Group items tagged

Everything Google is doing, from Google+ to semantic search serves its mission “to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful.”

In order for Google to provide the most relevant search results, it looks beyond the keywords to find context of your query based on your connections and social signals, +1’s, shares, likes etc..

Google Authorship ties you to your content no matter where you publish on the web where “rel=authorship” is installed.

Search, and Google in particular (with 90% of worldwide share), still drive vastly greater quantities of traffic than all the social networks combined (some good research from DefineMG here). Given Google’s 3.5+ Billion searches performed each day, that shouldn’t be a surprise, but to many bloggers, thinking about search, Google, and all that “SEO stuff” has been put aside in favor of Facebook shares, likes, tweets, +1s, and the more visible feedback and applause that come from social sources.

Thankfully, you can resolve to make this a priority in the future. It may sound like a bad infomercial, but you can substantially upgrade your blog’s SEO potential with less than 5 minutes per post. Here’s how:

The other keyword research source I’d encourage you to pursue is Google’s autosuggest.

MadContent.com is a bit unique in that they cater to customers and clients who are in need of SEO services. SEO, or search engine optimization, is a method that involves strategically placing specific keywords at predetermined intervals in articles, product descriptions, and more. Through using SEO, customers and clients of MadContent.com may be able to boost their search engine rankings organically when the specified keywords are searched for.

The Writer’s Market and Mediabistro’s How to Pitch guides both offer information on their listed magazines for what percentage of the publication is freelanced out, and of pay rates. If the magazine you want is in there, you’re set with the info you need.

Many magazines have their writer’s guidelines right on their website these days. Poke around there and see if you can turn up any “write for us” information.

Don’t overlook the insights the mighty search engine might bring you if you do a search on “pay at X magazine.”

TextMaster.com is an interesting little site that is fairly new but already has a reputation for being a good way to get started as a freelance writer. They make the claim that they are writer centered and by all accounts are fair and honest.

To become a member of the site, you simply sign up and verify your email address. Then you can go and explore the site.

There are 3 categories on TextMaster that will be of immediate interest to you: Copywriter, Translator, and Proofreader. These are the 3 areas that you can apply to for work.

The easiest way to write well is to edit your writing. The best person to edit a manuscript, article or blog post is the author herself.

Leave your writing alone for a while

Pay attention to what jumps out at you as awkward.

Imagining is the job of the fiction writer. This is what we do, every time we sit down in front of a blank page. It seems as if we’re working with no more than a keyboard or pen and paper, but that’s not true. We have at our disposal every person we’ve ever known, every experience we’ve ever had, seen, heard and felt. Our ingredients are the people who have ignored us and caused us to search our brains for reasons why, people whom we’ve admired, both intimately and from a distance, and people whom we’ve tried to emulate. People who love us despite our faults; people we can’t stand despite our efforts to be better people ourselves.