“I think that journalism is inherently SEO friendly,” Lancaster said during the Twitter chat. “People searching for news find sites based on search engine power.”

The following is based on tips that Lancaster shared during the hour-long chat, as well as suggestions, resources and links provided by him and writers who participated. This is by no means the end-all, be-all on the subject, but should be enough to get you started. If you’re interested in learning more, I’ve included some additional resources at the end of the post. If you know of others, please feel free to add them in a comment.

What is SEO?
SEO is a way of formatting information on the web so it appears in the highest possible position within results of searches people do on Google or other popular search engines.

What should I add to my articles, blog posts or other Web copy so it shows up in searches?
For SEO purposes, you can tag your articles or posts with a variety of descriptors including:

• Permalinks
• Meta links
• Keywords
• Links
• Alt tags

What are permalinks?
By default, WordPress uses your article’s title as the permanent link or to the content. But sometimes the title is too long for search engines to pick up. WordPress lets you use a “permalinks” tool to edit an article’s URL. Lancaster suggests editing a permalink down to 3 to 5 keywords to help an article rank better. “Sometimes I’m lazy and forget to edit my own permalinks before publishing, which brings me to an important point,” he says. “Once your article goes live, it’s too late to edit the permalink.” Doing so will cause a 404 or “file not found” error, which causes Google to drop the article from the index. So, don’t edit any permalinks after the fact.

What are keywords and what’s the best way to use them?
Keywords are a handful of words or phrases that briefly sum up what an article is about. Putting keywords in headlines is a great way to snag traffic. Using keywords in subheads also helps stories or posts get picked up by search engines. For personal blogs, “SEO isn’t about keywords really, but (they’re) a big part of the picture,” Lancaster says.

Should writers worry about keyword density? Isn’t that what content mills encourage their writers to use?
Keyword density describes writing web content in a way that packs as many keywords as possible into as few words as possible. But, according to Lancaster, writers shouldn’t worry about keyword density. New research into something called LDA is showing that keyword density doesn’t matter. “Well-written content trumps low quality content in the long run,” he says.

What’s the best way to pick keywords to describe a story or post?
Use keyword research tools such as SpyFu, Soovle, and Google AdWords Keyword to find popular keywords, then work those terms into your content. Writer Dawn Papandrea suggests asking ourself what words someone would use to search for a specific topic, and then including that phrase in your headline or first paragraph. Or, Papandrea suggests, “Start by doing a Google search on the topic and see what comes up. Try different phrases/word combinations.” Or look at search terms that brought people to your blog in the past and use the same terms when you write about that subject again.

What’s so great about links?
To maximize SEO, include links to other web content in your stories or blog posts as a way to get other relevant, quality websites linking back to you, which will boost traffic, and search results. “Encourage linking. If you can get links to your blog or Facebook page, you will raise your credibility with search engines,” Lancaster says. “Good sites link both in and out, and I believe sites with outbound links to other good sites rank better.”

What does anchor text have to do with links?
Anchor text is the text you click on in a link. On most websites it shows up as blue, underlined or both. You can learn more about it in this anchor text cheat sheet from SEOmoz.

What are ‘alt tags’ and why do they matter?
Alt tags are short text descriptions of an image that search engines pay very close attention to. A well-optimized page has images, and those images have alt tags containing keywords. Writers and bloggers who run their blogs on Blogger’s free blogging software platform can follow instruction in this post on The Original Blogger Tips and Tricks blog to add alt tags to images in their Blogger posts.

How can you tell if the SEO formatting you’re adding to a blog post or story is working?
Google Analytics is the key, it can show both trends over time and recent top keywords. “Using tools, you find what people are searching for, then you write about that,” Lancaster says. If you’re running a blog, website or news operation on WordPress.org, Lancaster recommends the Google Analyticator plugin. He also recommends using Google Webmaster tools to see where a site ranks on specific search terms.

Any other good SEO plugins?
The All in One SEO Pack WordPress plugin is good for focusing on either categories, tags, or archives, Lancaster says.

