July 4, 2016 at 8:27 am

@swalia A lot of people feel that SEO takes away from the spontaneity or creativity of their writing. I like to look upon it the same way I would using a condom when lovemaking: it’s awkward when one isn’t used to doing it but with practice, it becomes very natural.

@bestwriter It’s a little bit more clear when the exact keywords and number of repetitions are given, isn’t it? It is more effort to write a single post with SEO in mind but this is one of the reasons many bloggers prefer to choose a niche: the effort of researching keywords and finding ways to include them in the right density becomes easier when spread over many related posts 🙂

July 4, 2016 at 5:08 am

Like @peachpurple, I have about 90 friends here and have rejected friendship from some users who seemed to be a little shady, or maybe just looking to add friends without participation. My experience is te same: there is a core group of about a dozen or two users who are active here in the forum, who write regularly or comment on my posts, and with whom I may  have a friendship on other writing sites or social networks.

I don’t really expect much different. I’m not terribly disappointed. Rather, I appreciate the friends I have who do keep in touch!

July 3, 2016 at 9:42 pm

While they aren’t exactly my favourite bird, I do like crows. Like other corvids, they’re very intelligent creatures. We live not far from a place called the “Crow’s Nest Pass” and have many, many crows in our town. They can be very amusing to watch sometimes!

July 3, 2016 at 9:37 pm

@bestwriter It seems that this is more a matter of pride and personal achievement for you than a matter of money, so it’s disappointing that you would decide to drop the matter of your on-page SEO so easily. It’s your choice completely, of course, but I feel quite confident that you could improve your SEO despite the fact that this is a task considered quite daunting by many web writers.

Because you asked for more input and in the hopes that my insights might help others, I will reply to your request for help with the SEO of that post in particular.

1) As @scheng1 pointed out, the keyword density was low. “Norman Vincent Peale” doesn’t rate at all, with only one mention in some 500 words. And the density for keywords like “positive” and “positive thinking” is less than 1% for each term. Unrelated words like “area,” “rewards,” and “email” have as much prominence on the page as the phrase “positive thinking.” Words like “fallen,” “tree,” and “water” rank almost as high. What you want to do is use your keywords – and also related words and phrases like “thought” or “think,” which search engines will understand are variations on “thinking” – more in your post.

2) You use the longtail keyword phrase, “power of positive thinking” three times: once in the title and twice in the first sentence of the opening paragraph. But you don’t repeat it anywhere else in the article. Three repeats in rapid succession could be seen by search engines as keyword stuffing. It’s often better to space out the occurrence of a keyword phrase. It should be in the title and as close to the beginning of the opening sentence as possible (preferably in the first 5 words) and it should be repeated a few times throughout the body, with one mention in the last paragraph. Your keyword phrase should also appear in one subheading and in the caption of your image. This means you’d have to add subheadings and an image caption to improve the value of this post.

3) Although your keywords relate to the book and your conclusion is a recommendation for others to read the book, you never really say anything about the book at all. This is why I say the focus of your post is unclear. You don’t give any background, other than referring to the title and the author’s name. And throughout the body where you discuss the various challenges presented by the storm damage, you miss several opportunities to refer to specific principles or techniques taught in the book. You could increase keyword density and improve focus by explaining how the book helped you cope in this situation.

4) There is no clear goal or call to action in your post. Was your goal to get the reader to go out and read the book? Was it to educate the reader about how to use the power of positive thinking? Or was it really just to recount a personal experience? When it comes to SEO, your personal experience shouldn’t ever be the focal point of your content. Rather, it should be used only to flesh out the content and to help push the reader towards your goal. So if your goal was to encourage people to read the book, the personal details should be used to illustrate how the lessons in the book equipped you to cope when others were unable.

I hope this helps all who want to improve their SEO! Remember, while some posts are paying as low as 5 cents, there are others that are getting a return that is 7-10x as much. Although I’m not sure exactly what specific factors are being weighed when compensation is assigned, I do know I can consistently earn higher amounts with longer posts, a focused subject, and just casual attention to keyword placement.

July 2, 2016 at 9:45 pm

@bestwriter I don’t want to tell you how to write but if you want honest feedback about the focus of your post and how the keywords were used, I would be happy to help. Yes, they are good keywords. Yes, using your personal experience to illustrate how you applied what you learned from the book is an excellent writing strategy. No, I don’t think the post as you wrote it is really optimized for search engines.

July 2, 2016 at 9:42 am

I think 5 cents is awfully low for that post. I’d expect it to earn 10-15 cents, but it may be that it was difficult to figure the focus or that your keywords weren’t well placed for SEO.

June 29, 2016 at 2:03 pm

@bestwriter Wikimedia was one of my favourite sources, some years ago. I still use them occasionally. I can see why you’d prefer them 🙂

@sunil Pixabay is a provider of public domain (and therefore free to use) images. It is not generally described as royalty-free because of the confusion with pay to use sites like Shutterstock. Pixabay’s description does reference the fact that there are no royalties to pay, but they focus much more on the images being “free of copyright.” And of course, no attribution is required because their images are released into the public domain under a CC0 waiver.

I mention this because it’s easy for newer writers to become confused when we use non-equivalent expressions as though they were synonymous.

