Content Writer Micky’s Blog

Archive for the ‘My Work Projects’ Category

Keyword research can be vital to the success of your website.

If you operate in a market with no or few competitors, it doesn’t really matter. People should be able to find your site if you just use common sense and let your website describe what you do.

However, in more competitive markets, it can be incredibly difficult to rank well for the keywords you think describe your products or services best – particularly if your website is still new. 

You could be competing against hundreds, if not thousands, of other websites that are targeting the exact same keyword phrases as you. And it will be hard to outrank your competitors, because they may have many advantages over yours, such as:

• those websites may have been up for years and have ‘proven’ their worth;
• they may have many more pages of content than you do;
• they probably have a lot more incoming links to their site than you do.

Google and other search engines are bound to rank those websites higher than yours, which is only new, doesn’t have a lot of content yet and no or few incoming links – no matter how good your content is or how well you have optimised your site for those keywords. 

If you start a new website, you have to be realistic with your expectations of SEO.

• The more general and popular a search term, the harder it will be to be able to rank for that phrase.
• Single keywords are way harder to rank for than keyword combinations of 2, 3 or 4 words.

What can you do to still get your website found?

1. Find out what people type into search engines. Do keyword research (or have someone do the research for you) using a keyword research tool, so it’s not a guessing game but you actually KNOW what people are searching for. You can also ask people you know what they would type into a search engine if they were looking for your kinds of products or services.
2. Check out the competition. Type some of the relevant search phrases you have found into Google (within Australia, Google accounts for about 95% of all online searches) and see how many results you get. Decide whether it’s worth it or even possible to compete on those phrases.
3. Think of alternative keyword phrases. Many keyword research tools give suggestions for related words. You may hit upon a slightly different description that people use as well, but not many other websites are targeting. That’s your opportunity to optimise your site for that phrase and rank well for it.
4. Target so-called ’long tail keywords’. These are longer and quite specific keyword phrases that maybe only a handful of people search for each month but have very little competition because nobody else has thought of targeting them. Blogs are great for targeting long tail keywords because you can keep adding new pages that each target a different long tail keyword phrase. The good thing is that because the keyword phrases are more specific, they often attract very targeted traffic so your conversion rate will be higher.
5. Start small: Go local. Rather than immediately trying to capture the market in the entire country or world, consider starting small. Focus on your town, city, region or state. You’d be surprised how many people type in their location after a search phrase because they are looking for a business in their area. Targeting “web designer Newcastle”, for example, may get you more traffic than trying to rank well for just “web designer”, which has way too much competition. Remember to claim your Google Local Business Centre listing and submit your site to local and regional directories. Once you are successful locally, it’s a natural progression to target a wider audience. Of course, this option may depend on the type of products or services you offer, but it’s often a good way to start.

Example of SEO keyword research

A client of mine offers home staging services in the Newcastle/Central Coast/Sydney area. I recently optimised some of the pages of their website.

Keyword research revealed that ‘home staging’ is a popular search term but there are more than 6,000 other web pages competing for that keyword phrase when you search on google.com.au (6,000 Australian pages and even 1.6 million results worldwide!). That would make it very difficult to rank well for that phrase. However, I found out that roughly the same number of people search for house makeover, but the search results show only about 400 other Australian web pages for that term. That makes it a good alternative keyword phrase to target and I have optimised their homepage for that term.

Also, by more obviously targeting some of the locations of the company’s service area, the website will be found better for location-specific search phrases such as home staging Newcastle and house staging Sydney for instance.

So don’t despair if you can’t seem to outrank your competitors in the search results. Think of alternative ways to attract traffic. Add more pages (a blog is useful in that regard) and target more specific keyword combinations with each of them.

Need help optimising your website? I can do keyword research for you and help you target the most effective SEO keyword combinations. I can then optimise your pages for you. You should also consider these SEO ranking factors in addition to optimising your page content.

Visit my SEO Content Writer website for further information about my services and feel free to contact me to discuss your web content & SEO needs.

I have recently completed a new website for Sawtell Framing & Beachscapes Gallery, using WordPress as the Content Management System (CMS). I have created the design, installed the CMS, created all the pages, optimised the site for search engines and edited the content as supplied by the client for usability and SEO purposes.

With the CMS, the client can now easily make any changes to the content he wants and add or delete images to the photo gallery or other pages.