What about quirky content, the new or unusual stories that readers wouldn’t know to search for but love once they find them. How do you get traffic to them?
It’s hard to use SEO for quirky content. One option is making it easy to find by using a easy-to-recall phrase in it. But, Lancaster says, since people aren’t searching for those types of stories, using social networks such as Twitter and Facebook to promote them is probably a better way to go.

How can fiction writers use SEO?
Fiction writers can benefit from SEO, mostly to build their reputation and audience. Fiction writers can use SEO to generate traffic, then convert that traffic into subscribers or Facebook fans. “Maybe SEO can help you if you want to rank for something like ‘Denver children’s author’ or ‘Colorado fiction writing’,” Lancaster says.

How much time should a writer who’s busy with paid assignments and maintaining their own blog (or blogs) spend on SEO?
Some experts suggest an hour a day. Sara Lancaster, wife of Jason, copywriter and WordCount Blogathon participatant and sponsor, says: “As much time as you can spare. What good is a blog or website if no one can find it?” As you’d expect, Jason Lancaster says writers should concentrate on what they’re good at and pay someone do do their SEO work for them (no doubt a nice option if you can afford it). If you can afford to go that route, what would it cost? Basic SEO reviews of a writer’s website or blog like the kind Lancaster does run approximately $499. Read about one such SEO review Lancaster did in this post on the Spork Marketing blog.

What are big SEO mistakes that writers make?
Using free blog hosts and not using Google Analytics. “If writers want a successful personal website, they’ve got to get away from Blogger, etc., and get their own site,” Lancaster says. Then, use Google Analytics to see what’s happening.

Other tips:

• The first basic concept for SEO: search engines must understand your content. Have a search-friendly site.
• Search engines use links to determine authority and trust. More links equals more trust and higher rankings.
• Re-writing or editing old posts with an SEO slant can be a great way to get more traffic.

One final note – According to Lancaster, SEO consultants have a hard time finding competent copywriters who can write, understand SEO and meet deadlines.  ”I know of a few SEO consultants who have tried to pay someone overseas to write their stuff cheap, and it never works out,” Lancaster says. “As SEO consultants learn and grow, they’re starting to recognize the importance of high quality writing.” You can read more of what he has to say on the subject in this post on Search Engine Journal.

Here are some previous WordCount posts on SEO:

• SEO for writers? Forget about it
• 7 simple SEO tips for writers
• The well-dressed blog post
• SEO and blog post tags: more isn’t better
• What freelance writers should know about SEO

Here are some other useful resources for learning more about SEO for writers:

• The Beginners Guide to Search Engine Optimization (SEOmoz)
• A freelance writer’s basic guide to SEO (Daily Writing Tips)
• Ultimate Guide to Search Engine Optimization (Entrepreneur Magazine’s Ultimate Guides)

These days all kinds of writers would benefits from the basics about SEO, if only to help push their own blogs up higher search results on Google or Bing.

If you’ve got questions about SEO, please join us for the next WordCount Last Wednesday chat, which takes place this Wednesday, Nov. 24.

My guest for this hour-long live Twitter chat is Internet marketing expert Jason Lancaster, head of Spork Marketing in Denver. Lancaster is no stranger to WordCount. During last May’s blogathon, he wrote this WordCount guest blog post on SEO tips for writers.

As part of the 2010 Blogathon, Lancaster also did an SEO makeover of Charles Newbery’s blog about his family life and work as an ex-pat freelance journalist in Argentina, Pine Tree Paradise. Lancaster wrote about the process in this post on the Spork Marketing blog.

The chat takes place on Twitter.  To follow along, use the hashtag #wclw.

The format of tomorrow’s live chat is as follows:

• 8:30 – Log on and introduce yourself.
• 8:35 to 8:45 – I’ll ask Jason Lancaster a few questions to get things rolling.
• 8:45 – We’ll open it up to questions from the audience.
• 9:30 a.m. – The chat ends.

