Category: Writing

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Link Building Optimization SEO Traffic Building Writing

SEO Myths

Everyone praises search engine optimization (SEO) like it’s the holy grail to a successful website — it isn’t. First of all, always remember that content is king. If you do not have good original content and just link to other sites without even providing valuable insights, your sites have less chances at good traffic growth. Even having good content can be less effective if not published at the appropriate time.

A recently popular article over at digg entitled “5 Myths in SEO” lists the following pitfalls: “Overnight Results,” “Placement Can Be Guaranteed,” “Meta Tags,” “Submitting to Search Engines,” and “More Links > Good Links.” Any SEO company or practitioner who promises you these things is most likely lying, or too confident with his illegal methods.

My personal SEO recommendation: Write to your heart’s desire. Write with passion, and always try to provide something unique.

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Commentary Writing

Blogging: A Personal Touch

These days, everyone is blogging we hardly realize we have crossed all possible definitions of the term. Back in the days, we would even argue if a site is indeed a blog, or not. The past year or two has definitely changed the way we see blogs, as they have been used now for almost every conceivable purpose: music, photos, even porn.

We need to be reminded that blogging used to be synonymous with personal journals. This is exactly how they are used in livejournal, multiply, myspace, and friendster blogs.

I found two recent articles relevant to this discussion: “Why Emotion Matters” and “Being Three-Dimensional.”

The first one puts emphasis on the difference the storytelling makes. It’s not always how successful or how lucky you are, but sometimes it’s just about the journey you are taking. Tell a better story.

The second article on being three–dimensional is a discussion of how blogs are written. Many of us blogging for profit have forgotten the personal side of the practice, churning out lifeless and impersonal articles every single day. We paraphrase and comment on what others have written, or are selling, or whatever they have on their blogs, but we fail in relating it to our daily lives. Blogging should not take away the fun, and expectedly it also means including a little bit of you, the writer, in the stories that you tell. After all, it’s supposed to be your story.

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Links Writing

The write time

No, that’s not a grammatical error. Some of the better entries in the blogosphere have been written without getting noticed just because of one thing — bad timing.

You cannot write a movie review a year after the movie was shown, unless maybe a sequel is upcoming or interest has been revived for some other magical reason. Write and then publish when your readers can notice what you’ve said. Publish at the right time.

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Links Writing

Writing for the web

You’re a stream of creative thoughts and ideas, but it’s not not enough for effective writing on the web. Writing for the web need not be complicated, get straight to the point. Great offline writers can master writing for the web by following some simple guidelines. In addition, the articles “How to Write a Better Weblog” and “10 Tips on Writing the Living Web” from A List Apart can further mold your writing and content for the living web.