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It is really very difficult to come across totally unique content on the Internet, especially on blogs. The definition of unique content may differ from topic to topic but it more or less means content that is very difficult to find on other sources and at the same time it is highly useful, relevant, or topical.

Creating totally unique content is not possible always because when you are blogging you are mostly talking about things that other people, the bloggers are talking about. Even your visitors would like to know what your take is on the subjects generally being discussed on other blogs. The key expression here is “your take”; what you have to say, what you have to add. This is a big reason why lists are becoming big bores on various blogs, even on the “A-list” blogs because these lists have nothing unique to say. They are either pointing out things that have been said thousands of times by thousands of other people or they simply linking to things that have already been said thousands of times by thousands of other people.

Again, you can say the same old thing but with a different perspective in order to be unique. This way people will come to your blog just because they know you’re going to say your own thing on the topic; that what you are saying is totally unique to you. This uniqueness can be your style, the examples you use, the way you write and the links you link to. In order to generate unique content you have to come out of the herd mentality: just be yourself and don’t follow all the suggestions copiously thrown around by different “expert” bloggers.

Okay, being different, being unique, and not following trends does not mean you devoid yourself of benefits of following some well proven methodologies for success. For instance it is highly advisable that you create compelling titles for your blog posts and organize your blog content under various headings and subheadings. Now, this is not just a suggestion, it is common sense. Titles do entice us especially if they cater to our sensibilities and headings and subheadings do help you organize your thoughts properly.

Generating unique content for every successive blog post is normally not possible but among five blog posts at least one should be totally unique – totally your own, unadulterated perspective and point of view.

Unique content also helps you target niche audience because the more you focus on less common content the more targeted your audience becomes.

Make your blog post interesting and topical

I think this goes without saying. People are not going to read your blog posts if they are not interested and they will only be interested if you can offer something interesting. By “interesting” I mean something that is highly relevant, that is current, that is useful, that is realistically useful, and that is topical. Current topics, garnished with your own personal opinion, are generally great in bringing more and more people to your blog. I will quickly like to add here that more people reading your blog post does not make your blog post good; the entire goodness exists in the relevancy of your blog post.

Pay attention to the title and headings

Titles and headings make it easier for the reader to quickly go through your blog post. After all one has to visit scores of blogs in a day and a post that goes on and on and on quickly sends the less interested visitors away. A good way of keeping them hooked to your current blog post is highlighting the relevant portions and expressions with the help of headings. The title is what gets them initially interested and the headings keep them reading your blog post. A well-defined title can get you good rankings on the search engine result pages. Your headings are like orientation tools. Once you know what is there in the paragraph you can read that paragraph faster. Therefore if there is heading over a paragraph it is a lot easier to read that paragraph or at least skim through it.

Keep your blog posts short if possible

Although personally I have nothing against long blog posts — in fact sometimes even I write pretty long blog posts – keep the length of your blog post as much as there is requirement. Don’t unnecessarily increase the length of your blog posts because your readers are intelligent enough to see through if you have got nothing solid to say.

Organize your main thoughts in bulleted lists

It seems everybody loves bulleted lists on the Internet and they come highly recommended. In fact the bulleted lists are so relevant that even search engines take them into consideration while ranking your web pages and blog posts according to the related keywords. So if you think that you can write your thoughts in bulleted lists instead of a paragraph then use bulleted lists. They not only reduce the size of your blog post they also make it easier to read.

Stick to your fundamental theme

Don’t try to cover everything under the sun; people come to your blog to read on a particular topic and preferably on a topic you specialize in. So if you are a web designer it is better that your blog posts deal with web designing rather than cooking macaroni, although sometimes you can do that to keep things interesting.

Instill passion into your blog posts

This is a must; write only if you believe in it and if you believe in it then people will be able to perceive the underlying passion and passion is always powerful.

It depends on how you perceive ego. Some say it is your inner consciousness and some say ego is what you think other people think of you. In blogging personality, attitude and attention do matter and in fact they matter a lot. To stand apart your blog required an identity, a unique personality so that people can instantly recognize you and then remember you. Along with remembering you they must also remember you in good stead. It is no use being notorious because although you will get attention initially this attention won’t last long. You need positive attention, you need people to like you and appreciate you and value whatever you publish on your blog. For some this is ego boost and for some it is a step towards something else.

