New Tip on Pitching SEO Copywriting

Just a little head's-up about a new post I added to the articulayers site recently.
It is an Freelance SEO Copywriting Tip based on knowing some simple do's-and-dont's regarding pitching potential SEO clients.
Just as an aside: it was based on the mistakes I was seeing young writers making that were new to this field...some mistakes that I believe are pretty easy to avoid with a little effort.
Go give it a look, and let me know what you think.

Year in Review - 2009 into 2010

At the end of last year, I listed the following ten things:

1. Schedule more time for my own stuff.
2. Keep the flow of projects steady, so one ends as another begins (reduce overlap).
3. Participate in more online discussions of interest.
4. Attend more conferences (try to hit 2 per year).
5. It's all about backlinks (today, anyway).
6. Bartering rocks.
7. Smaller businesses are typically more of a hassle, but can be extremely rewarding.
8. Communicating SEO in numbers is the best possible way to get more work.
9. Old clients can surprise you with new requests any time.
10. It's all about the relationships you make, maintain, and build upon.

I wanted to take a post to reflect, and see where it went.

1. Schedule more time for my own stuff. OK, I did start my new site. Am working new stuff - nothing scheduled yet, thank the Lord.
2. Keep the flow of projects steady, so one ends as another begins (reduce overlap). I actually did pretty well with this one...I hand-picked my clients well this past year. My projects were challenging and rewarding, and only rarely over whelming. There was a near melt-down in the early Fall, and the usual holiday hi jinks, but the year finished strong, and the projects speak for themselves.
3. Participate in more online discussions of interest. Yep, I am a forum nerd now. But only one, really...I have about a half dozen community voices I check on regularly, and learned to speak-up a little more in one.
4. Attend more conferences (try to hit 2 per year). Zero success here, beyond online training. Nothing beyond the cube.
5. It's all about backlinks (today, anyway). Duh.
6. Bartering rocks. Yep - did some great swaps again this year. Looking for more, always.
7. Smaller businesses are typically more of a hassle, but can be extremely rewarding. Duh again. Not sure what this frustration was all about, but OK.
8. Communicating SEO in numbers is the best possible way to get more work. Yeah, still believe this to be essentially true for cold calls, but I did more thru referrals in the last 12 months than otherwise.
9. Old clients can surprise you with new requests any time. Um, yeah. This year, I had almost an entirely new roster of clients. A couple long-termers, but most of my focus was on new people asking me new questions.
10. It's all about the relationships you make, maintain, and build upon. Duh.

So here, I will lob out more of the same to see what difference another year makes.

In 2009, the 10 things that made a difference in my business as an SEO freelance copywriter and will guide me into 2010:

1. Relationships uber alles.
2. Better clients, better company.
3. Fun is subjective.
4. Less coding - more writing.
5. Family time first.
6. Charge handsomely for every minute spent supporting someone else's dream.
7. Trust my own skills, and take the leap...again.
8. Borrowing brilliance is only a mistake when it lacks honesty. Building on it well is flattery.
9. Money is spoiling everything...collapse is certain.
10. High maintenance people are low paying investments. Mental health is non-negotiable.

That comes off more acidic than it feels. 2009 rocked. 2010 will be even better, I can feel it.

How Did I Get Started as a Freelance Seo Writer?

Perhaps the most common question I am asked, especially by college students, is how I got started as a freelance seo writer. This was again the situation in my last couple visits to local Atlanta colleges like Emory and Kennesaw State.

Let me answer that by giving you a short scenario. The writer will be played by me, the cold faced marketing director will be played by a Vietnamese dwarf named Miss Gengy, who has a peg leg, false teeth and a horrible disposition.

Scene: fade-in to an eager young writer, briefcase (new) stuffed to the brim with fake collateral from pretend gigs. See sweat on brow, and fidget in chair as another marketing director sees through the BS, and is perturbed at spending time in this meeting.

Writer: {clearing throat to speak} ...um...

Cold Faced Marketing Director: (Rising to leave) I think we're done here.

Writer clumsily gathers crap pile and stumbles blindly from office, a sadness in his heart but a stern look of determination on his face. Zero in his pocket. Rocky theme begins, and writer opens door, stepping into a world of uncertainty, more stupid than brave, more willing than not...

I make jokes, I laugh and kid, but I seriously went into meetings I was totally unqualified to be in, waving my arms like a monkey to try to get noticed. I was aggressive, and I was unstoppable. That is how I started as a freelance SEO writer - by my unwillingness to be anything else.

