SEO Copywriting - What is this stuff?

SEO Copywriting involves quite a few different things. People who offer SEO copywriting services offer more than just SEO articles that are written to feature certain keywords prominently. It can involve heading formatting, small descriptions etc. Large pages of text are simply not suitable for certain pages. So where do our SEO articles end up?

A lot of websites use SEO copywriting services to flesh out their pages, because text written with SEO guidelines in mind guarantees better search engine rankings. If a novice website owner wrote their own text without being aware of SEO writing techniques, they would end up without any rankings. Whereas many SEO techniques gain and lose effectiveness as search engines like Google change their algorithms, large pages of keyword optimized text always gets the same results.

Other times our articles wind up in an article directory. People pay good money for quality articles written with keywords in mind that link back to their site. These articles get a lot of traffic, and then so does their site. Writing these articles can sometimes be more difficult, but this kind of writing work will pay you well.

For those of us who make money writing SEO articles, it is important to find writing jobs that pay well. You can find good SEO writing work on GetAFreelancer or at RentACoder. At RentACoder you can find a LOT more writing jobs that pay well. Another good place to bid on writing jobs is WriterLance, which works similarly to GetAFreelancer.

If you want tips on how to get writing work that you will be well paid for, read my posts on how to find writing work on GetAFreelancer, and on how you can get paid for your writing online.

Writing SEO Articles that Make Money

SEO articles can go for anything from $2 to $25 each or more, but most of us seem to find ourselves working on the bottom end of this scale. Like any other industry, web content writing has vast earnings disparity. So what makes some article writers well paid, and others not?

Well, for starters, experience is worth a lot more in this industry than a qualification (although this helps). The best way to land a well paying writing project on GetAFreelancer or another writing site is to have relevant experience writing the type of articles the client needs. Here are 5 tips on how to be well paid for your writing:

1. Generalize
If someone offers you rectal cancer articles, do them. The next time a medical articles writing project comes up, you can bid high and claim relevant experience


2. Fewer clients, less money
Stick to 2 or 3 clients, and write articles for them for a few months. Good references will get you a long way


3. Focus on Quality
The better your web content and SEO articles are, the more you can charge people for them. The only way to increase your price is slowly


4. Promote Yourself
Tell people what you do, network, make business cards, start a blog - do whatever it takes to tell the world about your writing abilities.


5. Don't Sell Yourself Short
If you know your SEO articles are worth $10 each, don't bid lower than this. There will always be more projects going from clients who appreciate a highly skilled writer.

Web 2.0 - What does this mean for writers?

Web 2.0 is a term that you might have seen bandied about the place, but not a lot of people really know what this phenomenon is. It's not a new secret type of internet that's better, faster and free that you haven't been invited to. In fact, it's no one thing.

To summarize Web 2.0 in one sentence I would say this: It is a change in the way publishers and browsers use the internet. This has all been made possible by PHP and SQL. PHP is a database platform, and SQL is the language you use to get info out of a PHP database. This allows for fantastic new web design concepts, and allows you to do many different operations on one page.

Take my blog, WriteNonsense for example. You see one page, but actually it is many pages stored in a PHP database. When you click on one of my post links, SQL fetches what you asked for. Ever been on Facebook? What you see there is a perfect example of Web 2.0 design and technology. It's simple, fast and easy for anyone to use, and you don't have to know any tech stuff to enjoy the new features we find all over the place.

The major difference that Web 2.0 has brought about is that the internet is now being used as a platform. Google Docs allows you to edit documents and spreadsheets, and save them, online. This is a little clumsy, but it heralds a whole new era. Imagine a few years down the line when everything we do is online, accessible from anywhere else in the world.

What does this mean for writers? Well, it means that we have to up our game. Web content is becoming more important, but also smaller. There is a greater search emphasis on links now than anything else and while that might swing back, we need to stay ahead. I suggest you go and Google "Web 2.0 design" and see what is cutting edge out there. The types of SEO articles that will be required soon will be vastly different from what we write now.

