Business Writing & Copywriting Blog

My thoughts on SEO Content Writing

Oct 18, 2008 No Comments »

Recently a client approached me with a requirement of hundred articles for his various products and he needed me to write a small sample to help him make up his mind. Generally I don’t send samples because there are enough samples on my website but sometimes the requirement is unique enough to warrant a sample and in such cases I don’t mind providing it. He liked the sample a lot and then asked me whether I could provide him SEO content. I told him that the sample article that I had sent him was in fact an optimized article and he should get some good traffic for the chosen keyword. He was quite amused and happy that I had sent him an “SEO article” even when he hadn’t asked for one.

Although elsewhere I have explained the difference between normal content and SEO content if you ask me, frankly every well-written article is a search engine optimized article. Still, there is some difference when the relevant keywords come in focus. Clients often ask for a percentage density for the keywords of their choice. For instance many clients want the density of the keywords to be around 3% to 4%; this means of the total number of words existing on a page the keyword should take up 3% to 4% of the total number. Does it matter?

Nobody is sure. What matters is the relevance. Using the right words you need to explain the right thing. For instance if I want to talk about SEO content and if I want people to find my page that talks about SEO content then I should use this phrase at least a few times on that page. This has to be done till the semantics used in search engine ranking algorithms become highly intelligent. They have already improved a lot but you still have to use the exact keywords. Here I would quickly like to add that sometimes when you are looking for a writer Google also shows the results that contain the word “writing”.

So how do you create SEO content?

• Use the keywords: If you want to be found for a particular keyword then you have to use the keyword on the webpage but you shouldn’t overdo it because that proves counter-productive. Instead organize your content in such a manner that your important keywords get highlighted naturally.
• Organize your content logically and highlight important portions: This is very important especially when you are writing for web pages. The reading on your webpage should be as seamless as possible. Highlight the most important portions of your content using headings, subheadings and bullets. Use your keywords in headings, subheadings and bullets. Repeat your important key phrases and keywords at least once or twice in the first paragraph and definitely include your keywords in the title of your page.
• Stay away from creating abstract text: Being a writer I love literary experiments but not at the cost of my clients. When you are writing copy, SEO content, use precise phrases and use the exact words. Straightaway say what you mean to say and never leave scope for confusion. Why is it necessary to stay away from abstract style of writing? Straight writing is friendlier towards both your human readers and search engine crawlers; they can easily make out what you’re trying to sell and what you’re trying to promote.
• Research your keywords: It is very important to know for what keywords you want a particular webpage or the entire website to be found on the search engines. For instance if I want my website to be found for the term online copywriter then I must optimize my content for this particular phrase. But then I need to be sure whether people looking for me use this expression or not; maybe they are using something totally different that I am not aware of. So I have to find the keywords and key phrases that are actually being used and shouldn’t optimize my content for the keywords that I think people must be using. In fact researching your keywords should be the first step you should take before starting to generate optimized content for your website or blog.

Doing what you love and making money off it?

Oct 17, 2008 No Comments »

Can you actually love your work and earn money doing it? This is a question Seth Godin ponders upon on his blog. Loving your work does not mean loving to earn money because if that is your passion than of course you can earn money while loving to do it. He talks about creative things like painting, poetry, creative writing, music etc. People love these arts, they love to consume them and be entertained by them but can you actually make money without compromising on your values vis-a-vis your artistic sense?

I think to an extent you can. This may sound clichéd but I love writing. A few years ago I wrapped up my web designing and web hosting business and started writing to make a living. It was a shaky decision but I knew that there was a great demand for writing services and for people who could provide quality content. Blogging was just beginning, and the search engines had just started ranking websites according to the quality of their content. Sure, the sort of writing I do, you cannot call it literary, but I definitely have to use my creativity. I am not ecstatic – I will be ecstatic if I start writing novels and can support my family through them – but I am not frustrated too. I am always dabbling with words; they are my tools. It is a lot better than creating websites and writing code as far as my passion goes. My current profession allows me to perpetually remain in the company of words and this doesn’t let my writing muscles rust. I would have totally lost the touch had I been doing something else and not writing.

You can surely do something that you love and also make money while doing it if you are ready to make some adjustments. Take for instance painting. There is lots of scope for creative arts and you don’t even have to create professional art all the time. Do commercial painting during the normal working hours and then afterwards you can do the sort of painting you love just for the sake of passion and love. The same you can do with other creative arts such as photography, creative writing, poetry, even pottery.

