Dec 25

Dealing with Massive Content Development JobsWriting by Nick Stamoulis on Monday, 24 of December , 2007 at 10:52 am

Just the other day I got an order for forty articles on an obscure topic that requires research to be done in no longer than two weeks. The topic is complicated and requires a certain amount of research, yet I have the utmost confidence in my ability to complete it. I have been in the content development game for some time now and my approach to massive jobs works, for me at least.

If you are creating your own topics or keywords for your content, it is a little bit easier. Sure, you will need time to do a little keyword research, but you get to face the job on your own terms. If not, it doesn’t matter, but you will have your work cut out for you.Group your keywords by topic. Try to break the list down into five or six loosely related groups.

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Dec 23

Design Content, Does it Really Work?Writing by Nick Stamoulis on Wednesday, 19 of December , 2007 at 2:45 pm

Design content not only works, it works wonders. Recently, I had the pleasure to be involved in a massive writing project for a swimming pool cleaning products company. They had been around a while and had a pretty big network marketing presence, but had never really done the Internet thing. That being said, when it did come time for them to jump into the web marketing, they did it right. It was a big budget project, they had already chosen their keywords and they chose well.

They sell enzyme based products for cleaning swimming pools. Type in “Pool Enzymes” and you get a massive field of 430,000; not as bad as some markets but still pretty crowded. I produced a total of about 30 premium articles for them and was well compensated for my efforts. The work was tough going, due to the amount of research involved and all said and done it took me just under a month for it to be completed to my satisfaction. The articles and web content were all highly optimized, but not overly so. I developed the content with the goal that it was going to be good to read. I didn’t worry about keyword density. There were very few articles that had more than one keyword per paragraph. Some did not have any.

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Dec 23

Search Engine Optimization Journal???s Top 20 Design Blog ListWriting by Nick Stamoulis on Wednesday, 19 of December , 2007 at 12:40 pm

We have researched and compiled our first annual list of some of the most useful Search Engine Optimization and Search Engine Marketing Blogs???other than the Search Engine Optimization Journal!
Please feel free to visit these blogs as they provide excellent information! Please let us know if we missed any blogs off of this list.

1. Matt Cutts: Design, Gadgets and Design
Blog URL: http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/
Design news and tips coming straight from a Design employee who is recognizably one of the biggest names in the Design industry.

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Dec 19

Keyword Research the Old Fashioned WayWriting by Nick Stamoulis on Tuesday, 18 of December , 2007 at 2:00 pm

There are tons of keyword research tools out there and there are some that are very good, but don’t forget the benefits of brainstorming. Brainstorming comes up with some great keyword ideas and once in a while you will think of something that a computer program just won’t come up with. Customers are humans and the human edge does come in handy from time to time.

Brainstorming is always the first step of my keyword research. I aim to come up with as many short phrases as I can possibly think of in one sitting. Going through the phrases that I would type in is the easy part, thinking of things that others might type can be a little more challenging. The more you do it, however, the easier it will become. Some people are better at brainstorming than others, but those that are really good at it can save themselves a lot of time in their keyword research.

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Dec 14

How does Website Copywriting Differ from Print CopywritingWriting by Nick Stamoulis on Thursday, 13 of December , 2007 at 11:12 am

While website copywriting and print copywriting share a few similarities, there are just as many differences. The biggest and most obvious difference is in the writing style. Print copy is read primarily by human eyes. As such, print copy is written for people. The style tends to be active, lively and simply written.

Website copywriting is different in that it needs to be written for both humans and search robots. Search robots are programs that scour the web for new pages, index their keywords and return the data to their respective search engines. In order to make website copywriting better adhere to search engine optimization guidelines, the following steps are recommended:

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Dec 4

Design And Content Are Your Company’s Work GlovesWriting by Nick Stamoulis on Tuesday, 4 of December , 2007 at 9:35 am

Aaron Wall had an interesting post on his blog today. In response to Matt Cutts’ blog post about paid posts, he addresses scientific research that is sponsored by big pharma companies and how the information on those “research” papers is no more accurate the blather of people paid to write about products. It’s something I haven’t thought about, but he’s right.

This made me wonder just how Design and research go hand in hand in website content. Many clients will ask us to ghostwrite their website content and massage it to look like their competitors’ content. We always try to discourage this for a number of reasons:

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Dec 1

Domain Name Purchasing: Some Good Advice From The PilgrimWriting by Nick Stamoulis on Saturday, 1 of December , 2007 at 9:27 am

Just when you thought that what could be said about PageRank has already been said, along comes Janet Meiners to prove you wrong.

Awhile back, you might have remember Aaron Wall making comments about how Design isn’t fair because they penalized one of his sites. He told the story of how he had bought a domain name and then lost his PageRank and, I believe, his inbound links as well. You should know that if you are buying domain names then that could happen.

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Dec 1

Design Services That Are Effective And AffordableWriting by Nick Stamoulis on Friday, 30 of November , 2007 at 4:07 pm

When it comes to e-commerce you need to select your Design firm very carefully. There is perhaps no service more important to the success of your company online than Design. Brick Marketing makes Design simple and effective through a methodical process that is proven and continues to bring results for our clients. Some of the Design services we offer include:

Design StrategyKeyword ResearchMeta Tag CopywritingContent Design RecommendationsLink Building Strategy

We will communicate with you every step of the way to ensure that you get the best possible Design for your business. Whether you have an Internet-only business or you have a brick-and-mortar business that you are moving online, we will do everything we can do to ensure that your Design is the most effective that it can be at an affordable price.

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Nov 28

Aaron Wall Offers Free E-book On Design For BloggersWriting by Nick Stamoulis on Tuesday, 27 of November , 2007 at 2:48 pm

Just when you thought Aaron Wall couldn’t get any more remarkable, he goes and does the unexpectedly ridicumarkable. His free Design book for bloggers is so short you can read it all in one setting and he’s giving it away because, as he says, “Design for a blog is different than Design for most other websites, largely because of the social elements baked into blogging technology.”

The free book covers everything from blog hosting and keyword research to advertising and promotion, which makes it a great book to download. Here’s a free tip from Aaron’s new book: Don’t set your blog up as a subdomain on a free host. I totally agree with that.

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Nov 26

Lists: The Pros And Cons Of Inbound Link Building With ListsWriting by Nick Stamoulis on Sunday, 25 of November , 2007 at 6:21 pm

Yesterday I posted a list of ways you can encourage inbound links to your website. It seems that lists are popular. Everyone is doing it and if they’re not, they want to. But how do you go about creating a long list of 100 or 1,000 top _____________? Fill in the blank.

Well, for starters, you need to identify what it is you want to create a list on. Don’t do something that other people have done. Be different. It is OK to take a list that has already been done and modify it into something else. Obviously, then, the first step is to do some research in your niche to see what kinds of lists other people have put together.

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