You do know that the title tag is an important component of onpage optimization right? So ensure you have a few good keywords in your title. Nowadays with so many articles published, you should also attempt to make your title as eye-catching to your viewers as possible. But you should still have keywords in them. Remember not to overdo it with keywords.

6. Your next step will be bolding your major keywords. There are a lot of article directories (like Ezinearticles.com) allow their publishers to use basic html tags in their articles, so you should take the opportunity to bold your important keywords. If the article directory supports other tags, you can also use other tags like emphasis and strong to help your human readers and Search Engines easily understand what your article is about.

7. Now, see whether you can add in 1 or 2 links with RELEVANT and proper "keyworded" anchor text to your site in your article. It will greatly help improve your rankings. Remember, deeplink instead of only linking to your main page. You should link to your related products or services page or some other page with content. Don't waste it on your main page. You do not get a lot of opportunity to deeplink, you know.

8. Now you have finished writing the article, is it time for you to submit to article depositories? No, not yet. Make a copy of your article first. Then go back to your article, and start summarizing it for article submission! Cut of some less important parts and see whether you can reduce the explanations or descriptions. You may be surprised why the need to do summarizing? The summarized form will be the article you will be submitting the article directories. The actual uncut article should be placed on your own site. I am sure you have heard the phrase "Content is King" right? So content on your site is good for your rankings. But if you submit your "content" to article directories, the "content" now is on the directories and not on your site. See the problem here? And if you have the exact same article on your site, Search Engines' duplicate content filters may ignore your site's article.

So the idea here is to create two different sets of "content", one for the article depositories (the summary) and the other for your own site. Having the longer and thus more keywords rich article on your own site is good for SEO. All you have to do is to add the link to your full and uncut article on the set submitted to the article directories for your readers to follow. This way, you will always have an "unique" copy of your article on your site and readers of the article directory will still be able to follow your link to your site and get all the benefits of article writing. You just killed two birds with one stone.

9. Most article directories allow their publishers to have an author's section. You can usually add a few links in this section. Remember to link back to your site and please use the proper anchor text. Again, deeplinks would work better here.

So, you have it. Some basic SEO tips for article writing. Hopefully, I have written it in such a way that it is easy to understand and follow and soon you will see the benefits. I wish you all the best.

For more details, please visit Writing Articles For SEO