The whole point is trying to remain in the company of your art no matter what happens. Although some compare it to something like prostituting the most important part of your life but it doesn’t have to be like that. The problem arises when people get trapped in solely earning money.

SEO tips you should know as an online copywriter

Oct 16, 2008 No Comments »

As an online copywriter you not only have to write well you also have to write search engine friendly content because the search engine crawlers are as important as human visitors for every website and blog. You have to make sure that your content is easily accessible to the search engine crawlers and most of your pages are index and ranked for the right keywords.

This can be really difficult if you have no clue about what sort of search terms users are using to find the website or blog you are writing for. You can use your common sense, advice from your visitors and friends and keyword analysis tools like WordTracker and AdWords to find out all keyword combinations and phrases that you may prefer to optimize your content for.

Once you have made a list of relevant keywords and key phrases you start building your content around them and this is where SEO tips can come handy for you as an online copywriter. Here are a few things you can take care of while generating content for your website or blog:

Create highly relevant content

It is a misconception that if you use your keywords in your copy again and again it will fetch you higher search engine rankings. Of course the keywords and key phrases must be present on the page in order to get some ranking for that page but they don’t have to occur needlessly. As an online copywriter you should know how to creatively use keywords and key phrases to come up with compelling and interesting copy. Stick to the topic, don’t write less and don’t write more than required and stick to the subject; this is very important for SEO. Nothing compares to relevance.

Use keywords and key phrases in the title

The title is a unique identity for your webpage; it tells both your human visitors and the search engines what sort of information that page gives. By merely looking at the title people should be able to make out whether they want to read your webpage or not. The title of your webpage also appears wherever its link appears; for instance, if somebody sees your link on the search engine result page he or she will see that link with your page title as the hyperlink. And they are more prone to clicking the link if they see the expression they have just used do conduct the search.

Even if some other blogger or website publisher links to that page there is a great possibility that he or she will use your title as the hyperlink. So you can easily make out how important it is to have a unique page title for every page on your website.

Use headings, subheadings and bullets to organize your content

Headings, subheadings and bullets help you organize your content logically and it is easier to quickly go through your webpage both for human visitors and search engine crawlers. When a particular webpage is being crawled your headings, subheadings and bullets are closely considered and checked for relevant keywords and key phrases. They basically sum up the entire message of your webpage and in fact a person should be able to make out 50% of your message by simply going through your headings, subheadings and bullets.

Focus on the main points in the beginning itself

People are in a great hurry on the Internet. They don’t want to read the entire page in order to make out what you intend to say. They would rather read the first headline or the first paragraph and if they cannot make out what the page represents they quickly leave to explore other websites. Hence it is extremely important that you come to the main point as early as possible and most preferably in the first paragraph. This also gives you a chance to use your important keywords and key phrases in the beginning of the webpage without sounding spammy. Webpage crawlers generally don’t go through the entire page; they read the first 250-300 words and then move on to the next page. So the expression "save the best for last" doesn’t hold good for an online copywriter who intends to write SEO content.

Do lots of interlinking

This doesn’t come under the realm of copywriting but wherever possible link to other pages under the same domain because it helps the search engine crawlers find other pages easily. A network of interlinking makes every page under your website or blog indexable.

SEO is not merely an online copywriter’ job because it also involves tweaking the source code and including the necessary meta tags. But as an aware online copywriter with little study and learning you can provide complete SEO services to your clients besides writing content for them.

How to write persuasively

Oct 12, 2008 No Comments »

To be frank, you’ll find hundreds of articles and blogs on how to write persuasively and in fact, I too have previously written on the subject of persuasive writing. So why this blog post on such a repetitive title? There are two reasons:

• The importance of the topic of how to right persuasively remains unmitigated no matter how many people have written about it.

• I am simply feeling like writing about it.

Let us first throw some light on what is persuasive writing. Is it some kind of deceitful textual legerdemain that you implement to make people buy from you or do your bidding? Well, this can be achieved by persuasive writing. But it doesn’t have to be deceitful. What you want to achieve through persuasive writing is convey your message to your readers in such a manner that they not only find your message convincing and believable they are also driven towards doing business with you.