People blog for different reasons and of course there are people who blog merely for attention. But some people mean to do business from their blogs, through their blogs. This business can be selling ads, promoting affiliate programs, promoting own business, spreading awareness regarding a social cause and disseminating religious and political messages. Of course social work, religion and politics don’t come under the ambit of doing business but after all it is an objective. For such people – who are blogging for one of the above-mentioned objectives – blogging success is not merely a satisfaction of the ego. They are not bothered about their personal fame (although very few people dislike the idea and the outcome); they are more bothered about the effect it is going to bring about.

Having said that I have often noticed that successful bloggers do develop a certain kind of “superior” attitude and I don’t mean it in the negative sense. Success takes lots of perseverance, skill, effort and networking and there are very few people who can sustain for a long time. This obviously fills a person with a sense of achievement. Nonetheless, there are few bloggers who remain untouched by all these feelings.

Opera Browser

With so much hype surrounding the release of Firefox 3 I was wondering how many people are using the Opera browser. I find the interface quite cool.  My only problem is I’m using so many add-ons with Firefox that it won’t be worth the effort switching to Opera; although it does seem inviting. Are you using Opera instead of the Internet Explorer or Firefox?

This thing caught my attention due to two reasons: I recently subscribe to Google alerts for "copywriting", "writing", "online copywriting", etc. to get some ideas so that I can generate more content for my online copywriting website. In these alerts I come across lots of such offers. I’m not saying that you cannot make $100,000 or more in a year copywriting, but how do you teach people to not only write great copy but also get lucrative assignments without having an ability to write well? It’s quite interesting. This way I think if I keep working for my clients the way I am these days than very soon I will have my own "copywriting course" and I may share the biggest copywriting secrets that make my clients millions of dollars in sales and leads. This means I should always keep in touch with my clients. In fact I should also do this to get repeat work from them, on a serious note.

The second reason is the onslaught of messages that I get from my contact form by people highly eager to learn copywriting. The general tone is, "I wonder how this Internet content writing stuff works; I love to write, can you teach me how to write on the Internet and earn lots of money?" I will certainly teach when I start making lots of money.

But seriously, is purchasing one of these copywriting courses worth the investment?

Careful keyword targeting can help you boost you search engine rankings. I’m not saying manipulating your content so that your pages rank higher on search engines; the sole purpose of your website content is to provide helpful and relevant information to your visitors and even search engine crawlers are looking for that quality when they are going to your website or blog. Nonetheless, it helps to know what keywords to target while generating your content simply because it can help you promote the right content in front of the right audience.

Selecting targeted keywords is not as cryptic as it sounds. Do your own research. When you are thinking about your keywords don’t think like a person who is designing the website or writing the content. Think like a person who wants to find what you can offer. How would he or she search for the type of content you are generating for your blog or website? What keywords or expressions would you use so that you make sure that you find this sort of content? It may also help if you can make out what sort of people you want to attract through search engines. Do they understand jargons? Are they techies or non-techies? This is because different people will look for the same thing using different words according to their background and preferences.

For instance, I provide online copywriting services; some people find my website by searching for "content writer" because they are familiar with the word "content" and some people simply look for a "website writer" because they are looking for a writer for a website (it is as simple as that). So if I don’t optimize my content for both sorts of expressions and many more expressions I will be losing (I do, in fact and I am trying to bridge this gap these days) customers who would have really loved to hire me had they been able to find me.

Finding the right keywords to target through your content comes with time, and sometimes you can also use tools like WordTracker and AdWords to find out all possible keyword combinations for your content. I find the AdWords tool more effective.

As a side note, it is better to focus on longer search strings rather than shorter keywords because people do use long expressions on the search engines. For instance someone may try to find me with "writer for my pottery website". It is easier to rank higher for longer search strings and in fact it is better to start your content optimization campaign with longer expressions so that you get at least that traffic and then later on you can start building content for more competitive, shorter search expressions or keywords.

There’s another extremely silly-sounding headline I often come across: “Who else wants to earn $nnn in two weeks?!” or something like that. Amazingly, this headline does work.

