Hello gang, I was wondering about some things and thought maybe we could collaborate on them. I've been doing a lot of keyword research lately trying to fine tune my website for copywriting services. The thing is, there just doesn't seem to be a lot of activity in that regard. if people are searching for writers, they're using odd terms. There are plenty out there, but with low monthly searches. Any thoughts? anything that has worked for you? I've found a few good ones like: benefits of email marketing seo blog seo promotion press release technical writing But even so, these have been good article and blog topics, but tough to find the right ones for the site. Any thoughts?
I think for copywriting, there's no point in trying for organic traffic. I use the direct contact method via email to various businesses and point them towards my site. How has your keyword approach been working out?
Well, the way I look at it, you have to make use of every available resource. SEO costs you nothing, at least in terms of your own site and publishing free content. I also have purchased links. However, I agree that you have to make direct effort to contact clients. I think an effective way to do this is by actually writing a snail mail sales letter. But I also publish PR's, and am looking into paid ads, although I don't trust AdWords. I'm a programmer too, and I know how easy it would be to fake results. That may sound a bit paranoid, but I've seen some really odd things happen when I've used them.
your key term list would greatly benefit from niche specialization. for example, if you specialized in health and wellness, you could seriously narrow the playing field by optimizing for terms like "how to market fitness training book"
Sean has a great point about using your niche specialization. I also try to think like the people I'm targeting and ask myself what I'd search for. Most people have no idea what a copywriter is but they know they need a sales pitch or a sales letter. So, they're likely to search for things like sales letter or sales letter writer and so on and so forth. I think a good approach would be to write a series of articles on how to write a sales letter. It'll help you build an audience by giving your prospects value and will highlight that you know your stuff. In this case, keywords are less important and you could comment on high profile blogs (leaving insightful comments of course) to attract people to your site as well as to maybe try and eventually get a guest post on their site.
http://www.wellfedwriter.com/blog/h...seo-the-good-the-bad-and-the-ugly-guest-post/ Does this help you in any way?
Like most things, the difficulty is in figuring out what people search for when they look for what you're offering. Just because you call it "copywriting services" doesn't mean anyone else does. They're much more likely to do searches like "hire a blogger", "need articles written", "how can I get content for my site" or "where to hire a writer for a blog" and so on. As you say, most of the searches will be low-volume, because there are so many ways to ask the same thing. It's not like there's a brand name which will always appear... that would be too easy, of course! Given that many of the terms in the writing world are frequently misused or have multiple meanings (cf. "editor"), it's even harder. Your best bet, in my opinion, is to aim for a specific market rather than a specific niche: do you want work from noobs or experts? For the former, target normal language phrases ("how to hire someone to blog for your business"); for the latter, target more technical terms ("copywriter for press releases").
yes, great points. I've actually been doing all of this. one of the most important skills we can have as writers is the ability to sell. In order to sell effectively, we must think like our customers, or like our customer's customer. In that vein, I've been targeting more specific niches and clients. I'm glad there has been some response on this thread, because I think it's a topic every one of us needs to be good at.
I agree we should use any possible resource yet I strongly disagree we can speak of SEO cost like 'nothing'. You spend your time to write the text, time to find keywords, money to pay the copywriter, time to monitor results. It's as time-consuming as any other marketing action.
…. and still it cannot be ignored! Websites not properly optimized for search engines are unable to pull the kind of traffic one needs to lucratively monetize them. Right?