Content Writing & Copywriting Blog

How not to depend much on search engines

Sep 19, 2008 14 Comments »

95% of my writing business depends on search engine traffic. This is a dangerous situation. What if something happens – some change in the ranking algorithms, something that is not liked at my website – and my listings vanish from the search engine result pages? Does this mean I should pack my bags? Although I can start all over again and try to get back into the search engine results but this is a very shaky situation and I am sure many of you too are faced with the same dilemma. What is the best way to deal with such a situation?

Let us except that the search engines are very powerful promotional tools and they should never be excluded from your Internet marketing effort, but they should never be the sole suppliers of your traffic. With millions of websites scattered all over the Internet it is not too ambitious to try to get some traffic from these websites directly. I will again emphasize that you can get the best traffic from search engines because when people come from search engines they are already looking for a specific search term and this may not happen if they are coming directly from a website. But then the advantage of getting traffic from a website is that a person clicks on your link fully knowing where he or she is heading to. So how can you generate traffic outside of the search engines? Here are a few thoughts; you are welcome to add yours.

Publish a blog

Regularly publishing a blog is the best way of driving high-quality traffic to your website without having to depend on search engines. Although blogs get tons of traffic from search engines due to the way they are published, a lot of traffic also comes from other websites and blogs and this is an advantage not enjoyed by conventional websites. People are constantly linking to blog posts, commenting about them, commenting on them and recommending them to their readers and friends. There are even many social bookmarking websites just to promote blog content among various readers and blog publishers. In few instances some bloggers have been blocked by the search engines (that is, their links didn’t show up on the search result pages) for violating various rules but the blockage didn’t affect them much although they did notice it and wrote about it. The mere act of writing about the blockage got them hundreds of thousands of hits from other blogs and websites. They couldn’t have generated such massive traffic merely from search engines. Once your blog has crossed the popularity threshold you don’t have to worry much about search engine traffic.

Have quality content on your website or blog

Interesting content draws crowds to your blog or website. People not only read the content they also like to link to it whenever possible, and if they are really impressed they put a permanent link to your blog on their blog or website. Quality content also enhances your credibility and people begin to trust you for your opinion. You get tons of repeat traffic. Great content also encourages your visitors to subscribe to your RSS feeds and this also helps you increase and maintain your readership – this readership doesn’t have to depend on search engines to find your blog and consume your content and consequently, generate business for you.

Be active on social media websites, online forums and blogs

We live in a conversation economy; lots of business is generated by encouraging conversation between buyers and sellers. But this is just one small aspect of social media marketing. What you are actually doing is establishing long-lasting relationships with different individuals. You don’t necessarily have to do it for a selfish reason because being social means giving more than taking. Be useful to people and people will be useful to you. Be an interesting person, be a resourceful person and people won’t take you as a business bug. Try to interact with people through Twitter, FaceBook, Plurk, Digg, Pownce, etc. Often it is not possible to track conversations on all social media websites so just focus on a couple or even a single website but do it thoroughly and establish yourself there as an authority. Network with as many people as possible.

Similarly, constructively interact on various online forums because you can get lots of quality traffic from these forums. Don’t spam and don’t leave meaningless comments just to leave your links because this doesn’t work; people don’t click your link if they don’t like what you have written. You should also leave comments on other blogs to let people know about the existence of your blog or website. But make sure that you add value to the ongoing discussion and this means read the content present on the blog or website carefully, think about it, and only then add your opinion.

Distribute your content to blogs and websites

There are many blogs that would eagerly accept your guest posts provided you have written something really worth reading and captivating. When these bloggers publish your blog post, what is known as guest blog post, they often put a small profile of yours under the post or over it with the link connecting to your blog or website.

Similarly you can submit succinct, useful articles to various websites and article submission websites. These article submission websites draw lots of traffic from search engines; this way you can get indirect traffic from search engines in case your own website or blog vanishes from there.

Include your link in your e-mail signature

This might not look like much but you never know where your e-mail may end up and who might click on the link you have included in your signature. And anyway having a link is a lot better than not having it. This can be really effective if you send out lots of e-mails on a regular basis.

