SEO = Findability

I want to be found!

When I first started blogging about three years ago, it was more like a little secret I had with myself. I didn’t tell anyone I was doing it and I actually worried that someone I knew might somehow find out. I struggled with issues of ego and hid behind self incrimination:

Why am I doing this?

Who’s to say my words matter?

I’m nobody and only nobody cares.

My thoughts don’t matter, my opinions are irrelevant, and my experiences aren’t “cool” enough.

You FOOL!

But I did it anyway.

Then I let the secret out. First I told a few friends, then some people in my family. Before long, I was talking about it openly. After a year or so, I posted a few links to my blog on facebook. A few people were reading it, but most were not. By then, I didn’t care anymore – I didn’t care who read it and I didn’t care that most of the people who knew me and knew I was doing it didn’t read it. I just cared about fostering my own passion to write. Though not highly recognized and certainly not very well read, I knew my blog was public and therefore, it kept me aiming for quality work. It also kept me committed to my daily writing practice. That first blog was, and still is, purely personal.

The more I wrote and posted on my blog, the more I learned about blogging in general. As a result, themes emerged and I became anchored on a few specific areas of focus. Eventually I launched the Nitty Gritty of Writing blog to practice blogging professionally.

Now I am finally ready to be found!

SEO articles posted to article directories are my latest focus because the SEO keywords in those articles will bring more visitors to my blog. I want the traffic for three reasons:  

1. When people leave comments it helps me to find them and I want to find others so I can learn from them and build community; 
2. I do believe I have significant things to share and I want to help others to learn; and
3. I want to be found by people who can lead me to the next level in my work.

Yes, SEO = findability 

and I want to be found. 

Don’t you?  

Blog Posts Vs. Articles: What’s the Difference?

When I am free writing from brainstorming and prompts I sometimes get confused as to whether I am writing a blog post or an article. They are similar, or can be, and the lines of definition are blurry and vague. I can’t answer the question exactly, but I do have a current option that I am using now as a guideline:

Blog posts are more personal; they center on personal experience, opinion; they are written in a style that is more interactive by engaging your readership. Blogs are chatty. Articles on the other hand, are informational, centered less on personal knowledge and more on legitimate research. Articles fit into established formulas and can be written to specific templates. Blog posts can have structure, but it isn’t required; articles need to be structured. You can get away with writing a blog post that lacks a main point and supporting points, but an article needs these things. Blog posts can be anything including pictures, links, video, text, or any combination. An article must have text and the other things have to be relevant in the supporting role. A blog post might be commentary on an article or someone else’s blog post whereas an article would be more of a critical review.

You will find your own definition as you write them both, but maybe this brief summary will help you determine where to post the stuff you are writing. 

The "About" Article

The “about” article is similar to the “list” article in that it consists of several aspects of the same topic. The main difference is that in an “about” article, all sections or points are aimed at further describing, explaining, or informing about your topic. This can be done with any topic. Take, for example, spaghetti: the different sections might include 1) the history of spaghetti; 2) the ingredients and/or different kinds of spaghetti (i.e., white, wheat, whole grain, etc.); 3) nutritional value; 4) how it is made; and 5) how it is eaten. Some of the sections in an “about” article can be turned into other articles more easily than others. Back to the spaghetti example: from the how it is eaten section you could write articles that include recipes for spaghetti sauces; the nutritional value section however, is more limited.



“About” articles are easy to produce because you simply need to follow a basic formula: introduction, 3 – 5 sections in the body, and a conclusion. Do your research and collect information from at least 3 different sources. Then read through the information you have and mark possible headings or sections in the margins. Next, go back through the research and write out your different sections as individual paragraphs. Heading your sections is an attractive stylistic feature because it makes the article easier to read. It also helps you incorporate keywords for SEO purposes. Once you have the body written, write your introduction and finally, the conclusion.


It is best to include your sources in an “about: article, so between the conclusion and your bio box, list your references. If possible, sent an email or leave a common on the site of the authors you referenced so they know you’ve linked to their work in your article. Not only is this a courteous gesture, it invites them to check out your blog and/or website and potentially opens up their whole circle of influence to a connection to you and your services.


Following are some “about” articles that serve as good examples for you as you work on crafting your own.