This is just a random thought, but I think we are going to see some remarkable changes in the way people use text to attract traffic. This will be because of the massive overflow of text documents that will now become available on the internet as a result of Web 2.0 applications and practices.

web 2.0

Write SEO Articles Without Sounding Like a Salesman

Writing SEO articles can become a little repetitive, and it is easy to lapse into a pattern of using the same phrases over and over again. Here are a few tips to keep your SEO articles interesting for both you you and your readers.

Write SEO Articles like you are speaking

I can't say this enough: write your SEO articles as if you are speaking to someone. Imagine that you are working for the company you are writing for, and speaking to a potential customer. Instead of using cliche sales phrases, be 'honest' about the product you are selling. Tell them in detail what it could do for them, and why it is good value.

Use Keywords Constructively

Before you start your SEO article, think of a few good ways to use your keywords. Make the sentence in each paragraph that contains your keyword interesting and informative. Your reader found this page because of your keyword, so make your SEO articles as relevant to your keywords as possible.

Be Specific

Don't waffle. The main thing that sets $3 SEO articles apart from $10 ones is their ability to inform the reader. Any 3rd language English speaker can sound like an infomercial for 500 words. You can do better, so write SEO articles as if you are an expert on the product you are selling. Describe it in detail, giving different price options and color schemes, etc. You can easily fill up 500 words on a single product if you give enough detail.

Remember: the higher the quality of your SEO articles, the more money you can charge your clients for them. Because we are in a bulk business increasing your per article rate by $1 or $2 can drastically increase your income.

Seo Articles

15 Minute SEO Articles

We’re in a bulk business people, so the buzzword here is speed. I’m not advocating sacrificing the quality of your work to churn them out, but you need to be able to write at least 10 SEO articles in about half as many hours to make it worth your while. This is not difficult, and here’s the method I use for turning out high quality articles that my clients pay good money for.

1. Do your research

If you have the URL of the client’s site and the site is up, go to it and go straight to their “About Us” page. Scan this and find their ‘hook’ – the thing they say about themselves that makes them different. Scan through the products they have, services they offer, brands they deal in etc. If you don’t have the client’s site, find a similar site and learn about the industry. Learn as much as you can in 5 minutes.

2. Don’t type so fast

It’s great to be able to type 80wpm, but if you want to finish your SEO article in 10 minutes after researching it, you only need to manage 50wpm (If it’s a standard 500 word article). Typing at a slower constant speed gives your mind time to come up with the start of the next sentence as you are typing.

Remember, you make mistakes when you type faster, and correcting them takes time and interrupts your train of thought. When you get to the last sentence of a paragraph, start thinking how you will use the keywords you have been given in the next paragraph.

3. Speak when you type

At the risk of sounding insane to your family and neighbors, speaking when I type helps me to keep my SEO articles conversational. 500 Words is a lot of text in website terms, and you have to make it feel like less when it’s read. Pretending like you’re speaking to someone helps you to write quickly about the topic while at the same time keeping it from sounding like too much of a sales pitch.

There you have it – 15 Minute SEO articles! This is the way I write SEO articles, and I must say it definitely helps with time management. (Although I tend to go a little slower because I find the 15-minute burns a bit taxing) If you stick to a disciplined schedule you can crank them out without lowering the quality of your work – and this means you will have a larger number of high quality articles to sell.

SEO Articles

Review - Slyvisions

What's this? A review? That's right, I found a site out there that has some useful information about SEO writing, and just about everything else, so I thought I'd tell you about it.

Slyvisions is more than just a blog about SEO copywriting. It's basically an all-in-one information center that tells you how to do just about anything online. It's full of useful online tips to help you get started with a career in writing, run a successful blog or launch your own website.

Slyvisions also has a lot of useful tools that make running a blog or a website, or writing articles, a lot easier. It is updated daily with a new post that usually contains something beginners do not know, but definitely should. The focus is slightly more on webmasters and blogging, but if you poke around you can find a lot of useful stuff on how to make money writing.