WordPress (WP) is best known as a blogging software, but because it allows you to add both “posts” and “pages”, and you can set the homepage to be a static page rather than the usual summary of latest blog posts, it’s easy to use WP as the CMS for a website.

Sawtell Framing had a website before but it was on a very buggy, inflexible and difficult to use system. Pages didn’t display properly, some images weren’t showing, the website just wasn’t all that attractive either and received little traffic – and the company hardly ever got enquiries through the site.

So I designed a fresh looking site – showcasing some of Ryan Webber’s great photos of Sawtell & Coffs Harbour beaches on the homepage and photo gallery page. Other pages show the professional Coffs Harbour picture framing workshop in Toormina and examples of what Sawtell Framing can frame for you (virtually anything).

The company has a gallery on site in Toormina and a photo gallery on the website to show some of the spectacular Coffs Coast beach and coastal scenes. All photos are for sale in various sizes – as a framed print or a canvas print. The Coffs Coast canvas prints make great gifts and look fantastic on the walls of homes and offices.

For this website, I have created a custom WP theme (design) and have used two WP plugins: All-in-One SEO Pack and Google Analyticator. Two possible future extensions to the current basic websites are a blog and an online shop, both of which are not difficult to add, with a number of WordPress plugins to choose from for the e-commerce facility.

Visit the Sawtell Framing & Beachscapes Gallery website to check it out. 

If you would like to talk to me about getting an attractive and effective website for your business with optimised and interesting content, contact me, Micky Stuivenberg of Triple W Communications, via my Content Writer website.

I specialise in persuasive and search engine optimised content (writing/editing) and SEO web design. My rates are very reasonable and with my marketing, PR, copywriting, journalism and SEO background & experience, I am able to really think along with you to come up with the best and most effective solution for your business.

August 8 2009 marks exactly one year since I officially started working full time for myself as an SEO Web Copywriter (on the auspicious date of 08/08/08). Yes, it’s my ‘business birthday’!

I’m very happy to report that it’s been a huge success! I’ve been consistently busy with a steady stream of new projects and clients, particularly since January this year.

Some of my achievements over the past year

Between 08/08/08 and 08/08/09 I have:

• worked on hundreds of projects for 56 different clients in Australia, New Zealand, Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia, Hong Kong, China, the Netherlands, the United Kingdom, the United States and Canada (see some examples of my content writing, copywriting, SEO and web design projects in my portfolio);
• secured repeat business from 19 of these clients;
• been (and still am) the ongoing freelance webmaster for up to 10 different websites, updating the content whenever required;
• written and rewritten many hundreds of pages of professional and search engine optimised website content that made my clients very happy (see testimonials);
• created 5 complete websites (web design, SEO and content writing) – with 3 more under development at the moment (see portfolio);
• carried out website evaluations and written reports regarding design, usability, accessibility, content and SEO;
• written marketing copy for about a dozen brochures and flyers;
• written an entire 8-page newspaper supplement with 16 stories as a freelance journalist (see PDF of this Airport Supplement);
• written stories for a number of local and regional magazines (including Coffs Harbour Airport Magazine, RedInflight Magazine);
• become a part-time online tutor for Search Engine College;
• joined Twitter – after resisting for some time - and staying up to date with industry news and connecting with interesting SEOs, writers and web designers (but I’m still trying not to spend too much time on it!);
• turned down at least around 20 potential clients because the project was too vague, would have demanded too much of my time or didn’t really fit in with my focus (e.g. I don’t do book editing or design complex websites with huge product databases);
• ignored or sent very brief replies to what feels like hundreds of emails from budding content writers and SEO specialists from around the world (well, yes… mostly India) who wanted me to outsource work to them (I don’t do this. Ever. Not even to those who are good);
• increased my rates by 20% in May (but they’re still very reasonable compared to big-city/big-company copywriters, SEO specialists and web designers);
• NOT spent ANY money on marketing or advertising of any kind – clients have always found me via search engines (yes, my SEO for my own website is good!) or word of mouth;
• and given many of my clients free advice regarding their website, content, design, layout, usability, SEO or marketing strategy, which they all seemed to appreciate very much.

OK, there you have it. I’m sure I’ve done more but that’s really the gist of it. And that was in the middle of an economic downturn (or even more dramatically, the Global Financial Crisis) – so I can’t wait to see what the 2nd year will turn out to be like!

The good thing – I’m doing something that I really like and I’m good at. The only downside – all the free time that I had hoped to have once I started working for myself, from home… yeah, that hasn’t happened. Maybe in the first couple of months but not anymore. Oh well. I suppose that’s a good thing!

