5 Tips for Breaking into Freelance Web Content Writing

5 Tips for Breaking into Freelance Web Content Writing.

10 Free SEO Tools

What is Seo (Search Engine Optimization)?

SEO is the science of increasing your web traffic by improving the factors influencing web ranking in browser search results. It is an important aspect of Internet marketing. It combines:

• Keyword research
• Building content rich sites
• Web ranking research
• Link building
• Web development expertise, and
• A robust and proper use of social media.

The Primary Steps of Any Seo Strategy

1. Identify your target audience
2. Focus on keyword research, ie. research words that customers use in search engines to find your product. Keyword research involves researching keywords that are relevant, receive high traffic, with low to moderate competition and a high level of commercial viability. I will cover keyword research in many future blogs.
3. Write content (with the help of these keywords) that will attract your target audience and  improve your web ranking in search results.

There are a number of free seo tools which should be a part of any site owners toolkit. These tools provide site owners with valuable information to help them improve their search engine rankings and attract more visitors and business.

Let’s look at 10 of these free seo tools:

1. Google’s keyword research tools allow you to use keywords that customers are using when looking for a product. The tool has a number of search options from searching for keyword ideas using a combination of keywords, a web site and categories to comparing statistics for your keywords and filtering results by search volume (global monthly searches etc.) and competition types.
2. The Google analytics tool tracks how visitors are getting to your site and lets you analyze your traffic data. This tool will help you focus and write better-targeted ads, strengthen your marketing initiatives and create higher converting websites.
3. Copyscape is a free plagiarism checker. The software lets you detect duplicate content and check if your articles are original.
4. InboundWriter is a new online tool that helps you optimize web content for search engines. The free version lets you optimize up to eight documents per month in search results. It helps you discover profitable keywords you’ve been missing out on and track rankings of your website for multiple keywords in all major search engines.
5. SEO ToolSet  has multiple free tools. The Search Engine Optimization/KSP Tool measures a keyword’s popularity by showing daily approximations of how often each keyword is searched in the major search engines, derived from monthly statistics. Use the Page Analyzer tool to research the competition.  After you have found out who your competition is, see how many unique pages are ranked in the top ten in the major search engines. Then compare it with how many pages you have
6. MultiRank Checker by iWebtool.com  is great to check the Google page rank and the Alexa ranking of multiple urls.
7. SEO for Firefox by SEOBook.com  is good for a quick overview of many parameters including keyword density analysis, keyword suggestions and statistics,  page comparison and link checking.
8. Google Optimizer, Google’s free web site testing and optimization tool, allows you to increase the value of your existing web sites and traffic. Use Website Optimizer to test and optimize site content and design. You can quickly and easily increase revenue and ROI whether you’re new to marketing or an expert
9. Google Webmaster Central ensures that your site is search engine friendly. It will identify various issues, such as broken links, malware, crawling issues, etc., as well as providing data on search engine indexing and search traffic.
10. Hootsuite : With HootSuite, you can monitor keywords, manage multiple Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Foursquare, Ping.fm and WordPress profiles and schedule messages.

Web Content Writing Basics

Web Content Writing Ideas
Certain golden rules when applied can transform anybody into a web content guru. That is the ongoing purpose of this blog.

Web content writing is an exciting and constantly evolving field. To write great content that is fresh and that will keep visitors constantly engaged is all at once challenging, educational and exciting. A genuine love, passion and involvement with your topic will shine through and will keep visitors engaged and involved with your site.

Writing great content however is only part of the job. Making sure that the content is found and indexed by most browsers so that you get the traffic is the more challenging job.

Here are some ideas and tips which make web content writing a piece of cake. Each idea is a subject on its own and I will attempt to cover them in a lot more detail in forthcoming blogs.

These ideas will equip you in no time at all to write great content that is found easily by most search engines and will build and increase traffic to your site.

Use a writing style that grabs interest

• Use the inverted pyramid style of writing which places the most important information first. If visitors don’t find the info. they are looking for in the first couple of minutes they will go to another site where they can.
• Break up large blocks of text with bullet lists for ease of reading.
• Use meaningful headlines and subheads that explain key points at a glance as well as help optimize the page
• Focus on the best keywords for your business. There are several tools such as Wordtracker that will get you started with keyword research.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) techniques

The purpose of great content is to attract the maximum number of visitors to your site. Search engines look for the following information among other parameters:

• Focus on keyword density which involves repeating select, target keywords so that search engines find your site more relevant and give you a higher ranking in search results. Experts recommend that the ideal keyword density is between 2-5 percent.
• Use effective titles and headings. The titles and headings must not only grab attention but must also have keywords.
• Build links. Muster all your efforts in making your content so useful that other sites link to you. The more links you receive the higher your page will rank in search results.

Fresh Content

• Content is really king and fresh, up-to-date compelling, useful and relevant content is of utmost importance especially in these days of rapidly changing technologies and instant news updates.
• Search engines penalize websites that have static content. Fresh content makes for higher search rankings.
• Research before writing as info these days becomes obsolete at the bat of an eyelid.

