Most businesses need articles for the web written to help their company make more money. One of the ways their business makes money is by directing relevant and targeted traffic to their website.

What is Relevant and Targeted Traffic?

There are millions if not billions of people surfing the net, actively searching for content online. They typically use a search engine to find the information they seek. Not every internet users wants what a particular company has to sell. And businesses don’t necessarily want uninterested people coming to their site. Instead businesses want to attract only those people who are already interested and have a need for that business’s products or services. In other words, they only want to attract relevant and targeted users to their website who are genuinely interested in their offer.

For example, a company selling lawn mowers is not interested in having apartment dwellers reach its website. Most people looking to buy lawn mowers live in their own house, not a rented apartment, and have a lawn which needs to be mowed. Geographically, lawn mower firms will be targeting suburbia more compared to city dwellers.

Therefore it’s important for the business to get those customers to its site who are interested in the products it is selling. It will want all those people who type in search queries like “need to buy lawn mower” or “which is the best lawn mower to buy” to reach its website.

Here is where keywords come in.

What are Keywords?

Keywords may be a single word or a phrase typed into a search engine to yield search results. Typically a web user clicks on a search result (or many results) to find out more information about the issue he is concerned about.

Since you use the web, you already know that you typically click links only on the first page of search engine results. Every company wants to appear on the first page search results to maximize visibility and clicks.

In order to do this, they use a strategy called “search engine optimization” or SEO.

What is SEO?

SEO is the art and science of increasing the chances of having your website indexed and ranked high on search engine results. There are many variables that determine search rank, but for the purposes of this article, we’ll consider “keyword content” to be the primary factor.

Writing SEO content means that you put in those keyword phrases in your content that a user is most likely to be searching for when he types in a search query.

Luckily most of the guesswork has been taken out of keywords by tools such as Google AdWord’s Keyword Research Tool and Wordtracker. These tools help you determine the most-searched for keywords around the globe and revolving around a particular topic.

So if you type in “lawn mower” in Google’s tool, you’ll get results like “electric lawn mower” and “lawn mower repair” which will in turn help you choose the right keywords to use on your site to attract the right clientele. They will also tell you how many people are searching for that keyword, so for our example, electric lawn mower has 90,000 global monthly searches, while lawn mower repair has 110,000 global monthly searches.

So how does all this pertain to writing for the web?

Writing for the Web Means Writing SEO Content

In writing for the web, you need to know how to incorporate keywords into your writing in such a way that the article flows smoothly while making good use of the keywords that you have identified as crucial to your content. This is called SEO-enriched content.

Some clients might have a direct need for SEO articles, while others might simply need web-friendly articles.

What are Web-friendly Articles?

The web is an active medium (as opposed to TV or print where you sit back and watch/read). On the web you need to actively search for content, click on content, and follow links and so on. Web readers are impatient, want content now, and will click away quickly if they don’t find what they’re looking for on your site.

Therefore web-friendly writing needs to be structured in a way so it is fast to scan and read, gets the main points across quickly and succinctly, and is interesting enough to hold the reader’s attention.

The main characteristics of an article written for the web are:

• Gets to the point quickly and without preamble
• Is easy to scan and easy to read
• Has a catchy SEO title, subtitle and subheading
• Contains bullets and numbered lists where relevant
• Is written in an active and energizing tone rather than a passive, tired one
• Evokes a desired reaction or action from its readers

Anyone looking to become a freelance writer on the web must know how to write articles for the web. It’s a whole new medium which allows expression in direct active tones, almost simulating an actual face-to-face conversation.

Are you just learning to write for the web – if so did this little tutorial help you to understand the basics? Share your thoughts below.