Although it’s possible to use the standard Twitter interface for a live chat, you might find it easier to follow along with an add-on application such as TweetGrid, TweetChat or HootSuite. This tutorialexplains how to set them up.

If you’re afraid you’ll offend followers by tweeting too much during a chat, you can suggest they use an app called TwitterSnooze to temporarily turn off your tweets. In case you haven’t done this before, when the chat starts, tweet a message like this: “I’ll be in a live chat for the next hour; if you don’t want to follow, turn off my tweets with TwitterSnooze.com.”

If you’ve got a suggestion for a subject you’d like to see covered, send it my way.

To close out the year with a bang, the next live chat will be the WordCount Last Wednesday Christmas Party! Instead of a guest speaker, we’ll welcome all freelance writers and bloggers to come and chat about the high and low points of 2010, writing goals they’re setting for themselves next year and their observations for how the freelance business is changing. Stay tuned for more details. The WordCount Last Wednesday Christmas Party chat will take place on Dec. 22, but at a new time – 10 a.m. Pacific. Stay tuned for more details.

If you’re an expert in a particular aspect of freelance writing, running a freelance business or tech tools for writers and are interested in participating in a WordCount Last Wednesday chat as a guest speaker in 2011, contact me.

Even the terms we use to describe ourselves has changed. Independent writer, journalist entrepreneur, web journalist and multimedia content producer have taken the place of freelance writer, freelancer or wordsmith (although truth be told, I never cared for that one, or “scribe”).

Here are a dozen words from the new freelance lexicon:

Click through – What writers want people who visit their blogs or the websites that run their stories to do on ads on those pages. Like the BlogHer ad you see on this page. Yes, like that one over there on the right. Go ahead and click on it. But come back.

Content assets – The nom du jour for a writer’s output, synonymous with “story,” “article” or “piece.” More publishers buy all rights to work created by contract writers so they own the “content assets” and can repurpose them as they see fit. More on that below.

Content mill – Websites providing how-tos, service pieces and other evergreen information, in some cases along with national and local news, created by a massive number of contract writers word slaves, including professionals and hobbyists. Includes sites such as Examiner.com, Associated Content, Suite101 and Helium and well as companies such as Demand Media, which produces content for multiple sites. Depending on what you think of them, also referred to as content sites, farms, aggregators or “demonic.”

Deliverables – See content assets.

Hyperlocal – Popular term quickly veering on overuse for coverage of current events happening in a community that is produced and published entirely online. Definitions of coverage, events and community varies, but could include written, audio, video, map-based, real-time or reported coverage of a city or town, individual neighborhoods within a city or town, or specific industry, topic or subculture within a given city or community.

PIE - Short for “payment in exposure,” what some start-up websites try offer as compensation to writers they’d like to work for them for nothing. Yeah, right. Here’s what author Harlan Ellison says about that.

Repurpose – Verb meaning to use a story in multiple media, publications or venues. As in, “I’m going to assign a 4,000 backgrounder on credit cards divided into 12 sections so we can post it on the website first and then repurpose individual sections to run in our weekly e-newsletter.”

SEO – Short for search engine optimization. Catch-all phrase given to techniques used to push web pages high within Google and other search engine results, making it more likely someone will click on the contents, thereby increasing page views, and hopefully, advertising click throughs. Value and effectiveness of SEO in non-web content writing is widely debated.

Site producer – The Big Kahuna running an online content or news site, or portion thereof. Online equivalent of “editor.”

Uniques - Short for unique visitors, a measure of traffic to a website. Used to determine ad rates. Usage: “I need to get uniques to my blog up to 250,000 a month so I can charge $5 CPM.”

Web content writer – Individual who specializes in writing SEO-based copy for websites, including content farms. Works for low pay and/or share of ad revenue, creating writing practice based on quantity v. quality. Not to be confused with writers whose works appears on the web, though some freelancers do both.

Web style guides – Writing style rulebooks created by Yahoo and others to explain formats and other usage, incorporating tenets of both SEO and AP style.

