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Tuesday, September 21, 2010

Is Your Writing Style Affecting Your Website Traffic?

Directly as a result of reduced income due to the daily challenges of really making a living online, I have decided to supplement my income by doing some part-time content creation for selected websites.

My writing style is free-form and tends to be "from Brain-To-Paper" or screen in this case. So I selected a website that promised to pay me a small fee for a 400~500 word article. I spent 15 minutes searching their database of 22,000+ selections and picked one within my area of expertise regarding "Playing Bass Guitar".

Spent the next 15 minutes composing my epic treatise on the subject, spell checked and added photos and sent it in for approval.

Imagine my surprise when the submission was "Rejected". I thought "What happened?"

Sad but true. It seems I had failed to follow a few of the site's criteria for successful acceptance of my 'perfect' document. Without following the requirements to the letter, the effort is rejected unannounced after a few rewrite attempts.

This was surprising until I actually read the requirements!

Turns out this particular site has all kinds of composition rules, including preventing plagiarism, copyright, and additional requirements for SEO-friendly articles. Keywords in the text are required for the search engines digestion, and concepts composed within the project are critical to match the keywords.

Ok, I got it now. Wish they had informed me of the quick rejection possibility, I would have submitted a very different document for approval.

In hindsight, having a strict set of rules in place levels the playing field somewhat and makes the approval process faster for clearly composed prose.

Here are some questions to ponder. Please respond with a comment below!

Are you using guidelines for your blog post's or just writing from your brain like I am doing here?

What would happen to your blog traffic if you implemented a particular style of writing that the search engines loved.

Would it bring more traffic to your site or blog?

Respectfully,

Nicholas Chase

9 comments:

Yolande Pienaar said...

Hi Nicholas

I do believe it makes a difference. When I try to adhere to keyword richness and SEO practices, much like Suite 101 requires, my blog gets more readers and Google and the other search engines actually pick up the posts quicker.

Good luck with Suite - they really are a fantastic bunch of writers together.

Andrea Goodsaid said...

Hi Nicholas -

Well yeah if SEO is a prime marketing want of yours (as it is with directories) then sure, on page SEO is important.

It's just as important though to nurture your 'voice' online though IMHO - funny balance to strike. And not one that I can say I've struck with SEO myself so far.

You might appreciate the last post on my blog - kinda echos what you've written here:

Better Blogging and Self-Reflection - got an interesting group of mixed comments :)

Andrea

Nicholas said...

Thank you for your comments Yolande and Andrea. SEO was the dirty secret of many bloggers trying to game google and get high page ranking for their adsense bloated websites. Google caught wind of the techniques and banned most of these 'black-hat' marketers.

SEO is a reality, but you have to follow Google's guidelines to make your website rank over time. Just raw back-linking is also a sure way to get banned or 'google-slapped'.

I am enjoying Suite101 and a few other flat-fee sites and have made some good money so far. I'm testing to see if revenue-share or flat fee is the historical winner in terms of income.

Respectfully, Nicholas Chase - writer / blogger / producer / director etc...

your success said...

Of course. Search engines are the main traffic source anyways(best passive traffic). So you need to make sure your SEO is good, sacrifice a bit of content for the sake of optimizing.

Anonymous said...

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Anonymous said...

yes ,this is realy affect for increase own website traffic.
some peoples add new attractive images and use different fonts for seen styling website.but it not enough technique increase website traffic.most important part of increase organic traffic is content.if our content is unique not copied.as well as increase organic traffic this technique easily.

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Mike

Anonymous said...

I am agree all technique but,the most important part of increase organic traffic.

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Charles said...

Well. I do believe the writing is very important. As a French native speaker, i have trouble posting quality articles on my blog http://binaryoptions-broker.co.uk/

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