@cherelleleong Cherelle, it’s always been about the content only now businesses are realizing that it is now crucial to be producing timely, relevant content. The more you post the better. I have laid witness to the changes and none have been more prolific than the past year and is still evolving (more changes coming) .

The only thing that remains constant  is the link it is the Internet lifeline. Make sure your website is linked internally very well, have no dead end pages every page, post needs to have a link, always cite credible sources in your posts, include an image with each post and have the mechanics in place to distribute your content out through the social channels the backlinks will come naturally.

Writing quality content that is being seen by your peers, target audience will garner the backlinks you need. Don’t be worried about SEO get a plugin Wordpress SEO and look at the post SEO analytics (included with the plugin) to correct any problems with your post before posting.
Your main concern is to be creating, curating, managing content which as a writer that is what you do best.

@Cherelle Leong

Hello Cherelle.

When selling a service you are OK with a platform like WordPress depending on the niche market.  

As a writer, you’ll probably do OK with that platform.  If you were a consultant with a different skill set that included say engineering in a particular field; a doctor with a specialty; a lawyer with a specialty, you’d also need a flagship website. You cannot turn a WordPress site into a website (as many people believe you can) because there are too many variables left up to the platform that you cannot control. WordPress is a CMS platform intended for continuous updating of content so for writers, it is a perfect fit.

WordPress does well with SEO (as a CMS) if you learn the platform well; learn how to use the extensions that would be useful to your best advantage. You may find over time that a flagship website (in addition) would be an asset also, but to begin with WordPress would be good and may be all you’ll ever need.

See, it also depends on the marketplace online in which you will be competing. Who your competitors would be and what market share (online) you would need to grab to be able to make it within the first few years.

There are two areas you’ll need to research first – The market in which you are entering and the marketplace online – two distinctly different areas. 

Once you have an idea what you’re up against, you can move forward with a decision into which type of platform you think you need.  

What is the competition doing in the same field? <<< THAT is the question to answer.

.02

Sheesh – I went back up and read over your question. I got off track with my answer by reading the other comments in the thread.

First is, have you scoped out what platform the competition is using?  That simple question might help you decide which platform to use. Don’t be sucked into anything complicated – WordPress is probably the best CMS Blog platform out there, if that type of platform will do.  I run about a dozen WP blogs and it is an excellent platform. 

However, most businesses and here you are a tad sketchy ( I have no clue what type of business you are talking about ???? ) have a flagship website and a blog. It makes good business sense.  Detailed business pages with staff, photos, products and all that hoo-ha and an integrated or off site blog with fresh content to satisfy news hounds or spew product announcements. Works well.

With WP, you do lose control somewhat over what’s behind the scenes. See, on page content is very important. Content is still King.  But content behind the curtain is just as important. You don’t start worrying about back links until you have all your ducks in a row with the website itself.

For SEO you need several basic things: if possible a keyword rich URL, Keyword or key phrase in the meta title (what appears in the browser tab), same keyword(s) in the Page Title or Header Tag (H1), Subtitle Tags (H2,H3,H4), keywords in the content. 

OK, so  everyone knows that – but then add this – directory names, image names, image titles, image alt text, video names, video titles, etc. 

Naming conventions are very important because it’s the words that are indexed by the search engine robots. SO use words to name things, not initials and not shortened, chopped up descriptions. 

Some say keyword density on a page is not a factor and they would be dead wrong. If you take the top ten pages for any given keyword and compare the keyword density the top site will have the largest % of density and down the line. There may be an anomaly here and there due to heavy back linking but pretty much, for the most part, you’ll find density is a very important part of where you will land for organic search.  You can check keyword density with a number of free tools online. Just search and find the ones you are comfortable with. You don’t have to buy a bunch of fancy SEO tools to do this.

As a writer, you know words are important – remember words are important in every aspect of a web presence too, and you’ll do better than everyone else. 

