gainfully unemployed » writing

Great Content is the Best SEO

chris — Tue, 19 Jan 2010 17:22:17 +0000

SEO is a very important factor in developing a successful blog or online property. You want the structure of your home to be solid, strong, and well-designed.

The same goes for your website.

When people say that SEO is unimportant or a waste of time, they’re wrong. Making your site search engine friendly and easily navigable and findable is incredibly important.

But…

It’s not the most important thing.

Your content is the most important thing.

It’s easy to find yourself rushing through a blog post or an article so you can get to the promotion and link building part much faster. Successful bloggers know that their job isn’t done after they finish a post. It’s only the beginning–especially with a new blog.

An informative, well-written post can be pretty lonely without anyone to read it. And the truth is, people have a lot of options. There’s plenty to read out there, so you have to find readers and traffic for your site. You have to promote your work.

The single best thing you can do for the SEO of your site, other than making sure the structure is sound and it’s highly searchable, is to find high quality, relevant links.

And the best way to find these kinds of links is by writing amazing content that people–yes, here it comes–want to link to!

It’s a much better use of your time to focus on creating amazing content than fishing around the web trying to find people to trade links with. If what you publish on your site is great, then links will be no problem. And they’ll all be “one-way” links, not reciprocal!

So, when it comes to the actual content of your site, it will pay off to make it as useful, as informative, as amazing, as scandalous, as eye-catching, and as entertaining as you can.

Great Content is the Best SEO.

(image: Ivan Petrov)

Increase Your Blog Traffic with Article Directories

chris — Tue, 29 Sep 2009 19:57:20 +0000

One of the best ways to promote your blog or website is by publishing articles in Article Directories. Some of the better known directories are EzineArticles.com and GoArticles.com. Publishing articles in these kinds of directories is smart for a few reasons.

They create direct click-through traffic to your blog posts, articles, or domain.
They can help your site become indexed by search engines more quickly.
They create back-links to your site, which helps it achieve higher search engine results in Google and Yahoo.

How do Article Directories Work?

You can publish articles about anything, but you want the subject to be specifically related to what you write about on your blog. The reason for this is that you get to place two links in the signature box at the end of your articles. This is pretty much the whole reason you want to write for article directories: building links to your work.

Once your article is approved, it will be live and should soon get some search traffic to it. This will in turn send some traffic to your blog via you signature links. Other web publishers can re-publish your work on their own websites as long as they include the links to your site, which can further increase the amount of links you get to your work.

How to Get Click Through Traffic from Article Directories.

It is always nice to see high rates of click-through traffic on your ezine articles. One way to increase clicks on your links is by writing in such a way that your reader still wants more information and will naturally want to click your link as a means to finding it.

In my last post I used the example of home brewing beer so I’ll continue that here. Your article may be about how to brew beer properly or some things to know for beginners. You may write in your signature something like this (with the link in quotes):

Read more about how to choose the best “Home Brewing Kits.” Also, learn more tips and tricks to getting started “Brewing Beer at Home.”

Both links can be to different posts on your blog, or one can be to a post and the other can be to the homepage domain. You want to also make sure to use keyword-rich anchor text. The first link in the above example could lead to a review of several “home brewing kits,” while the second may be to the homepage, which may be more general in theme, which is why you use the text “”Brewing Beer at Home.” It really depends on what your target keywords are. In this example, you would

Keyword-rich links are good for off-site SEO and will help your site in the SERPS. If you’re looking to gain traffic to your site, both direct and long term, article directories are a good place to start.

Article Length

400 to 500 words is the optimal length for these articles.

It can be frustrating getting started at Article directories–at least for me it was–because your work may be rejected for not reaching the publisher’s standards. They don’t want spammy or keyword-stuffed content, which is part of the reason these directories maintain their high quality reputations, which are reflected in PR and search engine rankings.

How Do You Get Paid by Hubpages?

chris — Mon, 13 Jul 2009 23:45:56 +0000

I noticed that quite a few people visited my site last week wondering how you get paid by hubpages. I wrote two pieces recently about how to make money online with hubpages, in which I wrote a little about how you can actually earn some income from the work you write at the site. Read them here if you want to learn more about how to do it. Then come back to this post for more clarification.

Make Money Online with Hubpages (part 1)

Make Money with Hubpages – Backlinks (part 2)

The truth is that Hubpages does not pay you at all. What I mean to say is the owners of the site never issue a check in your name or send you a residual payment. Publishers have the opportunity to earn from the impressions of their pages–the amount of times a web surfer views their pages.

What you need to do to make money on Hubpages is sign up with Google Adsense. This is the primary way people make money from their content at Hubpages. Adsense ads appear around your content as text links or images. When clicked by a visitor to your work, you earn money 6 out of 10 times.

Now how much you earn per click with this advertising network depends on a few factors: the quality of your content, the kind of traffic you receive, and what you write about. The better your content, the more people will link to it and the more people will see it. More importantly, advertisers will want their ads to pop up on your pages if you create high quality content. If you create spammy, low quality work, you may have ads blocked by some merchants. Would you want your product or service associated with something that looks like crap?

Make Money on Hubpages with Search Engine Traffic

If you receive natural search engine traffic to your hubs (which is an important thing in any internet marketing venture), you should be able to earn some money from your work. Search engine traffic is known to convert well into a click or a sale because the type of visitor looking for something on a search engine is looking for a solution to a problem and may find what they are looking for in a text ad on your hub. This type of web surfer may be more “click-happy” than someone with a more focused objective.

Look at it this way: this type of visitor to your hub is literally “searching” for something. Advertisements are a legitimate way to help these people solve their problem. At the end of the day, if you are helpful and informative, you will earn some money for your efforts. Give and you shall receive.