What's more is that if you have a blog or a website, and you hurry up and go there, you can get a free backlink to your site if you review Slyvisions.

This is one really helpful site - check it out!

5 SEO writing tips

I've been doing this for a while, and I've come up with a few things that makes SEO writing go a little smoother.

1. Do your research

What ever you're writing about, the best thing to do is go to the client's site and see what they are about. Read the "About Us" section, as well as anything on the products and services they offer. If no site is available, look up the relevant topics. Even if you think you know a lot about them, seeing what other people have to say can give you ideas.

2. 500 words, 5 ideas

There is no hard and fast rule in SEO writing, but I find the easiest way to start is to count off 5 distinct points about the topic, and write five 100 word paragraphs. Think how many times you need to use the keyword, and figure out a few ways to use it. Try to use none of them more than twice.

3. When in doubt, repeat yourself.

There is only so much you can say about "New Mexico Plumbing Service". The thing to remember on the web is that content is king. In SEO writing, we are usually dealing with quantity, rather than quality. While the text must all read well and be informative, nobody is going to mind if you make the same point twice from two different angles.

4. Talk about the products

SEO writing is all about selling, so tell people what they are buying! Mention an example, pretend you are a catalog, and be specific. Details can fill up word count, and still be informative.

5. Keywords at beginning and end

As far as possible, try to begin and end your article with the keyword. This is generally the preferred style, and it will show your client that you know what you are doing. Keep the keyword as close to the beginning of sentences, paragraphs and headings as you can to improve the article's keyword proximity score.

SEO writing

How To Write SEO Articles

A lot of people ask me what exactly goes into SEO articles. There are a few things you need know about how to write SEO articles:


What are SEO articles?

An SEO article is usually around 500 words, and contains a certain keyword, repeated a certain number of times. These keywords are what site owners think users will type into search engines like Google. If you are looking for a place to rent in Southern California for example, the keyword you might type in would be "rental home Southern California". This can be difficult to use in a proper sentence.

How do you keyword optimize effectively?

A general rule with SEO articles is that search engines don't like keywords that are broken by other words, but don't notice if they are broken by punctuation. So you could use the keyword above like this: "Looking for a rental home? Southern California has many..." and presto - it reads perfectly!

What is keyword density?

Keyword density is a measure of how often a keyword appears in SEO articles. If the article is 500 words long and the keyword appears 10 times, the keyword density is 2%. Depending on many different factors, I know that Google likes keyword densities around 2%, but this could go as high as 8%. Too many keywords and your article looks "funny" to Google, while too little means it could be overlooked.

What is keyword proximity?

Basically, this is how close together your keywords are - and exactly why "rental home Southern California" should not be broken by words. If it is, then a site that doesn't break this keyword up in its SEO articles will get a higher search engine ranking.

What is keyword prominence?

This is not usually a concern for people who write SEO articles. It is a measure of where in the HTML code your keywords appear, and how important these places are. The best places are in the HEAD and TITLE tags of your page - without keywords in these places most search engines won't even look at your SEO articles.

So how do you actually write SEO articles?

If you find yourself with SEO articles to write, the best thing to do is go to the client's website and look at what they actually do. Going by just the keyword can be disastrous! If you are given "Health Insurance Indiana" as a keyword, and you write about how great our health insurance is, it could be embarrassing if all the client's website does is compare quotes from health insurance companies!

I find that if you come across a point that isn't in the client's website, it's usually easier to make up something new than to research it elsewhere. If you have a 500 word article, try to come up with 5 different points about the company, relevant to the keyword. It also helps to use the keyword a few different ways, as this confuses Google's spiders into thinking that your SEO articles have a lot of information about the topic searched for. (But this is really more of my pet theory and the theory of some of my clients)

Anyway, I found a good resource for all of this kind of information. Mike Wong has a cool site about SEO marketing and such and such. He tries to sell you a lot of things, but he has piles of info for free. Check out Mike's website here.

SEO articles