For website owners, there are good reasons to use ghost writers:

• If you want to display the work that someone else holds copyright to on your site, you need to get their permission. You also usually need to have their name on the article. Often, they’ll ask for a link back to their website. If you’ve hired a ghost writer to write your content articles and blog posts, you don’t have these issues at all.

• You may wish to come across as an expert in your field – indeed, you probably are an expert. That doesn’t necessarily mean you know how to write about it. Many people don’t have good writing skills – hence the huge number of freelance writers earning a good living as content writers! Alternatively, you may have excellent writing skills but find the task of writing boring and time consuming. If that’s the case, a ghost writer will write your items much faster than you could.

• Time. Websites require quite a bit of content to bring traffic to the site. Often the site owner has their hands full processing orders or marketing and simply doesn’t have the time to write the number of articles or blog posts they need to have. Outsourcing this work to a ghost writer often makes sense. The items can be written quickly, professionally, and don’t tie up the site owner’s time. Some site owners order hundreds of articles to boost their traffic and there isn’t the slightest possibility they’d have the time to do it. It would take several weeks or months – whereas as a ghost writing service could probably have the completed articles back to them in a week or two.

• Giveaway reports and e-books are excellent marketing tools but again, site owners either don’t have the time to write or they know that a ghost writer can do the job better than they can. Often, the site owner has the topic expertise and simply requires the ghost writer to express it well. The writer is usually given most of the information that will go into the report or e-book. Under that circumstance it makes sense to hire a ghost writer so that you can be credited as the author of the information.

Ghost writers are also often hired to write personal stories. You may have a personal experience or an interesting life story that you want to turn into a book. Writing a book is a daunting task and finding a publisher isn’t easy. If you don’t have the writing expertise to make the manuscript appear professional and the book an enjoyable read, publishers aren’t likely to consider it favorably.

If you need to hire a ghost writer, there’s one very important thing to remember – make sure they know it’s a ghost writing job! The last thing you want is to forget to mention this and find that on completion, the writer believes they hold the copyright even though you have already paid.

Most experienced content writers will understand that the job you give them is to be ghost written, by the very nature of the task. An inexperienced writer may not, so make sure you mention in your initial enquiry that you are seeking a ghost writer, particularly if you are using a freelance site where writers of all levels will bid on your job.

If you’re developing a new website or revamping an old one you’re probably looking for a good content writer. Naturally, you want a writer who’ll be able to understand your products and services, your customer demographic and what you want to achieve.

Our Content Writers

Each content writer working with Article Writers Australia is well educated, and experienced in writing web content. Between them, they have a broad range of experience, which means we can allocate the ideal writer for your site – even if it’s a legal or medical site. Whether you require written copy for your website pages or articles and blog postings – or all three – we can help you.

Current Special – Start-Up Content Pack

We currently have a special offer designed to get new websites off to a great start. For $759 our content writers will write (or rewrite) the text for your 3 main web pages, provide 10 unique articles relevant to your products or services, and 10 blog postings.

You simply provide us with your chosen keywords and information about your company and its products or services. If you’d like to you can provide us with article topics too, but our very creative writers will come up with them if you don’t.

Web pages need to be just right so we’ll consult with you throughout the process. You can have as much or as little input as you like. The cost also includes any revisions you may require to the web pages.

Just like every other profession, when it comes to content writers, there are good ones, average ones and awful ones. If you scour the Internet for the lowest rates possible, it’s obvious which group of content writers will be most likely to accept your work. The good content writers will simply not undertake work at those rates – nor will the average ones for that matter. They don’t have to – they’re busy working for the website owners, SEM and SEO firms who understand the importance of quality content and the value of professional and reliable writers.

If you take a quick look at the websites that broker freelance writing work, you’ll notice that a large percentage of the writing jobs posted are offering abysmal rates – some as low as $1-2 per article. There are plenty of “writers” bidding on those jobs. What you won’t see very often is a professional marketing firm requiring volume content or a webmaster that operates websites of a professional nature looking for a professional writer on those sites. There’s a reason for that.