The fault is not with the style, but the way you use it. I agree that calling your customers “opportunists” does show where your values lie and the copies that sell million-dollar secrets are anyway mostly crappy, but the concept of laddering does work well in marketing. For incentive, there is no harm in offering incentives for early birds. There is nothing wrong telling your customers that they are getting a product cheaper because they are doing something desirable, for instance, buying the first 400 copies of an e-book. There is also nothing wrong in prompting your readers to buy something more valuable once they have shown interest in the less valuable option.

When you are writing copy you are always catering to the deepest desires of your readers. Forget about writing for your client; when you are writing a copy, you are actually writing for the readers, you are talking to them. To write for your readers, you need to know what they are really looking for. You need to know whether a reader looking for a mattress for his bed wants it for brand value or a peaceful sleep. If a person wants to earn money, try to know whether he or she wants the money to spend on luxuries or on some social causes, and then write your copy accordingly.

As a copywriter, when you are writing copy, you are trying to achieve three things:

1. Improve your customer’s bottom line.
2. Communicate to the readers.
3. Make sure your copy performs well so that it can establish your credibility as a copywriter and hence get you more lucrative projects.

It’s up to you as a copywriter where to draw your boundaries, but as long as your copy is benefiting your clients and their customers and clients, you shouldn’t let your own prejudices come in the way. Doesn’t matter if the copy style sounds trite and cliched, if it works, if it benefits your client and his or her customers or clients, you should use it.

The meaning and purpose of SEO copywriting

Just as content writing is different from copywriting, normal copywriting is different from SEO copywriting. When you write for SEO purposes you pay special attention to the way the search engine crawlers access your content. When you are writing copy for SEO you try to convey to the search engines for what keywords and key phrases the particular webpage should be ranked higher on search engine result pages. You don’t have to do this if you’re not bothered about how the search engines view your page. The central meaning and purpose of SEO copywriting is writing search engine friendly copy without obscuring the inherent meaning for your human visitors. Most SEO experts fail to achieve this; they get too obsessed with generating content merely for the search engines. What purpose does your copy solve if it draws tons of traffic from search engines but makes no sense to people who want to do business with you?

Now we move on to the benefits of consistent SEO copywriting

SEO copywriting brings you lots of targeted search engine traffic

The search engines don’t merely send you random traffic: they send you traffic based on the search terms used by their users. Their ranking algorithms decide where your link should be displayed for a specific search term or whether it should be displayed at all. Once you have optimized a particular page for your selected keywords or key phrases and once that page begins to appear higher on the search engine result pages your website gets lots of targeted, highly relevant traffic. And once you have incurred cost on SEO copywriting you pay no more because when your links appear naturally on the search engine result pages and when people click on those links you don’t have to pay for them as in the case of sponsored links. Whether your links generate a single click or millions of clicks you don’t have to pay for them.

SEO copywriting enhances your credibility

The search engine users click more on naturally appearing links rather than on sponsored links. Anyone with money to spend can pay for the ads but only those people who build their content page by page working over a long period of time appear naturally on the search engine result pages. This increases their credibility in the eyes of search engine users. It also means that you have lots of content on your website or blog and lots of people eagerly link to you (that’s why you rank higher in the first place).

SEO copywriting gives you user-friendly content

At the crux of SEO copywriting lies user-friendliness and this is what differentiates and SEO copywriter from a normal copywriter and even from an SEO expert. In fact and SEO copywriter first writes for your users and then tweaks the copy for the benefit of search engines. Efficient SEO copywriting automatically increases your conversion rate because right words are used to express your ideas and your content is organized to facilitate convenient reading.

SEO copywriting increases your conversion rate

Everything boils down to conversion rate eventually. In the end of the day what matters is how effective your copywriting has been. Did many people buy from your website? Did enough people subscribe to your RSS feeds or e-mail alerts? Were you able to convince many people to link to your website or blog posts? What I mean to say is did your copy achieve what you intended it to achieve for you? SEO copywriting can really help you increase your conversion rate by forcing you to write your copy in the right manner. You not only write well you also draw relevant traffic from search engines.

So where does consistence come in? You need to indulge in SEO copywriting consistently for it to take effect. Search engines love it when you have tons of high-value content and even your competitors know this. Consequently, they are continuously generating search engine friendly content. To stay ahead of your competition you need lots of content that is not only subject-relevant but also search engine optimized.