Why I don’t want to grow my business bigger

We’ve all seen articles with headlines like this:

10 Ways to Grow Your Business

Things to Consider when Growing Your Business

How to Grow Your Business and Dominate the World!

Twitter is often filled with such headlines, linking to stories that promise to teach you how to make your business bigger.

Well, guess what? I’m not interested, thank you very much.

Bigger isn’t necessarily better.

I run a small business. It’s successful. I’m happy. My clients are happy. And I wouldn’t want to change a thing.

7 Reasons I like my business to stay small:

(more…)

Tags: , ,
Posted in Evergreen posts, My Business | 2 Comments »

Knowing what keywords to optimise for

Is your website optimised for search engines? That’s great. The big question, however, is which keyword phrases your pages are optimised for – and do people actually type those terms into search engines?

Many websites naturally rank well for their own business name, brand or product names. Unless your branded names are incredibly common, it’s not hard at all to rank well for these, particularly if the words are part of your domain name or page URLs.

It’s the more generic keyword phrases your target market may be using that you want to know about, so you can optimise your pages for them and get new people (potential customers) who don’t yet know about you to find your website. You want to find the search terms people use when looking for the type of products/services you offer and target those.

(more…)

Tags: , , , ,
Posted in Content Writing & SEO Tips, My Work Projects | Comments Off on Knowing what keywords to optimise for

How often should you repeat your keywords?

Keyword density. That’s a term that refers to how many times you use a certain keyword phrase on a web page as a percentage of the total number of words on that page.

Some people offering SEO services hammer on about making sure your text has a certain keyword density (e.g. that 3% or 6% or whatever of your text should consist of your targeted keywords).

Well, guess what? That’s nonsense. (And don’t just take it from me, listen to Google. See Matt Cutt’s webmaster video below.)

There is NO magic number when it comes to keyword density in SEO.

(more…)

Tags: , , , , , , , , ,
Posted in Content Writing & SEO Tips | Comments Off on How often should you repeat your keywords?

Writing copy for destination guide

Coffs Harbour Jetty Harbourside brochure 2011 cover imageI love writing about destinations and things to do and see. I’ve worked for a travel magazine before and been involved in travel websites for more than a decade. In my current job, I’m lucky to regularly get copywriting jobs for tourism destinations, attractions and places to stay.

There’s no destination I know better and have written more about than Coffs Harbour and the surrounding Coffs Coast on the beautiful North Coast of New South Wales. This is where I’ve lived since 2005 and it’s a wonderful part of the world.

The Coffs Harbour Jetty is the city’s most popular suburb and encompasses the harbour, marina and the historic jetty (pier) it’s named after.

This suburb is currently being rebranded as an urban village with the name “Jetty Harbourside”. It really is like a seaside village but it has everything you need plus it’s just 3 minutes by car from the Coffs Harbour City Centre and 5 minutes from the airport.

I love “my” Jetty suburb and I was thrilled to be given the opportunity to write the copy for a new brochure promoting the Jetty Harbourside village to both visitors and locals.

(more…)

Tags: , , , ,
Posted in My Work Projects | Comments Off on Writing copy for destination guide

Celebrating another successful year in business

The 8th of the 8th marks the anniversary of my business: I officially started my SEO copywriting & web consultancy business on 08/08/2008. So today is Content Writer’s 3rd birthday.

My business has enjoyed steady success right from the start and I’m still really happy doing what I do. There has never been a moment that I have been without work – but luckily enough I have been able to take a few short breaks while putting new projects on hold for a while.

I have however also sacrificed quite a few evenings and weekends to work and my goal for year 4 is to plan my work better and not to agree to deadlines that are too tight, so that there is enough time to finish work during normal business hours.

Because my website continues to perform very well in search engines, more clients than I can take on find me via Google and I have never needed to advertise my business.

Some quick stats about Content Writer’s 3rd year in business:

(more…)

Tags: , , ,
Posted in My Business, My Work Projects | 3 Comments »