I Need Discipline

Posted: 02 May 2012 04:13 AM PDT

After being in the SEO ghostwriting industry for about 6 years now, I’m often approached by potential clients (and even sometimes longstanding clients) about whether or not I know about keyword density or the latest Google algorithm update. Many are surprised when I tell them “Yes, I do. The majority of my projects are SEO related.”

I do my best to stay as current in the world of SEO as possible. Things seem to change monthly, whether Google is updating the algorithm and all of these strategies that we once thought were good ideas are suddenly bad ones and now we’ve got to switch focus and make sure our content is on par with these new changes.

Plus, I think it goes without saying that if you’re going to make a living writing for SEO companies and website owners doing their own SEO, then you should at least know what your content is going to be used for, right? I pay to be a Pro member at sites like SEOMoz so that I can continually learn and see what I can apply to my content and strategies.

It makes me nervous when I see writers say, “Oh, I don’t know anything about SEO. I just write.” That just makes me wonder how their content is going to come out and how much their client is paying them. So, that leads me to these reasons on why your writer should know SEO:

Keyword Density: Some can argue that keyword density doesn’t really matter, but with this last algorithm update, it’s been said that if your keyword density is over 3% then you could be penalized for over optimizing. This means it’s essential your writer understands keyword density, so that they don’t OVERDO it. Yes, many new SEO writers tend to go keyword crazy and don’t even realize it.

Stop Words: This is a mistake that I see even clients make. They send a keyword like “attorneys Seattle” and they think the phrase has to be used exactly like that with no “in” to make it grammatically correct. But, if you know about stop words, then you know that the “in” has no effect on the keyword itself because the search engines don’t recognize it. They automatically strip dozens of words that they call “stop words.”

Duplicate Content: It’s more important now that you make sure your content is repeated or plagiarized from somewhere else. You would be amazed at how many writers don’t understand the concept of duplicate content and inadvertently copy full sentences and paragraphs from their research material.

You’ll Get a Bigger Bang for Your Buck: Hiring a writer that knows SEO means that you’ll not only get a higher quality product, but it means you’ll save money in the long run because you won’t waste time removing excess keywords, you won’t have to edit it yourself and you won’t have to pay someone else to rewrite it when you decide it’s just no good. All of that equals you saving money.

They Can Offer Advice: I frequently have clients that have knowledge of what they need (perhaps a web designer told them they needed web content for their new site), but then I ask them if they have keywords, or how long they need the content to be and it turns out that they really just don’t know. And that’s okay. Because I understand SEO, I can offer guidance in keyword research and selection as well as guidance in the length of their content and then all of a sudden they are off to a good start with their new website because I was able to offer that advice and guidance.

The bottom line is that there are a lot of writers out there that are “writers.” They wrote in college, or they like to write novels or they have a knack for writing and need to make some extra money between college semesters. While these people may be good writers, they’re not professional writers. They haven’t taken the steps to learn about SEO and what it takes to have web worthy content. You don’t have to worry about this if you use a writer that has a proven track record and history in SEO writing and you’re website will always benefit from an experienced SEO writer.

Valerie Mellema is the owner of Words You Want and has over 6 years in the SEO writing industry. Words You Want offers writing services for articles, blogs, eBooks and press releases.

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April 2012 Blog Income Report

Posted: 02 May 2012 04:33 PM PDT

I have decided that I can't be bothered with the normal pre-amble bit this month so I will simply end it here and let you guys get on with reading what you have come here for, the income report.

Page Impressions & Visitor Count

The unique visitor count for April stands at 3,173 which is a big decrease of 776 from the month of March.

The page impression count for April stands at 6,420, which is a big decrease of 619 from the month of March.

This means that each unique visitor looked at 1.70 pages.

My bounce rate has dropped from 78.25 to 72.92.

- Traffic dropped quite considerably during March and to be honest I'm at a loss as to why this happen. I spent quite a bit of time pushing my posts and blog on Facebook groups which accessed almost 1,000,000 active users. I dropped back on blog commenting so maybe that is why the traffic dropped off.

Show Me The Money!