When Michelle asked to swap posts with me today, I immediately panicked. With every post, WordCount hits its readers with something useful, pragmatic, informative, or controversial. Me? I like pictures of apes:

Ron, locked on his condo patio by his three-year-old daughter

So, instead of me rambling at all of you about the essentials of interaction design or creating a literary arc with your social media marketing strategy, and instead of making a mess of Michelle’s blog and redesigning it while you watch, I decided WordCount readers deserved something more. Something that, when they read it, would make them really, really happy.

Gretchen Rubin

And when I think happy, I think Gretchen Rubin.

Okay, really, I think about my wife and daughters and monkeys throwing Frisbees and low-sugar cereals.

But when I think about writers who are experts on the topic of happiness, Rubin definitely tops the list. She’s the author of the #1 New York Times bestseller The Happiness Project, a book that chronicles her year-long journey through hundreds of happiness experiments based on centuries of philosophy and science on the subject.

Whoa. Back up. I’m being a little dishonest here and got sidetracked for the sake of good connecting sentences between paragraphs.

Here’s the real reason why I interviewed Gretchen Rubin: she’s a naughty, naughty blogger.

No, not that kind of naughty. Stop Googling “Gretchen Rubin naked.” Come back here and pay attention.

Rubin is “naughty” because she’s a world-class blogger on the very successful Happiness-Project.com and countless other major sites — and doesn’t worry [gasp!] about search engine optimization.

During an online forum discussion about SEO and duplicate content, a fellow writer once noted that Rubin posts identical content on her personal blog and her Psychology Today blog. According to SEO mavens (despite the fact that Google openly denies this) duplicating content on multiple sites is a big no-no because search engines penalize sites that do.

In my interview with her on Monday, Rubin told me she cross-posts content on Psychology Today, her top-rated Huffington Post blog, Yahoo! Shine, and Divine Caroline, among several others. Her penalty? According to Compete.com, Rubin’s personal blog receives an average of over 65,000 unique visitors per month. Say it with me: 65,000 uniques.

Ladies and gentlemen, that’s on a blog that has a hyphen in the domain name — because even way back in 2006, http://happinessproject.com and http://thehappinessproject.com were already taken. In some circles of SEO “mavenry,” saying you have a hyphen in your domain name is like saying you have herpes on your, ahem, you know what.

Here’s a little from my interview with Gretchen:

Ron Doyle: So you were doing this big happiness project, mostly just for you, but then you started a blog. When and why did you start blogging?

Gretchen Rubin: In March 2006, I was working on the part of my happiness project dedicated to the theme of work and I wanted to test the theory that happiness comes from doing novel and challenging things, so I started a blog. But they wouldn’t sell me the domain name, so yeah, I have a hyphen. I didn’t know what I was doing, so I asked a friend for help. They told me to use Typepad, so I did. They said post every day. That was more than I had planned, but I did it anyway. I didn’t have images on the blog for months. But that’s what great about blogging — you can start simple, add bells and whistles later, and step up your game as you gain confidence. Some people, who knew more about SEO than me, asked, ‘Are you worried about this?’ I decided early on that I’m not going to worry about it. There were so many things that I could have worried about. Instead, I focused on one of my mantras, ‘Ubiquity is the new exclusivity.’ If I had an opportunity to put myself on a quality site, I did it.”

Doyle: So there was never a point in your evolution as a blogger where you were worried about SEO?

Rubin: Oh, sure, I was interested, I still am a little. I always wonder in the back of my mind if I’m doing the right thing. But I attended a presentation on the topic and the SEO expert there said that search engines like Google are constantly changing their algorithms to stop people from manipulating it, so it’s hard to know what hurts or helps. Instead, I do what makes sense from an audience perspective.

Doyle: That’s a really refreshing way of looking at the world of blogging. So many new bloggers want a magic formula to success — and that’s often SEO. But you’re saying that writing content people want to read is all that really matters. What tips then, if any, do you have for other aspiring bloggers?