Use Social Media and Comments to Define Content

•  Web Marketing experts recommend you use software to find out which subjects are hot, what’s new and what gets shared most on social media. Then create a new page, focusing on a topic that is going viral or at the very least being talked about extensively.
• Visitor interaction will help you understand what’s working. Use comments to engage visitors and understand their needs and which piece of content is popular with them.
• Send regular white papers and newsletters to your customers via email. It’s important that the content is both beneficial and useful as this strategy will not only enhance your relationship with your visitors but will convert them into customers who regularly visit your site.

I hope that these simple tips will get you started on your journey towards becoming a web content guru.

Article on Amelia Earhart

The advantages of writing for your local newspaper are many. Covering a broad range of stories is an excellent way to hone your writing skills and is a great confidence booster. I gained confidence in my writing abilities, for the first time, after being published in a local newspaper back in 2000. Since then, I have written for websites, magazines and international newspapers and will share these articles in other posts.

I wrote this article titled “Mystery surrounding Amelia Earhart’s death stirs local students’ interests ” for my local newspaper, The Downingtown Ledger.
Read the full Amelia Earhart article on the Downingtownledger.com

Ten Surefire Ways to Break into Today’s Freelance Writing Market.

Today’s market has opened up tremendous writing opportunities for freelance writers. Opportunities abound every which way you look. There are already thousands of people who earn their living writing from home. Here are ten proven techniques and methods for breaking into today’s freelance writing market:

1. Write for the web. Online communications have opened a floodgate of opportunities. Billions of dollars are spent daily on creating content online, and you don’t have to be a big corporation to capture your share of that pie.

Web visitors like to see fresh content. Site owners who constantly need to attract traffic to their sites will invest in paying writers to produce new material. Current opportunities include writing articles, blogs, Ebooks and newsletters as well as managing discussion forums and groups.

An easy site to begin content writing is for EHow.com. This site is good to build a portfolio to show clients samples of your work. Search engines also give a good ranking to EHow. It may not be the top site for earning solely through your writing but it is definitely a great starting point.

2. Blog for fun and profit. The key to learning how to become a blogger is to start blogging! It is really that simple. The advantages of blogs as a small business are very low start-up and operational costs. The only real cost is the blogger’s time. The challenge for all for profit bloggers is creating a large enough audience to support the business.

Most for-profit blogs run ads. Blog networks such as Blog Ads and Goggle’s Adsense make it easy to add advertising to a blog site. However, only the top sites in terms of traffic generate more than a few dollars per day. Most ecommerce sites have affiliate programs, and they are easy to use. For example, The Amazon Affiliate Program rewards sites that sell Amazon books.

3. Bid for your next freelance project at freelance-bidding sites. These sites connect freelance writers to different markets that require their skills. The membership process is simple. You register and often pay a small fee. Once you are registered, you can browse through all the active projects and bid on the ones that interest you. These websites make a small commission on all projects that are awarded. The buyer is billed directly. Sologig, Elance, Guru and The Freelance Work Exchange are a few examples of freelance-bidding sites.

4. Contact the editors of local newspapers in your town or city. Local newspapers are excellent places to start building a network of contacts in the industry. They run on a tight budget and have a skeleton staff. They constantly need writers to cover stories as “stringers”. Stringers are freelance journalists that are paid per piece as opposed to being paid a regular salary. Check out Newpapers.com for an online database of newspapers across the country.

5. Write for an international publication. The world is flat and this global marketplace is a haven for writers. You can reach an ever-widening audience thousands of miles away. NewsDirectory provides a list of newspapers and magazines around the globe. Worldwide Freelance Writer highlights many paying markets in its market section.

6. Turn your hobbies into a lucrative freelance writing career. Hobbies can be fun, exciting and expensive. Most of all, hobbies are the result of a passion or love. At the risk of stating the obvious, a passionate love for a subject makes for truly ingenious copy. Check out the latest Writer’s Market, which provides detailed descriptions of magazines that hire freelance writing talent.

7. Write for professional trade journals. Fitness instructors, computer geeks, artists, astrologers, doctors and lawyers have become well-published writers in their field of expertise.
Join writers’ organizations in your field and also visit various websites that specialize in your topic.

8. Take advantage of your ethnicity and write for ethnic markets. There are two types of markets available to journalists of ethnic origins. The first is the English speaking and writing market.

Join an association for a particular ethnic community and broaden your contacts and enhance your networking skills. These websites have special information for ethnic writers:
SAJA (South Asian Journalists Association)
AAJA (Asian American Journalists Association)
Journalismnext.com (Website for minority journalists and media professionals)
NAHJ (National Association of Hispanic Journalists)

The second market open to ethnic journalists is the foreign language media. According to the U.S 2000 Census results, 45 million people aged 5 and older spoke a language other than English at home. Wikipedia has a listing of foreign language newspapers in the U.S

9. Contribute towards nonpaying writing opportunities. An unpaid opportunity is an excellent way to build up a portfolio and hone your writing skills. Non-profits need content for their websites and often require proposal and grant writers. VolunteerMatch is an online network of thousands of participating nonprofits. Your local church, homeowners associations’, local clubs and community groups need volunteers to write their newsletters.

10. Use the internet in your search. The internet is the most powerful tool for research and is also the most easily accessible tool for finding your next freelance project. The following resources are helpful:
American Society of Journalists and Authors
Absolute Markets
Writersdigest.com
Writersweekly.com
JournalismJobs.com
MediaBistro.com