How to Make Money with Hubpages Content: It’s About What You Write

The biggest indicator of what you may earn per click comes from what you write about. If you write a post about bathroom renovation, you will probably be able to earn more money with Hubpages than if you write a review of the movie Batman Begins. The reason is simple. Services and products associated with bathroom restoration are more expensive than products associated with movies. A business selling high end products has more money to advertise with because its products have higher margins, and thus a greater payout if a sale is a made or a prospective customer’s email is collected for an emailing list.

That being said, you should write about what you want to because life is short. Have fun. If you write about movies or your favorite park in town (random, I know), you may still be able to earn substantial money if it is really well done and pulls a lot of traffic. It is a lot easier to write about something you are genuinely interested in and passionate about rather than just looking for expensive terms to base you articles about. Furthermore, there are other ways to make money online with Hubpages.

Make Money on Hubpages through Referral Programs

Amazon and eBay are integrated into the design of hubpages and can easily be added to your hubs through your editing dock. You have to sign up individually with both of these companies in order to become an affiliate and start referring products. Once you start making referrals, you will be paid directly by Amazon and eBay.

There are two ways to use these referral links. You can hand select each individual product or type in the keywords of your hub and sort of set it on autopilot to have related products automatically pop up. It really depends what you are writing about. ?Say you write an informational hub about Rolex watches. You may want to set an ebay link at the end of your hub to display related products. Rolex watches on sale will appear. But say you are writing about a specific model from this watchmaker. ?You may want to hand select the model because it may be more specific to what you are writing about.

More Traffic Equals More Money on Hubpages

The keys to doing well with your hubs are traffic, traffic, and more traffic. I am repetitive here and only half-kidding. But it is true that the more traffic you receive to your work online, the more money you will be able to make. If you take a second to look at the online environment and put out of your head terms like “Search Engine Optimization” (or SEO) and “Search Engine Marketing”, you begin to realize that writing quality articles that inform, enlighten, or entertain is what will create traffic for you.

The cream rises to the top. Sure, there are less than incredible websites, blogs, and probably some hubs, that gain a ton of traffic, but are spammy and useless. This is the exception to the rule, however. This kind of content simply will not last and writing low quality stuff just makes it hard to encourage more people to read it. And the people who read it sure aren’t going to link to it or tell their friends about it.

Making money online is not easy–and it is honestly a lot easier to do it by writing great content that people can find and that helps people out in some way. This will not only help you get real links back to your work, but it will help through word or mouth, and over time, you will get more “love” from search engines.

Learn how to properly use keyword phrases. And keep writing even when you aren’t earning any money and even when you have no traffic. Sign up for Hubpages.

Why to Use Images in Your Posts and Where to Find Them for No Charge

chris — Thu, 21 May 2009 20:45:02 +0000

You’ve spent two hours writing your post. You’ve spell checked three times. Your title is perfect, targeted, smooth, and catchy. Your tags couldn’t be more fine tuned.

So it’s time to publish and get your message out to the world, right?

Not quite.

There’s something missing isn’t there? So what is it?

Color!

Yay! A colorful image!

What’s missing is the perfect image that really puts the icing on your piece of writing. The proverbial cherry on the top that will finish telling the story or create the feeling that really puts the shine on your work. Now, admittedly, I rarely use images on my posts here at the online business inspiration blog, but I decided recently that I want to start doing so.

Here are a few websites where you can find great stock images for no charge.

1) stock.xchg – Stock Exchange is one of the easiest places to search for, choose, and download stock images on the web. I have used this site almost exclusively because it is so low-hassle and user-friendly. As long as you respect the photographers and comply to their usage constraints, you will have a great experience using this site. The quality of the photos varies, but you can find great images.

2) PhotoXpress – You can find some great, high quality images at PhotoXpress. There is also a paid option, which will supply you with top-notch professional grade photos. The same goes for Stock Exchange. But you don’t need to pay to find the perfect image for your post.

3) iStockphoto – This website is one of the most popular stock image sites out there. If you are a power content producer, you might want to consider a paid option. It is actually very reasonable, starting at $1 per image. There are thousands of royalty free images to choose from, however, so keep your credit card in your wallet.

Adding an image to your posts is good for a few reasons.

1) It will keep eyes on your site for that extra second that it may take someone to say, you know what, this guy or gal has some good information to offer here. Keep people on your site for a few extra moments and they may become a daily reader. But an amazing image will not save poor content. It will only complement good content.

2) If your article gets saved to social bookmarking sites like digg or mixx, often the image you use in your post will be highlighted on the site next to the title of your article. This may be all it takes to get an extra click-through.

3) A well-chosen, well-cropped image adds an extra level of quality to your site. It will make your work look more professional because it will be more professional.

Well, there’s my short primer on using images in your post and where to find them. I guess the only thing I need to do now is take my own advice.

Thanks for reading.

Chris

How to Write (Blog) with Authority

chris — Tue, 17 Mar 2009 22:48:41 +0000

I read a great post at Copyblogger about how to write with authority. I thought it was a good refresher course in how to write in a strong, effective voice in the online medium.

Authoritative writing is dependent on one thing: having authority. This means you need to have some information of value to people–you need to be able to help people. You can’t fake this.

Another thing that is becoming more and more important in business is transparency. People are desperate to find someone who will give them honest, valuable information. It’s called loyalty and it’s not free. It takes effort, passion, and great content to create loyalty.

Once you have a dedicated base of readers or followers who trust you and you honestly care about them, that’s all you need to succeed in online business–or any business for that matter.