Thursday 8 December 2011

Yes, IWriter Is Good for Freelance Writers

When it comes to a freelance writing, iWriter.com is a great place for writers to find work. Find out why my iWriter.com review is a highly positive one.

Writers can log in to the site, select one topic from the dozens available and get paid for good work in a matter of maximum 72 hours. I have been with iWriter.com for the past 6 weeks and I love the site.

First my experience. I have got two payments from iWriter.com as follows:

First payment - $48.13 (three weeks after joining the site)
Second payment - $75.70 (two weeks after the first payment)

The second payment got just bigger because I got 'ELITE' status after my first 31 articles. Would reach there if one of my articles was not rejected and given a one-star rating by the requester.

As a basic writer, you qualify only for $2.58 per 500 words you write. I see several $2.58 in my account. However, once I became an elite writer, the payments are $6.48, $5.67, or $8.10 per article. I now can write an article in less than one hour. An extra $5 or $8 for otherwise wasted hours is a good thing for me.

I have a full time job and I don't plan to take up writing as my main source of income. The numbers may not look big, but I still love the extra money.

Starting Out
Initially, I was a little wary of using the site and writing for others. The requesters can reject your articles without citing any reason at all (it happened to me once). I accept it as part of the game. However, I don't write for anyone who rejects more articles than he accepts. Such people are not worth your time and they will pull your ratings down for no mistake of your own.

Hands on Experience
After writing four-five articles (every one getting a five-star rating) a requester hired me to write several articles. He liked my writing style very much. I could write without worrying about rejections. This guy gave me lavish tips too - $3 as tip for an article that paid me only $2.58. I feel lucky finding this requester.

Rejection
Till date, I have only one rejection. The requester said I used a brandname in the article. I still resent the rejection because I can't find any brand name in the article I gave him. I wrote for this requester because I saw him approving most of the articles. I may be just unlucky. Anyway, seeing a one-star rating for an article I thought worth at least 4 stars was very shocking.

Elite Status
It took me only 31 articles to reach the elite status. The several five star ratings I got helped. Then I saw requesters willing to pay up to $20 per article. I was quite apprehensive taking such high paying articles. However, all my articles are accepted. These high paying requesters are also more pleasant to work with. They give you detailed feedback when they take a point away from you. They also don't seem to reject articles for invented brand names in the articles.

Will I use iWriter.com in the Future?
Yes. Definitely. Now it is more than a nice side income. I don't have many hobbies. I think I can make writing as my hobby or passtime activity. The payments are just a bonus.

Sure, there are other people who don't like iWriter because the payments appear low. Everyone has his/her own reasons to love or hate anybody and anything, right?

Wednesday 30 November 2011

Using Robots txt for SEO

Robots.txt disallows all or select search engine bots or crawlers accessing whole or part of your website. Use robots.txt file to improve your SEO efforts. Here is how.


What does robots.txt do?

Robots.txt is a text file that tells search engine bots or crawlers not to visit certain parts of your website. You don't want to see search engine bots like Google Bot to see folders in  your website that may contain sensitive data. You can also hide duplicate content from the eyes of search engines by disallowing the bots from accessing your pages.

Structure of robots.txt

The robots.txt text file is usually placed on the root folder of the website, along with the index file. It will be publicly accessible at http://www.example.com/robots.txt

Disallowing Every Search Engine Bots

This is a simple robots.txt file that rejects every search engine bots:

User-agent: *
Disallow: /



The '*' refers to all search engine bots. The '/' prevents search engines from accessing any of the folders.

As you can see, using this directive prevents search engines from accessing your website and listing your website in search results. You do this when your website is in building stage and you don't want search engines to index your website.

Disallowing a Specific Search Engine

User-agent: Google
Disallow: /

This will disallow Google bots from accessing  your site. However, it will allow all other bots to access your site.

Disallowing Certain Parts of Your Website

You can disallow certain parts of your website by using the following directive in the robots.txt file

User-agent: *
Disallow: /tags/
Disallow: /images/
Disallow: /tmp/

This will prevent search engine bots from crawling the folders named tags, images and tmp. You need to add a separate disallow line for every folder you want to hide from the search engine spiders.

Search engines wrongly assume your website has duplicate content if you use 'tags' or 'labels' to organize your articles. The snippets of a single article or content page can appear under different tags, which search engines think of as duplicate content. Disallow access to the tags pages and they won't see duplicate content.

Disallowing Specific Pages of Your Website



User-agent: *
Disallow: /www/pages/page1.html
Disallow: /www/pages/page2.html

This will prevent every search engine bots access to specific pages (page1.html and page2.html) of your website.

Robots.txt Use Can Go Wrong

Even experienced web designers make the mistake of using robots.txt the wrong way. That is, they disallow access to every search engine bot and complain their website is not showing up in search engine results pages.

Wrong use of robots.txt file can undo the effects of your good SEO. So, make sure you don't disallow parts of your website that you want to be indexed by Google and other search engines.

No, there is not a directive to ALLOW access to a page or folder.

Tuesday 29 November 2011

SEO Content Articles - Write Them this Way

Writing SEO content or content rich articles is simpler than most people think. Follow these simple guidelines to write SEO content articles that don't look like keyword stuffed pages.

This article is a follow up on SEO content writing, in which I gave a quick overview of the art and craft of writing for search engines and real people at the same time. OK, here we go.

