SEO Web Content: Good Writing, Good Business

As a website copywriter, I hear this myth repeated back to me all the time by new clients and prospects. "Don't bother search-engine-optimizing the content," they say. "Just make sure it is well written and the keywords will flow naturally into the content." Or, they repeat the words of so many self-styled gurus: "don’t write for the search engines, write for the people who will be reading what you write."

If you're one of the people who believe there's a conflict of interest between search engines and humans, you're operating under two misconceptions:

* Misconception 1: you know more about what people want to read on the web than the search engines do.

* Misconception 2: you or your writer will just naturally write the content that people or search engines want, without consciously trying to meet their demands.

Why Search Engines Know More about Your Website Visitors than You "I want a well-written web page, not a list of keywords." It frightens me a bit when I hear this, since it demonstrates a complete lack of understanding of what search engines do.

A search engine is not simply a massive find function, like the one in the "Edit" menu of Microsoft applications. It does not just pull up any page that has the keyword in it X number of times. If it did, all pages that show up on search engine results would simply contain a list of the keywords.

Ultimately, writing for the search engines means writing for web surfers. Think about it: services like Google thrive on giving people the pages they want to read. If they consistently failed to give people what they wanted, people would stop using them.

What Your Website's Visitors Want to Read

Most of the time, people don't want to read on the web. Reading on a screen hurts the eyes. It doesn't help that a lot of web pages make it harder with text that's too small, backgrounds that are colored rather than white, and lots of extraneous graphics.

Besides, when it comes to reading matter, there is an overabundance of choice on the web, more than any library on earth. Of that, an unfortunate amount isn’t worth reading. Time must be rationed.

In fact, people treat a web page much as a search engine does: they scan it. In particular, they scan it for the keywords they entered into the search engine. If they arrived via a link from another website, they are still looking for words and phrases related to their interest--which are generally the same as the keywords people enter into search engines.

In short, Nobel-prize-winning literature makes bad web content. You have to write specifically for the web. That's why the web hasn't fueled much of a resurgence in the short story or other literary writing, dashing many hopes. Ebook versions of paper books have also disappointed expectations.

Newspapers are the only paper publications that have made a smooth online transition, precisely because they are written in short, to-the-point paragraphs that are easy to scan.

Still Think Good SEO Web Content Makes for Bad Reading?

You've just read almost to the end of a piece of search-engine-optimized web content. This article was optimized for the keywords, "SEO," "search engine," "search engines," "keyword," "keywords," "search engine optimization," and "writing."

The keywords were present in headings and throughout the content. The content itself is easy to scan: paragraphs of one-three sentences, broken up by sub-headings every four paragraphs or so.

Naturally, those keywords are too broad for this page to have a chance of ranking high in search engines for them. But this page will get some of the atypical search keywords that account for as many as half of all searches. So, if someone types in a phrase like, "keyword writing search engine optimized content," this page would have a pretty good chance of showing up.

To be sure, this article is on the long side for a web page. Most people won’t even scan more than 600 words of text; 250-500 is ideal.

But this article is destined primarily to be shown in an email newsletter, where attention spans are longer since people are more confident the source of the content can be trusted to repay their investment of time. Besides, as a well-structured page, it can be split into two or three pages according to the subheadings.

In short, there’s much more to writing well for the web than just writing well. If you’ve had enough sense to have your web content written professionally, have enough sense to take the advice of most website copywriters: search-engine-optimization for keywords and good web writing are the same thing.

Author Resource: Joel Walsh is a professional content writer and founder of UpMarket Content, whose site offers information on getting great website content: http://upmarketcontent.com/website-content [When posting on the web, please hyperlink this text as the visible anchor text: "website content"]

Work at Home Opportunity

Work from Home- This is a great company that offers you the opportunity to sell quality products from 4 different catalogs. You can also choose to sell on-line with your own website containing all of the products from each catalog. The website creation is done for free with no hosting or maintenance charge. You can choose to do just become an e-consultant and just be content to promote your website or glorious quality products or choose to host home parties, e-parties and more!

Fabulous holiday home décor, gorgeous gift items for the holidays and seasonless homedecorating items that will keep your home looking beautiful throughout the year. It’s all inside our 2004 Feelings of Christmas® line, our most impressive collection of home decorating and gift items ever.

A World of Cooking™ is a wonderful selection of fine cooking products brought to you from around the world. Each item has been chosen especially for the Richmont sales force and customers. Choose a category on the left to begin shopping.

Fine Jewelry for gift giving and those special occasions and just because!

Want to preserve special memories -- from old photos to a child’s best painting -- in a special way?Permanently place your favorite photos and images on a variety of products with Creations. Our one-of-a-kind product line helps you place special images on dozens of customizable items you can use everyday! Create a beautifully designed treasure with one of our fabulous Creative Design Templates. Or use your imagination and make your own one-of-a-kind treasure

Find out more about this opportunity visit the Richmont Direct Website.