Check out my Content Writer website if you want to read more about me and what I do.

I recently created a new website for Roofing Matters, a reroofing and roof repair company based in Coffs Harbour and doing roof replacements throughout the NSW North and Mid North Coast.

Roofing Matters did have a very basic website but there was no real design in place nor any content explaining what the company does. Hardly anyone could find the previous site and if they did, there wasn’t much information there for them.

I designed the website and wrote all the content for the site based on various conversations I had with the client. It’s a small but clean, lean and effective website.

I also did the SEO for the site so it is optimised for a number of keywords and combinations of related keywords, such as re-roofing Coffs Harbour, Coffs Harbour roof repairs, Coffs Harbour roof replacement and other similar keyword phrases.

Check out the site by clicking on the screenshot image on the right.

Do you need a business website?

A new website doesn’t need to cost you several thousands of dollars. If you’re a small business owner or operator and don’t have a website yet or one that isn’t performing as well as it should, just get in touch with me, Content Writer Micky Stuivenberg of Triple W Communications Pty Ltd.

We can discuss the possibilities for your site and I will give you a quote that will compare favourably with the competition. Most other web design companies do just that – design – and give you an empty shell of a site, leaving it up to you to do the rest (think about, create, write and upload content, not to mention search engine optimisation).

As a content and SEO specialist, I can work with you on that aspect as well and make sure your website will be attractive, easy to find and a pleasure to use, giving visitors the information they are looking for and increasing not just your traffic but also your conversion rate (turning visitors into customers).

Read more about my web design, SEO and content services on my Content Writer website. I can offer a full service package (web design, domain name, hosting, content writing, SEO) or just the elements that you need.

In addition to being a web copywriter and SEO specialist, I am also a freelance journalist. One project that I’ve worked on in that capacity in recent weeks has just been published, and it looks great!

The project involved me writing 16 articles for an 8-page sponsored newspaper supplement about the Coffs Harbour Regional Airport. The supplement was delivered as a wrap-around to today’s Coffs Coast Independent newspaper which is delivered door to door in the Coffs Coast area.

For this project, I’ve worked closely with the Airport Manager and have interviewed more than a dozen people, done a lot of research and spent many mornings and afternoons touring and hanging around the Coffs Harbour Airport.

Click on the image on the right to open the PDF and read the stories. I have written everything in the supplement except the Mayor’s and GM’s forewords.

Please note that I have reduced the quality of the images to reduce the file size from 13MB to 1.4MB, but it’s the text that I want to show here anyway.

I have learned a lot about our airport and I hope the supplement gets read by a lot of locals who may not be fully aware of all the great facilities we have here.

I have tried to write it in a friendly, casual way with some personal stories rather than a boring corporate spiel with lots of facts and figures. This way it’s easier to read and hopefully gets through to more people.

If you are interested in my services as a freelance journalist, please contact me via my Content Writer website.

I recently completed another copywriting project. I wrote the text for a flyer for a new website, BuyAustralianMade.com.au. The aim was to convince manufacturers of products made in Australia to have their goods featured in the product directory of this website.

I gathered the strongest selling points, wrote the copy up in easy to read blocks of text with subheadings and bullet points, and the Melbourne graphic designer turned it into an attractive looking flyer.

Download the PDF of the flyer.

BuyAustralianMade, which launched on 1 June, will be promoting and advertising their website to the increasing number of people interested in buying genuine Australian made products and using local Australian services.

The idea behind the flyer is that everyone who proudly sells an Australian made product (services are featured as well) feels they need to be listed on this website. They will gain a lot of extra exposure to a targeted group of potential customers.

I am Micky Stuivenberg. My company is called Triple W Communications. My website is called Content Writer. I write content and do SEO for websites, write and edit copy for marketing and other communication materials, and am a freelance journalist.

Visit my website for further information or contact me to discuss your project.

Writing content for websites is never the same. I deal with completely different clients with completely different requirements and preferences and write about completely different subject matters. What I like about my job is that I learn so much about such a varied range of topics and industries.

One thing that all my website copywriting projects have in common, is that I approach things as if I were my client’s customer, the visitor to their website. I think “If I came to this website, what would I want to know, do,  buy or find out?” 

Then I make sure I write clear and concise copy that answers the most important questions and highlights the main benefits of the company’s products or services to the customer. This is especially important on the homepage or other main landing pages that people may come to straight from search engines or online ads.

