Today's Writer :-)
Wednesday, January 04, 2012
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Friday, April 30, 2010
Easy SEO Article Writing Basics For You
Are you writing articles for the Web? Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is fundamental -- here are four tips which will help you to learn this skill.
Firstly, let's look at why SEO is important: SEO helps your articles to be found. People looking for information use the Web search engines, which are basically indexing software.
Therefore, you need to include the search terms -- the keywords -- for which people are searching in your articles to ensure that the articles are found.
1. Choose Your Primary Keyword With Care
If you're writing Web articles for a buyer, you'll usually be given a set of keywords to target (include) in your articles.
But what if you're writing articles for yourself? In this case, you need to create your own keyword list. For each article, choose a primary keyword. (Only one.) You'll include this keyword in the article title, as well as in the first paragraph of the article.
You can also choose a secondary keyword if you wish. However, once you've chosen your primary keyword, just focus on writing an excellent article.
2. Write an Excellent Article -- Be Original
You must also remember your article's readers. So your article must not only be original, it should also provide useful information. While keywords are a primary tool of SEO, links are equally important. An article will only be linked to from other sites and blogs if the information is great.
Strive to make your articles "linkworthy". The more links any article collects, the more likely it is to be found by searchers.
3. Avoid Keyword Stuffing
As a Web writer, you'll often work with buyers of your writing who are unfamiliar with the Web, and they may use terms like "keyword density".
Years ago, when the search engines were less powerful than they are now, having keywords appear several times in an article was important. Nowadays, repeating keywords is more likely to get an article labelled as Web spam. Using a keyword too often is known as "keyword stuffing": avoid it.
Use keywords naturally -- once you've placed a keyword in an article title, and again in the first paragraph, it's not necessary to repeat it again, unless you're doing it naturally in the flow of writing.
4. Great Keywords Lead to Great Articles: Keyword Ideas
Because keywords are so essential to ensuring that content is found on the Web, it's vital to use those search terms which are used by Web searchers. Often they're keywords you wouldn't use yourself.
Therefore, when you're writing articles for others, ask to see customers' communications and questions, and also any lists the buyer has of search terms from the site's Web logs.
These sources will often give you great keyword ideas for articles, and the better your keywords, the more effective your articles will be.
Want to make a great income from your writing? Angela Booth's "Sell Your Writing Online NOW" Training Program at http://sellwritingnow.com/Home/training.html gives you all the skills you need to make great money writing for the Web. A subscriber recently said: "Your training has inspired me - I'm on Lesson 14, and I'm making enough money to quit my day job."
For free weekly writing information sent to your Inbox, subscribe to Angela's Fab Freelance Writing Ezine at http://www.freelancewritingezine.com/ and receive "Write And Sell Your Writing: The Power-Write Report" immediately.
Fresh Content Improves Search Engine Optimization
Many search engine optimization companies will sell you a search engine optimization package that addresses many of the major aspects of search engine optimization. These aspects include, but are not limited to, use of file names, alt tags, h1 tags, keyphrase density, meta tag optimization, link analysis and the like. These are all key aspects of a good search optimization.
However, one problem is that the major search engines (especially Google) not only rank pages upon relevant content (which is determined by the factors listed above, and more), but by fresh content as well. What this means to you is that, even after your site has been "optimized to the max", your rankings will increase to a certain level and then not go much higher. To get to the top and stay there, your site should deliver fresh, relevant content on a regular basis. Depending upon the nature of your business, your competition, and targeted keyphrases, the rate at which you should add content to your site can vary from monthly to daily.
The delivery of fresh content to your site, in a form that is readable by search engines (i.e. not through the use of javascript, iframes, or the like) requires a dynamic, database driven content management system.
The most cost effective way to achieve this is through the use of a weblog that sits on your server and resides under your domain name. Updating the weblog with rich articles or commentary, broadcasting this information to the internet, and allowing users to post comments, achieves the following:
Increases the number of inbound links to your website
Increases the frequency at which major search engines will spider or crawl your site
Increases interactivity for the web user
Improves your search engine ranking
For further information, you may contact ArteWorks toll free at 877-336-8266, or visit http://www.arteworks.biz.
Copyright © 2005 Matthew Foster
About Matthew: Matthew Foster is the President and CEO of ArteWorks Business Class, a company that specializes in online marketing, ecommerce and public relations for business. Self-educated in HTML and HTML 4.0 certified by the National Computer Science Academy, Mr. Foster has been actively involved in Internet policy, international banking and ecommerce, website design and search engine optimization since 1995. For further information, please visit www.arteworks.biz.
