Change The World With Words

Depending on what sort of writer you are, you may think that Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is:

A)    Earth shatteringly important, or

B)    Not applicable to you at all.

Either way, you’re probably wrong.

If you’re a specialist SEO writer maybe you consider building SEO skills and knowledge the most important part of your job, and maybe it is. But none of us write for search engines alone. Search engines, ultimately, are only a tool to bring human users to a particular site or page, and human beings appreciate good, clear, informative writing. For most writers, good writing skills are at least as important as good SEO skills.

If you only ever write for print publications, or are a traditionally published author, you may think SEO skills aren’t applicable to you. If you’re managing to market your books to publishers, or get editors to buy your articles, without any online presence at all, maybe you’re right. But most writers and authors have something that could benefit from being optimized: an author website, a blog, an Amazon page.

For most of us, a basic knowledge of SEO is useful, if not vital, and as someone who knew nothing about it a couple of short years ago, I’d like to share some of what I’ve learned:

Be prepared to put some time (but not too much) into learning about SEO techniques.

There’s a lot to learn, and a lot of good resources. Be prepared to spend a bit of time on it, BUT don’t get carried away. Unless you’re planning on becoming a specialist SEO writer, you probably only need to know the basics.

A basic knowledge will allow you to:

• Bring appropriate traffic to your blog posts and online articles.
• Ensure your work is visible online to editors looking for a sample.
• Understand what editors and webmasters require from you when they tell you to target a certain keyword or phrase.
• Not be too precious when online editors change your title or tweak your article (often done purely for SEO purposes).

Write for humans as well as search engines.

Here’s the thing about SEO. It’s always on the move. The major search engines change their algorithms all the time (as any online writer who lived through the gruesome Google Panda update can testify) so “knowing” SEO is in itself an ongoing process.  None of us mere mortals know exactly what algorithm changes are coming up next to prevent us writers “tricking’ the search engines.

But here’s the other thing. The search engines may change their algorithms, but their basic objective remains the same:  to take human searchers to the best and most appropriate information on the web, given what they type into the search engine. Write great copy, that human beings can read and digest easily, that solves their problems and answers their questions – and you may be surprised at the long-term results, regardless of how many (or few) SEO techniques you use.

A big part of how search engines judge a page is what’s referred to as off-page SEO, or what humans do with your information. Do they spend a long time reading it? Interact with it? Favorite or bookmark it? Share it on social media? Link to it from their own sites and articles?

Search engines are becoming more intuitive. Eventually they will have a set of algorithms that almost enable them to think like a human. The better your copy works for humans, the better it will work for the search engines, and if the search engines continue to update with human satisfaction as their main objective, online copy written with human satisfaction as its main objective will continue to rise up the ranks.

Don’t keyword stuff.

Using a keyword over and over again in a way that is unnatural or interferes with the sense of the article is really annoying. You don’t need to use a keyword any more than a few times and it should sound completely natural (tightly focussed, relevant articles practically SEO themselves).

If you want to keep repeating a keyword in a natural, readable fashion consider a FAQ or Q&A style article, where you ask (and answer) a list of questions, all of which have the keyword included. Eg:

What is SEO?

Do I really need to know SEO as an article writer?

What are the best SEO resources on the web?

You get the idea.

Use free tools

You don’t need to pay for basic keyword tools that will enable you to effectively SEO your writing. I like the Google Adwords Keyword Research Tool for researching keywords. It’s more than adequate for most writers needs.

If you run your own blog you can also install free SEO plug-ins. I use WordPress blogging software and the All-In-One SEO plug-in, which is completely free and perfectly effective.

A warning about URLS

A very basic article on SEO techniques will advise you to (at the very least) identify your keyword/phrase and include it in your title, opening paragraph, tags and URL. When writing for you own site or blog, make sure you have your settings organised so your post title becomes part of your URL (a lot of blogging software doesn’t do this automatically), or else manually create your URLs.

When I started this site two years ago it took me a while to realize that all my posts included the main URL of my site followed by a question mark and a lot of random symbols. Not good for SEO. I reset my blog to use the title of the post as part of the URL, and found that I had managed to break all incoming links to those posts. (I only noticed when posts that had previously shown several tweets suddenly reverted to ‘0 tweets’). Learn from my mistake and get it right from the start if you can.

Basic SEO skills are a useful addition to your writing skill set. I’ll be discussing more useful skills you can develop to complement your writing in an upcoming post. If you don’t want to miss it, be sure to come back or subscribe.

The online world is full of scammers and spammers and freelance writing scams are not uncommon. The good news is there are ways to spot a scam and minimize your risks.

J L Rowlett gives some great advice on this area in her ebook Write all the Way to The Bank. There’s actually a whole section in the book called “Eyebrows Raised for the Following Types of Businesses” (they include Database Entry, Collecting Emails and Email Creation, College Paper Typing, Blogging for Commissions, and Paid Lists). I would say the most important point she makes is this: Don’t pay to work.

