You don’t have to sacrifice the quality of your work in order to create content that is search engine optimized and will help improve your ranking with the major search engines, explains Pierre Zorkian.

By integrating certain important elements into your website content, directory submission articles, blog posts and social media content, you can make them easy for search engines to find and improve your overall ranking.

Here are ten of the key concepts to keep in mind:

1. Content matters: It’s important to remember that no matter what your subject matter is, your content has the potential to reach a large audience and help your company beyond the SEO benefits. Website content, articles and blog posts are ways to connect your company to relevant, interesting information about your industry. Creating copy that is well-written and focuses on interesting topics in your industry will help it go beyond increasing your page rank by being linked to and shared by outsiders.

2. Stay on topic: Business writing is not the same as writing your personal blog! There’s nothing wrong with adding some personality to your writing – this helps to keep the readers intrigued. Just make sure that you stay focused on the business-oriented topic you are writing about and avoid drifting into unrelated tangents.

3. Write compelling headings: The titles of web pages and articles are among the first things that grab the attention of a reader. Don’t use a generic, boring headline which simply describes what the article or web copy is about. Instead, think like a newspaper headline writer and develop a headline which makes someone want to read more.

4. Ideal keyword length and density: Content written for web copy and articles for directory submission should be 300 to 1,000 words in length. Blog posting and posts on social media sites can be shorter. The length of your article will largely be determined by the number of keywords you are using: a keyword for every 50 to 100 words of content is a good rule of thumb.

5. Add keywords to the bio: Biographical information given for a magazine story or an article for a directory submission is a great chance for you to enhance your credentials and also optimize your content. Make sure that you include one keyword in your bio.

6. Don’t stack keywords: Cramming keywords in an article or page of web content (such as being part of a list) looks unprofessional since all of your linked keywords will be running together on the page. Spread your keywords evenly throughout the article so they look more organic.

7. Use meta descriptions: Meta descriptions are 150 character descriptions of your content and are excellent opportunities for optimization. Make sure your content has meta descriptions with keywords included. This is a great way to get Google to recognize your content and increase its value.

Read more at Wordtracker