As the online world becomes increasingly social, with Google now indexing Facebook content, personalising results, analysing traffic from social media platforms and taking visitor behaviour into consideration it’s important to be aware of how this all affects SEO article writing.

In the past it was very much the case that most article writers were producing content predominantly aimed at the search engines. This involved creating content which included an abundance of keywords, the aim of which was to appeal to silicon based life forms rather than carbon based ones.

Fortunately this changed some time ago, with quality very much being the order of the day, and with keyword stuffing not only no longer effective, but actually likely to result in sites being blacklisted. But as with anything in the world of SEO, things keep moving, and the increased focus on personalisation has meant that article marketers yet again need to step up to the plate and deliver content which has a slightly different focus.

The reason for this is that whilst we have long been focussing on quality content, it is now more important than ever to ensure that our content instigates certain user behaviours. This may include sharing, bookmarking, tweeting, sending to Facebook, Liking, Google+ing and so on. By getting quality content shared in this way not only is traffic likely to grow, but the status of our content and its value in the eyes of the search engines is magnified.

In fact to a certain extent we’ve almost come full circle. Having moved away from appealing to the search engines to appealing more to real users, we’ve now started to move back towards creating content which appeals to the search engines again, the difference being though that this time we’re using real users to achieve this.

By creating quality content we moved away from churning out the dire drivel we all know and try to forget. But now it needs to be more than just quality content. Today SEO article writers need to be delivering content which addresses a specific need, answers clear questions, adds directly to some understanding and provides a concise, complete and valuable resource which encourages people to bookmark and share it.

In essence then, it’s important to make sure you know what your audience needs, and what sort of questions they’re asking before you begin writing the answers. Don’t tell people what it is they need to know, find out what they want to know, and provide the answers to them. And how do you find out what people want to know?

The answer is obvious – from the very same platforms you’re hoping your content will be shared through. Using social media to find out what people are asking, discussing and having difficulty with is the best way of making sure that social media works with you once your content is out there.