One thing is clearly established that people don’t spend their hard earned money (stolen money, or even inherited many) easily; they really need to be coaxed into shelling out the green paper (or plastic money) and pay you for your product or service. They would rather get it for free and this is why it is a lot easier to promote free products and services. You have to "persuade" people into taking a decision and the executing it. How do you do that? There is no magic trick, you just need to be straightforward, to the point, engaging, and convincing, in a strategically ordered manner. In order to write persuasively try to do the following:

Grab attention immediately

This is the first most thing your persuasive writing must achieve. There is lots of noise on the Internet and an average surfer can find scores of web sites in a matter of a few minutes, So he or she is always in a great hurry to check out other links. There is this problem of plenty; since so much is available we cannot easily decide what to read and what to ignore and in this confusion we end up reducing our attention span. Whatever you have written it must grab the attention of your readers immediately so that your reader doesn’t go to another link and gives you enough time to make your point. You can accomplish this by creating a captivating heading; offer something to the reader he or she is desperately looking for. Focus on the need not the product. Offer to make a difference. Offer something that is not easily available. Talk with conviction and use clear words without scope of confusion or abstractedness.

Don’t hold back

Have got something very important to say? Say it in the beginning. The most annoying thing a reader encounters is verbal beating-around-the-bush sort of narrative. If you come to the main point in the first paragraph itself your reader can quickly make a decision whether to read the rest of the copy or not.

Organize your main ideas under headings, subheadings and bullets

This is not a technical rhetoric (because you may find this suggestion all over the Internet), this actually works. As mentioned above people these days have very little patience; they quickly want to arrive at a decision or else go somewhere else. So they want to go through your text as quickly as possible and when you organize your text under headings, subheadings and bullets it makes it easier for your readers to make sense of what you are trying to convey. If they are genuinely interested then they will also read your fine text. Organizing your content under headings, subheadings and bullets is also good for your search engine rankings because the search engine crawlers too look for important words and phrases under these tags.

Use action words

Whenever you persuade people you prompt them to do something. This can be done by using action words, not needless action words but action words that can really drive people and encourage them to take an action. For instance if you want people to subscribe to your newsletter then you specifically have to tell them to subscribe to it. If you want them to buy your eBook, you not only highlight the great benefits of your eBook, you also ask people to buy it – use the expression "buy this eBook". Don’t assume that since you have laid down all the great benefits and advantages of reading your eBook and you have the sleekest possible website people will buy. They’ll happily read whatever you’ve written, and then absentmindedly leave your website. Tell them to buy and tell them to buy now.

Close it with an impression

Make a closing that leaves a lasting impression upon your readers’ mind. They may leave your website after reading your copy, but your last few sentences should make them remember your website, possibly bookmark it to come back to it later on.

Persuasive writing is all about making an impact by stating the truth. It doesn’t have to be drab, but it shouldn’t also be so esoteric that your reader forgets why he or she is there in the first place. You have to empathize with your reader. What does he or she really want? What troubles him or her? Know that and you have covered 60% distance of writing persuasively; the rest is just your creativity and skill of writing.

Importance of content in your social media marketing strategy

Oct 08, 2008 No Comments »

Social media marketing is all about using the right words or using enough words to communicate your message to as many people as possible. Communication is at the core of your social media marketing success. There are two ways your content can work for you:

• Promote your message
• Promote your brand

Aside from your friends and colleagues you are known on the Internet for what you have on the Internet. This can be textual content, video and images. Since I mostly deal with textual content I will write in that context.

Successful content conveys the right message at the right time in the right language. It needs to be appealing, it needs to be relevant and people should be able to relate to it; only then they will pass it on to their friends and colleagues. Suppose you create a new webpage with lots of useful information and links and then you share that link through your FaceBook profile. Let us say you have 500 friends in FaceBook and at least 10 forward your link to some of their friends in FaceBook, Twitter, or other social bookmarking and networking websites. The possibilities are limitless. Who knows, your link may end up on the home page of Digg without you even knowing it (and you wouldn’t know what actually hit your website).

Good content is the most potent tool in your social media marketing tool kit. Without content you can only socialize, you cannot do serious business, because for serious business you have to show people what you have really got and this can only be achieved through content that can really communicate.