Content writing jobs come in a range of sizes – from a handful of blog postings or articles for an individual website owner, to job lots of hundreds of articles or postings each and every week for large marketing firms. For an individual webmaster, receiving a few articles of poor quality and having to re-write them is somewhat of an inconvenience – but consider the position of a firm that requires 200 articles each and every week. The company is outsourcing because they don’t have the time to write those 200 articles and because writing is not their core profession. When a firm receives a batch of 200 poorly written articles they must –

• read every item closely to identify errors;
• re-write or edit them in-house or
• find someone to re-write or edit and
• pay them to re-write or edit;
• explain the delay to their clients; and
• find another content writing service.

Hiring cheap content writers ends up costing far more than if the firm had paid higher rates for professional writers in the beginning. The time marketing personnel spend reading and correcting articles can be substantial – the process will take longer than it took the cheap writers to complete the articles. The hours spent doing this is time lost working on what they are good at. The marketing firm also risks losing their client as a client has no interest in errors made or delays caused by contractors – they are paying the firm they have engaged. Experienced marketing personnel have learned this and they bypass the cheap content writers without a second thought.

Likewise, firms that market for professional businesses seek quality writers. They know that anything less than grammatically correct and well written content will simply not be accepted by their clients. They wish to retain their good clients and as the cost of the content is billed to the clients, there is simply no need for the firm to use cheap writing services. Hence marketing firms with bulk writing requirements and webmasters of professional websites tend to seek out professional content writers or writing services.

Don’t despair – you won’t have to pay $250 to get a good quality article. There are many writing services that charge much less that $250 for an individual article and around $25-50 per article for large quantities, depending on the volume and regularity of the work. If you’re counting the pennies, consider this – professionally written content can give you a good long term return on your investment. Spending $500-5000 on professional writers is likely to bring quality traffic to your site and increase your sales – whereas having poorly written content is likely to give your visitors the impression your entire business is as “dodgy” as your content writers.

• Write your own content
• Buy cheap articles

Writing Your Own Content

If you are not a writer but your writing skills are reasonable you can certainly write your own website content. It may take a little time but you can consider that time as an investment in your new business. Set aside a couple of hours each day or evening to work on your content. Here are some basic tips to get you started:

• Consider the type of person who will be attracted to your website and the product you wish to sell. How old are they and where do they hang out online? Are there particular issues that may be important to your target group? What might they want to read about when they arrive at your website? What information can you provide that they will find interesting and useful?

• Look at as many competitor websites as you can. Check their page rank and read their content. Do some sites impress you much more than others? If so, think about why. It’s probably because they have well written and useful content.

• Set up a Google news alert for topics surrounding your niche. That will give you a regular stream of ideas for blog items.

• Think about your niche topics when you are out and about. Ideas will come to you. Jot them down in a notebook so you can write about them later.

• Do a little research on how to best use keywords in your website content. What words and phrases are people typing into the search box to find a website like yours or a product like the one you will be selling?

• Once you’ve written some content, ask a friend to read it and give you their opinion. Pick a friend who will be honest and not just tell you it’s fabulous!

Buying Cheap Articles

If you need a lot of content quickly, and can’t bear the thought of writing it yourself, you could consider PLR articles. They are pre-written articles on selected niche topics and are usually sold in packs of 10-20 articles for around $20.  You need to change the articles slightly as they are sold to multiple people and you want yours to be unique to your website.

PLR is not a bad way to go if you can source good quality articles. When they arrive, give them a quick edit, rewording them slightly and adding your preferred keywords. It may only take you a few minutes to do each one. You’ll have website content and you’ll only have spent around $20.

A company recently asked us to rewrite their business website content into plain English. The products offered were not only “high tech” but “high ticket” items and potential clients were telling the sales staff that despite reading the company’s website, they could not understand how the product could be applied to their situation. It occurred to the company executives that although some people were taking the time to call them for further information, many more must be simply clicking off their website. Needless to say, it also occurred to them that this was probably costing them a very large amount of money!

A quick look at the website revealed the problem. The content appeared to have been written by the PhD level software and technology developers. Despite having a very reasonable knowledge of the subject area myself – from a user’s point of view - my eyes were glazing over with disinterest after the first few sentences. The content was overly technical and filled with jargon that only the development experts would understand. The website content failed to do something else that is crucial – tell the website’s readers what the product could actually do for them!