Rubin: I don’t really worry about search. But I do worry about internal links, ways to get readers to dig deeper. I don’t really worry about keywords, but I stay focused on my key topics — friends and happiness, for example. If you get 100,000 new [readers] coming in from search and only 1 percent stay, that’s still great. But I think you should pay more attention to shout-outs from similar blogs, because people coming from those places will become loyal readers. And I think paying attention to your returning readers is most important if you want your blog to grow and be energetic.

Ron S. Doyle is a Denver-based freelance web designer and magazine writer. You can see more of his work at his new blog, Psychology Today’s You 2.0, an exploration of technology’s effect on identity and personality. He also writes a humor blog about design at BlogSaladBlog.com.

SEO, or search engine optimization, is a method for structuring blog posts or articles so they show up higher in searches on Google, Bing, Yahoo or other search engines.

SEO is part art, part science. These days, freelance writers and bloggers can take their pick of books, conferences and online classes to learn all about it.

But you don’t need to take a class to get the basics. For those, I turned to Jason Lancaster, founder of Spork Marketing, a Denver Internet marketing agency that builds websites for small businesses. Lancaster is also a sponsor of the 2010 WordCount Blogathon.

Lancaster may understand better than most Internet marketers the importance of SEO for writers because he’s married to one. His wife is Sara Lancaster, the proprietor of No. 2 Pen, a marketing communications company with a specialty in writing website content. (She’s also a Blogathon participant for the second year in a row – go Sara!)

Here are Lancaster’s suggestions for 7 simple steps writers can take to make their work more SEO friendly:

1. Pick an SEO-friendly title. Freelancers who grew up in newspapers or magazines may know how to write clever headlines, but clever doesn’t cut it online. Headlines, or titles, need to include keywords that describe what a story or post is about. Such explicitness is necessary so when people are doing Google searches when the title shows up in search engine results, people can scan it and quickly decide whether to click over and read the story, Jason Lancaster says. “It doesn’t have to be robotic, but if it’s clever but vague, SEO won’t reward you.” Keep titles short and to the point. Search engines don’t like long titles – after a certain character count they stop paying attention – just like readers. Think of it this way, Lancaster says: if your title is worth $10 and you split it up among 10 words, each word is worth $1. But if you use 3 or 4 words, each one is worth more. “It’s not fun or creative, but the best policy is to be a little boring,” he says.

2. Use subheads, bullets and bold type. There was a time in the early days of search engines when packing keywords into a story was popular, all the better to get a story to show up high in search results – thus the origin of the phrase “keyword stuffing.” Search engines have wised up since then. Today, search engines looks at typical editorial elements such as subheads, bullets and bold or italic type as clues to what an article is about. The added bonus: the same elements that help a story from an SEO standpoint make it look good to readers too. According to Lancaster, the best subheads describe the information that follows. For example, if the post you’re writing has a couple paragraphs on the background of the subject you’re writing about, use the subhead, “Background,” he says.

3. Include pictures or other graphics. Photos, illustrations, maps, graphics, video – in the eyes of Google, any kind of visual element is a plus. For starters, visuals separate what you write from spam or junk content because spammers don’t go to the time and expense of adding graphics to their work, Lancaster says. Also, people routinely use Google to search for images. If you include images and label them properly, it will help your post or story appear higher in search rankings. I can vouch for that: some of the most popular posts on WordCount get the traffic they do because people have done an image search using keywords I used as tags on a photo that I’d put with a post and they landed on my site as a result. If you add a graphical element to a post, Lancaster recommends labeling it with a caption and keywords, both elements that show up in search-engine searches. He also recommends giving the image an alt tag, a text description of several words or a phrase, so if someone is blind or set their browser not to show pictures they’ll know what image is there.

4. Pay special attention to the beginning and end. Search engines pay special attention to the first and last 50 words of a post or story, so you should too. You don’t need to stuff those sections with keywords, but it helps if keywords show up in the first and last sentences, Lancaster says.