If you are simply promoting the links that you stumble upon while randomly searching the Internet nobody is going to take you seriously after a while and people will think you are there just to share interesting links that you keep on finding. On the other hand when you share with them the links from your own website you can attract lots of targeted traffic to your website or blog.

So if you really think that social media marketing can make a great impact on your business you have to take your content seriously.

Luck and effort

Oct 08, 2008 No Comments »

Seth Godin on his blog has marvelously explained the inherent characteristic of “effort” while comparing luck and effort:

While luck may be more appealing than effort, you don’t get to choose luck. Effort, on the other hand, is totally available, all the time.

Here is the link to his post.

He has talked about people who have lots of luck; success falls on to their laps without much effort. On the other hand there are people who have to sweat and bleed for little fragments of success and recognition.

At the cost of sounding like “the grapes are sour” I would like to say that the perception of success and failure differs from person to person and so is the perception of luck. Some people consider failure is a great opportunity to learn and start all over again. Similarly I consider myself extremely lucky that I don’t have to leave home every morning in order to make a living. I just have to move into another room to manage my online copywriting and content writing business. It doesn’t mean that I don’t have to work hard; but I am lucky that the technology of today has helped me earn a comfortable living while being with my wife and my baby all the time. Seth Godin has rightly pointed out that we are lucky that we were not born in the times of black plague or when slavery was rampant and freedom was hard to find.

Does this mean I don’t need anything else in my life? Sure I do. I want to earn more money, I want to make my family’s future financially secure, and I want to pursue my genuine passions: singing and writing literature. All these things may happen luckily (a hotshot music director stumbling upon my YouTube video or a big publisher falling in love with my writing style), or I may have to work really hard to achieve them. I have problem with neither.

Using various entrepreneurial stages to your benefit

Oct 05, 2008 No Comments »

All freelancers are entrepreneurs. Most of the time they are managing almost all the aspects of their one-man (or one-woman) enterprise and they have to go through various dark and bright phases. This illuminating post lists four stages in an entrepreneur’s life:

1. Uninformed optimism: this is the first stage when you are brimming with confidence and optimism and you don’t have much knowledge of your newly discovered idea. Everything is bright and promising and success is the only word you know. At this stage you can launch thousand business ideas and they can all succeed. You are simply a genius, indefatigable, unconquerable.
2. Informed pessimism: the reality hits hard in the second stage. This is the time when you realize where you actually stand and what a Herculean effort is required to achieve the goals that seemed so easily achievable during the stage of uninformed optimism. In the second stage some of the results have already manifested and you have lots of data to compare with your results against it. The fingers of frustration begin to touch you and you feel nervous about the plunge that you have taken.
3. Crisis of meaning: the pall of fear has encompassed the firmament of your existence and the sun seems to have set, never to rise again. This is a perilous stage because you can either crash into a state of permanent failure or you can gather your strength and rejuvenate your efforts.
4. Informed optimism: if you are past the third stage you enter the informed optimism stage. By this time you have tackled your fears, you have analyzed and studied some of the results, you know where you are succeeding and where you may be lacking in effort and strategy. You are in control of your bearings and you know what direction to take. You are cautiously optimistic, the writer phrases.

This is well known that these stages come in every entrepreneur’s life; the crucial point is how you can leverage these stages and turnaround all adverse circumstances. For instance you shouldn’t make money related decisions during stage one because than you’re always prone to spending more. During the uninformed optimism stage you should handle media and public relations because you are at your best in terms of confidence and drive.

Since by the second stage you have all the information at hand you can plan for the next step. You can strategize your operations and make a promotion and marketing plan. You can also chart a realistic map of your growth and the amount of effort that would be required.

The original writer has explained all the stages much better. As a freelance copywriter and content writer I keep on going through these stages again and again because every new day is a new entrepreneurial step. Every day I have to redraw my marketing strategy and implement new methods to promote my business. This takes away a big chunk of my time and this sometimes worries me a lot: am I losing lots of time, and consequently lots of money, doing things that are fuzzy and may not work? Sadly, almost every marketing effort on the Internet takes its own good time to show results.

Does the way you design your surroundings affect your performance?

Oct 03, 2008 No Comments »

I’m not sure if I’m correct – JK Rowling wrote her first novel in a cafeteria. Now, if you want to define distraction, what place can be more distracting than a cafeteria (or may be not?)? I was just now reading this interview at Tim Ferriss’ blog about designing your workspace and optimizing your performance as a result.

