Writing Projects for Clients and Freelancing
Mike DeHaan
My top priority is still to write the articles and book for my clients' projects. Yesterday I made two decisions about those projects.
(1) When in doubt, recommend a strategy to the client and let them give feedback. I had done this before, but became aware that it was a good strategy for getting un-stuck from a writer's block.
(2) When in doubt, switch to a different project for a while.
I have been experimenting with expanding my Squidoo social network. One of the side effects is that I have found some advice on SEO from other people's lenses. The surprise is that a bit of that was news to me. It's time for a cliché: live and learn. Plus, of course, experiment and test and verify that the new information is true, reliable and effective.
My recent 10 Dangerous Tornado Myths Debunked on Environmental Graffiti is probably responsible for most of the 1,500 page views logged on Feb. 22, the day it first was published. Since a tornado is a dangerous storm, and many of the myths would lead people into more dangerous situations than necessary, it may be that this is a public service article.
I just publicized my Suite 101 article, Caffeine And Sugar In Energy Drinks: A New Health Crisis? because I updated it recently and it had not gone through the full mill of bookmarks. In fact, many of the older articles have not had the benefit of that treatment. On the other hand, it was poorly received in Reddit/Health, so that is discouraging.
The biggest topic on my slice of the Internet is yesterday's announcement from Google that they have tweaked their algorithm for search results. They said this has only affected users in the USA. Some authors report a massive drop in page views since that took place. I cannot say that I noticed this, but...
(1) When in doubt, recommend a strategy to the client and let them give feedback. I had done this before, but became aware that it was a good strategy for getting un-stuck from a writer's block.
(2) When in doubt, switch to a different project for a while.
I have been experimenting with expanding my Squidoo social network. One of the side effects is that I have found some advice on SEO from other people's lenses. The surprise is that a bit of that was news to me. It's time for a cliché: live and learn. Plus, of course, experiment and test and verify that the new information is true, reliable and effective.
My recent 10 Dangerous Tornado Myths Debunked on Environmental Graffiti is probably responsible for most of the 1,500 page views logged on Feb. 22, the day it first was published. Since a tornado is a dangerous storm, and many of the myths would lead people into more dangerous situations than necessary, it may be that this is a public service article.
I just publicized my Suite 101 article, Caffeine And Sugar In Energy Drinks: A New Health Crisis? because I updated it recently and it had not gone through the full mill of bookmarks. In fact, many of the older articles have not had the benefit of that treatment. On the other hand, it was poorly received in Reddit/Health, so that is discouraging.
The biggest topic on my slice of the Internet is yesterday's announcement from Google that they have tweaked their algorithm for search results. They said this has only affected users in the USA. Some authors report a massive drop in page views since that took place. I cannot say that I noticed this, but...
- I had an upswing on Environmental Graffiti with almost every day well over 100 PV instead of about 30. Judging from what EG reports, however, it means that some people are suddenly actively navigating in the EG site. I have a big jump when an article is published (well over 1,000) and then it trickles downward. So it seems that the articles are not necessarily attracting a lot of attention via "search".
- My Suite 101 articles do not seem to have been affected, but that is only one day; and I have a spike because I finally publicized that "Energy Drinks" article.
- There was a definite difference between USA and Canadian search for my "Firestick Cactus" article on Suite 101: it may be 3rd to 5th in Canada, but 11th in the USA. That would be a huge loss, because most people only look on the first page of results, which goes from 1 to 10.