5. Look before you link. Links are only as good as the words you use to describe them. In the Web world, those words are called anchor text, the words or phrase you put inside a link, such as what I did in step No. 1 above with “clever headlines,” which leads to a post I did about writing headlines. According to Lancaster, links are yet another way to add emphasis to a post or story that search engines pick up on. Because of that, anchor text should relates to what the story is about instead of including a phrase that doesn’t mean much of anything, such as “Click here,” which he calls a “dumb call to action.” Instead, create a compelling sentence, include a keyword in it, and that that your link, he says.

6. Limit categories and tags. Stick to labeling a post with one category – Google likes it better that way. Blogging platforms like WordPress and TypePage organize posts multiple different ways already, including by date, author and tags. If you put a post in three categories, when Google crawls your site it’ll find multiple copies of the same post, and search engines don’t like duplicate copy. “It dilutes whatever ranking you have,” Lancaster says. When it comes to tags, Lancaster recommends using three to five. If you’re using an SEO plug-in, such as the All in One SEO Pack for WordPress, a lot of this work is done for you.

7. Don’t get too caught up in how search engines work. SEO specialists geek out over what Google, Bing and other search engines put in their search algorithms, but that doesn’t mean you have to. Don’t worry about things like keyword density or Flesch–Kincaid readability tests, Lancaster says. Instead, focus on creating well-written blog posts or stories, use keywords, subheads, categories and tags correctly, and forget about “all the little nuances.” Make visiting an enjoyable experience for readers. “We all want to give our readers credit for reading every word of what we write, but the fact is they scan and when they find something they’re interested in they read every word. That’s the real SEO tip,” Lancaster says. “Make your content scannable, and Google will crawl it very well.”

Here are other posts I’ve done on SEO for writers:

• What freelance writers should know about SEO
• SEO and tags: more isn’t better

The best posts are heavy on context. But that’s just the beginning. To make sure they’ve got that pulled together look before you send them out the door, they should also have:

A catchy title – A clever headline will capture more attention than a dull one. Just make sure it accurately reflects what’s in the post.

A visual – Adding a photo, line drawing, logo, video  or other type of art that creates white space and visual interest, which increases readability. Creative Commons has a database of images and other creative work that can be re-used for free.

Links – Include URLs of blogs posts on the related topics, either written by you, which is good because it’ll drive traffic to your older blog posts,  or someone else, which is also good because when your readers click over to that someone else’s blog they’ll wonder who you are and come visit and that’s the first step to making a connection with like-minded bloggers.

Keywords and tags – A tree falling in the wilderness doesn’t make any noise, and a post on your blog that nobody knows about won’t make any noise either. You don’t have to be an SEO pro to add tags. The design themes some bloggers use do this work for them. If you’re looking to bone up on SEO, you’ll find some good resources in ProBlogger’s 2005 series on SEO for blogs.

Promotion – In addition to tags and keywords, it’s good to have a few mechanisms in place to alert regular readers to new posts. You can tweet about posts on Twitter and use other social networks like Digg, Delicious and StumbleUpon. Here are some other strategies for driving traffic to your blog.

One thing good blog posts don’t have – spelling errors. I don’t care what Penelope Trunk says, blog posts with too many typos are a turnoff. And not everyone can afford to have an editor proofread their posts. So before you hit the “Publish” button give your post a once over or run it through a spell checker.

Today’s topic: Online resources for freelance writers:

What freelance writers should know about SEO – Sounds tricky, but search engine optimization, or SEO, is simply understanding how to tag articles and blog posts so search engines find them.

10 top Web tools for freelancers – Learn about Google News Alerts, Firefox 2.0, RSS, Del.icio.us and more.

How writers can use LinkedIn, Part I – My go-to source for organizing contacts and finding story sources.

How writers can use LinkedIn Part II – Use this professional network of 23 million to remake yourself into the writer you want to be.

Go online to get business cards in a hurry – Sources for ordering business cards without leaving your office.

Later this week:

Tomorrow: Blogging basics for writers

Wednesday: Tips for improving your writing

Thursday: Best blogs for writers

Friday: Career development for freelancers