Here are some SEO and Web Copywriting courses I recommend. These courses can be taken online, in your own time and at your own pace, making it very convenient.

I have taken courses myself in the past with both Search Engine College and Sydney Writers’ Centre, and I personally vouch for the standards of these course providers, while SEO Book is a known leader in the SEO industry.

All organisations are run professionally by experts and you’ll get true value for your money.

Course Provider: Search Engine College
Who are they? International online SEO/SEM course provider (one of the very first), run by Kalena Jordan, an Australian SEO expert now based in New Zealand, with students in nearly 50 countries.
Courses: Basic & Advanced SEO, Basic & Advanced PPC, Website Copywriting, Website Usability, Link Building, Article Marketing & Distribution and more
Study Method: Tutor-supervised online self-study or certification courses

Download a free sample SEO lesson or see all courses and/or sign up with Search Engine College now.

Course Provider: Sydney Writers’ Centre
Who are they? Australia’s leading centre for writing training, run by journalist, editor and author Valerie Khoo, where you learn directly from the best in the business.
Courses: Writing for the Web, Professional Business Writing, Blogging for Business, Magazine Writing, Creative Writing and more
Study Method: Some are online courses, others are courses and seminars held in Sydney.

See details of all writing courses and sign up online at Sydney Writers’ Centre now.

Course Provider: SEO Book
Who are they? International provider of online SEO/SEM tools and training headed by Aaron Wall, a leader in the SEO industry, based in the US.
Courses: Over 100 training modules and access to lots of SEO tools and resources
Study Method: Self-study

See details of this SEO Training Package or join SEO Book online now.

I know there must be countless of other online SEO courses and web copywriting courses available if you search the web but I just wanted to give some personal recommendations.

I have really enjoyed taking courses at both Search Engine College and Sydney Writers’ Centre. Because I live in a regional area of Australia, I found it very convenient that I could simply sign up online and take the courses online, while still being just an email or forum post away from the expert tutors in each course for guidance when needed.

The courses have definitely helped me become a successful SEO Content Writer. I have since gone on to become an Assistant Tutor for the SEO courses at Search Engine College.

If you take any of these courses, I’m sure you too will become an SEO or Web Content Writing expert yourself in no time at all. Good luck!

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.

Problems with your website could include:

• Low number of visitors (people can’t find your site)
• High bounce rate (people leave your site early)
• Low conversation rate (nobody buys, signs up or contacts you)

I will personally visit your website, perform a manual review of your website and write a report for you.

My report will cover the following issues:

• Design, Structure, Layout
• Content, Presentation, Language/Tone
• Usability, Accessibility
• Seach Engine Optimisation

I will evaluate the homepage and up to 3 other pages of your website for a fixed, low fee. With my report, you will be able to make the changes your website needs to be more successful.

Find out more about what’s included in my website evaluation report and how much I charge for this professional service on the Website Evaluation page of my Content Writer website. 

SEO = Search Engine Optimisation (Optimization in US spelling)

When you do SEO for your website, you optimise it for the search terms (SEO keywords) you want to rank for in the search engines, so that people will be able to find your site better in the ‘normal’ (organic) search results.

If you know how to optimise your website and do it yourself, SEO doesn’t need to cost any money, only time and knowledge are needed. Hundreds of factors are at play in SEO, but to name just a few – it’s very important to have:

• a well-structured website with descriptive internal links and page names
• good, interesting and optimised content on your pages that includes the right SEO keywords
• optimised Page Titles
• optimised META descriptions
• a number of quality back links from reputable websites to your website with important keywords in the link text.

SEM = Search Engine Marketing

Technically, Search Engine Marketing encompasses paid search methods as well as organic SEO. But most people use the term SEM when they are referring to the use of programs such as Google Adwords to be included in the paid results / sponsored listings in search engines.

The most common paid SEM methods are pay-per-click (PPC) arrangements whereby you place little ads that will appear at the top or on the right-hand side of the normal/organic search results. Every time someone searches for the term you have specified, your sponsored listing will appear. And each time someone clicks on your listing to go to your site, you pay the search engine (Google, Bing or Yahoo) a certain amount of money. You can set a limit so that you ad stops appearing when your budget has been spent.

Should you use SEO or SEM/PPC, or both?

The good thing about SEO is that, once your website has been optimised, you will continue to benefit from it without having to spend any money.

It is crucial for anyone with a website that it ranks well in the normal (organic/unpaid) search engine results for the keywords used by their target market to find their type of products or services. It can be the difference between having a successful and an unsuccessful website.

There are a few common reasons why people decide to use SEM/PPC methods such as Adwords for their site (although often in combination with SEO). These include:

• When you have just launched a new website that doesn’t rank well yet in the normal/organic search results
• When you have added a new product or service page/category that doesn’t perform well yet in search engines
• When you have a temporary/seasonal product or service offering you want to promote heavily for a short period
• When you are in a very competitive field and find it impossible to rank on the first page for certain highly competitive search terms 

The downside of SEM/PPC is that you have to keep spending money in order to continue to appear on the search engine results page with your sponsored listing.