Publish a newsletter

In terms of the Internet this is one of the oldest surviving modes of communicating with your visitors. When they visit your website encourage investors to subscribe to your newsletter so that they can receive regular updates from you. Although this can be same as subscribing to your RSS feeds but your newsletter is a bit different – people don’t need an RSS reader first of all to read your updates, and second, it will be difficult for you to publish everything on your blog; sometimes you need to communicate only through e-mail. Publishing a newsletter is one of the greatest ways of getting tons of highly targeted traffic to your website without having to depend on search engines.

Do share on this blog if you are aware of more methods of generating targeted traffic to your website or blog without search engines.

Is SEO copywriting really a big deal after all?

Aug 13, 2008 5 Comments »

My clients often ask me (as one just did a while ago) what is a big difference between SEO copywriting and online copywriting and why do I specify different rates for both the services? To be frank there is no big difference because every good online copywriting should ideally also be a SEO copywriting; after all the main purpose of online copywriting is to make the reading interesting and relevant to both human visitors as well as the search engine crawlers. Having said that, there is a fundamental difference between a SEO copywriting and online copywriting and there is a reason I have different rates for the two services.

When you’re doing SEO copywriting you need to pay close attention to the relevant keywords and search expressions. SEO copywriting is more catered towards making the search engine algorithms happy. You have to walk on a rope and keep a balance because you need to do that without sounding absurd to human visitors. There is a keyword intensity to be considered but this is not always so. Your keywords and key phrases need to be placed at strategic places using specific HTML tags so that they are appropriately highlighted when the search engine crawlers are going through your website. While sounding perfectly normal you need to use the keywords and key expressions judiciously.

Some SEO experts believe that it doesn’t matter whether you use keywords in the copy or not but this is wrong. If you don’t use the right words and terminologies how can the search engines make out what ranking to assign to your website for particular words and search expressions? You definitely have to use of the words and such expressions that are relevant to your website or particular webpages. For instance if I want to be found for the term “online copywriter” and if this expression exists nowhere on my website it is going to be very difficult for the search engines to display my link for this expression especially when many more websites exist containing the expression so many times.

Online copywriting doesn’t bother much with using keywords and search expressions. As long as you are conveying your message in the right manner it doesn’t matter what words you are using.

Selecting targeted keywords for your content

Jun 22, 2008 6 Comments »

A visitor in this comment asked me to write a blog post on selecting targeted keywords so here are my thoughts on the topic.

Careful keyword targeting can help you boost you search engine rankings. I’m not saying manipulating your content so that your pages rank higher on search engines; the sole purpose of your website content is to provide helpful and relevant information to your visitors and even search engine crawlers are looking for that quality when they are going to your website or blog. Nonetheless, it helps to know what keywords to target while generating your content simply because it can help you promote the right content in front of the right audience.

Selecting targeted keywords is not as cryptic as it sounds. Do your own research. When you are thinking about your keywords don’t think like a person who is designing the website or writing the content. Think like a person who wants to find what you can offer. How would he or she search for the type of content you are generating for your blog or website? What keywords or expressions would you use so that you make sure that you find this sort of content? It may also help if you can make out what sort of people you want to attract through search engines. Do they understand jargons? Are they techies or non-techies? This is because different people will look for the same thing using different words according to their background and preferences.

For instance, I provide online copywriting services; some people find my website by searching for "content writer" because they are familiar with the word "content" and some people simply look for a "website writer" because they are looking for a writer for a website (it is as simple as that). So if I don’t optimize my content for both sorts of expressions and many more expressions I will be losing (I do, in fact and I am trying to bridge this gap these days) customers who would have really loved to hire me had they been able to find me.

Finding the right keywords to target through your content comes with time, and sometimes you can also use tools like WordTracker and AdWords to find out all possible keyword combinations for your content. I find the AdWords tool more effective.

As a side note, it is better to focus on longer search strings rather than shorter keywords because people do use long expressions on the search engines. For instance someone may try to find me with "writer for my pottery website". It is easier to rank higher for longer search strings and in fact it is better to start your content optimization campaign with longer expressions so that you get at least that traffic and then later on you can start building content for more competitive, shorter search expressions or keywords.