Wednesday, March 24, 2010
Spring Coupon Specials for Writers
Welcome Spring with these goodies from Magazines.com and Amazon.com. They're all GOOD! =)
$5 Off at Magazines.com! Use code springmags. Offer ends 4.15.10.
Friday, February 19, 2010
Great Magazine Deals for Writers
If you're a voracious magazine reader (as most writers are), you might want to grab Magazine.com's latest offers:
- Subscribe to 24 issues of The Economist for only $44.90
- Subscribe to 10 issues of People Style Watch for only $19.95
Click on these coupons below and enjoy big savings!
Thursday, February 18, 2010
Writing for Triond
Late last year, I came across actual testimonials from freelance writers who have been on Triond for some time. Apparently, it is possible to earn decent money through Triond as long as you know a few tricks (more on this later!). So, I was inspired to write and publish again. My simple goal then was to earn at least $1 each month. And to reach that goal, I promised to deliver at least 3 articles every week. I did that for almost 2 months and got my wish! Now, with 20+ articles published on different websites, I make at least a dollar a month at Triond. Not bad!
If you wish to try earning residual income through writing, I suggest you begin with Triond. It is by far one of the most credible publishing companies that offer writer-friendly services and pay on time.
Thursday, January 14, 2010
On Managing Projects and Issuing Invoices
Last October, I finally set up shop and decided to go full-time on freelance Web writing. I signed up for several revenue stream sites for writers and renewed contracts with a few publishers. I didn't have exact financial goals, but I knew I wanted to earn a decent amount of money from the Web. So I toiled and pecked on my keyboard for hours, writing short how-to articles and publishing them on several sites.
Finally, the money started to roll in sometime November. I realized that freelancers are like dentists - the more you drill (or fill), the more you bill. I have learned to manage my time well and push myself to write more every week. Hopefully in the future I'll be able to collaborative projects that pay more. Recently I discovered a system that can help writers with Freelance Project Management. It's a handy platform that saves freelance writers a lot of time, energy and money. I could've used Mavenlink at the time I was working on a collaborative project for a software company.
Mavenlink is focused on helping businesses, freelancers and clients work together more efficiently on a project. It makes the project process run smoothly by enabling everyone involved to collaborate using just one platform. Mavenlink offers a lot of benefits for both clients and freelancers, thus its membership fee is definitely worth it and beneficial in the long run. What more, you also get 1% savings per transaction if you are subscribed to Mavenlink. Through this PayPal Discount, you can save $100 for every $10,000 billed.
Monday, June 15, 2009
3 Ways to Help People Remember What You've Written
by Barb Sawyers
With the constant onslaught of information, it's getting more difficult for people to remember everything they've read. That's why it's so important for writers to aid their recall. To do this, help readers deposit your information into their memory bank, add some strong glue and offer some cues to help them retrieve the information later.
Deposit into the memory bank
- Make sure your communication offers value and relevance. That's how the brain prioritizes memory deposits.
- Revise your writing until it's easy to understand, using your target readers' terms, not the jargon of your business or profession.
- Give people a context in which to remember. Tell them, for example, they will want to remember this information the next time they go to write an important email to a prospect.
- Focus on what's important and avoid the clutter.
- Organize your information, guiding your readers with numbers, bullet points, categories, acronyms, subheads or other devices.
- Use a strong visual to reinforce what you want readers to remember.
- Link what they already know to your new information.
- Create a catchy slogan.
- Persuade your readers to repeat your most important message out loud.
- State your main point in the introduction, then repeat it in the body and conclusion.
- Ask the readers to apply what they've learned by completing a practical exercise.
- Tell stories, anecdotes or jokes that play on emotions or connect different points.
- Rhyme. Who can forget: In August 1492, Columbus sailed the ocean blue?
Retrieval cues
- Follow up with communication that repeats the images and other cues you provided originally.
- Use emotional prompts. "I'm scared. Now what did Oprah tell me to do when that happens?"
- Or look to problem-solving cues. When people encounter the problem you can solve, they will dip into the memory and retrieve your solution.
Now repeat after me, loudly: "I will help my readers deposit information into their memory banks, add glue to keep it there and give them some retrieval cues to pull it out."
Or maybe you should just say, "Woo, glue and cue."
http://www.stickycommunication.ca
http://barbsawyers.wordpress.com
Barb Sawyers writes articles, newsletters, announcements, scripts and other communication that are read and remembered. With a masters in journalism and more than 25 years' experience, Barb has enabled many corporations, small businesses, government agencies and nonprofits to communicate more effectively.
She's working on an e-book called The First 25 Words.
A member of IABC/Toronto, Barb is past chair of the Alliance of Independent Practitioners, a large group of independent communicators.