Keep Your Hat on, but Avoid Black Hat SEO

The world of Internet writing is comparable to an ever-evolving, rapidly-changing animal. Imagine investing hours upon hours and weeks upon weeks developing skills finding the highest valued keywords. Then, just when you get them down and learn to stuff them into your articles with enough frequency to attract good advertisements, the rules change. Web writers are experiencing a similar happening right now.

Readers Do Not Like to Read Over-Stuffed Articles

Readers have always known keyword stuffing is bad (even when they didn't realize they were reading a stuffed article.) Keyword stuffed articles are awkwardly written, and sometimes words will pop up in a sentence for no apparent reason. Readers might just think they have come across an article crafted by a weak writer, and that is always a possibility, but it is more likely that the writer found out a certain word has value to advertisers.

How Writers Are Affected by Over-Stuffing Keywords

New technologies and search engine algorythims are emerging in response to reader demand for, frankly, less crap. Readers want to get results relevant to their searches; that answer their questions. They don't want to search for something, find a result based on black hat SEO (also called keyword stuffing) only to find out the article has NOTHING to do with their search, and that it just came up because a talented keyword stuffer stuffed it. Some technologies are blocking sites known for stuffing, while some search engines are giving lower ranking to these sites, so stuffed articles come up after more relevant work.

How Writers Can Achieve SEO Balance

Changing rules in the middle of the game can leave Internet writers wondering how on earth they can make money writing articles that attract advertisements without losing readers, or worse yet, getting dropped from searches altogether. While this could all change at the drop of a hat, the key right now seems to be writing informative articles, and using valuable keywords when they are relevant.