DIY copywriting, marketing and SEO » DIY SEO

Infographic defines naughty ‘n’ nice SEO tactics

admin — Thu, 23 Sep 2010 13:36:51 +0000

If you’re getting into DIY SEO but you’re uncertain what Google considers legitimate (White Hat) versus downright evil (Black Hat), here’s a scatterplot infographic.

It comes courtesy of www.seomoz.org, one of the web’s most trusted SEO sources and resources.

If the activity you’re considering falls into the wrong section, just… don’t!

DIY SEO – here’s what you can achieve

admin — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 12:37:08 +0000

The proof’s in the pudding.

I’m pretty good at talking up DIY marketing and SEO, making website visibility sound accessible to everyone. That’s my job. But can I actually prove that it works?

Thankfully, yes!

When I set up my new freelance copywriting website back in spring 2006 it had no profile, no page rank, few visitors and was virtually invisible to search engines.

At first I was so busy working that I did very little online marketing, not getting my act together ’til late 2007. But a steady drip-feed of marketing initiatives – one small thing a day – ever since has had the desired effect. A year later:

a quick search on Google shows my site returned 5th on page one of Google UK for searches on both ‘freelance copywriting’ and ‘freelance copywriter’
my site has a respectable page rank of 4, as does this blog
I’m getting about 1500 unique visitors a month, enough of whom convert to customers to keep me extremely busy and very happy.

Which is exactly what I was aiming for.

Update November 2009:

Helpinthecity.com is number 2 on page 1 of Google for both ‘freelance copywriting’ and ‘freelance copywriter’, and has been for some time. Now and again I creep up to number one on page 1 of Google. The aim? To stay at number one!

Spend an hour a day for three months and see DIY SEO begin to pay off

admin — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 13:50:27 +0000

In a previous article I introduce the concept of spending an hour a day spent on home grown SEO and basic do-it-yourself online marketing.

Four months down the line, the results are dramatic with almost 1000 unique visitors so far to my site in month 5 (January 08). Worth sharing with those of you who fancy getting your marketing hands dirty!

Between January and July 2007 my professional copywriting and editing website, helpinthecity, averaged 144 unique visitors a month. Because I hadn’t paid any attention to SEO they almost all came from direct marketing campaigns to my prospect database of 225 local new media and marketing businesses. A very reasonable response rate of 64% but – in the scheme of things – very low visitor numbers.

In late August 2007 I began spending an hour a day on DIY SEO and basic online marketing. Since then I built and launched a WordPress blog, launched a marketing ebook and built and launched my new helpinthecity site, structured to be more SEO-friendly. Plus a huge range of marketing and SEO-related activites:

regular website updates
new directory and listing entries
online press release distribution
joining freelance and creative networks
online advertising
blog posts
chasing quality inbound links
fiddling with my html…

As you can see, there’s a steady increase in unique visitors month on month:

September 2007 – 210 unique visitors
Oct 450
Nov 675
Dec 790
January 2008 – 990

Visitors spend on average 239 seconds on the site. And I’m being rewarded with loads of exciting writing and editing projects. The total cost? Nothing but my own time.

Never underestimate the power of steady eddie DIY marketing and hand knitted SEO!