Benefits of consistent SEO copywriting

Jun 10, 2008 5 Comments »

The importance of targeted search engine traffic can never be under-emphasized. Although there are many sources from where you can generate traffic for your website once you start publishing on the Internet the majority of your traffic will be coming from various search engines. Your SEO copywriting skills can help you to a great extent. But how is SEO copywriting different from normal copywriting? My clients often ask me this question because I charge extra for SEO copywriting. Is more skill required for SEO copywriting? It depends but the purpose of this post is not to talk about SEO copywriting skills but to discuss the benefits of consistent SEO copywriting.

The meaning and purpose of SEO copywriting

Just as content writing is different from copywriting, normal copywriting is different from SEO copywriting. When you write for SEO purposes you pay special attention to the way the search engine crawlers access your content. When you are writing copy for SEO you try to convey to the search engines for what keywords and key phrases the particular webpage should be ranked higher on search engine result pages. You don’t have to do this if you’re not bothered about how the search engines view your page. The central meaning and purpose of SEO copywriting is writing search engine friendly copy without obscuring the inherent meaning for your human visitors. Most SEO experts fail to achieve this; they get too obsessed with generating content merely for the search engines. What purpose does your copy solve if it draws tons of traffic from search engines but makes no sense to people who want to do business with you?

Now we move on to the benefits of consistent SEO copywriting

SEO copywriting brings you lots of targeted search engine traffic

The search engines don’t merely send you random traffic: they send you traffic based on the search terms used by their users. Their ranking algorithms decide where your link should be displayed for a specific search term or whether it should be displayed at all. Once you have optimized a particular page for your selected keywords or key phrases and once that page begins to appear higher on the search engine result pages your website gets lots of targeted, highly relevant traffic. And once you have incurred cost on SEO copywriting you pay no more because when your links appear naturally on the search engine result pages and when people click on those links you don’t have to pay for them as in the case of sponsored links. Whether your links generate a single click or millions of clicks you don’t have to pay for them.

SEO copywriting enhances your credibility

The search engine users click more on naturally appearing links rather than on sponsored links. Anyone with money to spend can pay for the ads but only those people who build their content page by page working over a long period of time appear naturally on the search engine result pages. This increases their credibility in the eyes of search engine users. It also means that you have lots of content on your website or blog and lots of people eagerly link to you (that’s why you rank higher in the first place).

SEO copywriting gives you user-friendly content

At the crux of SEO copywriting lies user-friendliness and this is what differentiates and SEO copywriter from a normal copywriter and even from an SEO expert. In fact and SEO copywriter first writes for your users and then tweaks the copy for the benefit of search engines. Efficient SEO copywriting automatically increases your conversion rate because right words are used to express your ideas and your content is organized to facilitate convenient reading.

SEO copywriting increases your conversion rate

Everything boils down to conversion rate eventually. In the end of the day what matters is how effective your copywriting has been. Did many people buy from your website? Did enough people subscribe to your RSS feeds or e-mail alerts? Were you able to convince many people to link to your website or blog posts? What I mean to say is did your copy achieve what you intended it to achieve for you? SEO copywriting can really help you increase your conversion rate by forcing you to write your copy in the right manner. You not only write well you also draw relevant traffic from search engines.

So where does consistence come in? You need to indulge in SEO copywriting consistently for it to take effect. Search engines love it when you have tons of high-value content and even your competitors know this. Consequently, they are continuously generating search engine friendly content. To stay ahead of your competition you need lots of content that is not only subject-relevant but also search engine optimized.

What is easier? Creating linkbait content or requesting people to link to you?

May 12, 2008 3 Comments »

I was thinking about increasing traffic on my websites, especially this blog and my copywriting and content writing website. I fare well on the search engines for some good keywords and expressions, but they are a selected few, and I’m working on optimizing my website for other keywords too (there are more than 40 keywords my website must rank high on, and doesn’t, yet).

But it’s not just generating content, you also need links from other blogs and websites to achieve more traffic, both from search results and direct links. I never feel comfortable (actually, never done that) approaching people to put my link on their blogs or websites. Comments etc. too I don’t leave any (I plan to focus on that) and I don’t participate much on online forums (I plan to focus on that too). But the thing that I like the most is producing content, and I think that’s the best of generating incoming links. In the near future I plan to write a lot for my website, and also for other blogs and websites.

Exchanging links or requesting people for links actually demands greater effort. Write an excellent blog post or a well-researched article and many people will voluntarily link to you. What do you think?