Content Magician, Freelance web content writers

Google is my favourite search engine and for years, I’ve been using it and then helping my clients optimize their websites for a good Google ranking and then writing articles aimed at Google’s ranking system and attracting their spiders….etc. Hang on, I’m not going into a half-hearted wishy-washy shoe-polishing effort. I think something’s wrong with Google ranking today.

It’s simply not what it used to be.

OK, I am taking this from a writer and also a web surfer’s point of view. You see, being a freelance writer and a mother at the same time, life can get pretty hectic. I find using Yoga (currently into Yin Yoga) for stretching and invigorating my life and work useful, so, I performed a search for that today and the result was far from accurate.

Basically, I was looking for a results page that was filled to the brim with useful information, tips and articles with pictures and useful links, perhaps? Google has become more and more ‘advertisy’…there’s no such word but what the heck. It’s either people are getting smarter in manipulating the results with the words on their pages or Google’s lagging behind.

I don’t know.

Then again, Google’s search algorithm changes all the time…by the minutes and seconds, so, I could be right today and then wrong tomorrow. Well, whatever it is, it’s an observation I thought worth blogging about.

I didn’t take up literature for one very simple reason….I don’t like beating around the bush and I don’t like ‘hinting’ at things whenever I write. I write the way I write in hope that my readers will actually UNDERSTAND the content that I’ve written without having to scroll up and down the page and re-reading the content on the page again and again…and again.

Writing in a clear-cut fashion seems to have been serving me perfectly fine till now because on the Internet, not a whole lot of people like writers who beat around the bush. I don’t know about you but I sure don’t appreciate ’spinning web’ on a web page. Whenever people surf the Internet, they’re often trying to find information…and FAST. When they get to a page with content on it, they usually want to find the content that they’re looking for within the first few seconds.

Which brings me to the point….

Content that confuses the readers don’t sell
Most of the people on the Internet are readers who either looking to sell something or looking to buy something. Now, I am not saying everyone is but most people are. Either that or they’re looking for something really interesting to read. If you’re into literature or stories, the best way for you to find entertaining content is to get into free ebooks. There are some really good entertaining short stories on the Internet, let me tell you that and I DO read some of them but…. (more…)

Even with Copyscape, we would have to admit that it’s hard to put a radar out for every one of the content that you put on your website or article directories. Even Google can only do so much to protect, detect and ban sites that copy your website content. We all know how much time and effort you’ve put into producing top-quality, up-to-date information and articles for your readers….we all know that but do people care?

That’s the thing…they don’t give two hoots how much effort you’ve put into your content. All they know is that they find it incredibly convenient to copy your content and place it into their websites.

The sad part of this is that not only do website owners copy others’ work, freelance content writers do that too. It’s something I call the easy way out because if you’re a writer, you can do the following and get away with most search engines. (more…)

Everyone tells you how to do this, how to do that, how to find clients, how to write kick-ass copy, how to entice the customers to buy stuff from you just from the stuff you’ve written, how you can make millions writing ebooks…blah blah blah.

But no one bothers to tell a freelance writer the mistake is for a web content writer….one that he/she should avoid making at all costs.

The mistake is….to stop writing for yourself!

Listen, we’ve been in the freelance writing world ever since forever (it’s not true but it feels just about right) and we’ve made every single mistake there is to make in the freelance world because no on bothers to tell us and when we started out, all this freelance web content writing thing was…like….an illusion. Everyone wished that it could be the very platform that they can use to launch their products or services or start a business or earn some income from their websites, but no one dared trudge this way because only stoopeed people do.

The smart ones let the dumb ones go first. (more…)

Web copywriting is carried out keeping in mind two audiences: search engines (which can index your site and pull up your page rankings), and prospective human visitors (who can buy your products). Sometimes the right density and positioning of keywords is enough to make search engines happy, and get you near the top of search results.

But when people visit your site, they read your content and if they find every paragraph a medium to stuff keywords, it spoils your impression, definitely a bad idea. You need to get a copy that can please both digital as well as human readers.

There is no point in getting high traffic when your visitors abandon your page before you can get them to click on a link, read more, or make a purchase. Although you have “cheated” your way into the search results, you just lost any chance of getting bookmarked, or recommended to another user, or getting visited again by the same user.

On the other extreme, you could get content writing services that churn out good copy–lively prose, no bluffing, no padding, just informative and persuasive copywriting–but if the keywords are not strategically placed and repeated when they count, you won’t be making search engine spiders happy.

Your site might read well but is just not spider-index-friendly. But then, with word-of-mouth recommendations, your site has a source of traffic not directly related to search engine results. The problem is your site might be reachable by any online search using keywords.

Now you know that man cannot live on search engine optimization alone. You need good copy. So you either get people who are good in SEO copywriting, or you can learn it and do it yourself. (more…)

I started my writing career on freelance with sites like www.getafreelancer.com. If eBay was the site people went to for cheap stuff, then www.getafreelancer.com is the site people went to for cheap services. That’s how started my career as a freelance writer….producing really cheap writing materials. There was one time I wrote 100-word articles for about less than $1 a pop! No seriously. But the competition on the freelance writing world is tough…being that there are a lot of adequate writers in this world with a little bit of talent, who can whip out a decent article with a decent number of words, laced with keywords (splattered is more the word) in this world. Particularly countries like India where there are, admittedly, more talents than others….really cheap ones.

I’ve long abandoned my account with Getafreelancer because I started to have a client base and I focused more on quality these days. But I got curious, one day, and I went back in and took a look at the kind of projects that were being posted in there. And once again, I was sucked into a black hole….a vortex of cheap writing. It’s a wet market of cheap services….still. You can see it from the way people are focused on speed and cost.

For example;

“I need 50 articles with 500 words with keywords. More work to come. If good, will assign more projects regularly. Budget is $1 each article”

Article by: Marsha Maung

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Note: A pretty darn good article on copywriting, we sayy! YYYAAAYYY!!!

by John L. Alexander

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In a minute I want to come back to give you some examples, but let’s talk about that word “dialog.”

We know that the term dialog is really more correctly thought of as the dictionary describes:

“A conversation spoken between two or more people.” If you look up synonyms for the word “dialog” as a noun, you’ll find a lot of terms that focus on “vocal expression” or “utterance” or “verbalization” in some aspect.

So why do I use the term “dialog” in terms of writing Web copy?

It’s the best term I can think of to describe what I like to think of as the “flow of conversation” or nearly like writing your copy as though it was meant to be read “out loud” by voice. When I say “write for voice” I’m referring to how something is written for the radio or TV or other live media. (more…)