Elegant Aging - Growing Deeper, Stronger And Wiser In Your Years

All About Thai Curry

Baking with Flaxseed

The List Article

The “List” article is one of the most efficient kinds of articles you can write. The top 5 or 10 best of something, worst of something; 10 reason to do or have something; tips for doing something better; ideas, etc., are all great “list” articles.

The reason I say “list” articles are most efficient is because you can make the most of your research for a list article with the least amount of work. Write out the top 10 ~ whatever ~ then you’ve got the background for 10 more articles: just write more about each of the items in your list focusing on one item for each new article. Post them in article directories with trackbacks to your blog or website, and trackbacks all to the original article, and you’ve got a total of 11 articles out of one basic research session. And all 11 articles will work for you. Each of those articles serves as “free ads” for you, your work, your services and products.

Here are some great examples of list articles. Read them and consider how each item in the list can easily be written into another whole article.

Top 10 Wii Games
Top 10 Worst Movies of the Decade: Romantic Comedy
Tips on Creating a Great Resume
10 Reasons Why I've Decided to Get an iPad
50 Great Date Night Ideas

Article Writing

Article writing is one of the most “secure” jobs in the writing field. Absolutely everybody online needs articles. “Article marketing” is one of the biggest buzz words in the online industry.

Think about any Google search you have ever done – if you are looking for information, you find articles. Nearly all those articles include a link to some sort of website. This is how online business people promote their bubusinesses and attract new customers. All these businesses need writers for all these articles.

As a writer, you can do the same thing. Simply post articles in article directories that yu have written and include a short bio box at the end. People will find you.

Article writing is a numbers game: the more you write, the bigger your reprotoire and the more chances you have of being found. So write several articles about the same broad topic so that you have many avenues to one subject. This increases your exposure and over time, establishes you as an expert in the field.

Article writing is also a words game. SEO stands for Search Engine Optomized and is how the search engines rank information on the web. Use SEO keywords in your title and again throughout your article with more concentration on them in your introductory paragraph. This will push your article higher on the list of hits when people search for information related to your article.

Your articles stay online forever, so it’s not like you get one big bang for your buck and then its gone. Online business people know this, so they are constantly adding articles to their business. If you establish yourself as an article writer, you will always have a job!

Online Exposure: Article Directories

Article Directories are online sites that have a stock load of articles about every topic imaginable and then some more. They serve two main purposes that are two-way benefits for writers. First of all, the articles in article directories are (for the most part) well researched and well written. So when you need some information about something you are writing about, you can usually find it through an online article directory site. They serve as a resource for your writing. Secondly, article directories offer an excellent source for you to get published online and build up an online portfolio. In addition, if you have a blog or website, you can link directly to it from your article. This is like free advertising for your site(s).

Like everything else online, the greater volume you produce, the better results you receive. Don’t let the idea of volume overwhelm you though, because even one article is a start. Start with one article an add another. Keep at it and you will become more comfortable with the writing and publishing online process and more familiar with the various article directory sites. Keep at it and before you know it, you will have a nice collection of articles under your name.

At the time of this writing, there are over 560 article directories on the internet. No doubt that number is steadily increasing. For a comprehensive list of article directories, go to Top 50 Article Directories. From this link, simply click on several article directories and browse around. Find out which ones you like as a reader. Check out the search engines – type in several key words for each article directory you visit and read through some of the articles that show up. Note if there are a lot of articles available for the key words you put in; note also the quality of those articles. Are they informative and well written? Are there sources you can follow for more information? Take notes, then choose a couple of article directories you like and submit your own articles there to see how you like them as a writer.

One of the things about online article writing is that technically, you can write one basic article and then tailor it several different ways so you end up with a lot of articles for the effort it takes to write just one. That way, you can submit to several different article directories each time you write an article. You just have to be sure that each article is different enough that it doesn’t cause a red flag for the plagiarism control. Some writers “spin” their articles. There is spinning software that allows you to put in your basic article and then it spits out a new one – same meaning, different words. In theory, you can spin an article over and over. I only tried this once through some site that offered free spinning, but I didn’t like the result, so I haven’t tried it again. I think that it might be worth spending some time with, but I haven’t returned to that task yet. If anyone out there has more knowledge and better experience with spinning, I welcome your comments and feedback.

The two article directories that I use are Ezine Articles and Goarticles.com. I think that goarticles.com is a bit more user friendly, so I tend to use that one the most.

Give it a try and let me know what you think. Maybe you will like other article directories and you can recommend them to me. Together we can explore different article directories and increase all of our online exposure.