1. All You Need Do is Pay Someone $5 to Churn Out Keyword Stuffed Articles.
Don't even think about it. Content has to be all about quality. Don't think you're saving yourself money by hiring the cheapest writers either - chances are that English won't be their first language and your site will end up bulked out with keyword rich content that no one wants to read and search engines don't particularly care about.
If you don't like writing yourself then spend the money getting a good copywriter who brings passion and pride to their work and will give you content people actually want to read.
If the content is good people will recommend it and you'll get the benefits of word of mouth marketing.
In addition this type of quality content is naturally filled with relevant keywords , plenty of which you may not have considered; keywords of the long-tail variety.
2. The Greater the Quantity of Pages, the Better.
Again, remember Panda and Google's guidance to ask yourself whether your site has overlapping or redundant articles on the same or similar topics with varying patterns of keywords.
Sites that resemble large scale content farms will get nowhere with Google and will not dominate the search terms you are after (whether they are your main keywords or long tail keywords).
Far better to delete any low quality content and put less important content onto fewer pages. Concentrate instead on making the content on your site the highest quality you can and it will pay dividends in the long run.
3. Each Article Needs to Contain the Exact Keyword or Key Phrase.
Any over use of keywords will inevitably look like keyword stuffing and will be penalized.
Language is a fluid and constantly varying process - which means natural looking content will contain all kinds of variations on the keywords and key phrases you are aiming for.
It's better to write articles for your niche and let the keywords fall where they naturally would fall, even to the point where many articles won't contain those keywords at all.
Search engines are able to tell over-optimized pages and sites so be careful.
4. Each Article Needs a Precise Formula and a Precise Word Count.
Ask any published author and they will tell you there is no precise formula for success when it comes to writing.
The same applies to copywriting. If you view it as a scientific or automated process then your content will be rubbish and your site will not succeed. Articles written for keyword density are about as interesting as belly button fluff and are just as useless when it comes to SEO.
As the algorithms keep on improving interesting and popular content hold value.
Similarly when it comes to the number of words in your article there is one rule and one rule alone - write as many words as the article needs. Too long and it will be boring, too short and it will be inconsequential.
Once again quality not quantity is what counts.
5. Every Headline Needs a Keyword.
Of course it doesn't.
Try to make your article headlines catchy, captivating and clever enough to entice the reader in. If they see that headline whilst browsing through search engine results, would they want to click and read it? If you can add a niche keyword in there, then all the better but don't make that the be all and end all of your headline writing. Vague, generic headlines with keywords in them will be no better than an exciting keyword-free headline and may even be worse when it comes to SEO. A captivating headline brings click-throughs, links, social shares and more traffic.
Hi Alex,
Nice article! Pointing at number 2, would you advise to delete / no-follow / Robot.txt these pages to news-articles when these are not high-quality?
Although these pages are not the best, they provide some rankings and a few visitors.
For example; we have setup a site which comparises multiple mobile phone subscription providers, and we also have a page with ‘news’ as a extra value although these pages are not high-quality. What would you sugges to do?
Again, nice article and thanks in advance.