Most people who click on a website take just a couple of seconds to see if they can find what they’re looking for. If not, they leave. And you lose a potential client.

One of my recent clients is RosterPortal.com, a new service that lets company managers and supervisors create staff rosters and shift schedules online. All employees get a log-in and enter their availability for the coming week or weeks. The software automatically sorts it and presents it in an easy format for the supervisor, who only needs to shuffle things around a bit to create a new staff roster – in just a few minutes.

RosterPortal also acts as an internal communication tool, like a staff intranet. To make things even easier, the online staff roster software can send email and SMS alerts to staff with new rosters.

“Why would people be interested in something like this?” I asked myself and my client. Because they’re going crazy doing things manually, trying to sort out everyone’s availabity and creating a roster that suits everyone. Staff forgetting to say they’re away. Spending another hour or so shifting things around. People not being aware of a new roster. Basically, their main problems are: 1) they’re not being efficient, 2) they’re losing valuable time (and time is money), and 3) a lot of people are constantly annoyed.

So I made sure the website content clearly explains that using RosterPortal solves those problems. Hopefully people reading it will think – “I need this program! Where do I sign up?” And to make that task as easy as possible, there are various obvious links to a free 1-month trial. 

I wrote search engine optimised content for RosterPortal’s five main pages, while the client himself will be adding further information such as FAQs, help files and tutorials.

That brings me to this point: Some people may think they need to hire me to write or edit the content of their entire website. Although that is ideal (for maximum success, consistency, continuity and individually optimised pages), you can hire me as your SEO website copywriter for as few or as many pages as you like or your budget allows. Or do things in stages, starting with just your Home and About us pages, for instance.

Need professional, persuasive website content for your website? Written not from YOUR point of view but from that of your potential customers – so they like (and understand) what they read and ultimately buy from you or get in touch with you?

Contact me, SEO Web Copywriter Micky Stuivenberg, via my Content Writer website to discuss what you need and get a cost estimate for your project.

Just another completed project I wanted to mention in my blog – writing appealing, search engine-friendly and sales-oriented website copy for Surfers Century Oceanside Apartments on the Gold Coast.

The website had existing pages but the content wasn’t very strong nor was it optimised for search engines. There were also a couple of blank or very short pages. New pages were also added to specifically target different types of visitors - couples, families and groups.

Gold Coast holiday accommodation is a very competitive market, and it can be difficult to differentiate between all the beachside holiday apartments in Surfers Paradise. For me, the project consisted of trying to understand what visitors want from their Gold Coast accommodation and highlighting exactly those positive points right away.

People coming to the website now immediately get confirmation, right in the first paragraph, that Surfers Century Resort is 4-star accommodation, very close to the beach, near all the shops and restaurants in Surfers Paradise, but in a quiet street, the apartments are modern, self-contained and have fantastic ocean views, and they are available at attractive rates. They can then read on or click on any of the other pages to get further details.

I hope that thanks to the new content, this client’s central Surfers Paradise holiday apartments will perform better in search engines and more people who visit the website will end up visiting Surfers Century Resort.

I manage and update the content of websites for various clients across the globe. Many of these businesses don’t have the in-house skills, the software or the time to update their own websites. So I do it for them, at a minimal cost to them. Because I’m an expert in this, it doesn’t have take me too long to change content on a website. And I only charge for my time spent.

One of the sites I’ve recently updated again is the Coffs Coast Waste Services website. This regional domestic waste collection and recycling business has just published new bin collection calendars and a new ‘Waste-Wise’ booklet for residents.

I’ve posted the new materials and have made some changes to other content that had become outdated on some of the inside pages. While I was at it, I also changed some of the page titles for SEO purposes, to try and rank higher in search engines for certain relevant keywords and search phrases.

If you have a website that needs updating, as a one-off or on a regular basis, contact me at Content Writer to discuss the options, or read more about the possibilities and my charges on my web page about my Web Content Updating Service.

Also read this related blog post for further information.

Among the things I do, besides writing content, SEO and creating websites, is public relations and writing media releases. Between mid January and mid February, I spent four weeks filling in for the media officer at the City Council of the city I live in, Coffs Harbour. This is something I had done previously in my job managing the Council’s websites.

The past few weeks have been a bit crazy, first with the horrible bushfires in Victoria and then with some areas of Coff Harbour and surrounding areas being flooded when we had more than 200mm of rain in two days.

