How to write a good article

Writing articles for the web isn't difficult. However writers often struggle to find a balance between readability and search engine optimisation (SEO). This is probably because they approach it in the wrong way.
                
The key to writing a good article is not to try too hard. Lots of people will tell you to conduct your keyword research first and then write an article based around this. Wrong!  You'll find it extremely hard to write and you'll be tempted to inflate the number of times your keywords appear in the article (keyword stuffing). What you'll end up with is a boring article which although meets your SEO requirements, will be totally unreadable and leave your reader with a poor experience.

Instead always start from an interesting idea or something drawn from your own experience. You'll find that the words will flow out a lot easier and the article will be far more interesting to read.  Most of the time the SEO aspect will take care of itself, since keyword density only needs to be around 1%. So providing you stay focused on the subject, SEO should happen naturally.

Once you've wrote your article, check whether your work is readable before you submit it. If your article doesn't sound natural when read aloud, amend it until it does.  Remember never forfeit readability for anything because this is the most important thing to your reader.

Google's Chrome extension removes the sites you dislike - but is it really a good thing?

Google recently released another extention for Chrome that enables you to block certain domain names from your search results.

How useful a tool it is for surfers, I'm not sure. Generally you will remember the poor sites you visit and not click on their links again. However as a means of collecting data for Google it is extremely use. This information could be used to update Google's search algorithim.

Google says that one of the purposes for the new extention is to detect content farms.

So what does this mean for SEO specialists? Well unless you are one of these contents farms you shouldn't have anything to worry about. However if you take this to the logical conclusion, if your site has a link from one of these poor quality sites it will have a negative effect on your site.

And it may not just be content farms that could effect your site. In theory any site which has a large number blocks, regardless of its contents could effect your site.

In theory, if your company provides a poor quality of service or  users simply do not like your company, they could block your site, effecting your ranking and anyone you link to.

In extreme cases, competitors could block your site.

Hopefully the guys at Google have taken all this into consideration.

Australians embrace mobile devices

I read an interesting article last week featured in smartcompany. It reported that by the year 2015, 56 million mobile devices will be connected in Australia. This means that each Australian will, on average, own 2.4 mobile devices.

Another important factor is that the use of mobile equipment is advancing rapidly, as they become more powerful. And people are utilising them to do even more than ever before. These factors presents both an opportunity and a threat to companies who are still to adopt mobile technology.

Unfortunately I've met a lot of heads of B2B companies who, on one hand boast that they're children are proficient in the latest gadgets, but then still insist that it isn't relevant to their marketing mix. They may concede that companies in the B2C sector would benefit from the use of such technology, but insist that it would never work in their industry. These dinosaur companies who "stick their heads in the sand" are seriously at risk of losing their market share to the young start-ups businesses; who can rapidily satisfy the needs of an ever increasing sophisticated customer.

If all this seems a bit daunting, it's lucky that the biggest use of this technology is SMS messaging or text messaging.  It can be used for anything from delivery notifications to transmitting information to customers via your website. Plus it's easy to get started.

If you are interested in knowing more about this subject, drop me a line.