Month: July 2009

The Secret to Getting Projects (Even Big Ones) Done Fast Part 2

Professional Copywriters Never Get Stuck!

Sure — of course, everyone can have writer’s block, even a professional copywriter that is being paid £500 to write a hard-punching salesletter. But the professional copywriter won’t get stuck long!

You see, most Professional copywriters that write web copy and salesletters for a living will reach into their SWIPE file (a stash of old salesletters and headlines that were kept and filed away by the copywriter). Once the copywriter pulls out the stash of winning headlines and sales copy that had been filed away, it’s just a matter of time to review the material that will spark NEW ideas and bring the clarity of the project into focus.

The Secret to Getting Projects (Even Big Ones) Done Fast Part 1

Here at SEO Liverpool we know that Starting a project, especially a big one, is probably one of the toughest things for people to do, including me! Sometimes all that is needed are some ideas to get your brain started in the right direction and overcome procrastination. But often times, entrepreneurs sit quietly in their desperation waiting for the stroke of genius to come to them… something that will start their project off on the right foot. I’ve been there myself struggling, literally pulling my hair out and I can tell you outright – there is NO reason for any of this madness.

Having been in the Legal field as an office manager and legal assistant for over in a previous career, I had the chance to deal with many legal forms and processes over and over again. This form here. That process there. After a number of years doing this, I began to notice a pattern. Everything had a form, a process, a structure. Even the solicitors I worked for — whenever they would see a legal paper that they really liked and admired the format, they would ask for a copy of it to put in their FORMS file to refer back to at a later time. Many solicitors operate on the premise of working from a FORM rather than having to re-create a whole entire document from scratch. And it makes sense because it’s a time saver!

Duplicate Content Filters… Myth or Reality?

Here at SEO Liverpool I’ve spent a lot of the day chatting with various people about duplicate content filters… do they exist or not? Well, the answer seems to be yes. BUT, as far as I can tell, there are no penalties for using duplicate content. The only problem is that the page with the best PageRank, will be the one to appear at the top of the search engine results, for a search matching a phrase, which is found on multiple pages. When you think about it, it makes sense. Effectively it means, “sure, go ahead, use duplicate content, but be aware that unless you have the best PageRank for a particular page, that content isn’t going to do you any good.” … which effectively stops people who are slapping up sites with the same content everyone uses, but doing very little to promote their sites, from getting top search engine placement. … and also explains why an original article, when submitted to a high PageRank article directory, results in the article directory being listed at the top of the search engine results for a matching phrase, above your original page containing “your” article.

So… you have several options…

1: Use freely available content, and know that your site is unlikely to get good search engine rankings, unless you heavily promote your pages and get them good PageRank.
2: Use freely available content and re-write it extensively.
3: Write your own, original, content for every page.
4: Use articles that very few other people will be using… from sources such as Article Underground (http://www.scamfree.com/articles/) as I’ve been recommending. If each page you create has 20 similar pages out there on the web, do some promotion, use the Article Underground blogs as announcement services, get your page to PR3 or 4, and your page will be the one at the top of those 20 pages in the search engine results.