;D

PS – For many of the reasons I mentioned above, I recommend a website where you or someone you hire has control over the coding, naming conventions, directory names, etc. so a website can be built from the ground up with SEO “built in” – it is easier to build it in there than to rebuild or go over someone else’s bloated code and make corrections for simple SEO that could be done right the first time. 

I wish great content was enough, but there is a lot more to it than just content. If you want your content to rank well, you’re going to have to learn how to research keywords to see which ones get the most searches and which ones are less competitive. High traffic keywords may seem like the golden ticket, but if you want Willy Wonka to find you on a search engine, you need to discover opportunities — that takes research.

Take some time to learn about SEO, you’ll thank yourself later. The best SEO resource I know is SEOmoz.com. They have a great introduction guide at http://www.seomoz.org/beginners-guide-to-seo

Enjoy!
@NathanRKing

Adding to this conversation, I found great information, templates and D-I-Y instructions on content curation on ContentMarketingInstitute.com.

Brings up an excellent question regarding, for lack of a better term, the Blend (if that’s TM or R by someone with regards to what I’m about to say… I’m sorry in advance. If it’s not, CHA-CHING!!!) Meaning, what is the right content Blend to appease both the search engines & the people actually performing the searches?

I’ve heard some old advertising speak that it typically takes 3 impressions for an ad or promo piece to stick in a persons head, they have to see & be cognizant of the message for them to retain it. So does this same methodology apply to writing content? One particular keyword/term used “how often” per so many words? Say…

- Once in the <H> tag
- Once in the <H2 or 3> tag
- Once in the body of “100″ words, linked to something in the website

Is there an acceptable “industry” standard?

@Chris Loeser

Hi Chris – You’re right about everything you said.

The most important is the Title Meta Tag (what appears in the Tab).They used to say between 5% and 8% for density, but that was awhile back. I’ve seen some websites that ranked well with density of almost 18% and very little incoming links. There again it depends on the marketplace.

One thing to keep in mind is relevance. The search engines fight hundreds of millions (and I do mean 100′s of millons,) of links to porn, drugs and all kinds of deviant behavior websites each and every day. Their algorithms have to measure your content against the content that may be identical on some porn site except for the keywords. I’m serious about this. The problem is so prevalent and sophisticated it’s hard to describe and very hard for us to realize what they have to work around to provide return content with a simple search.

Although keyword stuffing is a problem it is not so much a problem for most of us, as we are not uh, porn or drug hawkers.   

Keep your content relevant and creep up on density a little at a time. Be sure you write for the reader while keeping the search engine needs in mind. Research into your own marketplace can give you a good idea of what the marketplace will bear as far as density is concerned. 

I read somewhere recently some guru said “density” was left behind in 1997. Some people say some pretty foolish things. If that were true then the big “G” would not be working day and night on content (the words), their relevance and how many times they are used on a page. THAT part is simple. Also, you would not find density tools everywhere.  A tag cloud is just an infographic of keyword density. Maybe the use of the term “density” is old fashioned. I don’t know.

At any rate, I believe in calling an apple an apple. And “density” is the word. Heh.

@joanmuschampfagnani    I luv the devils advocate

I am not saying that you can just forget about SEO I have been a practitioner for 10 years so I have seen every change through what has felt like a century. LOL

I can’t expect that everyone be a SEO expert however, I do expect that the designers, the programmers, the coders have a better than average degree of understanding. 

Yes, I do agree with my colleagues here that you do need to know Symantec markup if you are performing content management. However, it is not required that you can strip down your theme, rearrange the coding that most themes need (sic). Your better off outsourcing this type of work as Joan has stated and do what you do best writing @cherelleleong

@cherelleleong I thought I was the daily entertainment for IT support!

I do get that you want to know–actually so do I–at least basics enough to know what I need done.

It’s all about prioritizing what you have time to learn! I have a lot on my list, too.  One thing I can say for certain is that I will likely never write code!

what is your content about? what is your niche? @cherelleleong

@rich-brooks Thanks for the links, some great info.  @deairby Not ready to share just yet but will do so once the site is up.