Recently, I did a class for a group of copywriters on how to find ideas for site content, press releases and other SEO-related types of writing. As I thought this might be interesting for the rest of SEO community I am posting here my keynotes for the class, slightly edited and expanded.<\/p>\n
Whatever it is you write, it has either a long term value (e.g. site content) or short term value (e.g. a press release), though sometimes something that was originally meant to serve as material to attract short term attention can end up serving you long term (e.g. syndicated articles).<\/p>\n
\n\ni. Bloglines<\/a> \u00e2\u20ac\u201c create an account, subscribe to blogs posting on your topic of interest – this is good for both short term and long term value content writing, in the meantime you can subscribe to your own blogs to create extra exposure for them<\/p>\n
ii. Technorati \u00e2\u20ac\u201c tags by popularity<\/a><\/p>\n
iii. Feedster<\/p>\n
iv. PubSub<\/a> \u00e2\u20ac\u201c subscriptions to searches on certain terms \u00e2\u20ac\u201c the info is updated as new posts matching the query are found, sample subscriptions are available<\/p>\n
v. Furl: latest headlines<\/a>, most popular<\/a><\/p>\n
vi. Free Press Release site<\/a> \u00e2\u20ac\u201c for ideas what to write about for immediate publication (long term as well)<\/p>\n
vii. Google news<\/a> \u00e2\u20ac\u201c the latest news at a glance, can be researched in depth for a certain specific topic<\/p>\n
viii. Google Blog Search<\/a> \u00e2\u20ac\u201c what\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s been posted recently on a certain topic – when sorted by date, shows what\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s hot short term, when sorted by relevance can be used for long term material research<\/p>\n
ix. Yahoo News<\/a> \u00e2\u20ac\u201c same idea as Google News<\/p>\n
x. Yahoo News Search<\/a> \u00e2\u20ac\u201c searches news and blogs, search results can be sorted by date<\/p>\n
xi. Wikipedia\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s main page<\/a> \u00e2\u20ac\u201c they display a featured article as well as current news. Both can give you an idea of what to write about both short term and long term.<\/p>\n
xii. Blogpulse \u00e2\u20ac\u201c Top news stories<\/a>, Top Blogs<\/a>, Top Blog Posts<\/a>, key phrases<\/a><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/blockquote>\n
\n
\n
- Watch what your competitors do (e.g. at i-newswire.com or any other press release site, search for your competitors\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 site URL and look through their press releases) \u00e2\u20ac\u201c but instead of simply copying them, critically analyze their activities and try to make your work better by using and improving their good ideas and avoiding their mistakes.
\n<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ol>\n\n
- Link bait concept \u00e2\u20ac\u201c think what people will be interested in and likely to link to. Not necessarily something positive \u00e2\u20ac\u201c negative reaction is good too for linking (see this article<\/a> by Rob Sullivan on types of linkbait)
\nKeep in mind, however, that in some cases negative stuff for link bait might not be a good idea – if it undermines the site\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s reputation in the potential customers\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 eyes, for example.<\/li>\n- How not to write<\/strong>: www.clickhereyouidiot.com<\/a> (the ideology of sales letters and what\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s wrong with it when driven to the edge – got this one from a Threadwatch post by Aaron Wall<\/a>)
\nConsider an article title like this: Unimaginable Power Of [Our Product\/Service]- Most Sacred Secretes Of [Whatever It Is We Offer] Revealed –<\/span><\/strong> what\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s wrong about it? Well, everybody smells an exaggeration and hype before they even start reading your stuff.<\/span><\/li>\n- Checking visitor logs for topics to write about \u00e2\u20ac\u201c this concerns sites\/blogs rather than articles\/press releases but still can give you an idea<\/li>\n
- Checking rankings \u00e2\u20ac\u201c are there any unusual terms the site ranks for? If they are still somehow related to the site\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s topic they might be worth covering\/expanding (tools: data.rankcount.com<\/a>, googspy.com<\/a> – thanks Aaron<\/a> for these two links as well)<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<\/ol>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Recently, I did a class for a group of copywriters on how to find ideas for site content, press releases and other SEO-related types of writing. As I thought this might be interesting for the rest of SEO community I am posting here my keynotes for the class, slightly edited and expanded. Whatever it is […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.irishwonder.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.irishwonder.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.irishwonder.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.irishwonder.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.irishwonder.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.irishwonder.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":490,"href":"http:\/\/www.irishwonder.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7\/revisions\/490"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.irishwonder.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.irishwonder.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.irishwonder.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}