CertifiedCopywriting.com

Week One topic: Keyword Stuffing

So, for the imaginary client, “Acme Graphics” which of these paragraphs do you think reads better?

1. “There are many graphic designers doing business on the Internet, but which graphic designers are really skilled in graphic design, and which ones are just posing as graphic designers? Well, at ACME Graphics we train our graphic designers in graphic design techniques that make them excel as graphic designers.
2. There are many graphics designers doing business on the internet, but which ones are truly skilled in the art, and which ones are simply practicing outdated techniques. Well, at Acme Graphics, we train all of our employees in proper art and design techniques, so they excel in the field, and bring value to our customers.”

See the difference?

Paragraph 1 is an example of keyword stuffing. The writer is trying to cram the keyword into the paragraph as many times as possible. And trust me, we’ve seen even worse examples. The thinking is, that the more the keyword appears on the page, the more appealing it will be to search engines. That’s simply not the case. It may have been in the early days of Search Engines, but now, they are more complex, intelligent, and intuitive than ever before.

The keyword stuffing does NOTHING for your SEO, and probably just irritates your reader.

In short. Keyword Stuffing is a dead practice. Don’t do it.

Next week: Keyword Density: How many times should I have the keyword on a page?

Reprinted from Sitepronews.com:

Did you know that submitting an inexpensive iPhone app will get your website or blog top quality one way links from Apple and over 100 other websites?

Did you know that by making an iPhone app to give away that promotes your company can reach hundreds to thousands of high value potential customers month after month.

Build one iPhone app and submit it to iTunes and you can develop some powerful one way links to your website along with exposing your company to thousands of new people. It is not hard to do and it can cost less than $500.

How do you build your own iPhone app?

You’ve probably heard how expensive they are to make. There is one type of app that is more about the content than the code. Of the Day Apps. You can create a tip of the day, quote of the day or even coupon of the day relatively easily and have it made in to an iPhone app for under $500. There are a million ideas for what you could offer.

The materials needed are the text and some images. In fact, you can use minimal graphics by using the same background image for all text. Making an of the day app is not too difficult and just about anyone can do it. If you need graphic help, you might consider using www.99Designs.com and making your app graphics a contest. Once you find an artist you like, you may be able to develop a long term relationship.

Choose an idea that supports your business and make it fun and valuable.

Make it worthwhile and brand it well. The app needs to have value for customers and most of your customers will not appreciate “over branding”. You need to get your message across but your app’s first priority should be its value to the customer.

However, there are some nice branding opportunities that are not too obtrusive. First, when the app loads, there is a splash page that shows for a few seconds. It should have the app title and some info about the app but it can also serve as a quick branding message with a company logo. The main homepage is the tip of the day screen. This changes every day, of course. The screen here is usually an image with text on the top of it but it can also be a pure html page. This is where you give your customer what they want “subtly” branded. Then there is the About Us page. This is all yours to say and show what you want. So, it’s not very hard to make an app of value that can be a great branding tool as well.

Make Your iPhone App Inexpensively.

You have three options for creating an Of The day App. The first one is to buy a script and install it on your server. A good place to find a script is Hot Scripts. You’ll have to configure the script for mobile use but you can find a script for no cost and save some money.

The second approach is to use an Of the Day App service like OfTheDayApps.com. Here you can build a web app using an admin backend without any knowledge of html, css or php. For under $500, your web app can be made in to a native iPhone app and submitted to iTunes.

The third option is to hire an iPhone Application Developer. You can have your app made exactly the way you want it and you can have the coding and the graphic work done by professionals. This is, of course, a more expensive option starting in the two to three thousand dollar range.

Do the Apple Two Step.

Once you have your app ready to go, there are two things you can do to promote it.

Step One – Submit your web app to Apples Web App directory.

You can sign up for an account and submit your site quite easily. The only thing you’ll need extra is an icon for your site. This icon is for people saving your site to their desktop or phone screen.

Step Two – Make a Native iPhone app and submit it to iTunes App Store.

This is the big Kahuna. It will cost money but it will also get you incredible exposure. Not only will people see and download your app by the hundreds, thousands, or even hundreds of thousands of times, you will also get a lot of one way links back to your main website. Check it out at iTunes. There is a link to every developer’s main site with their app. On top of that, as soon as you get accepted to iTunes, your app will begin to appear in the hundred or so app directories out there and almost all of them include the same type of homepage link.

Conclusion

Once you get your first app in the app store, you will probably be hooked. The traffic you will see coming to your site, the quality links and the panache of being an iPhone Application Developer are nearly intoxicating. You don’t usually have this much fun building links and driving traffic.

Finally, how many sites compete with you in Google? Where there may be over a million pages showing up for almost any competitive search these days, in iTunes, popular searches many times result in under a hundred results. Now is the time to act. The iTunes App Store is just over a year old and the opportunity is there if you take it. How long will it be a lucrative option? Who knows? But, right now, the opportunity is waiting for you.

Resources:

• Of The Day Apps: http://www.OfTheDayApps.com
• Hot Scripts: http://www.hotscripts.com/search/all/%22of+the+day%22
• Apple Web App Directory: http://www.apple.com/webapps/
• iTunes: http://www.iTunes.com
• iPhone App Coders & Developers: http://www.AppPublishing.com

Bill Broadbent has been marketing online since 1998 and has sold millions of dollars in consumer goods since then. He has been mentioned and interviewed in many media outlets and publications from the NY Times, National Geographic, and USA Today to NBC, ABC, CBS, Fox News and even The Daily Show with Jon Stewart. Lately, his interest has turned to the mobile revolution and he is developing mobile applications at http://www.AppPublishing.com.