Sometimes, it can be that simple.
It was for me.

This week, I was wrapping up 3 clients websites, and realized I will finally have time to restructure my own site.

It's funny - I started this blog over a year ago, when I realized too much time was passing without me attending to my site. But time hasn't magically appeared - I have less of it than ever. So be it- work comes first for a freelance SEO writer.

But now I am back around to that starting point again - I am looking at rebuilding/redesigning my own site as soon as I can cut these other 3 loose. It is both daunting and exciting - I am looking forward to rebranding myself and my company.

How it has Changed
A lot has changed about the way I do business in the last 5 years. 5 years ago, I was very heavily a web copywriter. My gigs rarely strayed from me cranking out content that was put into other people's sites. Business was great, and I was fat and happy.

Then, as time wore on, my own interests ranged more toward the strategy and development sides of things. I was building more, involved more in the concepts and execution of larger initiatives, and stretched my wings a bit.

Creatively, this was great. While writing was still my strongest suit, being able to develop strategies and plans and technically execute them was becoming really attractive (and lucrative) for me.

Cut to now: In the past couple years, open source code is changing the way people develop websites. My ability to use various open source solutions, to modify and optimize a variety of solutions, is again changing what I offer my clients. So it is time to reflect this in my marketing, particularly in my website.

So in the next two-to-three weeks, I will be rebuilding the Articulayers site. I will be blending open source code with my own tweaks, and will build something that has modular growth as part of the design. I will be catering to aspiring SEO copywriters, as well as giving my clients a menu of related services that I can offer. I will have some advice, some case studies, and some freelance seo tips.

Great fun!

SEO Copywriter Tip

Been a while since I shared an honest to goodness seo copywriting tip. Here's a good one: don't work too hard.

I don't mean don't spend all of your time writing - we both know how foolish that would be. I mean instead, to simply write good pieces and don't sweat the seo tweaking...at least not right away.

If you're writing an article, do a little research so you can pull in some quotes or links that punch up the validity of your argument. Links out to other resources are good SEO practices, and they help your article too. Why? Because if you build the validity of your argument, you build your validity (over time) in the search engines.

Of course, the competitiveness of your niche matters a lot here. But from an seo copywriter's perspective, the approach is always from the same point of origin: reaching the audience in a unique way. So the SEO copywriter tip is don't spend too much time on SEO copywriting tricks...spend it on reaching audiences through the power of your writing.

Blending Strategies
Here's another SEO tip for Writers: Don't Underestimate Press Release titles
I had an experience a few months ago, where one of my clients was blasting a press release written by another PR firm. They asked my opinions on some of the potential SEO value we could get-we had a couple days to look at it before the scheduled release. So I worked with the PR firm to revamp the title, and the edit the first few lines of text. It was a few simple, but strategic changes, bringing some specific keywords to the front of the piece.

This was a good example of blending team strategies to reach a better conclusion for everyone. Knowing this article was going to be blasted and then heavily scraped (and it was), we were able to re-tool the title and introduction and get lasting results for the targeted keyphrases. The PR firm were experts at what they did, and my clients made the right move by bringing me in to help when they did.

9 months later, a direct-match search on the targeted keyphrase still shows 8 of the top-10 Google results are where this article was picked up--my client's site being in slots 2-3 at the moment (it varies in the top 12 slots). Many of these scraped articles have the links I embedded in them, many are instead straight up text. But the point is, for this key phrase a user is likely to read about my client 8 out of 10 times on the first page. And by having this article on some very reputable news sources, my client gets instant credibility and direct connection to the keywords I placed in the title.

I don't normally search too deep, but I am certain I have a really nice chunk of the top 100 slots for my client in some way here.

So this project, a press release, was really a huge success because the client had the foresight to bring in the elements they needed as they needed them. The event was covered by a PR firm, experienced in spreading the news. It was tweaked by an SEO Copywriter to get a little more mileage from the effort. The client probably spent about $2,000 to pull it together.

The results are traffic, links, and a direct match for this valuable keyword that will likely last for a good long time. A related conversion can be worth tens or even hundreds of thousands to this client, so even one sale more than justifies the cost.

So, the tips I leave you with are to work on a piece of writing to make it effective. When it is a solid piece of writing, look back over it with more of an SEO slant. Weave in a few keywords, if possible, to the title and first few paragraphs...but don't sacrifice readability for keywords. You're better off with a tighter, simpler article than one forced into answering objectives involving word count, keywords, or anything else sometimes evaluated by SEO writers.

