Easy SEO Hub Writing Tips - The Article Summary

These Easy Non-Technical SEO, [Search Engine Optimization], Hub Writing Tips will help you write a better Hub article summary that will get more readers, and they don't include so-called white hat/black hat technical stuff. Just a little common sense. If you are writing on HubPages, regardless of your style or topics, you are doing it so others can read your articles. From how-to articles to poetry, you would not be doing it here if you didn't want other people to read it. So... SEO is important.

*Search Engine Optimization is simply a term to describe a method of making articles and Internet content more "attractive" to search engines, like; Google, Bing, or Yahoo, so that they will be more likely to return "your" writings as search results - vs. content that does not do things to attract search engine attention.

A hub article summary is generally described as a short two or three sentence description of what the article is about. But, it does not have to be only a couple sentences. That is usually the amount of text that will be shown in most search results listing, both Hubages, and other search engine search results, but your article summary can be longer if you have reasons to want it to be.

It has two main purposes - to tell someone, (a searcher), and the search engine what the article is about, and to provide a place to use keywords that might influence the search engines to see the article as a good match for a query someone typed in. It is the short description right under the title link on search results pages. Search engines will usually only show up to 160 characters, so think of it like a Tweet - a chance to grab someone's interest.

SEO, [search engine optimization], is simply things you do to get the search engines to find your writings so they can be presented in the search results listings to whoever is looking for whatever. If you think you are not interested in other people finding your writings - then why aren't you just using a word processor and keeping it on your own computer?

There are a lot of SEO techniques you can use, without any extra work, expertise, or, most importantly - changing your writing style. How you create your article URL address, and article titles were addressed here: Easy SEO Hub Writing Tips for the Title and URL, now the next step is understanding how important and helpful your hub article summary can be to getting your writings found, with just a little common-sense SEO effort. No technical knowledge needed.

Keywords are the primary criteria search engines use to determine which results to show an Internet searcher - in response to the query they typed in the search box. There are hundreds of other factors search engines use, but keywords are the most important.

A keyword is a word or phrase that relates to the Hub page topic. It is also a word or phrase that someone types into Google, Bing, or Yahoo when they are looking for something on the internet.For instance; if you were looking for a cake recipe - you might type "cake recipe" - that is known as a keyword, (even though it's two words), or if you were looking for "pineapple upside-down cake recipe" - that's what you would type in the search box. That's known as a long-tail keyword, or keyword phrase. Then the search engine goes out to the Net and looks for articles that have those words; in the title, the URL, the summary, and the body of the content.

That is how search engines choose which results to show the person that is asking for information. So it only makes sense to use words that people might be looking for, in your writings. Sometimes it's easy, like how-to articles about plumbing - easy to use the word "plumbing" in your writing, but sometimes it's hard, like how to fit in "detective story" in your ongoing chapters of Sam Spade adventures. It can also be hard when you know what you want to say, and how you want to say it, and neither will work with a simple keyword inserted.

So what can you do? Use keywords in other places that matter, like; titles and URL's, summaries and comments, and of course tags. You can easily use a little simple common-sense keyword SEO in these places without effecting or altering your writing style.

If you haven't read the Easy SEO Hub Writing Tips for the Title and URL article, you should, it goes into more detail about those areas. For these easy SEO hub writing tips the discussion will be about how you can use simple keyword SEO techniques in your article summary and comments section.

Using SEO keyword writing tips in your article summary is very, very important. Your article summary is so important that Hubpages even makes a point of reminding you when you have an article that does not include a summary.

You can see summary examples, the way a searcher would see them, below.

Notice that the top three listings, (1-3), included the keywords "how to write", and "hubpages" in both the title, and the summary.

The article summary is the "hook" that catches both the searcher and the search engine. Using the illustration above, and talking about the search engine hook - look how the top three listings have the searcher's keywords; "how to write", and "Hubpages," in both the title and summary. *(#2 is an exception because it is the Hubpages site itself) The search engines saw the keywords as being what the searcher was looking for. The combination told the search engine that those results were probably what the searcher wanted, so it listed them first. That's why it is important to use keywords in your summary

Example:

Hub article: About how to make three-tiered wedding cakes with fruit garnishes as decorations.

Someone searching for information or instructions might type in: "fruit wedding cakes," or "how to make wedding cakes with fruit decorations," or even "how to make tiered wedding cakes with fruit decorations."

