Editor’s Note:
This post follows PWAC Toronto Chapter’s Freelancers Forum, a one-day Social Media Strategy Group workshop. Watch for more guest blogs from the SM Strategy Group, including Dave Fleet, Paul Lima, Jemma Fong and Joan Vinall-Cox.
Click HERE for more information on the SM Strategy Group Tele-coaching series, which begins Tuesday, February 1, 2011.

Why SEO Matters

If you're a freelance writer, you need a website more than you need a business card.
And if you have a website, you need to make it easy for people to find you. That means making sure your site turns up in searches for writers who specialize in your area of writing.

Fortunately, it's easier than ever to make yourself "findable" on the Internet, presuming you're consistent in your search engine optimization (SEO) efforts. Consider these actions and habits:
 

• If you haven't yet set up your own website, try using a blogging platform like Wordpress. You'll be able to post your work without worrying about formatting, code and site organization, which greatly reduces the time required.
• Whenever you have an article published, publish it yourself on your own website once the next issue of the publication has been released. (The delay gives the publication first rights.) Even if you don't tag your article, you improve your site's SEO with all the keywords in your article. At the same time, you provide content that potential clients can read to help them figure out if you're the writer for them.
• Create social media IDs that match your site's address. For instance, my website's address (URL, or uniform resource locator) is luigibenetton.com, which matches my Twitter ID and my LinkedIn profile.
• Maintaining a blog "under" your business URL is a great idea if your posts pertain to the specialty you want to be hired to write about. But if you publish a blog on another topic altogether, keep it under a separate URL to prevent confusion.
• Write guest posts for other blogs and include links back to your website.

SEO is far too broad a topic to fit into five bullet points in a blog post. Indeed, experts dedicate entire blogs and books to SEO. Instead of sending you off Googling, let me recommend a book by Paul Lima, PWAC Professional Member and SM Strategy Group presenter, on the topic of SEO, entititled, "Do You Know Where Your Website Ranks? How to Optimize Your Website for the Best Possible Search Engine Results"