Show the value of your skills by blending into team situations. Respect project hierarchies, but don't be afraid to suggest changes based on your expertise and experiences...it is usually why you are in the room to begin with. When you can seize an opportunity that offers long-term value, don't be afraid to make an investment, or to jump in with both feet.

SEO should stand for Search Engine Opportunity, if you ask me.

SEO Copywriting Tip

Been a while since I have offered a genuine SEO writing tip, so ...

Synonyms and SEO
If you have been in SEO for any length of time, you can see algorithms trying to improve. And they do improve, but sometimes in weird, slow-moving ways.

Over time, one thing I have seen is contextual results becoming more and more important in search, and I see this only increasing as time rolls on. Using synonyms, variations of your main keywords (like plurals), and any related terms should help you build contextual domain strength for your root keywords.

It makes perfect sense.
You are selling widgets. So you, as an SEO writer, go after both the short tail and the long tail keyphrases for widgets. This will include many synonyms, plurals, related terms, and longer strings.

You research what you can about the searches being made. You create a master list of targeted keyphrases, search strings, synonyms, and any related terms that people associate with widgets. Map it all out before you start writing anything--it is much easier to make it flow naturally as you write if you know clearly what you "need" to say.

Nail Down the Short Tail and Grab the Long Tail
Answer to the short tail in navigation/informational architecture (when you can). So you might have a page titled "Widgets" with a main navigational link also named "widgets" leading into the page. This creates a solidly anchored link, making the main keyword an integral part of your site. Great!

Within the page itself, you'll of course want to add some depth to the widget information--you can't simply repeat widget a million times and expect it to work. But here is where your research and knowledge of long tail search habits, as well as your mastery of synonyms and contextual referencing comes into play.


Example: Let's say that "wuggles" is a synonym to widgets. In your widgets page, you can think of wuggles as a second-tier keyword. You'll want to infuse your primary and secondary keyphrases seamlessly into your body content. In addition to the main sentences you write, look at the metadata, the page titles, your headers, bullets, and ordered lists.

Switch back and forth between wuggles and widgets pretty liberally. Connect them to words that comprise potential long-tail searches, like "get a widget" "buying a wuggle" "finding a widget provider" "wuggle information" and so on. By using your main keywords alongside some related synonyms, you can create a deeper contextual meaning to your content.

This doesn't mean you should focus on wuggles opposed to widgets. It means that you should display your understanding that in talking about widgets, wuggles make sense. The user will appreciate it, because they also associate wuggles with widgets and will spend more time reading what you have to say. And, since the algorithms are getting smarter and will want to see wuggles mentioned on a widgets page, it will also make the engines happy...a win-win, as they say.

DON'T STUFF
I've said it before, and will always say it: don't cram keywords into a page. Make it flow naturally, or don't do it...stiff, forced content is hard to read, which goes against the number one rule for SEO writing. You are writing for a user, not a search engine. And over-saturating keywords makes your content crappy, your intentions transparent, and your SEO efforts much less likely to work. Synonyms are no exception.

But honestly, I find that the shifts in the algorithms are actually making it easier to write well. It may be a little tougher to get the rankings you want as quickly, but it is MUCH easier to write a good page and not have to sweat the keywords as much as the writing itself. I consider that progress.

As the engines try to find new ways to get the best content to the user, they are getting better at realizing that keyword density is not the best answer (thank GOD!). The best answer is content that flows well, and speaks authoritatively...content that liberally and naturally uses a variety of related, contextual words. So bust out the Thesaurus, know your topic, research, and write!

A Typical SEO Evaluation

This week, I did an SEO evaluation on a potential new client's site. The things I found were pretty common mistakes, so I thought I would genericize the situation and offer them here. The purpose is to give you some things to look at if your own website (or a client's) is struggling in the search engines.

This evaluation took about 2 hours, and focused only on the site's ability to enable indexing. I'll break it down into the 4 main issues I found, and some simple, cost-effective solutions I offered.

Issue 1: Page titles and meta data were all the same across the board. What it looks like to me, was the site builder created the html header for one page. He then simply copied it into all of the other pages as he built out the site. This can be a good way to build sites from scratch, but the specific information in the head tags needs to be changed prior to launch.