Search engine finds two articles, with these titles and summaries:

"Make Your Special Wedding Cake Using Nature's Bounties"

Make your wedding day extra special with this beautiful wedding cake adorned with nature's bounty. Celebrate your wedding with this unusual blend of the traditional and the natural. A wedding cake memory that will last a lifetime.

Those are smooth and flowing, but practically useless in your quest to get readers to your article. As nicely poetic as the summary sounds, and as proud as you are of its composition - it won't get you any readers. The only keywords it uses are "wedding cake," neither the person looking for information, nor the search engine will see this article as a value to what was asked for.

A better example:

"Beautiful and Special - Three-Tiered Wedding Cake Decorated with Fruit Garnishes" *(yes, that is a long title - but it's only an illustration)

"This beautiful three-tiered wedding cake, decorated with fruit garnishes, will be as special as your wedding day. This easy to make tiered wedding cake uses nature's fruits as decorations that will amaze your guests."

From a search engine perspective, this article seems much more suited to what the searcher was looking for - it has all the keywords they typed in, and will almost certainly be listed higher than the other summary example.

And looking at what the summary says the article is about... If you were the searcher, which result would you check out first?

Although the summary is important to the search engine, it is probably more important to the person looking for information. Consider your own Internet searches for information. When the search engine presented you with a list of results - what did you do?

If you are what SEO experts call a "typical searcher," you probably did the following:

1. Started at the top of the list - probably skipping the first couple "ad sponsored" listings
2. Scanned the titles for ones that seemed to be what you were looking for
3. Then when you found one you liked, you read the summary to see what it was about! Just like you do for books or products on a shelf. The package or title got your attention, so you picked up the product to get more information, or opened the book to read the dust-cover blurb. That is what your summary does - it provides more information.
4. You also probably don't look farther than the first two pages of search results before typing in a different search request - because you didn't see what you were looking for

So your writings might make the search results listings, but without a little common-sense, non-technical SEO effort, it will be on search results page 37 - and no one will ever find it.

Referring to the above illustration:

*Note: listing #2 probably ranked number two due to the authority of the site it is after all, Hubpages itself, and does not suit our purposes here - so let's ignore it. It ranked for factors other than the summary.

Placing myself in the searcher's shoes, and I typed in "how to write on Hubpages," listing #1 & #3 titles would get my attention first. #2 just doesn't seem to be what I was looking for. Also, both #1 & #3 have summaries that seem to be just what I was looking for - information about how to write on Hubpages. Their titles got me to look, but it was their summaries that hooked me into clicking. The summary got the traffic.

#4 title got my attention, but the summary did not hook me like #1 & #3 did. So even if I might come back to it, the better summaries got my traffic first.

#5, and #6 didn't get my attention at all. The titles were ok, they had the keywords, but the summaries didn't give me the impression they were what I was looking for at all.

Putting yourself in the searcher's shoes - did you see these listings differently?

And what if you don't even write an article summary? Then search engines will take some text from the first paragraph or two of the article content. A bad idea. If you aren't serious enough to write a summary, even a bad one, then you aren't serious about getting your writings read.

Google is the search engine used by about 80% of internet searchers. And they won't tell exactly what their search engines use to decide what gets listed first, but they do give hints. Using those hints, and "forensic" data mining, the SEO experts have determined that this is what search engines look for in a hub article summary:

1. Keywords first! - the most important factor. If the hub article summary does not contain keywords that match the words a searcher typed in, the search engine will not see it as a relevant match to what was being looked for
2. Keyword placement - Search engines like to see relevant keywords in the first sentence. And they especially like it when the first sentence para-phrases the title. So if your title was, "How to make a widget," then the summary should start with something like; "See how to make a widget," or "Learn how to make a widget," or "Details on how to make a widget." Followed by another sentence describing the article content.
3. Number of matching keywords - the more keywords in your summary that match what a searcher typed in, the more chance you have for a higher search listing. Both the search engine, and the person searching will see the article as more relevant to what they were looking for. For example: "How to make widgets," is a better search match than just "Widgets,", or even "make widgets."

The Next SEO-friendly Hub Writing Tip:

• Easy SEO Hubpages Tip - How to Use the Comments Capsule

See more of my writings at:

• GA Anderson's Library