As I wrote in one of my recent posts I shifted to my music room to work. Previously my desk was in the main room, bang in front of the entrance door and distractions were right, left and center. I couldn’t write a single sentence without getting interrupted, unless it was midnight and everybody was asleep. I initially settled in the main room because it’s very spacious and open on two sides, so lots of cross-ventilation and bright natural light during daytime. The present room is darker, no cross-ventilation, and quite cramped because lots of stuff is lying around here and there. Distraction is 60% less (you cannot eliminate it completely if you have a hyperactive 3-year-old running around) and performance has improved more than 100%.

I’m constantly thinking of how to increase efficiency and performance and I think surroundings play an important role. Your surroundings should eliminate distractions as much as possible, they should be pleasant and they should help you improve your performance.  It doesn’t have to be lavish like a five-star hotel.  Just a clean room with well organized papers, books, wires and other paraphernalia, can bring about a dramatic change in the way you look at your work and perform.  This is extremely important if you are working from home because surroundings take a backstage  because of the extra effort and sometimes expense involved but I think this is worth the effort.  Even if you have to spend some extra cash you should create a pleasant aura around your workspace because you spend a major part of your life doing your work.  You should create a workspace that you find welcoming and look forward to coming to every morning (afternoon, evening, whenever your schedule starts).

Mahatma Gandhi used to say that cleanliness is next to godliness and I totally subscribe to this view.  Even if you don’t have expensive furniture and latest gadgets, a clean workspace brings you a sense of peace and harmony.

Improving you writing skills

Oct 01, 2008 1 Comment »

If you make a living writing then it goes without saying that your writing skill needs to be as impeccable as possible.  Not everybody is perfect and there is no harm in being a bit less than perfect but as a writer you should always work towards improving you writing skill no matter what language you use to render the service.  I use English and therefore I found this article on improving you writing at Techrepublic quite engaging.  Although I didn’t learn something new it was a refreshing experience because I see such errors cropping up on various blogs almost on a daily basis. I wish the article had explained a few more things for those who really need some guidance.  For instance the writer says that all the items in a list should be parallel. A bad example of a list would be (taken from the article):

• Backing up the registry
• The Registry Editor is your friend
• Using REG files
• Use a GUI tool
• Searching the registry
• Take advantage of Favorites
• Clean the registry

This should be rightly written as (you may not agree but this is just my take on it):

• Backing up the registry
• Making the registry editor your friend
• Using REG files
• Using a GUI tool
• Searching the registry
• Taking advantage of Favorites
• Cleaning the registry

I don’t know the technical explanation but you can notice that every item begins with an “ing” word.  Another example would be (without the “ing” word):

• Backup the registry
• Make the registry editor your friend
• Use REG files
• Use a GUI tool
• Search the registry
• Take advantage of Favorites
• Clean the registry

Another good explanation in the article is the agreement of verbs. The wrong usage is

• Neither of the doctors are very smart
• The dog, as well as the goat and chicken, are easy to parallel park
• One-third of the company are color blind

I would rewrite the sentences as (somehow I’m not sure of the second sentence, please advise in the comment section)

• Neither of the doctors is very smart
• The dog, as well as the board and the chicken, is easy to parallel park
• One-third of the company is color blind

How do you make sense of the verbs here? I use my commonsense and since I never learned the language  formerly I cannot explain it.  Please do so in the comment section.

Empathy is the key when you are writing copy

Sep 30, 2008 No Comments »

In this Copyblogger post James has written how important it is to empathize with your readers. I think this is the most important aspect of your entire copywriting activity.  Empathizing with your readers means knowing exactly what they are feeling and what they are looking for. If you are busy blowing your own horn you are never going to understand what your readers really want from you.

Although he has pondered over many other points but this is the most important point because everybody wants to hear or read about himself or herself.  If I visit a website or a blog I’m not doing the website owner or the blog a favor; I go there because I want to go there, I need to derive something from there, and if I find something totally contrary and totally unwanted I leave immediately to seek the thing that I want from another source.

That is why whenever I am interacting with a client before starting work on his or her copy I make it clear that we have to talk to the reader in an interactive manner.  We have to understand why the reader is there in the first place. And then immediately attend to his or her requirement or necessity.