SEED

Kristi Anderson is Managing Editor of the AOL Living sites, including ParentDish.com, Lemondrop.com, StyleList.com, and PawNation.com.

As you might guess, links aren't just important for simple navigation. They're also significant for search engine optimization (SEO), because they're the online equivalent of a personal referral or vote.

Search Engines and Search Queries
Most web traffic is driven by search engines like Yahoo!, Bing, and Google. If your article can't be found by search engines due to insufficient or poorly worded links, you're missing out on tapping into the people who are looking for you.

Search queries, or the words that users type into the search box to find your content, carry huge value. Search engine traffic can make or break your article's success, because this group of targeted visitors provides revenue and exposure like nothing else can. This is why investing in SEO can have a huge rate of return.

John Neff is Editor-In-Chief of Autoblog.com.

While an article's title should grab a reader's attention, the first paragraph (or 'lede') convinces him or her to stay and keep reading. Generally, the first paragraph should begin with the central piece of news or information that your article is meant to convey. This sets up the reader with an expectation of what will follow.

Since each singular article is usually part of a larger story, immediately following the first sentence should be any background information that helps give the article context. One should never assume that readers are as well informed as you, the writer (why would they be reading your article if they were?), so use this space to answer any questions like:

• "What led up to this?"
• "Why is this important?"
• "Who are the players and/or organizations involved?"
• "What is this article about?"

Kristi Anderson is Managing Editor of the AOL Living sites, including ParentDish.com, Lemondrop.com, StyleList.com, and PawNation.com.

The beauty of creating online content is that it's all connected – a literal and virtual 'web' of information. And, a web is intended to be navigated, or searched.

Linking and Link Frequency
You connect your content to other online content through linking. A link is simply a clickable navigation element on a web page. Clicking on a link takes you to another web page. It's as simple as that.

Links are usually shown as blue, with underlined text. My link in the first paragraph of this article is an example. Links are an important way for users to discover and browse new websites.

Article jointly written by Kristi Anderson, Managing Editor, AOL Living; Robin Aguilar, Principal SEO Analyst; and Erin Scottberg, Community Manager for Lemondrop.com.


At SEED Academy, we've given you some great tutorials for creating good content and pointing others to it. So, as you start to write articles for SEED and experience success, it makes sense you'll want to spread the word as your articles get published.

As Robin's SEO myth article states in myth #10: "Once I hit publish, I'm done." If you don't care to promote your article, then you are done. But if you are invested in drawing attention to it, then it's only the beginning.

Read on for a quick overview of social media and social networking, and how you can make it work for you.

You're Already A Social Networker

If you wrote your first article for your local newspaper, I bet you'd buy a small stack of papers and hand them out to all of your friends – your real-world social network. You'd also probably email or call your friends to share the news, right?

Online networking operates on the same principle. You're engaging in community and conversation -- you're simply doing it online. And here's what makes it so much better than passing around that stack of newspapers: You can reach a massive audience more efficiently, and you can do it for free. (If your local newspaper is $1 a pop, you can quickly add up that cost savings.)