Writing SEO Articles for Pay

SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization. A SEO article is filled with keywords that could match what a person would enter in a search engine. The theory is that the article, which could be a page on a web site or a blog, would show up as a result from the search.

The website owners hope that when their article from their website shows up in the result that the searcher will look at the article and their site. The desire is to gain site traffic via the SEO article. This method of driving traffic to a site works, but it depends on the article being well written and loaded with keywords.

Let us assume you can write in an interesting and thoughtful manner. If you're capable of informative prose, you are more than half way to making money from these special articles. By including keywords in the article, you can write articles that will sell to the right website owners.

At first a writer with no clients would be wise to hook up with a company that hires writers to fulfill jobs that they have obtained from their website clients. This will get you started and help you build up a reasonable number of clips. A complimentary step at this time is to study the writing jobs that can easily be found on the Internet. In some cases the jobs will be through companies that hire writers for their clients. Other offered jobs will be from the owners of a specific website. You can also contact web developers to see if they need any help in writing the text for a client's website. Writer's chat rooms and forums are another place to find gigs and sources for jobs.

There are some caveats that need to be mentioned at this point. Be careful who you work for and how they pay. The good folks pay by PayPal or by direct deposit to your bank account. They pay each week with no delays. I would be leery of a source that wanted the work first and would pay monthly. This is a common scam on the Internet. When it comes time to get paid, the money does not show up for fallacious reasons or the company just does not respond to your inquiries about money owed. There is little you can do about these crooks as they are usually out of the country. Google the name of the company and see if there are negative remarks about them. Ask about the company on writer's forums. Check them out by looking at their website. If they do not show an address and phone number, be very suspicious of them.

Do not work for low pay. Some of these clowns want you to compete with writers from third world countries. Do not do it. It is not necessary as there plenty of jobs that pay a reasonable fee per each 100 words. $5 for a 250-word article is not great pay. But, if you can write four an hour, that is a pay rate of $20 an hour. If you have a topic you know well like online gambling, you can write without having to do much research. A job like this can be done quickly and in batches of 10 to 30 articles at a time. Not bad for sitting at your computer for a few hours. Remember you do not need to drive or buy clothes for this type of work.

There are companies that are well run and a pleasure to work for. They pay on time. If you develop a rapport with them you can stay as busy as your want to be. Private clients will pay more, but it takes time to get them and you need several to maintain a decent money flow.

The real secret here is to use this money flow to keep you writing and then try to get better paying magazine article jobs. Study the writing jobs list, which in some cases are published each week or even every other day. There are always people looking for writers. Build up a resume of SEO articles that are well written and show a variety of topics. This will show your versatility as well as your writing skills. This area of writing is fairly easy to break into. Your writing will improve as well as your word choices. This will help make your writing more interesting to read. This is the key to making sales.