We recently had a project with long-tail keyphrases such as “best business cell phone plans” and “compare family cell phone plans” and we inserted them into the text so they didn’t stick out like a sore thumb, and here’s our client reaction:

“Great stuff. You had some rather unweidly phrases to deal with and everything reads very good.  Best, BHB”

By the staff at Certified Copywriting:

Whether you write longhand or use a word processor, a time will come when the words won’t come. The empty page gapes before you, a vast expanse of space that seems impossible to fill. Your mind seems thick and heavy, and yet your thoughts are racing: I can’t do this any more. I used up all the words, every last one. And the most maddening thing about writers block is that once upon a time you could fill up the page and it was easy.

Causes of Writer’s Block Stress is one cause of writers block. Yes, there are dozens of legends about famous writers being able to write thousands of words a day while deeply depressed and high on booze or tranquilizers. Legends are exceptions, and should be regarded as such. For most writers, stress about jobs, the rent money, relationships, and ordinary life creates a mental stew that is detrimental to the act of writing.

Boredom Boredom is another cause of writers block. The computer desk starts to resemble a cage after awhile, and soon the words curdle in your mind and disappear before they ever make it to the page. The boredom syndrome is possibly the easiest form of writers block to contract, but it is also the easiest to treat.

Fear Fear is another big one. The writer is afraid of looking like an idiot or screwing up, which is understandable. Less understandable is the writer who is afraid of success or perhaps afraid of the self-discovery that writing promises. Yes, it is possible to fear something new, even if it’s good, and sometimes that kind of fear is very difficult to overcome. Perhaps the worst fear is that of rejection, which can strangle the creative flow.

Cures: All of the cures for writers block boil down to addressing one of the three big causes: reducing stress, relieving boredom or eliminating fear. You can find hundreds of suggestions in writer’s guides or on the Internet, and they all work one or more of the big three. Here are some examples.

Reducing Stress Schedule a block of time for your writing. The idea here is to give yourself permission to write and not worry about the time that you’re not doing something else. Does it work? Sure. Make that appointment, scratch that, make that date with yourself and show up.

Create a quiet space for your writing, someplace where you can shut out the world and focus on your imagination. This reduces stress by using the out of sight/earshot, out of mind principle.

Change your day job. If you hate your job, get one you like. It sounds easier said than done, but many times making that leap will lead to great benefits in the future. The amount of stress you take home from a job you cannot stand is very corrosive to the creative process in the long run.

Relieving Boredom Move your writing desk. Even if all you do is turn it around 180 degrees, the change in your writing environment can shake you out of the doldrums which may be causing writers block. A related cure is to switch your writing time, if possible. Swap your morning writing hour for a time later in the evening.

Try a writing exercise. Here’s a simple one. Get a paragraph or so of narration, yours or another writer’s, and re-type the piece starting from the end and working your way back to the beginning. As you work through the exercise, allow your mind to follow the twisted meanings that the reversed word order creates.

Eliminating Fear Research your topics. When you don’t research your subjects enough, deep down, you are afraid of revealing your ignorance. If you’re afraid of looking like an idiot, do some more research and eliminate that possibility. And this advice works for fiction writers, too.

Separate the writing from the editing. Composition is not the time to be afraid of making mistakes. Worry about fixing the details after you gotten the big picture. Writing, especially the first draft, is all about broad strokes. Come back to polish after you have a rough draft. If you’ve got a case of writers block, you’re not alone. Virtually every writer has contracted writers block. Your writing is not hermetically sealed away from the rest of your life. What you do away from the keyboard will affect your writing either for good or for ill. If you look at writers block as some strange version of the canary that miners carried down in the dark to warn them of dangerous conditions, you’ll not only get the words flowing again, you’ll also improve your life.

What is SEO Copywriting?

SEO Copywriting, or to give it its full name, search engine optimization copywriting or search engine copywriting, is the technique of writing the viewable text on a web page in such a way that it reads well for the surfer, and also targets specific search terms. Its purpose is to rank highly in the search engines for the targeted search terms.

As well as the viewable text, SEO Copywriting usually optimizes other on-page elements for the targeted search terms. These include the Title, Description and Keywords tags, headings and alt text.

The idea behind SEO Copywriting is that search engines want genuine content pages and not additional pages (often called “doorway pages”) that are created for the sole purpose of achieving high rankings. Therefore, the engines cannot possibly view SEO copywritten pages as undesirable, and the rankings they achieve tend to be as stable as those that are achieved by other search engine optimization techniques.

Practitioners of the search engine copywriting method recommend around 250 viewable words per page, with one, or at most two, targeted search terms strategically placed within the text and other on-page elements.

SEO Copywriting strengths

One thing that can be said about search engine optimization copywriting is that works for suitable websites and for suitable search terms (see below). SEO Copywriting can achieve rankings that tend to do well across the search engines, although no page can do equally well in all engines.

It is sometimes said by practioners of search engine optimization copywriting, that the method tends to maintain its rankings as the engines tweak and change their algorithms, whereas other methods produce less stable rankings. This can’t be true. If 2 pages are in the top 10 search results; one getting there by the SEO copywriting method and the other by different search engine optimization techniques, they are both there because they match the engine’s criteria (algorithm) quite well. When the criteria is changed, the match that each of them had is necessarily changed. The matches could become closer to, or further from, the engine’s criteria. Whether each page goes up or down in the results depends on what changes have been made to the engine’s criteria. It is a matter of chance, and not a matter of whether SEO copywriting was used or not.

SEO Copywriting weaknesses

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