UPDATE: Richmont Direct is no longer accept Free E-Consultant Positions. It will now cost $19.95 to join as an E-Consultant. You will receive your website, catalogs, paperwork & a coupon worth $19.95 toward the upgrade to a Party Consultant.

New Internet Phone

I was watching the television a couple of nights ago and saw a commercial for an internet company giving away free Internet Phone numbers. Couldn't remember the name of the company nor the URL, so I did a search on Google.

I don't think this was the same company but this company does provide a free internet phone. InPhonex is the name of the company you can go and check out the information by clicking here.

I signed up for a basic Free membership and created a phone number that I could easily remember. What is so good about this type of service? For me eventually I think it would be great as a business line so I don't have to use my home line for business or connect up another line again just to use as a business phone.

The free basic membership gives you unlimited Internet calling and faxing. This is what I have so far. I would like to eventually sign up for the Premium Membership which is $9.95 per month which comes with 5 additional phone lines, but this means I also have to purchase a Hard Phone (cheapest one is $49.00) that will be connected to my computer using a USP port (will cost $59.95), so this will have to wait.

The downside to the free basic membership is that you can only receive phones calls from those that have signed up for this free service and of course you need to have a microphone.

The upside to this type of service I think will be the fact that I can use this as a business line. This is a good system for those that have dial up internet connections. However, it will require paying for the Premium Membership plan.

I wouldn't recommend this if you're just starting out on-line. What I mean is that you should make sure that you're able to make enough profit and have a good enough customer base that you will be able to afford the $9.95 monthly charge and make back the money that you will need to spend on your equipment.

However, I think this is going to be the new wave of the future for phone calls. The phone company is going to have a hissy fit when everyone starts using this type of system!

Site Promotion - Banner Exchange

Exchanging links other website owners is one of the greatest and fastest way to get exposure on the internet, plus it also helps fulfill one of the major criteria's for the Search Engines.

I will list all of the banner exchanges that I belong to with this subject "Site Promotion" so that it'll be easier for anyone to locate the info.

I belong to Adland Pro which is a networking area but I also am a member of their Banner Exchange Program, click on the banner below to get more information.

If you're a Mom doing business on-line then the following banner exchange programs is a great way to get your site found.

For Business Linking click on this one below

Show Your Site Banner Exchange Program

Will add more banner exchange programs later.

Free Merchant Account

One of the best finds I've come across while trying to set up my e-commerce business was a FREE Merchant Account. I've been with this company for several years and have never had any problems using them. There is a fee for receiving money if you decide to create a business account but it is minimal considering how much it would cost you to just to apply for a merchant account elsewhere.

Pay Pal is widely used by e-merchants in the United States as well as many International companies. It is the main payment processor for Ebay Auctioneers. It can process major credit cards as well as e-checks processed through your customers Pay Pal account.

If you need a free and easy to use Merchant Account then check out Pay Pal's safe, encrypted and secured payment system. The best part about this system is that sign up is completely free. As a business account you can even receive an ATM Debit/Credit card to gain access to your funds at anytime using the thousands of ATM machines located all over the world.

Their customer support is fast and efficient. Once they actually froze my account because there was a mysterious transaction that was out of the norm.

They sent me a message and I gave them a call. They were right! My account information was somehow gotten and someone was charging me for a service I didn't buy. Pay Pal customer service gave me the options I needed to take care of the matter and my account was safe again.

I was very impressed with the way they handled this situation. I didn't expect them to actually sit there and peruse through my transactions to see if there is anything out of the ordinary. I can't say that everyone feels the same way about Pay Pal but my experience with them has been smooth sailing without any hitches.

So, if you're just starting out and need a venue to process your on-line payments or is using a Merchant Account that is draining your profits, I suggest you give Pay Pal a try. The sign up is free for a personal or business account and you can cancel at anytime.

United WAHM Alliance a much needed resource

It's been awhile since I added anything to this blog. I do have some very exciting news to share. Let me first explain why I even ventured into creating yet another website. My friend and I have been with a group for some time and talking about some of the rules that didn't make sense to us got us thinking. We're partnering to create a niche business for the work at home Mom's. A business that took 2 years of research.

Anyway, the past few months have been pretty frustrating for the both of us. We created an ebook and allowed other work at home Mom's to advertise in it. However, this ebook was to be given away for free. When this ebook was completed, we wanted to allow other work at home Mom's to give this away for free on their website. Thinking that this group we were both in advertises that they help Mom's in business we should post a message in the group. I also noticed months before that my messages weren't being approved so I asked my friend and partner to send a message through. Her message wasn't approved. It was a very simple message stating that she had an ebook that others can give away from their website. No name of the ebook, not even a description or a link was provided. Her message did not get approved!