• SEO Solution: Use unique description, keyword, and title tags. Focus on a pre-researched list of primary, secondary and tertiary keywords. Lay out a spread sheet with all of the pages and their specific content for each tag. Each page should have a unique, hand created and strategically focused set of meta data.

Issue 2: No alt attributes used in image files. Across the whole site, not a single image I found had an "alt name" attribute assigned.

• SEO Solution: Add alt attributes to the html tags for every image. This markup is to enable users who are visually challenged to still "read" the non-textual parts of your website. It is referred to as "Section 508 Compliance." The use of keywords here is not as important as describing the image accurately.

Issue 3: No Site Maps.

• SEO Solution: Add site maps. Generate an XML site map as well as an html site map that is accessible to the user. If applicable, create an RSS feed. Site maps are not guarantees that every page within them will be indexed. But site maps do tell the search engines what you want them to look at, and they do often help a site get more thoroughly indexed.

Issue 4: No Method of Measurement Being Used. The site owner really has no idea what is happening on the site--who visits, what they are looking for, what they are doing. There are some potential e-commerce opportunities being missed, and the call-to-action is muddled and soft across the whole site.

• SEO Solution: Add tracking and increase visibility and accountabilty of all calls to action. Set a baseline so there is an achievable, measurable goal.

There were other issues in the execution of the site that offered chances for optimizing, but these simple steps above were enough to get them started in the right direction.

From my end, it is pretty easy to optimize these things and make sure the site is getting properly indexed. As an SEO writer, it is important to always do this before doing anything else. It is truly eye-opening to see how many times these relatively simple things can improve a site's ability to gain organic SEO power.

And then the fun can really begin!

Another Simple SEO Copywriting Tip

About the Death of Keyword Density
Since the last SEO tip was so fun, I thought we'd try another. This one is more directly about SEO copywriting, and the changes that are happening in searching and in the search engines.

See, up until a couple years ago, keywords were the main (almost the only) thing to understand in SEO writing. Keyword density and meta tags were simple things that even horribly untalented people could manipulate pretty easily and see some great results. Stuff a bunch of keywords into a page, and bingo, you could start to rank for them. But, in most cases those days are all but gone, and as an SEO writer it makes me very happy. Why? Because it is going to be tougher and tougher to rank for crap...and this means job security for you-know-who.

So is Keyword Density Gone Completely?
Short answer: no. But as with everything in search, it is only one element, so manipulating it and it alone won't work for you anymore...at least not like it used to. It is now measured and balanced with other all other aspects of organic search, and is much less important than most things, things like backlinks or good page titles. Like everything about organic development, the value of keyword density varies by search engine--some of the "short bus" search engines still value density pretty highly, but I don't typically care too much about them as they simply don't drive the traffic I need to call something a success. Call me a search snob, but the numbers don't lie.

Personally, I used to measure my keyword density as part of creating every page. I had targeted levels to reach and if my finished page did not meet the targeted keyword density, I figured out a way to include more instances. I was pretty smooth at it so it wasn't always obvious...but it still always felt kind of slimy to do things like that. But that was then, my friends--and times are better now. I have not had to sweat density since about mid-2004, and the last time I did, it was only because the client very specifically wanted me to do so. I tried to explain it might not really be the best plan, but as the freelancer for a major client, I pretty quickly shut up, and did what I was told. They were happy, I got paid, and their pages did fine. But this was not only because of the density levels I met on every page--there were many aspects to this site that made it a big one.

But in the past 2 years, more than once I have also made pages rank for a targeted keyphrase without having a single instance of the keyphrase appearing in the body copy. Let me repeat that: NOT A SINGLE OCCURENCE of the keyphrase in the body copy, and I still got a #1 ranking in Google for my keyphrases (and held them easily for over a year, BTW). How? By refining the keyphrase, manipulating the page title, metadata and backlinks properly, and having generally solid content on a trusted domain. I did it all very intentionally, and it was really quite an eye-opener for me. I saw it as a huge leap forward, because it reduced the amount of time I would have to spend cramming in a few more instances of the keyphrase to reach some arbitrary number that seemed to make the algorithm click my way.

Make It Good, and Make It Stick
Now don't think that this means you can ignore keywords--nothing could be farther from the truth. But in my experience, from the user's side of search, keywords are slowly being replaced by much more specific keyphrases. Instead of typing in 1-2 keywords and sifting through the results, people are more comfortable typing in longer strings to get what they want. I saw some stats on this recently, which I will try to dig up to share, but it basically stated that the average search was edging closer to 4-5 words, where it was still 1-2 only a couple years ago.