Adbrite = $1.49 (+$0.49)
Fidelity Media (AdJuggler) – $0.24 (+/-$0.00)
Passive Income = $30.82 (+$16.50)
Private Advertising – $26.00 (-$40.00)
Private Writing = $530.65 (+$140.05)
PulsePoint (AdsDaq) = $0.06 (+$0.02)
Reviews = $101.25 (-$74.32)
Smowtion = $0.10 (-$0.17)
TLA = $4.00 (-$1.50)
UnderDog = $0.35 (+$0.29)
Zapunited = $0.13 (-$0.04)

Total = $695.09 (+$40.96)

- PulsePoint stopped displaying ads on the blog for the past two months, I’m working on getting it restored.

- I saw a drop in review amount because although I did quite a few sponsored posts I am still waiting for payment from a lot of them, some review networks pay quicker than others.

Top Five Search Terms

I like this part of the monthly income report. It is amazing how people find this blog on search engines.

1. most successful business ideas
2. things to do without spending money
3. Smorty
4. product launch ideas
5. how to start writing articles online

5 Top Site Referrals

The top five sites that sent the most visitors to this blog.

1. myblogguest.com
2. t.co
3. facebook.com
4. urlopener.com
5. google.com

Top 10 Commenters

This is just my little way of saying thank you to the people who take the time to comment on this blog. Without you guys it would be just me rambling away.

1. lesleyanneyp (9)
2. Cashjay@make money online (5)
3. Lennart Heleander@Property Marbella (5)
4. tires (5)
5. Mohideen @ seo blog (4)
6. direct lenders (3)
7. Bathroom Tiles (2)
8. broadband blogger (2)
9. idea management tool (2)
10. Ileane (2)

This blog, and me earning money online, would not be possible if it was not for those awesome folk over at Bluehost. If you are looking for quality, reliable and cheap hosting then I urge you to check them out today.

March 2012 Blog Income Report I think it is fair to say that 2012 hasn't exactly welcomed me with open arms so far but I am hopeful that March will be the catalyst to finally kickstart me and maybe, just maybe, I can get my life back to some kind of normality. Page Impressions & Visitor Count The unique visitor count for March stands at 3,949 which is an increase of 889 from the month of February. The page impression count for March stands at 7,039, which is a big increase of 2,122 from the month of February. This means that each unique visitor looked at 1.54 pages. My bounce ...
January 2012 Blog Income Report 2012 hasn't exactly started the way that I wanted it to. A quick eye over the stats in this blog income report will tell you that I didn't concentrate on my online dealings in January as I was hit with some personal problems. I don't want to highlight them all here but it involved the end of a two year relationship and the loss of my first child who was aborted at 3 months. People who know me will tell you that I'm a tough son of a bitch and I'll keep fighting no matter what people throw at me. And without ...
February 2012 Blog Income Report I wanted to start this post by addressing something that I mentioned in my last blog income report. I announced a couple of tragedies that had happened to me at the start of 2012 and I just wanted to say that I received so many nice comments, emails and Twitter messages from people wishing me well that I just wanted to say thank you, it really made me smile. :) I was hoping that February was going to be better but sadly this didn't pan out that way, February is normally a bad month for me anyway (normally just behind December) ...
December 2011 Blog Income Report Wow 2011 just flew by didn't it? It seems like only last week I was writing about my goals for 2011 back in January 2011 and now I am about to set out my goals for 2012. December was always going to be a slow month for me, not only does it mean less work being offered but I couldn't devote as much time to writing due to getting ready and visiting people over the holidays. So I was expecting my income to be rather low. Still I managed to publish 13 articles on this blog and I forfilled my writing obligations ...
April 2011 Blog Income Report I haven't been as productive with this blog over the past month as I would have liked to have been, if it was not for the large amount of guest posts I had received then you would probably have been looking at about four posts. I haven't been skiving though, honest! I have been really busy tucking into private writing assignments that I have secured, as you will see by the amount I made from private writing this month. Page Impressions & Visitor Count The unique visitor count for April stands at 1.151, which is an increase of 98 from the month of ...