June 29, 2016 at 1:17 pm

@bestwriter A royalty is a payment that is made to an artist (an actor, musician, writer, photographer, etc.) when that artist’s work is used in a commercial project that earns money. It’s kind of like a sales commission, but instead of being based on the sale of a product or service, it is paid for the permission to use a copyrighted work. When you agree to pay royalties, you may be asked to pay a certain amount for each time the work is displayed or distributed. Or your royalty may be calculated as a percentage of your profits.

Royalty-free images are images that are not subject to this royalty or commission. With a service like Shutterstock, Dreamstime, iStockPhoto, etc., you will pay a flat licencing fee for permission to use a photo or other graphic. But you are not required to pay an additional royalty if your project earns you a profit.

@sunil “Royalty free images are the ones you can use on your blog but with credit to them.”

You are confusing “royalty-free” with  licenses based solely on attribution. Whether attribution is required has nothing whatsoever to do with an image being subject (or not subject) to royalties. “Royalty-free” is an expression generally associated with content that is paid for with a one-time licensing fee. There are no per-use or profit-based royalties charged. The licence may or may not require attribution, and this requirement may be applied differently according to how the image is used.

June 29, 2016 at 2:44 am

@nakitakona13 Awesomesauce! Congratulations on an excellent title! You have a great balance, good length, and the title really gives the reader an idea what your post will be about. That’s exactly what you’re after 🙂

For fun, I put your headline into an analyzer that looks at emotion. You rated a super high 66.67%! On that analyzer they say the range from 50%-75% is reserved for the “most gifted copywriters.” You truly have something to be proud of on that count. Once again, congratulations to you!

http://www.aminstitute.com/headline/index.htm

June 29, 2016 at 1:39 am

@bestwriter To my knowledge, none of the Shutterstock images are free. There may, however, be some sort of free trial period when you sign up for the service. Any photo that appears on another site (like Pixabay) should be understood to be part of an ad for their paid service.

Regardless of your approach to writing or your goal in belonging to a site like LB, everyone must respect copyright law. It’s important that we all educate ourselves to click through all the way when performing an image search. This almost always makes it clear if the image is copyrighted or no.

June 29, 2016 at 12:58 am

@thinker Sorry, I’m no help when it comes to the nuances of American politics. I’m Canadian!

BTW, those who think Clinton and Trump (both terrible choices for president, IMHO) are the only options should give serious consideration to how Sanders differs from both. Whether or not people like his approach, he could teach many countries a thing or two about governance.

June 28, 2016 at 9:34 pm

I am also using Chrome, although there are some features of Firefox that I still miss. I like the tab groups in Firefox, which Chrome lacks. I also like the ability to drag a tab to the bookmark menu bar to create a bookmark for a page I’m visiting.

June 28, 2016 at 3:55 pm

@nakitakona13 Good for you! Now try to get some power words in there 🙂

June 28, 2016 at 3:54 pm

@bestwriter I am still not quite sure what’s up with these comments held for moderation. I don’t know why some are and others are not held for moderation. To be honest, I don’t make a point of checking to see if they publish. I will occasionally see by chance that one has or has not been added, but I don’t have the time to follow up that closely.

About Shutterstock images, they do appear on a pale yellow background (as opposed to white for the safe images) and are marked as “Sponsored Images.” Each Shutterstock image has a visible watermark (a big X through the photo, and the word “Shutterstock”) – although it’s easier to see this mark on some pictures than on others.

However, do your due diligence and click through from the search results to the page where the image is shown with its copyright info. The Shutterstock logo is clearly shown at the top of the page, and the URL is for the Shutterstock site. You will also see the copyright and licensing info all laid out, same as on Wikimedia Commons.

@lovern To be honest, I think BlogJob just got lucky. As soon as traffic dropped, the panic of the admin became apparent and poor decisions were made in haste. The site will likely never properly recover. At this point, any money they are making on traffic is at the expense of bloggers who keep their content there. And since there is no sign of any concrete plan to restore the rewards program, BJ has probably lost many of its best writers for good.

June 28, 2016 at 3:22 pm

@bestwriter How our posts are evaluated here is still a mystery to me. But I do believe you’re correct in thinking that in the short-term, better writing (titles or overall for the posts) is of more interest to the site than to us as individuals.The thing is, in the long-term, if we want there to be a site here to pay for our posts we will have to do whatever it takes to sustain the site. And that does mean writing better quality content.

The thing is, in the long-term, if we want there to be a site here to pay for our posts we will have to do whatever it takes to sustain the site. And that does mean writing better quality content. The secret bonus is that once you learn a skill it’s yours to use however you want. I honed a lot of my web writing skills on content sites and blogs, and on social sites that pay very little. But my skills command a higher price on work for hire sites because I practised them on sites not very different from LB 🙂

@lovern I never expect a writing site like this to pay much. Unfortunately, the heydeys of Bubblews are over. But I can consistently earn 22-35 cents per post upfront here. And some of my posts have fetched more. I add on my visitor referrals, and I do quite well. This month I have earned over $12 from just 19 posts and moderate interaction in the forum. It’s not nearly what I earn when I do work for hire, but it’s a lot better than the earnings on a site like MyLot and it’s more reliable than BlogJob!