So the engines are going to look for these longer tail searches in the content, which makes density manipulation pretty difficult. They are also starting to connect contextual content more and more often--which is partly why I was able to rank for a keyphrase without actually using it. I was talking about the same subject matter but used synonyms and the like and still had great success.

The key is to make a page of content good, solid writing first. Actually, just stop there. Make it good, and it is much easier to make it stick.

Spend Your SEO Writing Time Wisely
The same amount of time I used to spend manipulating density is now applied to better understanding search nuance. The end result is better pages--both for me as the writer, and for the users. The users reward me with more links to my pages, more time spent reading them, and more completed calls-to-action.

So if you are intent on becoming a better SEO copywriter, you should know it is more about being a good writer than being a keyword magician (or worse, a spamming stuffer). Spend more time doing keyword research, understanding your audience's needs and search habits, and creating good content. If you have a good page, people will spend more time with it. They will be more inclined to link to it, or take a specific action. Keyword density in itself is pretty darn easy to manipulate...good writing is more of an art. Bully for us!

SEO Copywriting Tip

I know I promised some SEO copywriting tips, and have not yet delivered...so here's a really simple one for you to chew on.

Crosslinking Your Content
So you have a nice site, you have it built well, and everything is ready to go. You have plenty of good content, the navigation is clear and works well, and you have both an html and an XML sitemap in place. How else can you help to increase the assumed relevance of your content? One simple answer is crosslinking your content.

Why do It?
The engines might clearly see the pages you have out there, but what do they think of them? If each page only has a navigation link, and a link from the sitemaps to it, it is what I call a "dangler," which means it is kind of floating out there. Think of a tree branch with a single leaf on it.

Danglers might be important pages to you and your site, but the spiders only see it dangling...so they don't understand that these are so important to you. Cross linking your pages from within the body content gets rid of this situation--and instead of a site filled with danglers, the spiders start to see it as a nice little compact web of information.

It's Easy.
All you need to do to crosslink your pages is to link important words to pages that help illustrate what those words are. They don't have to be exact matches to work well either. For example, let's say you have a site about getting small business money containing a page giving loan details, and you want this page to really stand out among the rest.

Look through the other pages, and find out where you are talking about loans, financing, money, or other similar ideas. Hyperlink these references to the loans page. They might be single words (like loan, loans, financing, money, etc.) or might be short phrases like "getting business loans" "small business financing options" and so on.

I have found that a contextual reference is increasingly important--meaning simply that you don't want to only look at linking the word "loans" to make the page for loans work. If it is a related idea/term, it will help you to associate it with your loans page...the engines (especially Google) are doing this more and more as time rolls on. Think of it like anchor text..because that is, after all, exactly what it is. And just like you don't want every anchored link on someone else's site to say the same thing about your site, the same holds true within your own architecture. Show the engines that your loans page is about all things related to loans, and you will find the juice you need.

How Many Links are Enough?
There is no single answer to how many links are enough...but don't go completely crazy with this idea. Ultimately, you are linking these terms and phrases to help the user learn more. If you overdo it, it becomes kind of a hassle to look through your site, and it starts looking like you are simply trying to manipulate the system which is never a good thing.

As a general starting point, if I have about 300 words on a page, I might look to hyperlink about 10 of them to other pages. It may be more, but not too often less. This gives some depth to the contextual content without going nutsy with it...and it has never had an adverse effect on me doing it this way. I am reasonable with what I am trying to accomplish, not spammy. If I have one page I am trying to really boost, it will get linked from a bunch of pages, but I try to mix it up and "spread the wealth" across all the pages as best I can.

When your page is linked from a couple or more places in your site, it takes on a little different stature in the eyes of the spiders (do search bots have eyes?). It will diminish the dangling, and overall, make the search engines happier with what they find on your site. Will it boost rankings? Probably not...but it will make each page stronger, which will increase the assumed strength of the domain--which definitely will end up helping you in organic search.

Just do it.
Internally cross linking pages is one of the easiest, and cheapest ways to help you get more mileage out of your SEO efforts. I am surprised at how many people don't employ this simple strategy...but look at the sites doing well in your niche, and I'd be willing to bet that they are doing it. Just jump on in--as long as the links all work (very important--don't allow broken links in your site!), it will have a positive effect. Hard to measure perhaps, but positive nonetheless.

Get linking!