As online readers, we’re very impatient. We want an instant answer to our questions and there are usually so many sites to look at that if one doesn’t hold our interest, we quickly move on to the next. If it all looks just too hard, we’re gone in a flash – over to one of your competitor’s websites. Telling us in plain English how we will benefit from your product is the best way to hold our attention!

We all use modern technology to varying degrees but the fact is that a large percentage of us don’t understand how that technology actually works. Whether your product is targeted at domestic users or government procurement officers, most fall into the “average person” category. We don’t usually want to know the technical ins and outs – we want to know what it does, what we will gain from using it and of course, how easy it will be for us to use!

If you have decided to do your own website content writing because you doubt that a professional content writer can do it justice, ask a few “average” people to read your content before you finalize it. You may have tremendous expertise in your own field but when it comes to content writing, the chances are you want your content to appeal to the “average person” and not to your peers.

If you are interested in PLR Articles try

·     Use keywords in your website content

·     Website content is not just about web pages

·     Write in plain English

·     Write short sentences & paragraphs

·     Make your website content useful

·     Consider using a blog to add content

Use Keywords in Your Website Content

“Keywords” are the words and phrases people use when searching for a product or service using the search box. You can research the keywords commonly used for your product or service by using the Google Keyword Tool. You can find out which keywords and phrases are most commonly used, how many people are searching for that term and how strong the advertiser competition is for those keywords.

If your product or service is a common one it’s likely that the popular keywords are also highly competitive. If numerous businesses are targeting those keywords with their website content, you may find it difficult to bring your website up ahead of theirs. You may be better off selecting less competitive keywords. For example, the keyword phrase “website content” is very competitive but “web content writer” is less so.

A web content writer may add website content using a number of less competitive phrases that describe a particular service rather than their trade. For example, their website content may include a number of articles using the phrases “blog writers” or “article writer” or “blogging services” or “web page content”.

Website Content is Not Just About Web Pages

It is important to have web pages describing your business and services however, there is a limit to the volume of content you can place directly on those pages. The more additional website content you have – such as articles and blog postings – the more visitors you are likely to attract.

Make Your Website Content Useful

If you put yourself in the position of a prospective customer, you’ll find that there are numerous articles or blog postings you can write that will be helpful to your website visitors. For example, if your business sells wooden flooring, there are numerous types of wood, several different styles of flooring and different levels of cost involved. You could write an article about each different type of wood, each different style of flooring, an article about the costs involved and a couple about doing it yourself and caring for wood floors. The list goes on.

The added benefit of providing useful website content is that the keywords that will naturally be involved in those articles are likely to be less competitive. There are probably more people searching for “wooden floors” than “Jarrah floors”. Often the people using those keywords are closer to making a purchase decision than the ones using more general search terms.

As you can see, preparing good website content is not as simple as it first seems. If you have no previous experience in getting business websites up and running, hiring a web content writer probably looks like a good option at this stage!

Writing Your Website Content

Write your website content in plain English and keep your sentences and paragraphs short. Website readers want to find useful information very quickly and they need to be able to read it quickly. Relevant and easy to read website content will give your visitors a favourable impression of your business. That doesn’t mean it should be written carelessly. Prospective customers will be put off by a website with spelling and grammatical errors as it suggests your business does not care about quality.

Consider Adding a Blog

Many business people don’t consider blogs as website content. They see blogs as a means of someone having their say – but used properly, a blog can bring a tremendous number of visitors to your website. For a business, a blog is not about having your say at all. It is about providing information to potential customers and bringing more visitors to your website.

A Blog is a useful way of adding regular website content. You can use it to write articles about new products or target a variety of less competitive keyword phrases by writing useful articles around them.

Using a Web Content Writer

Researching and selecting the right keywords and writing a large number of articles with strategically positioned keywords is not something most business operators can find the time to do.  Why should you? Web content writers have particular skills and knowledge. If you wanted to take someone to Court you would not do a law degree first – you would hire someone who knows what they are doing.

A good web content writer can help improve your online enquiry and sales figures quite dramatically. If you can afford to hire a web content writer to professionally prepare your website content, it is usually well worth doing so!

Having a great domain name and an attractive website is not enough. These things won’t matter much if your website isn’t visible when people search for the products and services you sell.