She was told that it was against the rule to advertise an ebook that had advertisement of other websites. There was no way of for them to know what was contained in this ebook nor away to find out if there was even advertisement. But, it was denied on this basis.

Emails went back and forth with my friend and the owner of this group. Final decision the ebook could not be given away even though it was revealed that 95% of the ads belonged to members of this group.

The idea of United WAHM Alliance was borne from this frustration and of course as I research our niche business I also found that many Work at Home resources for Mom's were missing one or more thing. I guess we've been on-line long enough to know that it was time to do something about this.

United WAHM Alliance is starting out with two groups. One is Google Groups and one in Yahoo Groups, of course both is just to help generate membership.

Our Groups allow for advertising on Mondays Only. Yes, a bit restrictive however, members can submit one ad message per type of ad on Mondays. So, if a member has several websites, have different types of sales, these ads can be submitted on Mondays with a message per type of advertisement.

It's pretty much like most wahm groups, lol . . possible, lol . . read on . .

Our group members can add their numerous website links to our Member's Directory as well as submit their Member Profile to be added to our Member Showcase. This is just the beginning member benefits for membership within our groups.

The groups are just the tip of the iceberg.

The main featue of United WAHM Alliance will be our website! It will provide more information and resource than any other WAHM site on-line. Information is key to helping one succeed with business especially on-line. We plan to provide 4+ topics each month with each topic containing 30+ articles, topics are niche businesses, family oriented, health and fitness and more! This article repository will grow each month as new topics are added each containing 30+ articles.

We will also create bulletin boards for every possible type of networking needed. Yes, we plan to allow our members to dictate what type of bulletin boards they will need and created as needed. Member's will also be able to request for private boards. We have creatively made it possible for certain bulletin boards to be available to our non-member visitors, this will help our members gain exposure to certain aspects of their business to everyone that visits the website.

What else will we provide, an ebook repository. We have several hundreds that members will be able to download for free. We also have webmaster tools and business tools that members will be able to download and keep for free. We will also put up ebooks & tools that our members can purchase at a discount to resell and make money with. A library filled with copy and paste scripts for website development.

A Classified Ad section to inclue garage sales and bartering. Auction Site for our members. Chat Room for holding virtual on-line home parties and more!

We will also provide discount on Advertisement in our Network of websites, we own more than a dozen at last count. We will also partner with other WAHM websites to help provide more venues for affordable advertisements for our members.

Monthly Awards will feature not one but as many members as we have websites. All winners will be featured on the homepages of our network of websites as well as in an on-line virtual magazine that is sent out on a monthly basis to over 500+ subscribers. We also create ebooks so when one is in the process of being made we will feature yet again another member to be added into the new ebook creation.

United WAHM Alliance is truly dedicated to providing the needs of work at home Mom's and any Mom wishing to become a work at home Mom.

Is it free? The groups are free to join, we however require a link on each member's website or in an email signature.

The website membership, that won't be free. Yikes, you say! Well, we are not an organization and we are not claiming non-profit. This is a business but we do promise to provide what we say we will provide. How many wahm site's out there will provide Member Profile's where the member tells us what to put down in a full page profile? This allows each of our members to add links to each of their on-line business for free exposure!

How much do you think you'd pay to gain 24 hour access 7 days a week to a growing library of information on your type of niche business or any other type of niche business? How much would you pay to learn how to create your own website? How much would you pay to purchase all the free ebooks, web tools and business tools that we will provide for free? Do other wahm websites provide this? Well, some do provide a few of what we will be offering our members, but what they cannot provide is the multitude of exposure and resources that United WAHM Alliance will provide.

So how much will it cost? We're not quite sure yet, lol . .sorry we do know one thing! As work at home Mom's ourselves we know that many Mom's do not have a budget and when we feel we find something that will be worth the money we shell out it better be affordable and worth every penny or more or we won't let go of our money. The membership fee will be between $25 - $50 per year. We're not quite sure yet if we plan to do yearly subscriptions or monthly. We will however, offer a 7 day free trial. This is the tentavie introductory pricing that we're thinking of. This pricing of course will increase as resource increases, meaning our expense for keeping the site going.

Our group members will of course receive a discount and of course from our groups we will find our Founding Members.

Are you curious yet? Stay tuned for more news on United WAHM Alliance or just visit the developing website to see what is slowly taking shape. If you want to get more information about the development of our website you may want to join our Group. If you are interested in becoming a crucial part of this website your group membership will allow you to apply for the Founding Members positions. It will be limited and we will screen applicants to make sure that each of our founding members will indeed share our view of providing valuable time and resources to help build and grow each of our member's businesses.