Sounds obvious, doesn’t it? If you are working surely you are the one who should be getting paid.  But it’s amazing how many companies will try to sell you a list of ‘leads’ with the promise that you will earn your money back a gazillion-fold because all the organizations on the list are sure-fire leads that you will be able to work for (and pretty much set your own terms because they are so desperate for writers).

Important tip:

Almost no-one worth working for is desperate for writers. There are plenty of us out here, which is why marketing yourself is such an important part of being a freelance writer. If websites/publishers do want new writers they will simply let the freelance writing community know. One tweet will often be sufficient, or an announcement on their own website. This is why it’s important to keep an eye on freelance writing marketplaces (many of which are free to access) as they will pick up on new writers’ guidelines or social media posts asking for writers and let their members/readers know.

How to spot a freelance writing scam:

If it sounds too good to be true, it probably is

If a company is promising something unrealistic, something that just doesn’t make sense, (like you can become a millionaire working one hour a week) it’s probably a scam.

Scams defy logic

If a company is going to sell a million copies of your book, and claim to have a ‘proven track record’ why are they asking for an up-front payment from you. Can’t they invest the money from all their previous million copy best sellers?

Check this link

Angela Hoy’s Whispers and Warnings over at WritersWeekly.com is a great place to go to check on publications, publishers, websites and other organisations that don’t pay their writers.

Check the rest of the web

You can also use Google to find out if there are warnings anywhere else on the net. Just search for “problems with [name of organisation]” or try something like “Is [name of organisation]” a scam?” Writers tend to get pretty vocal when they are being messed about and comments will soon show up in writers’ forums and blog posts/comments. One writer who has had problems may just indicate that he/she genuinely didn’t deliver, but if lots of writers are having problems with the same company – steer clear.

If in doubt, don’t, or proceed with extreme caution

If a website or publication is a new start-up it may be too early to know if they are going to be reliable or not. You can always just wait for a while until they are more established. Or, if everything sounds legitimate, you may want to take a calculated risk and do a small piece of work for them first to make sure they pay before taking on a bigger/more long-term project.

Have you had a bad experience in your writing career? Please let other readers know which ‘opportunities’ to avoid by leaving a comment.

Image by Salvatore Vuono via FreeDigitalPhotos.net  

Many bloggers and writers of online articles have been using the social bookmarking site Xomba to create backlinks to their online work,  thereby promoting blog posts and online articles while picking up a bit of extra Google Adsense revenue. I’m not one of them, but a know some people who are and they seem to have mixed feelings about the new rules announced this month over at Xomba.com.

A new blog post at Xomba states:

“In light of more stringent rules being imposed on Xomba by search engines like Google, and in keeping with the improved content, increased interest and communal aspect of our site, we have rewritten our posting rules,”

New posting rules include, but are not limited to:

No longer permitting user generated affiliate links or advertisements.

No posts will be allowed to “simply promote your content from other sites, including personal  blogs”.  Apparently it is still acceptable to include a link to your blog as part of your ‘signature’ at the end of a Xomba article.

Content that contains “excessive keywords, URLs in titles or anything that could be considered spam” will not be allowed.

There are some rules that I find a little confusing. For example, it’s no longer acceptable to link directly to your online store, but you can link to coupons (So can you link to a web page with a coupon – or coupon code – to be used at your online store? I would guess yes, but it’s not entirely clear.)

You can view all the new rules at a Xomba  blog post optimistically titled More Revenue and Rule Changes or see the official posting policy here.

Will this really make a difference? As I understand it so far, you can still link to your blog or other work from your profile and your signature. People will still follow these links. I believe Xomba links were always no-follow so posting there didn’t automatically affect search engine rankings for the sites that users linked out to anyway.

However this is clearly a reaction by Xomba to the way search engines are now perceiving articficially generated backlinks. This will have knock-on effects. What will happen to other writing sites commonly used by bloggers and writers to generate links? What will become of the article directories such as ezinearticles.com, and even major social bookmarking sites such as Stumbleupon and Digg? Could even Twitter and Facebook links to your own blog be perceived as overly promotional?  The online world is changing, and who knows where it will go next.

What’s really interesting to me are the shifts in the way online writing will be generated and promoted in light of the way Google and other search engines are ‘clamping down’ on poor quality content and spam.

This surely has to be a good thing for both web surfers and (quality) online writers and editors. If search engines start ranking genuinely useful high quality content above poor quality content with a load of artificially created backlinks, this should (in theory) drive the quality of web content up, and give good writers and responsible website owners their (rightful) place towards the top of search engine results.

Xomba are certainly claiming that the new rules will lead to better quality content (easy to believe) and better revenue (still to be proved), both of which have to be a good thing for users of the site (those who read it and those who generate content for it).

I’d like to reiterate that I don’t write for this site, so I’m not directly affected by this. I’m just interested in the buzz this is creating in the blogging and online writing community.

If anyone can clarify exactly what the new rules mean for existing and new Xomba users who wanted to use the site to drive traffic to their blogs and articles, please leave a comment.

If you’re a Xomba user who has been affected by the new rules, you can also share in the comments.

Before you leave, you might as well help yourself to a free ebook:  How to Earn Even More Money From Your Writing.