Russell Crowe, who has a home in Nana Glen near Coffs Harbour, and spends time there with his family now and then, was here for an NRL pre-season match of the South Sydney Rabbitohs, a team he partly owns.

During a live fundraising telethon broadcast nationally, he announced an iniative to raise funds to build a new community centre in one of the fire-ravaged areas in Victoria. Coffs Harbour City Council was to be the organiser and call centre for the appeal.

That ensured we had a couple of very busy days after that, organising all legalities, getting information up on the website and sending out media releases. (See the first Russell Crowe bushfire appeal media release and for further info see the second one.)

Other aspects of the job were responding to media enquiries, arranging interviews and photo opportunities, and editing and proofreading documents and letters from Council’s many departments and facilities before they were published or sent out.

One morning, I got to witness the release of Dodger, a koala who had been hit by a car several months ago and broke his leg. He had undergone surgery with the financial help of Council and was nursed back to full strength by members of WIRES, our local wildlife rescue organisation. The members of the local media, Dodger’s carers, the vets who had operated on him and myself were all very pleased to see Dodger quickly and happily climb up high into the tree he was released in. Let’s hope he stays in the forest and away from the highway! The release got good coverage in the local papers and on a regional television channel. (See the press release I wrote that led to the media covering the story.)

Anyway, just a little story to illustrate that public relations and press releases are part of what I do. If you’re looking to get a story out there, I may be able to help you. I have many years’ experience as a journalist and in public relations and know how to write an effective media release.

Get in touch with me, Micky Stuivenberg, Content Writer, if you need help with your public relations in Coffs Harbour, the NSW Mid North Coast or elsewhere.

I’ve written an SEO article titled “How To Select The Best Canvas Shape For Your Photo Canvas” for my client Prints R Us, which I will be posting on various article submission sites soon.

The idea is to get more incoming links via anchor text links with the targeted keywords, which should help rank Prints R Us higher in Google for those keywords. And if it generates extra traffic to the site, that would be nice too, of course!

Before I can post it elsewhere, Prints R Us has put the article on its own website and we’re just waiting for Google to index the page. This way, if it later finds the same article on various other websites, it will recognise Prints R Us as the originator of the article and won’t penalise it for publishing duplicate content or anything.

Here’s another finished project that I’d like to report on in my blog: a new website for Park Beach Physiotherapy & Sports Injury Clinic, Coffs Harbour, NSW, Australia.

I’ve designed the website myself and have written all the SEO content based on information provided by Park Beach Physio. The site is fully optimised in terms of design, page names and titles, META tags and content.

With just one back link at this point (from my site), the new website already ranks second, third and fourth on Google Australia for most of the important keyword combinations (variations of Coffs Harbour physiotherapy / physiotherapists Coffs Harbour and Pilates Coffs Harbour / Pilates classes Coffs Harbour etc.).

It even ranks #1 already if you search for ’sports physiotherapists coffs harbour’.  The homepage also immediately picked up a Google PR2 (page rank).

I’ve used a photo slideshow at the top of the website, instead of a static banner. We had a number of good images we could use and I thought this was a great way of showing them. They slowly roll from right to left and it’s in a loop so the same photos come around again when the series has reached the end. Visitors can look at the photos at their own leisure.

I created the moving photo banner (have a look) with Amara Flash Slideshow Builder, which is a great tool that doesn’t cost much and is very easy to use & flexible when you want to make changes later on.

The website contains all the information about Coffs Harbour Pilates classes at this fully equipped Pilates studio and it mentions and shows some of the equipment used. There’s emphasis on the fact that at Park Beach Physio, you get physiotherapy guided Pilates and an individual Pilates program based on your needs and limitations. It also has all the physiotherapy & Pilates pricing information, hopefully reducing some repetitive phone enquiries.

This project is another good example of a complete Web Design, SEO & Content package that I can do for clients.

Many other web design companies only hand a design (an empty template) to their clients and leave it up to them to populate the site with content. Often, the resulting pages are NOT optimised for search engines so are difficult to find in Google etc., and are written from the company’s point of view rather than speaking directly to the visitor/potential client. That business will then lose out on traffic, i.e. customers, i.e. potential buyers, i.e. money!

Interested in getting an optimised website and/or content, or need an SEO review or copywriting or editing services? Contact me, Content Writer, to discuss your project or ask for a quote.