If you do use a PPC SEM program, it’s important to set it up correctly, target the best keyword phrases and to continually monitor the effectiveness of your campaign. If you pay $50 every day, or every week, for people to click on your listing and come to your website, you would want to make sure a good proportion of those people buy or sign up for something, or at least contact you with an enquiry. This is called ROI (return on investment). You’re obviously doing something wrong  and throwing away money if you just get clicks but no new customers or leads.

The Importance of Keywords

For both SEO and SEM/PPC, keywords are very important. How do you know which terms and phrases to use to effectively target your potential customers? You’ll have to do some keyword research, or pay an SEO or SEM expert to do the research for you.

Here are 3 of the Biggest Mistakes people make when using SEM (e.g. Adwords):

1. Wrong: Targeting keywords you already rank well for in organic search results. If you are #1 or #2 on Google.com.au for “Italian restaurant Sydney” for example, you would be crazy to target that phrase with your ads. That is obviously a waste of your money.
   Right: Go for the keywords that are important to your business but that you don’t rank highly for (yet). Once your website performs better in the organic results for a certain phrase, you can drop that keyword phrase from your PPC campaign.    

2. Wrong: Targeting very broad and extremely competitive keywords. These are very expensive and you may still end up on the second page of the search results. They also may not give you the best ROI as people may be looking for something different.
   Right: Find a larger variety of more niche and very specific keyword combinations. They are less expensive and may give you very targeted, qualified traffic by people who are looking for the exact thing you are offering – resulting in a high ROI.    

3. Wrong: Setting your campaign and letting it run without monitoring it. What if every click you paid for resulted in a bounce (people leaving your website again right away) and you didn’t know about it? Or what if competition became so fierce your ad hardly ever appears anywhere? You can’t ever forget about your PPC campaign.
   Right: Use the available program features such as goals and alerts to monitor the effectiveness of your PPC campaign and make changes when needed for the best ROI.

Conclusion

If you were confused about the difference between SEO and SEM, or wasn’t sure which to use when, I hope this post has helped clear that up a bit.

My Content Writer business focuses on quality content and SEO, ensuring my clients’ websites have professional, informative, persuasive and search engine optimised content to perform well in the organic search results.

It really pays to invest in having a well-optimised website, because if you don’t, you may need to keep throwing money at SEM/PPC to appear on search engine results pages and get anyone to visit your website.

I have optimised my own website to perform well in organic search results. Because of that, I get a good amount of targeted visitors (people looking for my kinds of services) and I am always getting new clients through my website. I have NEVER had to spend any money on PPC or any other type of online or offline advertising. SEO is all I do and it works great for me!

If you need help optimising your website, contact me, SEO Content Writer Micky Stuivenberg, to discuss what I can do for you.

As an SEO web content writer, I specialise in creating clear, professional, persuasive and search engine friendly content for websites.

What I usually provide for my clients is:

• Optimised Page Title
• Optimised META Description
• Optimised Page Content – including headings, subheadings and links to other pages

I will make sure to include the important SEO keywords for that particular page in the page title, META description, heading, subheadings, internal links and several times throughout the body copy, particularly in the first few paragraphs. These are important factors for SEO success.

However, it doesn’t stop there. You can do more to optimise your website!

Here are 5 further SEO tips:

• Domain name: If possible, register a domain name that includes some of your important keywords (e.g. my domain name is www.contentwriter.com.au and that helps with my SEO).
• Page names: Give your pages descriptive names by including the important words for that page (e.g. my page about web design is not called /page6.html or anything but http://www.contentwriter.com.au/web-design.html)
• Hosting: Use a web host in the country where you mainly provide your services. If you mostly target Australians, use a web host in Australia. Search engines tend to mostly show sites that are hosted in the country where the searcher is located.
• Images: You can optimise your page further through the photos and graphics on your page: Include keywords in the file names (e.g. metal-roof-repairs.jpg rather than picture4.jpg) and the ALT tag.
• Back links: It’s good to have some incoming links to your site from other websites. However, NEVER use automatic link submission services and NEVER submit your site in bulk to random websites, portals and link farms. This is almost guaranteed to actually HURT your website rankings. Instead, spend some time to find reliable websites with a related theme and try to get a link from there, ask your customers or suppliers to link to you or get listings from authoritative business directories. It’s crucial that the link to your website includes important SEO keywords in the anchor text. Having a link to your site that looks like this - Please visit www.contentwriter.com.au – won’t do you any good (well, you may get some visitors from it but it does nothing for your SEO). Much better would be: Please visit the SEO Web Content Writer website.

This is not a conclusive list of SEO factors but they are some of the major points to take in to account.

Good luck getting better rankings for your important keyword combinations! If you need help with the search engine optimisation of your website or with your web content, please contact me – Content Writer Micky Stuivenberg for a quote or to discuss what I can do for you.

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.

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.

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.

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 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.