SEO Content Writing Reflections: A Personal Story

Hi everyone!  A small handful of you might know my name, but most of you probably don’t have a clue who I am.  But, allow me to introduce myself.  I’m Dan Stelter, and right now I handle some of the client inquiries for Devenia and currently run my own SEO content writing business on the side.  I also handle the English content writing services for Devenia.

You’re probably thinking, “Wow!  He writes online content!  Amazing – tell me more!”  Just kidding there – you probably don’t care about that at all, but it helps provide some background so that the rest of this story makes a little more sense.

Anyway, our CEO and I were talking the other day and we happened to be discussing how our business relationship and the future of my content writing company might look in the future.  One story that happened to come up was that I was telling him some of the ridiculous things people say to you when you’re first starting out.

To find clients at first, I contacted many SEO companies by e-mail.  Most people didn’t respond.  Some responded very positively, even if they didn’t need the service.  Some responded very negatively, wondering why in the hell someone would dare spam them.  It happens, and it seems as though everyone has a different preference in this regard.

I happened to begin telling the story of one client who said, “Dan, we appreciate the samples you’ve provided (they were mostly college samples).  However, SEO writing is much different than academic writing.”  I just left it at that, as clearly they weren’t impressed.

However, about 6 months later…

It happened that I began working with a particular company.  This company happened to like the writing done for them, and then they happily passed my name on to another company.  This other company also happened to be the one that didn’t like the academic writing style.  Apparently, the SEO world is a small world.  I ended up doing work for them, and they liked what was done.

Crazy world, huh?  What I learned from the whole scenario is to not take rejection personally. People reject/decline for reasons of their own, and they may not necessarily understand the true value of what is being offered to them.  Perhaps that was my fault – to no communicate to them that I could do the job.

What is the True Value of Content?

As a content writer, it is my job to promote the benefits of content.  But of course, the only reason I promote it is because I believe in it and have seen it provide great value to businesses firsthand.  For example, one client I did work for tripled the number of visitors to his site and quadrupled the time people spent on his site three days after launching a new design, complete with new content.

The mantra to live by is, “SEO is what gets them there.  Content is what keeps them there.”  But, it can’t be just any old thing.  It has to carry value and meaning for the target audience and must be written in an interesting, clear, and easy-to-follow way.  Great content builds engagement, engagement builds sales, and sales builds…you guessed it…profits!

What role do you believe content plays in the SEO process?

Last Updated on June 22, 2012 by Dan Stelter

1 thought on “SEO Content Writing Reflections: A Personal Story”

  1. Very right what you are saying here Dan. Without good content the visitor will look for the back button very fast. In general, we have less than 5 seconds to get the attention of the visitor to the page.

    Also, let me remind you that your excellent writing brought in our biggest client Dan 🙂

    Reply

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