SEO Content Headlines Writing

Use the target keywords as the first words of the headline. However, if you simply write the keyword as the headline, people are not going to click on the link to reach your website. Make the headline appealing by making a promise. In the title of this article, I promised you to teach you a way of writing SEO content articles and you are here.

SEO Content Descriptions

Write a very short description of two-three sentences. Write a lively and engaging description to get people hooked to the topic. Include more than two variations of the primary keyword. The first paragraph of this article is a description, which contains keywords like 'writing seo content', 'articles', and 'keyword'.

Use Sub-headings with Keywords

Subheadings with headlines are a key factor of SEO content articles. These sub-headings will make it easy for readers to scan your article. The subheadings also make it easy for you to divide your article into sub-sections and write useful content easily. The keywords in the subheadings tell the search engines that the page is contextually consistent. That is, you don't start with SEO content writing and wander into affiliate marketing.

Use Relevant Keywords to Make it an SEO Content Article

Bring keywords related to the primary keyword to as many places possible into the article without questioning the intelligence of your readers. In other words, your SEO content article can have keywords repeated multiple times in the article. It tells the search engines they have directed their visitors to the right page.

TheNextWeb published a neat joke, which clearly explains what keyword stuffing is. Avoid it or become the topic of jokes.

Forget About Keyword Density

If you are looking for keyword density of more than 3%, you are wasting your energy. High keyword density doesn't translate into better SEO content articles. You don't have to use any keyword more than 10 times in a 500-word article. Concentrate more on the natural flow of the article instead. Sometimes the keyword density can be more than 4% or even 5%. When it happens, make sure it happens in a natural way.

Use Keywords in the Last Paragraph

Honestly, I don't see any benefit using the keywords in the last paragraph or sentence of the article. It may just tell the search engines that the content remains topical without wandering into random topics.

Do tell me if this article will help you write SEO content articles that get human attention. 


Monday 28 November 2011

SEO Content Writing Best Practices


SEO content writing is profitable craft anyone can learn. Learn the best practices of SEO content writing here.

Content writing, especially SEO content writing, is a valuable craft, highly appreciated and very much in demand today. New writers attracted to this craft think it is easy to insert keywords into articles and get a well optimized article. Nothing can be farther from truth.

SEO Content Writing is Not Keyword Stuffing

If you add so many keywords into every line you write, it will become keyword stuffing and keyword spamming. SEO writing has its primary goal attracting the attention of search engine spiders. However, your SEO content is a failure if it fails to keep the attention of real people reading the content.

In other words, people see your article listed in Google or Yahoo. They click on the link to reach your page. They discover the page is not useful. They quickly hit the back button and escape from your page. That is the result of keyword stuffing.

SEO Content Writing Makes it Easy for the Readers

Writing good web content is helpful for anyone reaching your web pages, because they can easily find what they were searching for.

Following are seven good qualities of SEO content writing.

1. Main heading has primary keyword
2. Has sub-headings
3. Sub-headings have primary and secondary keywords
4. Has relevant data/information
5. Primary keywords and keyword variations are used throughout the article/web content
6. Doesn't look like keyword stuffing (and most importantly)
7. Doesn't question the intelligence of readers

How to Write SEO Content

Do thorough research before you start on any topic. This way, you can present facts and cut fluff. You will get a quality, engaging article in return.

While writing this article, I wanted to get the attention of people looking to learn the craft of SEO content writing. If you have read this article this much, I am successful in retaining your attention. Do this much and I say you are a good SEO writer.

How to Structure SEO Web Content

Heading: Use keywords as the first words of the heading. Keywords moved away from the beginning may attract real users, but search engine spiders value them less.

In other words start your heading in this format: Keyword Keyword ___ ___ ___. See the heading of this article for a live example.

Description: Start your web content with a very short description of two very short sentences. Use keywords in these sentences too. Scroll up and see if I have written an engaging description.

Sub-headings: Break your content into sections. Separate each section with subheadings. Use keywords in the sub-headings. This article uses sub-headings.

Sprinkle keywords: Use keywords in different parts of the article. For this article, the keyword is SEO content writing. You can see the phrase repeated several times throughout the article. If the keywords affect the flow of the article, I stuffed keyword. It is bad. If the keywords appear naturally, it is successful.

Use natural variations of keywords: Have you seen web content writing, SEO web content, writing SEO content, etc in this article?

Use contextual keywords: Articles, marketing, web, etc are contextual keywords that go well with SEO. Write a naturally flowing article and these contextual keywords should appear naturally in your articles/SEO web content.

I hope you now have a good framework of what web content writing for SEO is. I wrote this article as an example of good SEO content writing.

Did you enjoy reading this article? Share this article so that your followers can learn the basics of SEO content writing.

Friday 18 November 2011

Writing Services

I am a part time writer, delivering articles and press releases.

If you have reached this page, I assume you already know me from somewhere else. Request my writing services only if you have used my writing services elsewhere and if you like my output.

Rates:

Press Release -  $10 (400 words)
Articles - $3 to $10 (500 words, depending on topics)

Well, you wouldn't reach this page if you haven't seen my works somewhere else. If you have seen my work before, it is OK to contact me:

mach720 at gmail dot com

Please don't contact me if I haven't written for you. I am not looking for new clients as of now, because I already have a tight schedule. However, I feel it is good business to keep existing relations going.

Thanks,