Regular Quality Articles Single Most Important Aspect of SEO

A regular supply of high quality articles is essential for any site that wants to be found in the search engines. In fact, provided you have a quality website, with no dodgy practices being employed, regular quality articles is all you need to get top positions in search engines if you have time to wait and let it happen naturally.

The key words in that sentence are regular and quality.

For a start Google will recognise the fact that your site is producing regular original content. And when people start linking to your articles, or republishing them with links to source, you will be credited with natural back-links which count at least double what an unnatural link does.

External Links are Good not Bad

When it comes to showing the search engines that your content is high quality, external links to informative sites are almost as important as links coming in. These can be links to an article backing up what your article says, or a Wikipedia article that explains about something you mention without going into details, even a link to the source article of what your article is based on.

The fact is, webmasters should not be afraid to put external links in their articles, as long as the links go to sites relevant to and informative about the article subject matter.

Getting Noticed and Getting Links

As I said above, regular quality articles will get you good positions in the search engines, but it will take time. In order for you to get back-links, from people citing and republishing your articles, you need to get noticed.

Good ways of getting people to recognise your quality content, in other words to get traffic to your site, are to join social media sites like Twitter and Mixx, and also Technorati and similar sites are excellent.

Social Media

You have to spend a lot of time on the social media sites like Twitter and Mixx, commenting on other people's submissions, and interacting with other users, and making friends, or the content you post will simply be ignored. Submitting links to articles on sites other than your own is also a good idea.

Technorati

When it comes to Technorati, posting regularly alone will put you sufficiently up the stream to get noticed. I have found that interacting, i.e. commenting on other posts has no added benefit on Technorati.

It is also worth mentioning that Technorati can have trouble keeping up to date with content on sites hosted independently (i.e. not using Wordpress or Joomla engines). It is worth keeping an eye on when your site was last pinged and making sure your most regular posts are being indexed. As you will see my most regular content currently isn't getting indexed. I have logged a support ticket with Technorati over this.

Getting Involved in the Subject

Another good way of getting your articles noticed, is to comment on articles on sites that have a high traffic volume, and preferably a loyal following, and linking to your articles that are relevant to theirs.

I don't just mean jumping straight in with: You should check out this article on the subject [Link]. These comments are viewed as spam and generally ignored.

But I have found that if you leave an insightful comment and really give a detailed comment on your opinion regards the article and the subject you can become involved in a debate that leads to you gaining respect among visitors to the site.

Once you have this respect you can link to an article you have written that better explains your position.

If this is too time consuming (give up now), or if your chosen site has a lot of traffic but no visibly loyal following, you can leave a long comment and simply link at the bottom. While this method works, it is less effective than the former.

A good example of a site with a high volume of traffic and a loyal following is the Guardian's debate site Comment is Free, I have found that both methods can bring traffic from Comment is Free, but the former brings in a lot more.