If you want to attract the right visitors (aka “targeted traffic”) to your website, there are four vitally important aspects to be considered when creating your website content:-

1.  Keywords

Keywords are the words and phrases people enter into the search box when looking for particular products or services. If your business sells “Waddayoucallits”, many people would simply type in “Waddayoucallits” but others may type “Buy Waddayoucallits” or “Find Waddayoucallits” or “What does Waddayoucallit cost” or any one of numerous other phrases.

If your website content focuses on your new stores and your helpful sales team but doesn’t mention “Waddayoucallits” in the right places, your website is unlikely to show up on the first page or two when your prospective customers search. Keywords should therefore be selected and included strategically in your website content.

2.  Helpful Information

In a traditional business, people love to find a helpful assistant when they arrive – one who knows about the products or services and can answer questions. Consider your website content your helpful online store assistant. If you use the Internet yourself, you will already understand that when you visit a website you get a feeling about the professionalism and capability of the company from what you see and read.

If your potential customers are captivated by the wealth of helpful information on your site they are more likely to form a favourable impression of your business and what you can do to help them.

3.  Your Audience

Business owners are often tempted to give website designers product brochures and old marketing material to copy as website content. Some of the information may be relevant and should form part of the website content – but it hasn’t been written for an online audience and is unlikely to contain the strategically placed keywords that your website content needs.

Preparing your own content and handing it to a friend who can build websites may save you a few dollars in the short term but you are likely to pay dearly for it.

4.  Quality of Your Website Content

As with many things, you get what you pay for. If you pay someone $15 per hour you are likely to end up with poorly written website content. Even if you pay a professional writer $40 per hour, you may get well written website content – but most professional writers know little about SEO (Search Engine Optimization), keywords or website content writing. 

If on the other hand, you hire a website content writer do it for you, or you allow your SEO expert to arrange it as part of a design package deal, you are likely to be thankful you did. Whilst content writers charge from $80 to $350 per web page, they are professional writers with particular expertise. Their knowledge can save you advertising dollars and bring many, many more visitors to your website. Marketing is a numbers game. A greater number of visitors to your website is likely to translate to more sales. You don’t have to be a mathematical genius to realise the ongoing value of your investment in good website content!

You probably do know that the content of your website is what draws potential customers to your site. Your website is your online store and the more potential customers that visit you, the more sales you are likely to make – so long as those visitors are interested in the content of your website once they arrive.

Potential visitors type words or phrases into the search box and hope to find websites of interest. They want websites that contain information relevant to the product or service they are seeking. Websites with relevant and “optimized” content will come up first – and they are the ones likely to secure the majority of sales.  Naturally, you want your business website to be one of those. How do you achieve that? It’s all about the website content. That’s where your SEO content writer comes in.

The benefits of using an SEO content writer are:

• Well written content
• Search Engine Optimized content
• Better position in search results
• Increased traffic (potential customers)
• Likely increase in sales

A professional writer may write lovely content for your website, but if they lack SEO content writing skills, you will not be any better off than if you had written it yourself. Having an SEO content writer prepare your content may seem expensive however, that investment can save you a great deal of money on advertising and increase you sales dramatically.

Without optimized content on your website, your website may not come up well in organic searches. You may have to use “Pay Per Click” advertising to bring customers to your site. Even as a paying advertiser you will have to compete with many others.If their content is better optimized than yours, you will have to “bid” higher amounts to push your advertisements closer to the top – your PPC may cost you hundreds of dollars every month.

When your website is amongst the first organic listings, the number of potential customers visiting your website at no cost to you will naturally increase. Using an SEO content writer can therefore pay off very quickly.

SEO content writing is a specialist skill and writers who are skilled in this area often have business and marketing knowledge. Most importantly, an SEO content writer has an excellent understanding of how to select and utilize keywords in your content to attract the right visitors.

A good SEO content writer will:

• Take the time to understand your business
• Do any necessary research
• Write relevant and informative content for your visitors
• Utilize keywords to attract the right visitors
• Position keywords for search engine crawlers (optimization)
• Write professionally to ensure your business appears credible

Content is king. If you could invest $500 – 1000 in the share market and know that you would receive a dividend every week for years to come, you probably wouldn’t hesitate. Investing in your website content by utilizing an SEO content writer is likely to pay dividends over and over, well into the future of your website!